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Authors: Kate Flora

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BOOK: Stalking Death
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Suzanne was the charmer and the diplomat, I was the heavy, brought in for the hard cases to help clients in trouble. It was part of my job to make people face the facts. It was also my job to handle the process with sensitivity and to make it as easy for them as possible. It didn't sound like my client was experiencing that just now.

"Sorry. I didn't mean to sound like the Grand Inquisitor. I'm used to getting called in on emergencies where I'm coming in from outside, having to quickly gather the facts and work out strategies for handling things. I guess sometimes I do tend to sound like a drill sergeant." I waved an apologetic hand. "It's your show. If my approach is not what you want, just tell me."

Just as suddenly as he had flared up, he was effusively apologetic, as though he feared I was about to flee. "No, no. I didn't mean it like that. We do need your help. I was just thinking we might all function better in the morning."

"Morning is fine," I agreed, shoving my notes into my briefcase. "If you could just tell me how to find The Swan?"

For a second, he looked puzzled, as though he didn't understand where swans came into this. Then he smiled. "It's very easy. You go back down the drive the way you came, turn right onto the main road, and it's half a mile down on the right."

"And your house?" He looked blank. "For breakfast tomorrow?"

He pulled a campus map out of his desk, circled the building we were in, then followed a curving drive with his pen and circled another building. "We're right here."

"Eight-thirty," I said. Then remembered something. "The boy she's accusing. Has there ever been a relationship between them?"

Their "no" was quick and unanimous.

"What's he like?"

"Resolute and determined," he said. "Clever."

"Handsome and inventive," she said.

"Popular?" I asked.

He let it go a beat too long. "Alasdair's kind of particular about his friends."

"He ever been in trouble?"

Their eyes met, and like two computers networking, information flowed quickly back and forth, encrypted so I couldn't read it. "No," he said. "Nothing significant."

I wondered how the school, or Chambers, differentiated between significant and insignificant. "Your student handbook sets out the rules for conduct, academic and social?" He nodded. "So by not significant you mean he's never broken a major rule?"

I watched the exchange of data again. His face was bland but there were telltale signs. He was deciding to lie. "No. Nothing major," he agreed.

I lifted my bag to my shoulder and checked my pocket for keys. "I'd like a copy of the handbook." I waited while he reluctantly went to the shelf and found a copy.

"Thanks." I gave him a smile I hoped was reassuring. "See you in the morning."

He said a polite goodnight. She stared through me like I wasn't there. I thought of Suzanne, my partner, now a headmaster's wife herself. She would never intrude into Paul's business like this, however much they might have discussed it in private. Nor, should she ever be drawn in, would she forget her manners because her nose was out of joint. Fierce, formidable and icy though she was, Miriam Chambers had many of the qualities of an ill-mannered child. And both of them, polite and impolite, were showing the strain of holding things back.

I stood in the dark parking lot, watching them through the window, huddling together at his desk, wishing I
could
read minds. Unconsciously, I formed my hand into a gun, aimed, and fired. She staggered backward, her hand at her chest. But it was something he'd said, not what I'd done. I turned away and clicked the unlock button.

My instinct for impending disaster told me to drive straight home. Back to security and normalcy and Andre. Especially back to Andre. It warred with the businesswoman in me, which told me to stay and soldier through or people would stop calling me for cases like this. It also warred with the part that, like a bloodhound, was on the scent of something and wanted to follow it. The self that relished the challenge of a difficult case.

Overarching it all was an ironic detachment, born of having lived too long on the cusp of danger, which saw the whole thing cinematically. Like in one of those volcano movies, on the surface, everything was placid and normal, with an everyday set of problems to be dealt with. I walked on grass and asphalt on a peaceful New England boarding school campus, breathing air scented with wood smoke. Underneath, masked by this benign surface, violence and danger roiled like molten lava, waiting to explode.

"Oh, get over yourself, Kozak,
," I mumbled as I started the engine.
"It's just a job
."

Chapter 5

Craig Dunham was a Todd Chambers clone, though I doubted either man knew it. A big, preppy, confident man with Chambers' slightly supercilious air and enough starch in his bright pink, orange and blue striped shirt to hold him up should his own body ever fail. He had the annoying habit of looking past me, as though he was still waiting for the 'real' consultant to arrive. I didn't know what my failing was. It could have been gender, or age, or the fact that I'm inappropriately sized for a woman. Men are sometimes disconcerted to find that we see eye-to-eye. At least, in the literal sense.

I'd come to my meeting with him straight from a sterile and cold—in the interpersonal sense—breakfast with the Chambers. It was clear he hadn't married her for her cooking. People in New England joke about the Brattle Street and Beacon Hill fathers sneaking out in the evening for a burger after one of their wives' meager feeds, and we've all heard those stories about the Yankee millionaires trying to feed six people on a pound of meat. Miriam Chambers, though clearly not old Yankee herself, had embraced that style with a vengeance.

She'd presented me with one sad and lonely egg, quivering on the wide expanse of empty plate next to a decrusted piece of pallid white toast and a single strip of limp bacon. Hungry as I was, it had seemed downright cruel to molest those lonely bits of food. I wondered how he kept his big, robust body running on such a slender allotment. Probably made it his duty to check out the dining halls on a regular basis. There had been American coffee, too, the kind you can read through. Six quick cups might cause a slight buzz, but then you're committed to spending the rest of the morning in the bathroom.

I didn't know why they'd asked me to breakfast, since the talk was as spare as the meal. I could have lingered at The Swan, feasted on quiche, homemade muffins, fresh fruit and heaps of bacon and sausage, and been a happier person. I'd looked longingly about as Chambers conducted me to Dunham's office, but we passed no easy source of food. Unfortunate, since I'd skipped dinner. I skip a lot of meals. One of the downsides of being a workaholic. It means that when I do get to eat, I need to EAT.

The one thing I had learned was why Miriam Chambers had been at last night's meeting. Todd might have a reputation as a tough conservative and a brilliant fund-raiser, but she obviously played a major role in creating that image. He could hardly chew without looking to her for approval.

Now I was sitting on a sturdy wooden chair listening to Dean Dunham deliver a description of his investigation into Shondra's accusations as meager as the meal I'd just left. Brevity might be the soul of wit, but I wasn't here for wit, I'd come for information. I waited, pencil poised, from beginning to end, and found nothing to write down.

As soon as he finished, I pounced. "Tell me about the hierarchy," I said. "The reporting system from dorm residents to you."

He looked puzzled. "Todd said..."

"Do the residents report directly to you?" I interrupted.

"We're a pretty small school," he said.

"Do they..."

"Yes."

"And you keep student records here, in your offices?" He nodded. "So if Shondra had reported a harassment problem last year, it would be here in her records?"

"If she had reported it... but there was no report."

"That's what Todd said. So let's back up. When a student comes to a dorm resident, or an advisor," I paused. "Are they the same? Their advisors are the dorm residents?"

"Yes." A silence while he appeared to be counting windows. "Well, usually."

"What's the procedure for noting a student's concerns? What kind of record-keeping takes place?"

He explained it to me. A form filled out, copies in their file at the dorm and in his. "But of course, not everything gets written down."

"Of course not. But serious things? On-going things?"

"I would hope so."

You would
hope
so? Mister, you're supposed to be in charge. Was this the Walt Disney school of management? Wishing will make it so? "When Shondra's complaints first came to light this fall, did they begin with her expressing concern about telephone calls or did you first hear about it because of the pictures?"

"The pictures," he said. "But you know she..."

"So she never spoke to any of the residents about being bothered by phone calls?"

"Why do you ask?"

"I'm trying to get the big picture. What you knew when and how you, by which I mean St. Matthews, responded, so we can present a favorable picture of St. Matthews that's grounded in fact."

"I'm sure Todd told you. She complained about the first picture. We investigated. Concluded that she'd done it herself. Then there was the second picture. We looked into that and reached the same conclusion. That's when she really started making trouble. When she said Alasdair had done it."

"Tell me about your investigation."

"I thought I just did," he said. "Anyway, I don't see why it matters. Todd said you were here to help us communicate with our parents. To reassure them that there is nothing untoward happening on this campus."

Untoward was a pleasing locution. Too bad we weren't here to discuss language. Today I'd vowed to stay pleasant, so I flashed him an apologetic smile. "I know it seems strange, but sometimes I have to go backward before I can go forward. I need to know what I'm dealing with. The last thing St. Matts needs is to send out a letter that will expose it to claims for libel or slander. So if you could run me through it?"

Dunham looked like I was speaking in a foreign tongue. "I thought that truth... "

I raised a hand to stop him. Truth was a defense, assuming you could establish truth, but we were trying to avoid a situation where we had to defend ourselves. I often think I should give up consulting and go to law school. At the very least, I am always a lawyer's daughter. Truth, established by a trial, or even a battle of lawyers, was something St. Matthews didn't need. In the world of pop celebrity, any press is good press; in this world, public recognition for anything other than academic, arts or sports achievement, or major donations was to be avoided. Mom and Dad didn't ante up 30K or more a year to send junior to a tony school whose campus scandals made the nightly news.

"Believe me, a fight about what the truth is is something you want to avoid. And I bet it wouldn't be hard for Shondra Jones to find a lawyer who's dying for the publicity a fight with St. Matthews would generate." I steered him back to my question. "So... your investigation?"

Dunham's unguarded face veered between puzzled and annoyed. He looked longingly at a stack of waiting papers. "But I don't see..."

"Please." I gave him an encouraging smile.

If I lived a thousand years, I'd never understand why schools hired me to do jobs and then stalled, second guessed, or disagreed at every step. But people had a habit of keeping the difficult questions and bad news from themselves and therefore, also, from me. Self-deception was a common thing. At the management level, it took the form of policy. The US military weren't the first to practice forms of don't ask, don't tell.

I practiced Andre's skill of maintaining an opaque cop's face while I waited for his detailed explanation. When I left this room, he should still be thinking of me as a pleasant woman who was helping him solve a problem, not a cynical witch who was beginning to sympathize with Shondra Jones.

He ran me through it. It was as slipshod, cursory, and conclusory as I'd feared. Their "thorough inquiry," to quote the language from their letter, had consisted of interviewing the resident advisors and a few of the girls on her hall, plus two girls who lived downstairs near the entrance, as well as Shondra herself. On the basis of this, they had concluded that it was impossible for anyone to have come into the dorm unobserved, never mind making it to the third floor and Shondra's room. The prior year's resident advisor, to whom Shondra had reported the harassment, hadn't been contacted, nor had the former roommate who'd allegedly lived through it with her.

BOOK: Stalking Death
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