An Educated Death (6 page)

In the large, open lobby, a gaggle of girls stood together, giggling about something. Their high-pitched laughter echoed in the big room. I went down the hall past them to Dorrie's office. Beside the door was a black lettered sign that still unaccountably said Headmaster. Probably Dorrie had tried to change it and been stalled by the guy in charge of grounds and buildings. Curt Sawyer was openly resentful about working for a woman.

Lori Leonard, Dorrie's secretary, was frowning at something on her computer screen. She looked up when I came in. From her smile, I could tell she was relieved that I wasn't someone else. "You can go right in, Ms. Kozak," she said. "Mrs. Chapin is expecting you."

Dorrie wasn't alone. Besides Dave Holdorf, the assistant headmaster, and Curt Sawyer, there were two other men I didn't know. "Good morning, Thea," she said, getting up and coming to meet me. "I'm glad you're here." She sounded relieved. Winter air travel is unpredictable. She probably had been afraid I wouldn't make it. Her hand, when I shook it, was cold, and she looked as though she hadn't slept. Still, she was faultlessly turned out in a rich wool pleated skirt, a white cashmere sweater, and a Hermes scarf. Her jewelry was simple, understated, and real.

She led me to a wing chair facing the group of men. "Coffee?"

"Please. That stuff they serve on the plane doesn't do a thing." Dorrie is the kind of person who learns how you take your coffee once and you never have to tell her again. It's just one example of the kind of memory for people and details that makes her so good at her job. She went to the door and told Lori what I wanted. The men already had their coffee.

"I'm not sure you've met our legal counsel, Peter Van Deusen, and the Sedgwick police chief, Rocky Miller?" I shook hands with Peter and Rocky, wondering why a grown man would continue to call himself Rocky. I should know better than to think things like that around cops. I know they can read minds.

"It's really Alan Rockport Miller, Jr.," he said, "but I've always been called Rocky and it's too late to change now." It was the kind of comment you might expect from a man in his fifties, but Rocky Miller wasn't that old. Maybe late thirties. Maybe forties, if he was older than he looked. "Forty-five," he said, reading my mind again.

"What's my next question, Chief?" I said.

"What am I doing here?"

Dorrie looked amused. "I see he does it to you, too," she said.

"They all do it," I said, annoyed at the way Rocky Miller was taking over Dorrie's meeting.

"They?" he said. There was an edge in his voice I decided to ignore. He probably thought I meant men, not knowing about my history with cops. Most cops have an us v. them mentality. They assume a degree of separateness that isn't justified.

The lawyer cleared his throat and ostentatiously checked his watch. "Can we get on with this? I have another meeting."

Maybe Rocky could read my mind, but I could read Peter's. He was thinking that he was an important and busy lawyer who wasn't going to let some two-bit local police chief steal the show. I glanced at Rocky and saw that he was thinking the same thing.

The assistant head, Dave Holdorf, got up, brushing some imaginary specks off his pants. "Are you sure you need me, Dorrie, because I've got a lot of—"

"I need you." Dorrie and Dave respected each other's abilities, but they didn't like each other. Dave had wanted to be headmaster but the trustees didn't think he could handle the job, something he knew and resented. Rocky hadn't missed that, either. Dave sat back down with an almost imperceptible flounce. A look of distaste flickered across Curt Sawyer's face. The administration at Bucksport, like bunches of disparate people thrown together in workplaces everywhere, were a dysfunctional family, but they usually coped well with their dysfunction.

Dorrie handed me a fat folder of papers and sat down. "All of you, Thea included, are pretty well up-to-date on the situation." They all looked at me curiously. They knew what their roles were, but except for Dave, none of them understood how I fit in. Dorrie caught the looks. "Ms. Kozak is an independent schools specialist. One of her areas of expertise is crisis management. I'm afraid this situation has just about ruined her San Francisco vacation and she was willing to come to us straight from the airport."

She gave them a settle-down-and-get-along look. "I'm afraid Chief Miller has brought us another piece of bad news this morning. Do you want to tell them, Rocky, or shall I?"

His answer surprised me. "It's your show, Dorrie," he said.

She acknowledged the compliment with a nod, opened the folder she was holding, and took out some papers. "The autopsy report indicates that Delaney Taggert was about seven weeks pregnant."

Curt Sawyer and Dave Holdorf spoke together, their words crossing like rapiers in the air.

"Which suggests that she might have killed herself," Dave said.

"Why is that such a big deal, Dorrie?" Curt asked.

Close behind them came Van Deusen's question. "Do the parents know about this yet?"

"Not yet, but they'll have to be told. And it's a big deal, Curt, as you should well know, because the last thing we need right now is another indication that we aren't taking adequate care of our students. You might argue that it doesn't make any difference if Delaney was pregnant now that she's dead, but to her parents, and undoubtedly to all our parents, particularly the parents of daughters, it could be a very big deal. We function here in an in-loco-parentis capacity. The parents trust us to keep their children safe."

"Come on, Dorrie. You know as well as I do that if these kids want to do it, they'll find a way," Curt said. A typical head of campus security, and, in Bucksport's case, head of grounds and buildings, he was a nuts-and-bolts guy. His grounds were impeccable; his grasp of the politics of school administration somewhat less so.

"Try telling the parents of a sixteen-year-old that, Curt," Dorrie said.

"We've got to be very careful how we approach the parents about this," Van Deusen said. He was sitting forward on the sofa, one foot tapping nervously. His short, stocky body seemed barely contained by his suit and everything about his posture was tense. He reminded me of a terrier straining at the leash.

"I'm aware of that, Peter," Dorrie said. "I was hoping you could give me some guidance. But before we get to that, there's more. Something a lot more serious." Everyone stared at her in surprise, probably wondering what could be more serious than a dead student who had been pregnant. "You may recall the circumstances under which Delaney was found but I will review them for you anyway. An early-morning jogger using one of our woods trails spotted something pink out on the pond, paused to look at it, and noticed a large area where the ice seemed to have been broken. There were footprints leading out to the hole in the ice and none coming back. He went out as far as he could and poked around the hole with a stick. He came up with a pink glove and came straight to the campus to get Curt."

"We know all that, Dorrie," Peter Van Deusen said impatiently, checking his watch again. "And then a couple maintenance guys went out and fished around with shovels and found the body, which the fire department had to get out with grappling hooks. So what's the big news?"

I decided that I didn't like Peter Van Deusen. At that moment Dorrie looked as though she didn't, either. I knew that what was foremost in my mind was central in Dorrie's, too—the potentially devastating effect of a teenage suicide on the peer community. And suicide was the most likely thing, given a pregnant, depressed teenager. It was disappointing, almost criminally so, that neither the school's attorney nor the man in charge of campus security understood that.

Dorrie cleared her throat nervously, as though what she had to say was particularly difficult for her. "Chief Miller did a follow-up interview with the jogger yesterday and learned something we didn't hear the first time. He says there were two sets of tracks leading partway onto the pond, as though two people had gone out together, but only one set coming back." She waited for the import of her statement to sink in.

"So?" Curt Sawyer said. "So two kids go down to the pond. One decides to leave and the other goes farther out to explore the ice. What's the big deal?"

"I hope there is no big deal, Curt," Dorrie said quietly. "But it means that somewhere on this campus is the other person who was out there... someone who knows a lot more about what happened than we do and who isn't coming forward to talk to us. I have to wonder why."

The whole situation took on a darker tone as possibilities leapt into my mind. Had there been a friend out there unable to save her who was now huddled alone with a terrible secret? Had Laney needed support to get herself out there, then dismissed her companion on some pretext before taking that final plunge? Someone on this campus was burdened with a terrible secret.

I was about to ask a question when Van Deusen interrupted. "Can we take a few minutes to talk about handling the parents?" he said. "I've got another meeting to go to."

"Excuse me, Peter? On a Sunday?" Dorrie's voice had an edge it hadn't had earlier. "When I called to set up this meeting, didn't I make it clear that it might take all morning?" He nodded but I could see that he hadn't detected the change in Dorrie. "Then what's this business about another meeting?"

He shrugged. "Naturally, I'll give you all the help I can, but I have a very busy schedule this week."

Dorrie's palm slapped the arm of her chair. "This is ridiculous. If you don't have time to give Bucksport the attention it needs, Mr. Van Deusen, I'll ask Mr. Graves to assign us an attorney who does. Your cavalier attitude is both offensive and unwarranted. It implies that you do not value our business nor appreciate the gravity of the situation."

It looked as though this was one midlevel associate who wasn't going to make partner, and he'd probably always wonder why. I watched Van Deusen deflate under Dorrie's steady gaze, like a balloon with a big leak. John Graves was the managing partner at Graves and Doer, a tough, old-school, your job is your life kind of guy. The very mention of his name made his subordinates tremble. At least Van Deusen had the good sense to admit his mistake. He apologized and used the phone to call his office and reschedule his meeting. The client, it appeared, was his disgruntled wife.

When he had rejoined the group, Dorrie tented her fingers on her knee and looked around at all of us. "Now, I am not ready to take the radical step of assuming there was some sort of foul play involved in Delaney Taggert's death, and neither is Chief Miller. All I'm saying is that there is someone in this community... maybe more than one person... who knows more than they are saying about Delaney's trip to the pond, and we need to know what that something is. That's where Thea comes in."

All their eyes turned curiously to me. Somewhere a distant bell rang. Tomorrow the corridors would be filled with a hubbub of feet and voices. A headmaster's office usually isn't isolated from the student community. But today was Sunday. Through the window I saw the sunlight on a trio of bright heads crossing the circle. "Delaney Taggert fell though the cracks," Dorrie said. "Maybe in more ways than one. Her parents are devastated and we can expect that devastation to turn to rage toward the Bucksport School. That we are not a caring environment. That we let their daughter drown because we weren't taking proper care of our students." She ran a nervous hand through her neatly coifed graying hair.

"Our best protection, against a lawsuit, against an exodus of students, and because it's the right thing to do, is to conduct a thorough inventory of our system of parietals, checks, and faculty contacts, as well as our security system"—Curt Sawyer sniffed loudly and Dorrie ignored him—"to be sure that we are doing all we should, and to find out where, if anywhere, things went wrong in this case. To demonstrate that we are taking this seriously, we're bringing in an outside person, a crackerjack independent consultant, to assess the situation and confirm that our procedures are adequate to care for our students."

Curt Sawyer, who ought to have been particularly interested in this subject, looked bored. He was playing a game with his feet and the patterns on the Bokara rug. "Isn't that right, Curt?" Dorrie snapped him to attention like a drill sergeant. He stopped playing but continued to look bored and annoyed.

I waited for my marching orders, feeling slightly intimidated by her praise and slightly uncertain about the assignment.

An audit of the school's procedures was well within the bounds of our usual work, but the fact that a death was involved gave me pause. On the other hand, I was just beginning to develop something of a national reputation as a competent troubleshooter in tricky situations like this. I was good at it and Dorrie needed my help. There was no need to get into the details of Delaney Taggert's death. My job would be the more removed one of assessing the procedures in place for monitoring students and their safety, and determining whether they had been followed. If it began to look as though there were anything suspicious about her death, that would be a job for Chief Rocky.

"Dave, I want you to work closely with Thea. Smooth the way for her. Tell people why she's here and try to ensure their cooperation. I have an ulterior motive in all this as well, which I've discussed with you, Rocky." Dave Holdorf's eyebrows went up when she called the chief by his first name. "I'm hoping, in the course of her interviews, Thea may be able to learn more about what happened to Delaney." This time it was my eyebrows that went up.

"I wouldn't advise you to do that," Van Deusen said. "I think any questions related to her death ought to come from the police. You don't want it to look like you're conducting an investigation. A superficial inventory for PR purposes is fine. A good idea, in fact. But not probing questions about Delaney Taggert. Suppose someone on the outside found out. Suppose Chip Barrett found out. He'd make it front-page news."

"Who is Chip Barrett?" I asked.

"Jimmy Olsen crossed with a pit bull," Curt Sawyer said sourly. "A nosy, interfering little weasel who doesn't understand the word no. Reporter for the
Sedgwick Sentinel.
A buck-toothed little rodent who fancies himself the Scud Stud." From this unusually voluble response, I deduced that Sawyer had had his share of run-ins with Chip Barrett.