“I’m Danny Vandervere,” he said, gazing curiously at the officer, memorizing his features.
“Oh,” the officer looked up at him sharply, suddenly embarrassed, “I’m sorry, I didn’t recognize you, sir.”
“Don’t start with that,” Danny sighed wearily.
“But you’re the Mayor’s son, Marc-Daniel, aren’t you?” the officer was puzzled by the name that differed from what he had been told.
“My family call me that. My whole name is Marcus Daniel Vandervere, the Fourth,” he smiled self-deprecatingly, “But please, call me Danny.”
“OK,” the man agreed, scribbling all the different names on his pad, then pulling himself back into his professional demeanor, remembering that this half-naked youth was a Vandervere and had to be treated with kid gloves, ‘call me Danny’ or no, “Can you tell me what happened here?”
“I don’t really know, he was like that when I came,” Danny said, his voice breaking a little, “I was running, and I saw a hand, and then I tripped and fell badly, next to the body. It’s Mr. Janacek, he’s my calculus teacher. At the high school.”
“And the boy over there, how do you know him?” the officer gestured at Ash, who was standing off to one side, not allowed to leave but not being watched; he had his camera out, Danny couldn’t tell if he was taking pictures or just fiddling with it, but he seemed more comfortable with it in his hands.
“I don’t know him, I mean I didn’t before this morning, but he goes to my school.”
“Was Mr. Janacek his teacher, also?”
“I don’t know,” Danny shrugged, turning to look at the officer’s badge, “Officer P. Kelly? What does the P stand for?”
“Pete,” the officer answered in surprise.
“Not Peter?” Danny wondered, cocking his head at the officer.
“No, just Pete,” Officer Kelly smiled.
“You’re very handsome,” Danny said wistfully.
“Huh?” the officer was startled.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Danny blushed, “I think the painkillers just kicked in.”
“It’s OK, Danny,” the officer laughed uneasily and took a tiny step backward, then put his professional voice back on, “That’s all for now, I’ll ask you some more questions after you’ve had a chance to rest. Is there someone you’d like me to call? Should I call your Mom to meet you at the hospital?”
“My mother?” Danny scoffed, then remembered that the newcomer wouldn’t know about his relationship with his family and couldn’t be expected to see the ridiculousness of the suggestion, “You should probably call my father, he’d have you fired if something happened to a Vandervere and he wasn’t the first to know. But before you call him, call Mrs. Espinosa, that’s our housekeeper, she’ll come to the hospital for me, and you can tell my father that she’s coming so he won’t have to worry about me. Do you have the number?”
When Officer Kelly walked away, Danny was left by himself for a few minutes as the paramedics kicked around talking to the police, chatting about the crime and speculating about what had happened. Danny felt very alone, until his eyes lit on Ash standing by himself looking slightly forlorn.
“Can Ash come with me?” Danny asked the paramedic he knew, whose name was Dirk, “To the hospital, I mean?”
“It’s supposed to only be family,” Dirk told him, casting a look at the other boy, “But for you, I can always make an exception.”
“Thank you, Dirk, you’re sweet,” Danny gave the man the most charming smile he could dredge up in the circumstances, a ghost of his normal devastating smile but still fairly potent.
“Just come lay down on the gurney so we can strap you in for transport,” Dirk told him gently, reaching out to stroke his cheek, “Bill will settle you in, and I’ll go get your friend.”
Danny kissed the palm of the man’s hand and winked at him before moving back into the ambulance; Dirk glanced around quickly to see if anybody had noticed that little interplay, but everyone seemed quite focused on the dead body.
“I hope you don’t mind,” Danny said to Ash when they were alone in the back of the moving ambulance, “I know I’m asking a lot, but I was afraid of being alone.”
“I don’t mind,” the boy replied simply.
“But you must have had plans for the rest of the day,” Danny insisted on painting himself as selfish.
“Not at all,” Ash smiled at him, “My mom wants me to clean my room, but I’d just as soon not.”
“Did you leave your car somewhere?”
“I’m parked at the hotel, I’m sure my old bucket is safe there.”
“I’ll make sure someone takes you back,” Danny promised, then was struck by an unconnected thought, “Why were you in the woods this morning?”
“It’s a public place, isn’t it?” the boy asked defensively.
“Oh, I didn’t mean that,” Danny assured him, “I’m glad you were there, I don’t know what I would have done without you. I was just curious what brought you out so early in the morning.”
“Taking pictures,” Ash relaxed visibly, “I was trying to catch that kind of light you get early in the morning in woods, sort of green and clean, crisp and sort of ultrareal. I started off by the lake at dawn, trying to get the sunrise, but the trees were in the way, so I hiked up to the next trail. Want to see?”
“Wonderful composition,” Danny said, focused on the LCD screen on the back of the camera as Ash scrolled through some of the pictures he’d taken, first at the lake and then in the woods. They were nicely composed, catching attractive lines within their frames, and had good color, but the screen was too small for Danny to make out much detail.
“It’s just a hobby,” Ash said quietly, but with a touch of pride, stowing the camera back in his bag, “I prefer painting, but it’s hard to carry an easel and canvas around with you, so I take pictures and sketches, then work them into paintings when I get home.”
“May I see your face?” Danny non-sequitured again, the emotional trauma and the pills making his mind disorderly and robbing him of his well-bred politeness.
“Why?” Ash was startled by the request.
“I don’t know,” Danny admitted, “I just wonder what you look like without the hair in your face.”
“You don’t like my hair?” the boy sounded crushed.
“I do, I just like seeing behind things. Inside houses, under clothes, behind curtains. Nosy, I guess.”
“OK,” the boy said after thinking a moment, then pushed his hair back with both hands and gazed at Danny. His face was quite pretty, heart-shaped with small delicate features; his large eyes were a beautiful bright blue, the color of oceans on a map, thickly rimmed in smudgy black eyeliner. His small cupid’s-bow mouth was also painted, but in a pale flesh-tone to make it disappear into his face, leaving the eyes the only noticeable feature. His skin was stark white, with an ivory undertone, marred by a few pimples beside his mouth and along his forehead. There was something terribly vulnerable about the face, it was a face that cried out “don’t hurt me”… it was no wonder the boy chose to guard it behind that curtain of hair.
“You’re so pretty,” Danny sighed with a smile, causing the boy to blush furiously and drop his hair back over his face, “I’m sorry, I keep saying things that I should only be thinking. Please forgive me.”
“My face is insipid,” the boy corrected him bitterly, “Like some stupid Nancy Keane waif.”
“Nonsense,” Danny replied in surprise, then tried to lighten the mood by reaching out and grasping the boy’s knee, jiggling it back and forth, “I say you’re quite lovely, and I have exquisite taste. I shall not be gainsaid.”
Ash laughed at that, shaking his head in disbelief at the twelve-dollar words and the grandiose tone. Their conversation was interrupted by the ambulance’s arrival at the small hospital in Vandervere, another state-of-the-art facility that benefited greatly from being used by the Vandervere family: if the Vanderveres weren’t in residence, it would be a standard-i
ssue employee clinic and county hospital, not a large and expensively equipped showplace that drew talented doctors, nurses, and specialists from all over the state.
Danny was of course treated with the respect and care due a visiting head of state, called “sir” by everyone and kept informed at every step of his treatment. They gave him a set of scrubs to wear, instead of a flimsy hospital gown, and even produced a warm fuzzy bathrobe from somewhere. The doctors never talked over him, including him in their conversations, and the radiologist actually asked Danny’s permission to touch his leg and position it for x-raying. There were no interminable waits for a room or a doctor or a service, Danny was hustled through the process, his wounds recleaned and redressed, his x-rays developed within minutes, and his ankle put in a padded brace and bound again.
Within thirty minutes, Danny was propped up in a bed in a private room, his ankle (which was strained rather than sprained, with a bruised ligament that would heal in a few days) propped on a towel full of ice, working his way through an immense breakfast (he hadn’t eaten anything all day except an energy bar before leaving the house at dawn) that he shared with Ash.
Though Danny was still feeling dopey from the drugs and the shock, and occasionally let out little confidences and observations that he would ordinarily have kept to himself, he was feeling a good deal more lucid as he discussed art with Ash while they waited, displaying a depth of insight into the subject that surprised the other boy.
“You’re different than I thought you’d be,” Ash said, pulling out his big drawing pad from the depths of his messenger bag and rummaging for some pencils so he could sketch Danny.
“How did you think I’d be?” Danny wondered, slurping down a cup of diced peaches, enjoying every bite as if he’d never eaten such things before.
“I don’t know,” the boy shrugged as he started arranging his composition with broad strokes of a light pencil, “You’re so popular, and an athlete, and rich… I guess I thought you’d be kind of self-involved and a little stupid. But you’re interesting and smart and really nice. It doesn’t seem quite right.”
“You’ve described my brothers to a tee,” Danny laughed, “Most of my family, in fact. I just didn’t want to be like them. I can’t help being a Vandervere, and I take all the popularity and privilege that comes with it; but I can choose to be nice, and to devote my intelligence to the life of the mind rather than using it to gain power over people or make more money. Not that I’d turn my nose up at power or money, mind you, those are nice, too… it’s just the manner of gaining it where I have some scruples. Not many, but some. Are you drawing a picture of me?”
“You don’t mind, do you?” Ash looked up from his drawing, having not really been listening as Danny spoke.
“I look such a mess,” Danny objected.
“You look beautiful,” Ash said simply, going back to the drawing, “I think I’ll draw you as a wounded warrior, Greek or Roman or something. Saint Sebastian Tended by Irene or like that.”
“Classical, neoclassical, or postmodern neoclassical?” Danny asked, trying to visualize the idea.
“I don’t know, I’ll see how it develops,” he murmured vaguely, focused on the drawing.
“Are you feeling better?” Officer Kelly stepped into the room after knocking on the door-sill.
“Yes, thank you,” Danny smiled at him.
“I have some more questions for you, if you’re up for it,” the officer pulled up a chair facing Danny.
“I’ll try,” Danny promised, “Have you found out anything about what happened to Mr. Janacek?”
“Well, yes,” the officer took out his notepad and consulted some earlier pages, “It looks like the victim was not killed where you found him, we followed a trail all the way back up to the Wilderness Area, there’s evidence he was killed there in one of the picnic grounds.”
“Did he fall?” Danny wondered, trying to remember the landscape, whether it would be possible to get all the way down to the middle path by mere gravity; but there were so many places where a falling object would have caught and stuck, the thickness of the trees and the placement of rocks, and the intervening trails.
“No, it appears he was pushed, pulled, and in some places dragged to about ten feet uphill from where you found him, then he slid the rest of the way on his own.”
“Why would someone do that?” Danny wondered.
“I was hoping you could tell me,” Officer Kelly looked sharply at him.
“What do you mean?” Danny felt a thrill of fear at that question, though he couldn’t say why.
“Who knew that you’d be running on that path this morning?” the policeman’s voice took on a strange hardness, almost accusatory.
“Nobody,” Danny tried to think of who knew his running routes; he never ran with anyone, and in the last few weeks hadn’t encountered anyone else on that trail early in the morning, “Mrs. Espinosa knows which way I go, she insists I tell her before I go out in case I don’t come back in time, she’ll know where to send people to look for me. She gets worried that I might meet a bear, or break my leg, or something. She wanted me to take my phone, but where would I put it?”
“Nobody else knows when and where you go running?” the officer seemed suspicious of that explanation.
“I don’t think so,” Danny frowned with concentration, “I always go alone, I haven’t met anybody on the trail that early in weeks; unless Mrs. Espinosa told someone where I was going, I can’t think of anyone. Why?”
“Well,” Officer Kelly leaned back in his chair, “I have to wonder if someone meant for you to find that body.”
“Why would you think that?”
“The only two logical reasons I can think why someone would drag and push a body for almost a quarter of a mile down all of those hills and cliffs would be to either hide the body or to hide the site of the murder. But since the tracks led very clearly back to where the man was killed, and the body was left somewhere that it would be found — if not by you, then by someone from the hotel, before the day was out — then those two reasons can’t stand. I can’t help but think the body was put where it was for a reason, and the only reason I can think of is for you to find it.”
“Oh,” Danny said, trying and failing to find a flaw in the argument.
“So what I have to ask you, Danny,” Officer Kelly fidgeted in his chair, clearly unwilling to ask what he needed to know next, “is if you had some kind of relationship with Mr. Janacek that somebody knew about.”
“Um,” Danny was stuck: he couldn’t admit his relationship with Mr. Janacek, not to a policeman, and not in front of Ash; and yet, he was a fundamentally honest person and had no idea of how to go about creating a lie.
“Um, what?” the officer prompted.
“He was my teacher,” Danny equivocated.
“I have a cat,” Officer Kelly said, seemingly out of nowhere, “His name is Groucho. He’s a hunter, he’s always catching birds and mice and things. And he always brings them to me and lays them at my feet, or by the side of the bed next to my slippers.”
“Oh?” Danny couldn’t imagine why the policeman was suddenly talking about his cat.
“I wonder if someone was offering this kill to you, like my cat brings his kills to me.”
“You think a cat killed Mr. Janacek?” Danny was confused, and the confusion was magnified by the painkillers he’d taken.
“Think about what I said, Mr. Vandervere. If something occurs to you, some idea about a person related to you and Mr. Janacek who might do something like that, you should contact me right away.”
“OK,” Danny eyed the man askance.
“And you, Mr. Phillips?” Officer Kelly turned to face Ash, startling the boy considerably.
“And me what?” Ash stammered, having thought himself completely invisible in his dark corner behind his sketchpad.
“Was Mr. Janacek your teacher?”
“No, I have Ms. Cummings, third-period algebra.”
&nbs
p; “Did you know Mr. Janacek outside of school?”
“No,” the boy blinked at him with his one visible eye, pulling the hair that covered the other.
“If you think of anything you haven’t told me, something you forgot about, you’ll let me know?”
“Of course,” Ash whispered, taking the officer’s business card and tucking it into his bag.
“Your housekeeper is here, Mr. Vandervere,” Officer Kelly put out his hand to Danny, “She’ll take you home. Thank you for your help.”
“I wish I could help more,” Danny said, shaking the man’s hand and watching him walk out the door.
“Danny! Mijo!” Mrs. Espinosa burst noisily into the room, grabbing Danny’s cheeks and kissing his forehead, “What happened?”
“I just fell down, Tia,” Danny tried to calm her.
“This is more than a fall,” she started examining his bandages with a critical eye, making sure they were on right.
“I was running and I caught my foot on a root, and so it was a pretty bad fall, but I’m OK,” Danny assured her, “I skinned my shoulder and my hands, and I got a cut on my side, and I strained my ankle. But I’ll be healed in a week. Honestly, I’m fine.”
“And what am I hearing about a corpse?” she stood back and crossed her arms in a suspicious manner, as if Danny was trying to hide something from her.
“It was awful,” Danny said, tears starting again in his eyes — he had managed to put that horror out of his mind; even when he was talking to the policeman, he had thought of the body as an abstract idea, not the lifeless remains of a real person he knew.
“Oh, my poor mijo,” Mrs. Espinosa came back at him and threw her arms around him.
“It was my teacher, Tia. Mr. Janacek, my calculus teacher,” Danny sobbed into the housekeeper’s massive bosom.
“It’s OK, baby, it’s OK,” she rubbed his back and rocked him gently, and from that position finally noticed Ash sitting there in the corner with his sketch pad, challenging him with a whispered, “Who are you?”
“That’s Ash, Tia,” Danny said into her shoulder, “He goes to my school. He was there, too. He’s been keeping me company.”
The Math Teacher Is Dead Page 6