Stalking Death (28 page)

"Oh, get real, Todd." I wanted to shake him until some sense rattled loose. "You honestly think it's more reassuring to them, the day after a campus murder, that a stranger is attacked on the campus? How is that supposed to be comforting? You can't have a very high opinion of your student body if you think they're indifferent to the welfare of strangers. Or that they can't see the relevance of such an incident to themselves."

"I just meant... "

"Sit down, will you please," I said. It was making me crazy the way he hovered there, like any moment he was going to stop listening altogether and drift out the door. "I know exactly what you meant. What I'm saying is that you have to start thinking before you open your mouth, because not everyone is going to give you the benefit of the doubt."

He might be indecisive, but I was clicking into gear. "You have to start thinking about covering your ass. Indifference to me is one thing, a failure to warn, or to take appropriate steps to beef up security could land you in a heap of trouble. You don't want to risk being accused of providing an inadequately safe environment. What if we hadn't found Shondra? What if it wasn't accidental overdose or even a deliberate one on her part? What if she's a victim?"

His face hardened. Shondra Jones as a victim was something he refused to consider. I climbed down off my soapbox. We didn't have time for an argument. "Look... what if it hadn't been Shondra? Last night, someone lured the residential adults out of that dorm, leaving all the girls vulnerable. Can you imagine the consequences if something had happened to one of them—a fire, some injury or assault? We can hope that word of that hasn't gotten around. But you have to take steps to ensure that it won't happen again."

I felt like I was talking to a wall. But he wasn't the first wall I'd spoken to. It was one of my specialties—I was the woman who talked to walls. "Look, I know you're distracted by concerns about your wife and the principal donor of your new arts center. And it is the most awful thing that can happen to a headmaster, having one student accused of killing another. But that's your reality right now. You have to deal with it. Getting your school sued and yourself fired won't look great on your resume."

"I don't know," he said, finally sitting down. "I don't know what to do. Miriam says if I get rid of the trouble-makers, the parents will respect me for being tough and putting St. Matthews back on track."

No sense fighting him on this. "In the long run, she may be right. If you do have troublemakers, and they are removed from the school with strict adherence to your own rules and procedures, that's fine. But your situation won't be improved by a sudden purge without due process. If anything, that will make your students more nervous, which is the last thing you need."

"So I can get rid of them, I just need to hold some kind of hearing, is that it?"

"According to your rules." Trying to draw him back to more immediate issues, I asked, "Do you have any idea who might have been behind last night's shenanigans?"

He looked blank. Maybe 'shenanigans' was not in his vocabulary. "Who lured your resident advisors away from the dorm?"

"No idea." He was about as convincing as the four-year-old saying he didn't take the cookies. Now, I've had the benefit, if you can call it that, of being interrogated by some of the meanest guys in the business. I could have tried those lessons on Todd Chambers. But I didn't have my gun or my back up thugs, and anyway, what was the point? I was trying to help him limp through this crisis. Once things were stable, EDGE could make a gracious departure and he could shoot himself in as many feet as he wanted.

"Maybe you and Frank Woodson can put your heads together and come up with a plan to ensure that it doesn't happen again. Maybe he has an opinion about whether security needs to be beefed up, too. He seems like an okay guy." I'd met security directors who weren't.

"Frank's okay," he agreed. Except it didn't seem much like agreement. "You know. I think we talked about this before... I'm not too happy having some outsider coming in like this and telling me what to do."

For a minute, it had looked like he was going to work with me. Now he was back to being defiant. I was getting close to my wit's end. Maybe it was only my temper's end. My wits still seemed to be about me. There was something not quite believable in his behavior. Last night at the infirmary and again today, there was an insolent quality to his responses, as though someone or something was encouraging him in his indifference.

I was pondering what to do or say that didn't sound like an order yet might move him off the mark, when the door banged open. Charles Argenti strode in, nodded at me, and helped himself to a chair. Like Woodson, he had a Dunkin Donuts coffee. I wanted one, too. I'm pretty well addicted to DD's coffee. I guessed their mothers hadn't told them not to eat or drink in front of others if they weren't willing to share.

"So," Argenti said, "how is everyone this morning?"

Something else mothers will tell you—if you can't say anything good, don't say anything. Besides, Chambers didn't want me running things. I held my tongue and let him respond. What he said nearly blew my socks off. "At least there haven't been any more problems."

Could I assume that he and Argenti had exchanged information after I saw him last night? It didn't make sense to assume anything, did it? I waited for Argenti's sharp eyes to turn to me. "And how are you, Thea?"

"My head still hurts, and someone made hang-up calls to my room every twenty minutes all night, so I didn't get much sleep. Otherwise, I'm fine."

He studied me curiously. "Something happened to your head?"

Chambers was staring daggers at me, but I didn't care. If looks could kill, the human race wouldn't have survived this long. I told Argenti about my nocturnal assailant, and then, in case he was in the dark, I told him about Shondra's overdose, the trashing of her room and the missing dorm residents. Argenti had hired me and he needed to know this stuff.

When I was done, he slid his eyes back to Todd Chambers.

He had hawk's eyes, penetrating and a little scary, and a slightly hawkish nose as well, which made his face, when he wasn't smiling, quite fierce. "This is your version of nothing happening?" When Chambers didn't answer, he said, "And how is Miriam?"

"Doing much better."

Able to leap small buildings in a single bound. Cause more trouble than a truckload of monkeys. Maybe Miriam had hit me last night. She certainly didn't like me. But I was sure my attacker had been male.

"Todd, let's start planning what you're going to tell your students, shall we?" I was trying to nudge him gently. I might as well have whacked him with a 2x4.

"Look," he said, getting to his feet so abruptly I was grateful there weren't more flowers to be flung, "who is in charge here, you or me?" I wasn't about to dignify that with an answer. "You can't just barge in here and try to take over."

I had no idea why he was being so absurd, although I suspected it was about driving me away. "Believe me, I am not interested in doing your job, Todd. I'm here to help
you
do it. I'm here because I've had more experience than you at dealing with situations like this. I can identify the issues and areas of concern and suggest methods for dealing with them. Ultimately, whether you take that advice lies with you. It appears that you are choosing not to."

I put the papers back in my briefcase and faced Argenti. "I'm sorry. You have a very difficult situation here. However, as long as Mr. Chambers persists in being hostile and combative and rejecting my advice, my remaining here is a waste of everyone's time."

I picked up my wet raincoat, shook it, and draped it over my arm. "For the sake of the students, I hope someone will step up and act like a responsible adult. As I've told Mr. Chambers... St. Matthews leaves itself open to major problems by allowing such an unsafe campus situation."

"Thea... wait... please." Argenti followed me into the hall, closing the door behind him. "We couldn't have gotten through yesterday without you, and we're not out of the woods yet. I know Todd's being a horse's ass, but please don't quit on us. Let me sit down with him and see what I can do. Give me an hour."

"You're his boss, but I don't know what you could do or say that's going to change his attitude, Charlie. He seems determined not to do anything that will improve the situation. It makes no sense to me."

"Give me an hour," he repeated.

"All right. An hour." I handed him a card with my cell phone number. "Call me and let me know what's going on."

Wendy Grimm was hovering several feet away. When Argenti and I moved apart, she looked at us nervously. "The hospital called wanting to know when we were going to pick up Shondra," she said. "I... I didn't know what to tell them."

I looked at Argenti and shrugged. "It's as good a way as any to spend an hour, I guess. What shall I do about Bobby Ryan? He's working on communications."

"Let him keep working," Argenti said. "I'll call you."

I got directions from Wendy and headed to my car, wishing I were going home. It would be a wonderful moment when I finally saw the last of St. Matthews in my rearview mirror. This was about as much fun as rubbing myself with sandpaper.

I blame my parents for my inability to walk away from things. Dad's a sweetheart at home, but the most tenacious lawyer imaginable when clients are involved, and my mom, for all that she sighs and whines about my overworked, dangerous life, modeled overwork and compulsive behavior for me every day of my youth.

I was pleased to see that there was security at the gate, checking people out as well as in, although the gray car leaving right behind me didn't stop for the waving guard and almost ran him down. The world is so full of impatient drivers. No wonder there's road rage. The idiots endanger us all.

I drove to the local hospital knowing that I was just trading one unpleasant situation for another. Shondra wouldn't welcome me with open arms or an open mind. And I was not feeling especially resilient. I think I'm wearing out faster than most people. As Indiana Jones says, "It's not the years, it's the mileage."

I took a few minutes in the parking garage to dredge up some compassion and patience. No sense in preaching it to others if I didn't practice it myself.

The impatient gray car that had followed me from St. Matthews had gone past when I took the turn to the hospital, so I filed that one under paranoia and let it go.

She was waiting in a wheelchair in an empty, sterile room. She looked awful, gray-skinned and dishrag limp. Not what I would have expected from an athlete. But I didn't know what effect the drugs she'd taken could have, nor how much of this was the result of her brother's troubles. Her greeting was, "What the fuck are you doing here?" in a harsh, whispery voice.

"They sent me." She shrugged and that was the end of it.

I signed the offered paperwork on behalf of St. Matts—it was easier than denying responsibility or trying to explain my situation—and sprang her from the cold bright lights and antiseptic halls as quickly as I could. Hospitals give me the heebie-jeebies. I only have to walk through the doors and every broken bone and bit of scar tissue on my body starts to throb.

She didn't speak again until the car was moving. "I don't want to go back there," she said. "I want to go home."

I didn't blame her. "Be good if you could finish the semester. And the basketball season. Your teammates are counting on you."

"Yeah, right. Like they care."

"You know them better than I do, so maybe they don't, but two of them hiked over to The Swan first thing this morning to ask me if you were all right and if there was anything they could do."

"Which two?" Did I only imagine that she sounded less sullen?

"Lindsay and Jen."

"Oh. Them." A long silence. "They're okay. But..." Another silence.

I left her alone, figuring she'd get to what she wanted to say in her own good time. I drove slowly, because the trip wasn't very long, checking my mirror for the gray car. I didn't see it. It was only when we turned onto the road leading to St. Matts that I realized that I didn't know what I was bringing her back to. If she was coming back to chaos and destruction, an empty room, or something a bit more welcoming. I'd sent Craig Dunham off to put things right but I had no idea if he'd actually done it.

"Where do St. Matthews students go when they want to shop for clothes?"

"Home."

"What if they need a pair of shoes in the middle of the term? Or new underwear?"

"There's a bus to the Mall. Why, you need new underwear?"

"No. But I think you do."

"My grandmamma..." She made a sound somewhere between a giggle and a sob, "... says clean underwear is important because a person never knows when they gonna... when they're going to... be taken to the hospital. Guess you saw my room, huh?"

"Did you do that?"

"What do you think?"

"I think you value a nice, neat space and whoever did it knew that about you."

"You can't be for real," Shondra snorted. "That is just way too close to the truth."

"And what is the truth?"

"They done it to get to me, yeah. That's the way things have been all along. But they were also looking for something."