An Educated Death (43 page)

"Officer Hennessey," I said loudly, and then lowered my voice so that he had to lean forward to hear me. "We are busting our butts out here to keep things calm on this campus. If you insist on standing here and shouting at me like you are some medieval lout and I am your wench, I will refuse to say another word to you or Rocky or anyone in the Sedgwick Police Department, you understand? And I have some very important words to say."

The skin around his mouth and eyes was tight with anger but he wheeled without a word, stormed back to his car, and drove away without running over a single student. I stayed behind a minute to reassure the students. "It's all right," I said. "Just a security thing. The police are supposed to keep an eye on unfamiliar cars on campus and Officer Hennessey didn't realize this was mine." They probably didn't know me from Adam but the key was to act as though I belonged. If I said I did, they'd accept it. It seemed to work.

"Jeez," one lanky boy said, "my dad's coming tomorrow to pick me up. He gonna get the hairy-eyeball treatment, too?"

"Hairy eyeball?" a girl said, giving him the full benefit of her mocking grin. "Chad, that is so lame!"

"Yeah?" he said. "So what would you call it?"

"Police harassment," she said. "It's the pits. Ever since Laney died, this place has been crawling with cops. I half expect one to crawl out of the toilet every time I flush."

The others chimed in with their own versions of the intrusive police presence on campus—exactly what Dorrie and I had tried so hard to avoid—and I left them to it, reassured to see that the country was turning out another generation of young people with a healthy respect for the police. I got in my car and drove to the administration building. Hennessey's car was there but he was nowhere to be seen. Maybe he'd gone to tell on me and bring Rocky down on me as well. Which was fine. I didn't mind telling the story once instead of twice. The sooner I was done here, the sooner I could go home and sleep. Sleep, right now, was very alluring.

When I turned the corner and saw Dorrie, Rocky, and Suzanne striding purposefully toward me, I could see that I had a long way to go before I slept. They came at me like a flying wedge, caught me up in their midst, and swept me back down the hall to Dorrie's office. Seated and with the door securely closed behind us, I stared out at the now-dark campus and braced myself for Rocky's attack.

It was Suzanne, my partner and my friend, who attacked. "I know you are impulsive," she said. "And I know that while the rest of us have outgrown our illusions of immortality, you still cling to yours, but I've always assumed that you aren't a fool. Now I'm beginning to wonder."

They sat like a parole board, Suzanne, Dorrie, Rocky, and Hennessey, and stared at me like I was some incomprehensible and slightly dangerous object. "What's going on here?" I said. "What is it that I'm supposed to have done that has you all upset?"

"Stayed out of telephone reach all day when no one knew where you were," Rocky said. "Left your house without telling anyone where you were going. Went into the woods by yourself when you know there's a killer on the campus—"

"Suzanne knew where I was all morning. I was working, just like I am now. I called her. I talked with her and we agreed to talk again later. Officer Hennessey knew, too." I glared at both of them. Suzanne, at least, had the grace to look a little embarrassed but Hennessey just stared through me. I didn't share the insight his behavior gave me with the rest of the group, but I realized that one of the best arguments against the one-night stand—one I'd overlooked last night—is wondering how the other person will look to you the next day. We hadn't even
had
a one-night stand and he still looked like a handsome sack of manure.

"No one told me I was supposed to be reporting my whereabouts. Not that it would have done any good anyway. If I called in and said I was at home and then the killer came, broke in, and killed me, how am I supposed to have been helped? It won't matter a tinker's damn to me how soon my body is found, once I'm already dead. What I don't understand, Rocky—" This time I focused my anger on him. It was pretty powerful anger, too, the concentrated result of being poisoned, Andre's departure, the outrageous Rick McTeague playfully shoving me toward a hole in the ice, and now the combined arrogance of the people who were supposed to be my colleagues, sitting around engaging in the sort of tut-tuting, mindless criticism that has roused me to anger ever since elementary school. "What makes no sense to me, Rocky, is why it was important for me to have a policeman with me all night but not important for me to have police protection today. Especially since you haven't caught the killer. Were you just trying to give poor Hennessey a recreational opportunity?"

That brought Hennessey halfway out of his chair, his pale face red. Rocky the Powerful quelled him with a look and came back to staring at me. His own face was just as red, his pale, protruding eyes narrowed with rage.

"Now, just come down off your high horse and listen for a minute, Sherlock," he said. "You know full well that it was stupid of you to drive over here and go out into the woods alone, without calling us and letting us know. Without taking someone with you—"

If the man called me Sherlock one more time I was going to do something unladylike. "I resent being called stupid, Rocky. If this had been left up to you, Laney Taggert's death would have been filed as an accident."

"And Carol Frank might not be dead," he said.

"You can't blame me for that. I told you to find her, to warn her. And I didn't go into the woods alone. I tried to call you, Rocky. They couldn't find you so I left a message, and then I called Curt Sawyer, told him what was going on, and he said he'd have a man out there watching the whole time." I didn't bother to share my suspicion that Curt had done nothing of the sort. "Where is Curt, anyway?" Rocky shrugged.

I didn't know if the body had a limited supply of adrenaline, but I might be about to find out. My temper, already so sorely tried by Rick McTeague, sizzled like a Fourth of July rocket. "I don't know where you guys get off thinking that you're so superior, sitting around looking at me like I'm something that came in on a shoe when we're all supposed to be working together, but I do know this. I'm not a little kid who's going to sit here and be chastised by all the wise grown-ups."

The change in temperature after the outside was making my nose run. I pulled a out a tissue, swiped at it angrily, and went on. "You're all upset with me because you think I did something impulsive and dangerous. Of course, you're right. I should have stayed home and finished the laundry instead of meeting Rick McTeague and walking the murder scene. But if I hadn't done that"—I stood and walked to the door—"I wouldn't have learned something that may turn out to be crucial to the case. McTeague says that both sets of footprints were small. He says it's extremely likely that Laney Taggert was killed by a woman. Now all you have to do, Chief, is find her." I walked out, slamming the door behind me.

I didn't know if they'd come after me or sit around and talk about me but instead of going out to my car, I went down the hall, trying doors. My office was locked, but they'd look there anyway. The door to Ellie Drucker's office was open and there was a desk light on, so I ducked in there and slid under the desk. Sitting there listening to the faint sounds of footsteps in the hall, I realized how childish I was being and how hilarious the situation really was, especially since I'd just told them I wasn't a child.

It had all the excitement of a game of hide-and-seek when it's played at night, and was just as meaningful, in the great scheme of things. From my hiding place, I heard them unlock the door and go into my office. Rocky and Hennessey. I was surprised at how clearly I could hear what they were saying. The walls didn't seem thin. It made me realize what a quiet neighbor Ellie was. I never heard any sounds from her office. By the time they'd finished looking in my office, which took a while considering that the place was no bigger than a closet and there was no place to hide, and their footsteps headed off down the hall, my limbs were cramped and I was more than ready to come out from under the desk.

Beyond the pool of light from the desk lamp, the room was dark, but there was a strange light coming from the bookcase. I moved some books and discovered a small, jagged hole in the wall. That explained why I'd been able to hear Rocky and Hennessey so clearly. Had our positions been reversed, with Ellie the one who had a constant parade of people in and out of her office, I would have found the noise distracting. She must be a more concentrated worker than I. Knowing how hard it was to get Curt Sawyer to fix things, I wasn't surprised the hole existed. No wonder she'd stacked thick books in front of it.

I went back to Dorrie's office and found her and Suzanne head-to-head in soft conversation. They didn't seem surprised to see me. "I'm sorry," Suzanne said, "I don't know what came over me."

"You were scared," I said. "When you fear for another person's safety, that often comes out as anger."

She nodded. "You're right. I'm still sorry. Seven years we've been a team. You'd think I'd know better."

"Me, too," Dorrie said. "We're letting this whole awful business make us very uncivilized. Want some coffee or tea?"

I sat down, glad to take a load off my feet. "Tea would be nice. Twenty-four hours of sleep would be nice."

Dorrie brought me my tea and sank back into her chair. She looked more discouraged than I'd ever seen her. "A woman," she said, shaking her head sadly. "I don't even like to think about who it might be."

"Or a man with very small feet," Suzanne said. "It's not a laughing matter, but it is comical thinking about Chief Rocky lining up all the suspects and measuring their feet. When this is over we can collaborate on a true crime book and call it
The Cinderella Murders."

"We may have to, after this," I said, "we may never work in this business again."

"That's not funny," Dorrie said, and started to laugh.

We were punchy from fatigue, sinking into hysterical humor as we played verbal ping-pong with the idea that our only clue was small feet. "You don't think McTeague might have made it up, do you?" Dorrie said.

I shrugged. "Who can tell—the guy is a serious nutcase—but why?"

"Then why didn't he tell Rocky?"

"Because Rocky didn't treat him with respect. You know what else he knew?" There was an expectant silence. "He knew that Laney's secret lover was Chas Drucker."

"What is the world coming to," Dorrie asked, clasping her head between her hands, "when people withhold important clues to murder because they don't like the way the police are treating them? Whatever happened to civic responsibility?"

"You should know better than most people," Suzanne said. "Schools don't teach civics anymore. Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King but not the Civil War. American Indians... excuse me... Native Americans, the influences of the Iroquois Confederation on the Constitution, maybe, but not the Constitution, or the Bill of Rights, or anything that suggests there's a moral component to life or any sort of responsibility to other people, or communities, or to the country. We've got an ahistorical country with no morals and an inflated sense of rights and entitlements."

"Whew!" I said, "you're beginning to sound like me."

"Ought to occasionally, after seven years." Suzanne patted her hair into place. She looked exhausted after her long stint coping with Dorrie's trustees. "But it's not just you, Thea. Paul's kids are always saying, as a justification for not doing things, that it's a free country. Honestly, it makes my blood boil! They hate it but I always ask them just what they think that expression means and how much freedom costs."

Dorrie got up and started putting coffee cups onto a tray. "It's been a long day, ladies, what do you say we call it quits and reconvene in the morning?"

"Fine by me," Suzanne said, suppressing an enormous yawn, "I don't seem to have the energy I used to."

"Don't worry," Dorrie said, "in about eighteen years, when Junior leaves for college, you'll feel energetic again."

"Speaking of responsibility," I interrupted, "have you fired Drucker yet?" Dorrie wouldn't meet my eye. "I know it's Christmas, Dorrie, but you can't wait. With all that's going on, it's bound to come out, and things will look that much worse if you've sat on a serious breach of faculty ethics."

"But Thea," she said, "Christmas... his kids are home...."

"He lost his holiday exemption when he took a Bucksport student away for Columbus Day weekend and got her pregnant."

"We don't know that he's the father."

"It's easy enough to check," I said, "with DNA. Are you saying it's all right for a faculty member to have sex with student as long as he or she took precautions?"

"Of course not. It's just that he's been here for twenty-five years... and there's Ellie to think about. All that free time she's given, all those hundreds, maybe thousands of hours, and their kids... their son home from college..."

"It was his daughter who turned him in," I reminded her. "But I think you're losing sight of the issue here. Before all hell broke loose, or, more accurately, when only half of hell had broken loose, anticipating problems with Laney's parents and perhaps other parents, you hired me to do a procedures audit and advise you whether Bucksport was doing everything it could and/or should for the physical and emotional well-being of the students. Well, I did it, and I found some problems...."

Dorrie didn't seem to be paying any attention to my pompous little speech. She was fiddling with the snazzy gold buttons on her jacket. "Dorrie," I said, trying to get her attention. "I think you should seriously consider firing Bill and Kathy Donahue as well."

"Oh, not now, Thea," she said wearily. "I've got more pressing things to worry about, with two hundred plus sets of irate parents and upset kids. Write a report. When things calm down, we can talk about what to do for the long term."

Someone in the doorway cleared her throat. Ellie Drucker was standing there with a sheaf of papers. "I think I've got all but four taken care of," she said. "I'm still waiting for call-backs on them. I gave them my home number so I think I'll head out now, unless there's something else you needed?"