Stalking Death (9 page)

I saw immediately how she could get someone's back up. There was nothing warm and fuzzy about Shondra Jones. She wore "fuck you" attitude from her braided-head and jutting jaw to the tips of her big, sneakered feet. She stalked into the room with a ball handler's feline grace, dropped her backpack on the floor, dumped herself into a chair, and proceeded to stare out the window with an air of exaggerated boredom. The arms that dangled from her tee-shirt were taut with muscle.

Physically, she probably intimidated most people, but as a big girl myself, I was delighted to encounter a strong, fit young woman who was taller and meaner and didn't walk around with stooped shoulders and a hanging head. Adolescent attitude can be a pain in the ass, but in girls I'll take it over passivity or airheadedness any day. And I know it's intolerant, but group giggling stimulates my gag reflex. I doubted if Shondra did much giggling.

"Thank you for agreeing to talk with me," I said. She continued to stare out the window. "My name is Thea Kozak and I'm an educational consultant. The St. Matthews administration has brought me in to help them deal with this stalking situation."

Her eyes shifted from the window to me, narrowed with disbelief. "Situation?" she sneered. "The Administration says they is no stalking situation, except in my head." Making the word "administration" about three blocks long. "All in my head." She tapped her temple for emphasis. "How you gonna deal with that?"

"What about you? What do you say?" I kept my voice neutral and my face blank, trying to give her nothing to jump on.

She swept me with a disdainful look, and went back to staring out the window. She had exotic eyes. Large, brilliant, slightly tilted. They hadn't told me she was beautiful. "Buncha honky ass-kissers so busy snuggling up to the folks with money they got no time or interest in what's really going on. People like me, brought in to provide diversity, they don't give a damn about us." She gave the word "diversity" four long exaggerated syllables and a nice long pause to let it sink in. "'Cept it bothers them when we don't know our place. We supposed to kiss ass and be grateful."

Her eyes swept back again, giving me a glimpse of how angry she was. Angry and something else. Something I wasn't supposed to notice. Uncertain or frightened. I didn't think she meant me to see that. Underlying her youth and strength, there was an air of jaded weariness that made her seem much older than sixteen.

I didn't think authority frightened her, nor having to interact with adults or fear of discipline, but something had shaken her profoundly. The revelation had been accidental. But I've been badly scared, with good reason, often enough to recognize it.

I thought of Craig Dunham, asking what did a big strong girl like her have to be afraid of? No one had touched her, had they? I wondered if he'd ever had his peace of mind deeply disturbed? If anyone had ever shaken his arrogant self-confidence enough to give him profound self-doubts? How well he would cope if his privacy and concentration were constantly and relentlessly interfered with? And he was an adult. She was sixteen, far from home and living alone among strangers.

"I did all the right things, according to their rules," she said. "It hasn't changed a damned thing. I bet they never even talked to him 'fore they decided I was crazy and makin' it all up. While that boy... "

Her voice caught on the words and hovered there, temporarily paralyzed. "That boy... with all the harm he's done, and I ain't... I'm not just talkin' 'bout what he done to me, he can do any damned thing he wants, and ain't nobody going to say boo for fear his rich grandaddy will take the money and run."

Suddenly, the bravado and fear fell away, and she was just an angry teenager. "I've given them their chance. I tried to do it their way. I've got my rights, too, though they won't admit it." She spread her arms wide in a dismissive gesture, shaking her elaborate concoction of braids. "Well, you can tell them not to worry. I'm done waitin' for them to do theirjob. I'm taking care of it myself."

She rose and turned toward the door, her back arrow straight, her shoulders wide and square, speaking to me over her shoulder. "You tell them that, okay. Tell 'em take their effing dorm residents and their expensive consultants and their asshole letter to parents and shove the whole damned mess."

What did she mean, taking care of it herself? In a second, she'd be gone and I'd miss my chance to ask. "Hold on," I said. "Maybe you've got real reasons to be angry, but not at me. I'm just trying to figure out what's going on."

"What's goin' on?" She turned back, her shoulders slumping like she was too exhausted to maintain the posture of outrage any longer. "What's goin' on is a whitewash." A smile flickered, so brief I almost missed it. "Hey. That's fine, isn't it? A whitewash."

She stretched her arm up the wall and rested her head against it wearily, gathering her attitude back around her. Then she pushed away again. "You tell them to relax, okay. They can go ahead and do whatever they want. Send their lying letter. Pretend nothin's going on with Alasdair and them... all the things they done. No skin offa my ass. They had their chance. Best they could do was call me a crazy liar. So you tell them I'm handlin' it. Tell them, just wait and see what this crazy nigger bitch does next."

She snatched up the pack and slung it over her shoulder. "I be goin'."

"Shondra." I made my voice deliberately loud and commanding. She was tired of people who either patronized her or treated her with suspicion. "Sure you don't want to tell your side to someone who doesn't give a damn about the MacGregor money?"

MacGregor money might be paying my salary, but I had to come into these things with an open mind. If EDGE started walking in and approving whatever schools wanted to do, our reputation would suffer. They didn't come to us because they wanted "yes" women. They came because we brought an experienced and unbiased outside opinion and were willing to call it the way we saw it. When the chips were down, we could be tough
for
them and tough
to
them.

She half-turned toward me, giving me the benefit of her elegant profile. "I guess that would be you?"

"That's right."

"I'm supposta believe you might be on my side even though theys paying you?"

"They're paying you, too," I pointed out, "and you're not on their side."

She folded her arms and leaned back against the door frame. "You got a point there," she said. That was all she said, but she didn't leave.

I walked down the room and leaned against the wall, facing her, imitating her posture. "When did the stalker first start bothering you?"

"Didn't you hear?" she said. "They is no stalker."

I repeated the question. She was silent so long I thought she wasn't going to answer. "Last spring."

"April? May?"

"April, I think."

"What did he do?"

"Phone calls."

"Obscene phone calls?"

"I guess."

"You guess?"

"They weren't obscene at first, just anonymous, like he'd go, 'do you know who this is?' and stuff like that. I didn't know who he was. He called a lot. I was trying to work and the work's hard for me, so I asked him to stop botherin' me. He kept it up, so I got nasty. That's when it got ugly."

"Ugly how?"

"Ugly sex talk. Sayin' disgusting things he'd like to do to me." She looked down at her shoes. "Now mostly he doesn't say anything. He just calls, knowing that's enough. Knowing I'll worry and won't sleep."

"You had a roommate last year, right?"

"Yeah."

"She know about these calls?"

"Sure. She was the one insisted I report them. I wasn't gonna. I wanted to tough it out." She clasped her arms more tightly against herself. Muscle definition I would have killed for, that I couldn't have if I spent my life in the gym. "I thought they'd stop."

"She got some of these phone calls, too?"

Shondra shook her head. "He'd always hang up if she answered. He was smart. Creepy smart. After a while, it got so he only called when I was alone in the room."

"So your roommate never heard his voice?"

"No. But she saw me getting enough so she could see how they bothered me."

"Any idea how he knew you were alone?"

"No. That's why it was so creepy. It was like he was watching. She'd leave the room and bingo, the phone would ring."

"What was your roommate's name?"

"Allie. Allison Schwartz. Why?"

"I thought I might talk to her."

"Check up on me?"

"More like confirm."

She gave me a 'yeah, right' look. "Tough luck. Allie's gone. Dropped out. They told her she was a loser so many times she started believin' it."

"You stay in touch?"

"No way. Allie's trying to forget this place, what it done... did... to her head. She don't want to hear from me. Not from you, either."

Reading between the lines, she missed Allie. I wondered if the girl had been a friend. The picture they'd given me, and the way she presented herself, suggested loner. Social isolation was a common problem among minority students at places like this. Maybe she had friends on the team.

"You spoke with Deborah Zucker about the phone calls?"

"That a question?"

"I guess not. How did she respond?"

"You mean, what did she do besides actin' like I got two heads?"

"Yes."

Shondra's shrug was a big gesture. "She got me an answering machine so I could screen calls. It worked. I guess he didn't want his voice on tape or something, because for a while, the calls stopped."

"Doesn't the school have voice mail?"

"Yeah." Her jaw jutted sullenly. "But I had a boyfriend back home, and he didn't wanna leave no voice mail. He could only call certain times. So with the machine, I could listen for his calls... pick up when it was him."

"You said 'for a while.' Then what happened?"

"Someone stole it. The school wasn't about to spring for another."

Her face dared me to ask why she didn't buy another one. "Did you report that?"

She gave me one of those 'do you think I'm stupid' looks. "Of course I did."

"And?"

"And nothing. They didn't have a clue what had happened, so they did what they always done. Figured I'd stolen it myself. Sold it so I could take a trip to the mall." She gave me a sideways look, watching for my reaction. "I mean, how much did they think I could get for some piece of crap answering machine, even if I could find something at the mall that might fit me?" She stretched out in a way that showcased her long limbs and large feet.

I understood the problem of dressing a tall body. "Why would they assume that?"

"Lady, you're closer to 'em than I am. Why don't you ask them? Anyway, it's not like they come right out and say this stuff. I just know that's what they thinking."

"Do you take things?" I asked.

"Once or twice I did. In the beginning. They all had so much and I..." She didn't finish. "Jamison got on my case. Told me I was shamin' the family and asked how would Grandmamma feel if I got my sorry ass kicked out for being a thief after all he'd done to get me in here. Jameson's got some temper on him. Said he'd beat my ass. So I stopped. I never done... did it again. But to them, that's who I am."

She gripped her bag. "I gotta go. We just wastin' time and I've got class. Look, I know it's my own fault, but other folks get second chances."

I needed the rest of her story. "Did anyone else overhear any of the calls? Ever had anyone in your room when he called?"

"Not that I remember. Maybe Jen or Lindsay, once?"

"Who are Jen and Lindsay?"

"Girls on the team. Look, I gotta go."

"When can I talk with you again?"

She stared into my face. Her eyes were hard and cold, and this time, all I could see was anger. "We done talkin'."

I took out a card and offered it to her. "In case you change your mind."

She looked at doubtfully, then shoved it in her pocket. "Doesn't matter what I say to you or anyone else. It'll always come down to the same thing. Stuff happens. I report it. They decide it isn't really happening. Talkin' to you won't change that. Nobody 'round here's gonna stand up to Alasdair. I got no time to waste on things that don't matter. I got school, I got basketball, I got work."

She gripped the strap of her bag with a white knuckled hand. "I'm too mad at those motherfuckers to be polite anymore. You guess they ever think 'bout how it will be when my Grandmamma reads that letter? So if you'll excuse me."

"Deborah Zucker believed you, didn't she?"

"Yeah. And they couldn't wait to get rid of her sorry self. Did they really think we believed that stuff about her wanting to go back to the city? No way. She was like me. She didn't fit in. Allie believed me, too. And they're both gone. If you start believing me, you be gone, too. Wait and see. So if you value your job... "

She leaned in close, this strong, furious, wounded young woman I had to look up to, and whispered, "Better get your white ass back over there to the Administration Building and tell 'em what a crazy, mixed up nigger I am. Tell 'em, whatever I said, you could see with your experienced professional eye that I was just a lyin' ho. Not that it matters what you say. They already got their minds made up." She turned and left, her long strides carrying her quickly away.