Stalking Death (4 page)

Of course he was eager to get the letter out, if he was being deluged with calls from parents, but that made the content more important, not less. If he'd wanted someone to rubber-stamp the awful thing, Suzanne could have done that over the phone. But he'd insisted on having me here. Now that I'd driven this far, I was going to do my job.

"Before we start working on the letter, you need to put me in the picture more fully. You didn't go into much detail about what's been happening."

There was a rustle behind me, but when I looked, the woman was silent as a stone. Chambers shook his head dismissively, then quickly scanned the papers. "I had hoped, with all your expertise, that reviewing the letter would be sufficient. That's our real focus here, after all."

"I thought your real focus was managing a tense situation on your campus involving a student who claims she's been..." I raised my eyebrows quizzically, "... is being stalked, and the resulting rumors and concerns among the rest of the student body, which have gotten back to the parents."

He looked past me at the silent woman. "Is that really necessary?" There was another rustle.

"Todd, I can't help you draft a tactful and reassuring letter to parents about events I don't understand myself. In such a volatile situation, it's essential to ensure that what goes into your letter is accurate. If this girl is bent on causing trouble, you don't want to make statements or take positions you can't defend and you want to be sure you've done everything possible to look out for her well-being. You don't want to do something which will blow up in your face."

"Blow up? How?"

"She could go to the press with her story. It's the sort of thing newspapers love. To the police, since stalking is a crime. Or hire a lawyer and sue the school or her alleged stalker."

He blinked in surprise, as though his only concern was discharging his responsibility to the bill paying segment of his community by sending out an appropriate letter, not the state of things on his campus. Maybe I was misjudging him, but he seemed surprisingly unconcerned with the delicate matter of managing the student whose claims to being a stalking victim he wanted to label lies and paranoia. Or with the potential effect that declaration could have on the rest of his female students and his applicant pool, 50% of whom were presumably female, and most of whom had mothers. Parents take safety seriously and stalking sounds threatening and unsafe.

Maybe he hadn't listened to the news, but it seemed likely to me that if the abduction of a young girl in this part of New Hampshire made the national news, it would add new dimensions to parents' concerns about a potential stalker.

"I'd like to deal with this letter first." He snapped the paper loudly. "Then if you have other questions, we can discuss them. It's all here anyway. We conducted an investigation and determined she was making it up. There is no stalking problem on this campus."

This wasn't a chicken and egg problem. I couldn't evaluate the letter without knowing who the girl was, what she'd claimed, how they'd handled their investigation, and why, if there was no evidence of stalking, the students were upset and talking about it to their parents. Nor could I predict the risks of any steps, such as this letter, St. Matthews might choose to take.

I looked at his stubborn face, tinged pink with frustration, and somewhere above my slow but still competent head, a lightbulb began to glow. Chambers didn't want advice about a letter or his campus crisis. He only wanted the imprimatur of EDGE Consulting on this mess so he could show his trustees and the independent school world he'd done his best. He'd wanted one of us physically here so he could say he'd brought in the experts to be sure he was doing it right. Was the silent woman sitting behind me there as a witness?

Keep the incredulity off your face, Kozak,
I told myself sternly.
This isn't the first time you've been used. You ain't no babe in the woods.
Well, this babe wasn't leaving without making a sincere effort to get the facts and give my reluctant client the services he needed, even if they weren't the services he wanted.

Calmly, I pulled paper and a pen out of my briefcase and gave him my best professional smile. Once you've been executed by the right wing militia, an evasive, slightly truculent headmaster isn't so daunting.

"I can't help with the letter until I have all the facts. Let's start at the beginning, shall we?"

"The facts are that the girl is crazy," he said, giving his papers a frustrated shake. "Dangerous and crazy."

I waited.

"She's impossible."

I still didn't say anything.

"Don't you understand," he said, exasperated. "I have to stop this right now. Discredit her and reassure my parents. I can't let her go on. She's trying to destroy everything I've planned for this school."

Chapter 3

For a full five minutes after he'd declared his student crazy, he sat silently, looking anywhere but at me, twiddling his pencil, shuffling his papers and occasionally tugging on his ear. I'd never seen a grown-up professional man tug on his ear before. It fascinated me. I'd seen little kids do it. I'd seen women touch their earlobes quickly, checking for earrings, but this was serious tugging, as vigorous as pulls on those old-fashion bell ropes the rich used to have in their drawing rooms.

What was he summoning. Ideas? A coherent version of the story? Another way to con me into approving his letter? It was possible he didn't understand the seriousness of the situation. I'd seen it before. Sometimes headmasters got so caught up in the day-to-day running of their schools that they lost sight of the context, of the position of the school in the wider world of parents, alumni, and potential applicants. That was where trustees, with their broader vision, were useful, to remind Chambers that the economic security and prestige of his school depended on its reputation, and a Dean of Students to be mindful of the
in loco parentis
role.

All the while, the woman behind me stayed so silent I finally looked around to see if she was alive. My CPR was rusty—I'd only used it once in fifteen years—but I would have given it my best shot if she was lying there unconscious. She wasn't. She was sitting, still as a statue, watching him and waiting. If I lived a thousand years, I'd never develop that kind of patience.

"It started the first week of school," he said finally.

"So, about a month ago?"

"Yes."

"The student who says she's being stalked, who is she? Tell me about her." What he chose to tell would reveal as much about him and his reading of the situation as it would about the girl.

"She's African-American," he said. "An athlete. Here on a full scholarship. Decent student. Not stellar, she came to us with a lot of educational deficits, but adequate. Something of a gift for poetry, I believe."

I waited for the details that would explain her more fully. What her personality was like, whether she played well with others, got along with her roommate, was quiet or loud, introverted or extroverted. Whether she observed curfews and followed the rules or was rebellious, a risk-taker or a discipline problem. If she'd come with a history of mental or emotional instability. And what her sport was.

"Actually, she's only half black. But she's got a lot of attitude. She can be..." He searched for the right word, settled on prickly. "She followed her older brother, Jamison. He's a brilliant athlete. A campus leader. Charming. Personable. He's a senior this year. We'll be sorry to lose him."

But not his sister.
His sister who, thus far, remained unnamed. "And her name is?"

"Shondra."

At this rate we'd be lucky to get through this by midnight. Since it was clear we weren't going to be finished anytime soon, I needed to think about a place to stay tonight. But first, the girl's whole name. "Shondra what?"

He looked puzzled, as if, she being in the wrong and all, her name didn't matter. "Jones."

I was willing to bet, just from the little he'd said, that her name mattered very much to her. I looked pointedly at my watch. "It doesn't look like I'm going to be driving back tonight, especially if you want me to meet this girl. Is there a motel or a bed and breakfast you'd recommend?"

My query was about as welcome as a skunk at a wedding. It even stirred the silent woman behind me. Now that I was asking questions instead of following his script, he wanted me gone. But it was he who'd insisted we meet face-to-face, he who wanted me to talk to this girl. Maybe that had been part of the rubber stamp—first approve the letter, then get the dirty job of explaining it to her. Had he seriously expected either thing to happen? I reminded myself that however dense or difficult he was being, he was my client, even if he was playing hard to help.

Despite the way I was foiling his plans right and left, he eased the sulky expression off his face and found some manners. "Many of our parents like The Swan. It's our local B&B. It's very nice. Our parents can be particular." He paused. "But of course you know that. You're very familiar with our little world."

He picked up the phone and made me a reservation. Of course, keeping his parents happy was a big part of his job. I didn't mind if he momentarily confused me with them. I didn't even wrinkle my nose at his use of the phrase 'our little world.' Practically speaking, he was right. The private school world did serve a small population.

But 'our little world' was an interesting and challenging one. He and the other administrators on the front lines, and Suzanne and I and the rest of the EDGE staff backing and assisting them, were in both the education business and the service business. Boarding schools not only provide the classes that are their primary purpose, they provide housing and food service, sports training and culture and recreation, medical services and guidance and structure, as well as caring adults and a safe environment to the students entrusted to their care.

How campus crises or potential crises, large and small, were handled could have a major impact on a school's ability to attract and retain the type of student it wanted. Increasingly, in a world that scrutinized and rated schools, information about the quality of the student body and their success in getting into "good colleges" was what parents considered. That and the physical plant. Parents considering letting their children live away from home were also concerned about safety.

While he proposed to slap a Band-Aid on the situation in the form of his awful letter to parents, Todd Chambers, like it or not, had a lot more to deal with than nervous parents. He had a potentially explosive situation on his hands. It didn't take a Pollyanna to recognize that a crisis was also an opportunity. Handled well, his response would reflect positively on the ability of the school to provide a safe and caring environment to all the resident students. Handled negatively, it would outrage at least one member of the student body—one with the ability to have a significant PR impact—and not necessarily reassure the rest of the female students that they were respected, supported and safe.

I was surprised he hadn't thought this through more carefully. Maybe he had and just wasn't sharing those thoughts with me. He'd have to be more forthcoming if we were going to work together.

"Thanks for taking care of that," I said. "Now, tell me a little more about Shondra. What sport or sports does she play?"

"Basketball." As though tall, athletic young black women didn't engage in other sports. He seemed so surprised I hadn't grasped that on my own that I didn't remind him black women were winning at Wimbledon, that Jackie Joyner Kersee and FloJo hadn't been basketball players, or that China had a wonderful women's basketball team. We're supposed to be learning not to make assumptions about people based on sex and race and national origin. His mandate might have been to tread on the conservative side, but I doubted that he'd been hired to take St. Matthews back to the dark ages.

"She's 6' 3"," he said, as though that explained everything, and another bulb lit up. Since I was another tall woman, he'd hoped I'd have special insights and an instant connection with his problem student. As though being tall made me a mind-reader.

"Tell me about this stalking complaint. What does she say happened?" This time, the rustle behind me was more pronounced. When I turned, she was shaking her head.

"Mostly phone calls. Phone calls of a sexual nature. Recurrent phone calls, frequent enough to disrupt her studies and interfere with her sleep."

"Weekly? Daily? Hourly?" He shook his head. "Does she have a roommate?"