Stalking Death (10 page)

I watched her go, those broad shoulders so straight it must have hurt. Shondra Jones had come to St. Matthews with a chip on her shoulder. In a little more than a year, the school had turned it into a boulder.

Chapter 7

I followed my campus map to Cabot Hall, where I was meeting Maria Santoro, the resident advisor Shondra had gone to with the second picture. As I climbed the wide, slightly shabby staircase to the third floor, I thought about other times, other dorms, and how much sameness there was from one campus to another. Some were cleaner, homier, some more modern or more elegant, but they all possessed the same mingled scents of cleaning products, grooming products, pizza and popcorn. Except at times like this, when everyone was in class, there was always the background hum of music, the rush of showers, the rising and falling cadence of voices.

So far, I'd spotted two staircases, two fire escapes, and a convenient tree, all of which afforded access to the building, as well as all the ground floor windows, and the dorm hadn't been locked. I'd walked in unobserved and climbed two flights of stairs without meeting anyone. On the third floor, searching for Ms. Santoro's room, I'd passed two students and a janitor. No one had challenged me or shown any curiosity about my presence. True, I wasn't male, like Shondra's alleged stalker, but I was a stranger and I looked too young to be someone's parent, even if the last six months had aged me ten years.

At Ms. Santoro's door, I read the very picky sign about when she could and couldn't be disturbed. Neither welcoming nor supportive of a poor, homesick freshman, never mind the rattled victim of a sadist playing mind games. Dorm residents had to set limits, I knew, but tone made a big difference. Brief as it was, the tone of this note was whiny and petulant. I wondered if the writer was aware of that.

I raised my hand to knock, imaging Shondra standing here in my place. I could see her anger and her fear—I'd witnessed both of those today—but I didn't have the story yet, so I couldn't imagine what she'd said or how she'd proceeded. I knocked and waited. When nothing happened, I knocked again, harder and louder. I'd asked Craig Dunham to call ahead. She was supposed to be expecting me.

Finally, a stocky young woman with a peevish face and spiky punk hair snatched the door open and glared up at me. "What's your problem?" she snapped. "Can't you read? I'm not on duty right now. I'm trying to work."

With those few sentences, she'd put me in Shondra's shoes. I looked down at her with my best predatory smile—the one I learned from the heron about to stab a fish—and said, "Maria Santoro?"

She hadn't bothered to look at me before, assuming I was one of her young charges. Now she reddened and gave me a slightly apologetic "Yes."

I stuck out my hand. "Thea Kozak, from EDGE consulting. Todd Chambers has brought us in to assist with the Shondra Jones matter."

The flush darkened as she opened the door wider and jerked her chin toward the room. "Oh, right. Craig's secretary called with some garbled message about them sending someone over. Come on in."

I stepped past her into a pig sty. Papers and books littered the floor, warring for space with empty pizza boxes, take-out Chinese cartons and soda cans. Obviously, she didn't believe she was supposed to be a role model, but I was surprised she hadn't made some effort to pick up, knowing the administration was sending someone to see her. She shifted a litter of books and papers off a chair and invited me to sit. I wondered if she even bothered to do that when her visitor was a student or if she left them standing. What I really wondered was why she hadn't been fired long before this? Was the dorm head was paying any attention?

With a wince for the fate of my good pants, I brushed crumbs and other detritus off the chair, and sat. "Tell me about the night Shondra found the second picture," I said.

"Ha!" A sharp little fox-like bark. "That girl is a menace to society."

"About that night?"

"It was almost lights out time. Nearly eleven. I was grading papers when she came banging on my door." She rolled her eyes.

"She came to you because you were the resident on call?" I wanted to back up and take her through the normal evening routine but the room was hot and the smell of old food mixed with the cloying sweetness of incense was sickening. I wondered if she burned incense to cover up more incriminating smells.

"Yes."

As I waited for elaboration, she flipped idly through the pages of a book. I took the book out of her hands, closed it, and set it on her desk. "Maybe you could concentrate on my questions?"

Santoro shrugged. "She said she was sure that someone had been in her room and she wanted me to be with her while she looked around. I went back to her room with her."

"How did she seem? Was she calm? Upset? Angry?"

"Upset. And angry. Shondra's always angry. So, we went back to her room. Opened the door. The light was on." She hesitated. "It looked okay to me, but she said things had been disturbed."

"Did she say how she could tell? Was the room neat? Messy?"

"That girl should have been a nun. The only thing not perfectly orderly or neatly aligned was the laundry bag on the floor."

"That's how she knew her things had been disturbed?"

"That's how she said she knew," Santoro corrected. She picked up a pencil from the desk and began doing a mini-baton twirling act. A ray of sun through the window illuminated her face and I could see several empty holes in her ears and a small one in her nose. I wondered if she also had a pierced tongue. Not quite the image Todd Chamber's trustees were looking for.

"Then what happened?"

She halted the pencil and looked at me quizzically. "Are you a cop or something?" she asked. "You don't sound like any consultant I've ever met."

"You meet a lot of consultants?"

She shrugged. "I've met some cops."

Why was I not surprised? "I do a lot of this," I said. "Trying to figure out what went on so I can advise the school about the best way to handle the situation. They're paying for my time, and time is money."

The pencil twirled. "They should expel her and be done with it."

"Why?"

"Because she's a born troublemaker, that's why. Because now that she's got this thing set up, she's gonna milk it for all it's worth. Drag St. Matthews over the coals if she doesn't get her way. Probably sue for defamation, walk away with a bundle of cash."

"What is it she wants that she's not getting?"

"You don't know?"

I shook my head.

"She wants a formal hearing before the disciplinary board. She wants Alasdair MacGregor to admit he's been stalking her. And she wants him kicked out of school." The pencil flipped onto her desk.

"She told you this?"

"No. But we all know that's what she wants."

"Do you know Alasdair MacGregor?"

"I've had him as a student." She tried to hide it, but the thought of Alasdair MacGregor lit her up.

"What do you teach?"

"Spanish."

"Getting back to Shondra," I said, "when you got to her room, what did she want you to do?"

"She said she was sure there was something in her bed and she didn't want to find it. She said someone else had to find it because the last time we hadn't believed her."

"The last time meaning the first picture?"

"Yes."

"She found it in her bed?"

"That's what she says."

"No one was with her that time?"

"No."

"At that point, before you found the picture, how did she seem?"

"Seem?" She blinked her exothalmic eyes and checked her watch.

"Yes. Her affect. Her demeanor. Her mood." I didn't give examples. I wanted her words.

"She was quiet. Tense."

"What did you do?"

"I pulled down the covers and found a picture. I picked it up and held it out to her. She refused to touch it."

"Why?"

"Because she didn't want her fingerprints on it is what she said."

"How did you react to the picture?"

"Naked lady. Big deal." She shrugged. "Not worth getting upset about."

"Not even if you're a frightened sixteen year old?" She shook her head, as if the idea of Shondra Jones as a scared adolescent was incomprehensible. "And then?"

"I held out the picture so she could see it. She looked at it, then ran down the hall to the bathroom and was sick."

I waited for a 'poor thing' or a comment on the shock of such a finding to a young girl, but there was none. "Was anyone else around besides the two of you?"

"I think maybe Alice Demers walked by. She's such a mousy little thing. I'm not sure. And Cassie MacLeod. She's across the hall." She checked her watch again.

"Then what happened?"

"Shondra came back from the bathroom, looking like death warmed over, and insisted we had to take the picture to Mrs. Leverett, the house mother, right away. So that's what we did."

"And?"

"And what? You know. I'm sure Chambers has gone over this with you. We promised her a careful investigation and she said 'yeah, right, just like last time. Ask a few dumbass questions and walk away from it.' She said she couldn't take this anymore and asked, 'When are you going to talk to him?' I said, 'Who?'And Shondra said we already knew who."

"Did you know who she meant?"

"Of course." Santoro picked up the pencil and started twirling it again, a dumpy, incompetent, indifferent little drum majorette. I couldn't wait to rain on her parade.

"You know how Shondra has that flat, infuriating way of talking. That's when Mrs. Leverett lost her temper. They started yelling at each other. Then her husband came in and said the noise was going to wake the children. Shondra yelled an obscenity and walked out."

"What were they yelling about?"

Santoro laughed. "Her rights."

"And then?" I knew they hadn't called the local police, but I wondered what they had done. Called the campus police, perhaps? Certainly called Todd Chambers. Held an emergency meeting about what to do?

"Camilla... Mrs. Leverett, said it would be best to wait until morning, when everyone was calmer. She put the picture in an envelope, put it in a drawer of her desk, and we all went to bed."

I like to think I've left my impulsive, temper-losing self behind, but sometimes things still make me flare up like a Fourth of July rocket. How could any group of responsible adults end an evening like that by simply going to bed? Even if they believed she'd created that picture herself, even before their 'thorough investigation,' a student that disturbed should have triggered a call to the headmaster and to counseling services.

And if she hadn't done it, which was what they were supposed to have believed at that point? I pictured Shondra climbing back up the stairs, going into her room and shutting herself in with the vision of someone else in the room, touching her things, putting that revolting picture in her bed.

I knew what I needed to know, but I wanted to hear her say it. "No one checked on Shondra to see if she was okay?"

"Of course not," she said. "She'd just told us to go... uh... well, fuck ourselves, so why would we?"

Because you're the grown-ups and that's your job? "She'd just found a picture that could be construed as a rape threat directed at her, in her bed. You didn't think that warranted some extra attention? You didn't call security?"

Maria Santoro dropped her pencil. "Of course not. She put the picture there herself."

"That was determined through a subsequent investigation, wasn't it?"

She didn't deign to answer.

"You didn't know that at the time."

"Everyone knew she was a troublemaker."

"Is she one of your advisees?"

She shook her head, a vigorous "no," as though even when she was the resident on duty, she had no real responsibility for the students. "She belongs to Mrs. Leverett."

I'd have to speak with Mrs. Leverett, then. "Tell me about Alasdair MacGregor."

"What about him?"

"You had him as a student. What's he like?"