The Twisted Thread

by Charlotte Bacon

  Betsy had been a biology teacher before she married Stan, a chemistry instructor, and had given up the classroom entirely when the kids came. It had been hard to accept the transition at first; she had loved the students. They were so smart and they worked so hard.

  Usually, Matt let people talk, but this piece of information surprised him. “You were a colleague of Harvey Fuller’s?” he asked. It was hard to imagine Harvey countenancing the hiring of a woman like Betsy, so full of messy life. Her lab was probably funky with overgrown experiments. Fuller would have been sure to be on any job committee; Matt was amazed someone like Betsy had been allowed to slip through.

  Betsy looked somber. “Oh, yes. And it was one of the reasons I wanted to stay in the department; the students needed an alternative perspective, in my view. I didn’t know how bad it was going to be. Harvey was on sabbatical the year I came. Otherwise, he would never have let someone like me in. I actually got the kids to keep science journals. And worse”—and here she fluttered her hands in the air—“got a compost bin going in the classroom.”

  She paused and looked out a little more closely at the children. The littlest had pulled a truck away from the oldest girl, but so far, protests weren’t forthcoming. “No,” Betsy mused, “Harvey had no patience for me. Although I have him to thank for introducing me to Stan—he had us over for dinner one night and we hit it off. I had barely talked to Stan before that. I think Harvey did it on purpose, knowing that I liked and wanted children and that Stan did, too.” She gave a shrug then that was close to a shudder. Her disgust was real, Matt thought.

  “But Harvey’s not what I wanted to talk to you about, though God knows I could do that forever. He’s a fascinating case to me. This is what’s bothering me, Detective.” She looked at him full on, her eyes hazel and remarkably pretty. “After Claire died, things exploded, as you can imagine. Students in complete distress, parents calling constantly, police everywhere. There was total chaos, and Stan and I did nothing but deal with that for the next two days. And then last night, I woke up and realized that something had been bothering me about the morning her body was found. I got this sickening notion I ought to remember something.” It was hard to overemphasize just how much lack of sleep eroded short-term memory, she told Matt, and she spent all day trying to recall it. “And when I did, today, I didn’t want to call you at first. I knew I had to, but I didn’t want to. I think my mind was actively trying to suppress it. I think you’ll understand when I tell you.

  “The morning Claire died, I was driving to CVS. Nathaniel had a fever, and we were all out of Tylenol. I was heading past Portland, and I nearly ran over Madeline Christopher. She was listening to music on headphones, and perhaps she hadn’t heard me. She’s a sweet girl, but a little addlebrained sometimes. But really it was my fault because I was thinking about what I’d seen before that, since it was so unexpected. I am almost positive I saw Porter McLellan heading away from the dorm. He must have left from the back entrance. He was walking quickly, along the edge of the woods. I only saw him from behind, but I think I recognized his jacket, this shabby thing he wears though Lucinda keeps telling him to get rid of it.”

  Matt put his coffee down. “Was he carrying anything, Mrs. Lowery?”

  “No,” she said. “At least as far as I could see. As soon as I remembered, I immediately thought of that, too. No, I think his hands were by his sides. He was walking quickly. Mr. Corelli, what struck me was this: I could almost swear that this person was crying. It was his shoulders. They were shaking.”

  “What time was this, Mrs. Lowery?” Matt was already moving toward the door, his hands twitching for his phone.

  “Six ten,” she said. “The car has this clock with a very large LED display. I don’t know why, but that stuck in my mind.”

  “Could anyone else have seen him from that angle?” Matt scanned his memory to try to recall the windows on the back side of Portland. At least three faculty apartments would have views on that side, and who knew what the girls had glimpsed.

  “Madeline was running, and the others would be Grace and Harvey. And I am sorry to say this, Mr. Corelli, but I don’t think that either of them would have necessarily found it prudent to notice Porter at an inconvenient time.” She looked sad and confused, caught in a welter of allegiances. Then, from the yard, a scream went up. But it was only that, as Betsy predicted, one of the children had fallen and banged a knee, and in the next moment, her disorderly kitchen was full of shouting kids. As he thanked her and made for the door, Matt caught a glimpse of the wound Betsy was tending to, the small red flag of scraped flesh. Dialing quickly to speak to Vernon, he heard her soothing voice tell the hurt child that she would be fine, that everything was all right.

  “Jesus,” Vernon said when Matt explained what Betsy had told him. “I’ll call the assistant and get him as soon as we can.” But then Vernon called back almost immediately and said, “Autopsy results in, and that pathologist is actually making himself available on the phone. I’ll meet you up there. I’ve got dinner for you. Kathy made extra soba noodles. And we should go see the wife right away. The English bitch wouldn’t let us change our appointment. We don’t see McLellan until seven forty-five.”

  At a bench outside the library, Vernon met Matt and said, “No more shit food for you.” Matt was surprised to find how tasty the meal was and admired the fact that Kathy had even included a pair of chopsticks for him. His wife was worried about the impact of all the adrenaline on their systems, Vernon explained. The buckwheat in the soba noodles was supposed to offset that toxic rush. No matter what its physical effect, it was wonderfully soothing to eat something wholesome. As he sipped in the slippery pasta, Matt talked on the phone to the pathologist.

  Claire had been incredibly lucky, the doctor said; there were no complications; she had delivered the placenta cleanly and hadn’t even completely torn herself up in the process. Someone most likely had assisted her. She had been rather undernourished but overall healthy. A pity, he’d permitted himself to add. She’d been a beautiful girl. Built, too, for babies.

  At least she hadn’t dumped her child in the trash the way some of these girls did. Didn’t Matt remember that case in Holyoke? All too clearly, Matt said. But if Claire hadn’t harmed the baby, where was he? There was still absolutely nothing that pointed to his whereabouts. Angell was starting to be furious not only with them but with the federal agents, too.

  As for the wound that had killed Claire, it was going to be hard to use it to prove murder. Blunt trauma. From the bedpost. She had landed on it, and it had hit at a particularly vulnerable spot at the base of the skull. Having just given birth, with her entire vascular system still rather dilated, probably hadn’t helped, the doctor noted laconically. There were also some bruises on her arms, wrists, and near her neck. Whether they were sustained at the time of death or during birth, it was hard to say. “Women can get pretty banged up having babies.” Abruptly, Matt realized he couldn’t keep eating. Besides, as Vernon told him with an ostentatious tap at his watch, they needed to go and visit Lucinda.

  Matt had seen her only rarely in his four days on campus, and when they found her in her kitchen, she seemed rooted there. Despite the evening’s warmth, she was wrapped in a sweater. When they asked her where she had been early in the morning on Monday, she said, glancing at the far wall, “I was asleep. Porter was probably walking the dog. It’s what he does every morning. Just confirm it with him,” and then she turned from them in dismissal, though it was clear that she was doing nothing other than gripping a mug of tea that had long ago grown cold. The dog in question, an Australian shepherd, was lying protectively at her feet.

  “Buy it?” Vernon asked Matt as they left.

  “No,” he answered. “Betsy Lowery said nothing about a dog, but it’s more than that. She wouldn’t even look at us.” Matt dialed Betsy’s number, and again the woman came through. “That’s exactly why I didn’t think it was Porter at first,” she told Matt. A chorus of squab
bling voices could be heard in the background as she spoke. “He didn’t have Gretel with him. She’s always leashed. Last year, there was a ruckus about dogs on campus raised by Harvey Fuller, of course, and they started enforcing the leash law again. Porter’s the head; he had to use one.”

  It was almost time for them to meet Porter. Tamsin had designated the Commons for the appointment. As they walked into the dining hall, Vernon turned to Matt and said, “You have to wear black tie when you ate here? Use the good silver?” The opulence of the surroundings was irritating Vernon the way the memorial service on the Knoll had: all this rigid attention to appearances. Even in the dim light, it was obvious that the dark-paneled room where the students shuffled in for breakfast, lunch, and dinner was grandly designed, with a bank of windows along one side, chandeliers hanging icily from the ceiling, and parquet floors so highly polished they, too, gave off a sheen. Empty, it echoed, and Matt grew conscious of how full of glinting light it was, even in the settling darkness. When he had been a student here, all he’d been attuned to was where his friends were sitting, where the girls he liked might be, which teachers were eating where. To most adolescents, the array of one’s social connections was the most important kind of architecture there was. He wondered now which tables had been reserved for the Reign and which for the girls they deemed inferior.

  Vernon walked over to the coffee bar. “Green tea. They even have green tea,” he observed, and he made himself a cup. “I will not get you coffee. If you’re going to pollute yourself, you’ll have to do it on your own.”

  But Matt didn’t need the coffee. Betsy Lowery’s reluctant and slightly belated revelation that she’d seen Porter leaving Portland at a critical time had given them something slim but real to follow. Vernon wandered back to their table. “Why did he want to meet here, you think?”

  “Library too public. Even his office. Everybody walks by and sees the lights. And he doesn’t want us at the house with the wife.”

  Now slurping his tea, Vernon said, “So who was it? Someone who looked like him? Another big guy with dark hair? And why is the wife lying, and what’s he going to say?”

  Matt didn’t answer Vernon, distracted by an appetizing smell of grilled meat that lingered in the room. He’d heard Porter had made the food better and paid the cafeteria workers more than they’d ever earned before. But students now washed dishes and helped to cook the food they and their peers ate. There was an organic farm where spectacular lettuces and herbs were grown. The headmaster had also implemented a policy that required students to work around the school and in the community. They tutored in Greenville schools. They had cleaned up a stretch of the Bluestone that ran between Greenville and Armitage. Some faculty thought Porter’s notions of service highfalutin—“we’re not a commune,” Grace Peters had sniffed. Some thought of it as yet another layer of padding the kids could add to their college applications. Others admired Porter’s ideas and believed it was good for the more insulated of the students to get a sense of how the rest of the world worked, not to mention eat healthy food. A far cry from stern, humorless Gordon Farnsworth.

  “You like this guy,” Vernon said sternly, smacking his mug on the table. “I have to admit, I’m impressed, too. He almost makes you feel”—and here he swept his hand out to encompass the glimmering room—“that all this means something. Adds up to something other than simply revolting excess.”

  “You’re almost right, Vernon. I am very close to liking him. He’s worth talking to. And that’s exactly the effect he has. But it’s a problem.”

  “You don’t want him to be involved,” Vernon said. “But he is.”

  Matt looked at him. “He has some good history on his side, too.” Matt asked, and knew the answer in advance, if Vernon remembered the case a year ago when an Armitage kid had been caught selling speed and date-rape drugs on campus. In direct contradiction to usual procedure, and apparently in the face of opposition from the board, Porter had insisted that this student face charges. He had even written a letter to alumni saying that he would not countenance the breaking of federal law in such a dangerous realm and that, by hiding behind a cloak of privilege and conducting its own form of discipline, Armitage was cheapening what it had to offer and not providing the protection to its students that it claimed. The kid, who was a serious dealer, was now in a juvenile prison.

  “That never happened when I was here. Armitage kids got bailed out. They still do, when we catch them trying to buy beer. But for the big things, McLellan turns them loose. So why isn’t he on our side this time?” But Matt stopped talking because Porter had come in. They heard the creak of the wide door and saw him tall and lean on the threshold.

  He walked over, shook their hands, and immediately started with an apology for meeting them so late in the day and here in the Commons. “And I’m glad to see you’ve found the coffee, Mr. Cates.”

  “Green tea, Mr. McLellan. That’s all he drinks,” said Matt. They settled at one of the round tables, Vernon with his laptop flipped open.

  “Yes, students requested it, and we began to stock it. If you’re going to ask them to work so hard, you’ve got to feed them properly,” Porter said.

  “It might have something to do with the amount of tuition you charge them, too,” said Vernon. Matt realized his partner was only wedging himself without much difficulty into the role of townie antagonist, but the tone almost made him flinch.

  Porter said nothing for a second and then laughed. It was a real sound, unexpected in the crystal-spiked dimness, and it took them both by surprise. “You’re right, Mr. Cates. It’s got a lot to do with that tuition. Which is absurdly high and out of reach of almost anyone in the country, although it’s also true that every Armitage student, no matter his or her need, is subsidized. It costs a lot, what we provide. But it’s correct that we deal with an elite, and we help propagate that elite. It’s an accurate claim, and one I wish weren’t quite so true. Still, it’s not the only thing that can be said about Armitage and places like it. Because we have money, we can make it possible for students with no means whatsoever to attend and have access to one of the best educations around. An authentic one, with balance and humanity and intelligence in it. And I am still confident that we provide that.” He didn’t glance at Matt; he didn’t need to. Matt had reaped exactly those benefits. It was why he would have chosen to attend Armitage again, in spite of everything that had happened there.

  Vernon glowered at his screen, typing something furiously. It was always disappointing to have his bait refused.

  “Mr. McLellan,” Matt said. “We need to ask you something about the morning Claire died. Could you tell us what you were doing then, from the time you woke up to the time you called the police at six thirty?”

  Even in the low light, it was possible to see that Porter had gone entirely still, but he wasn’t, Matt sensed, surprised at this new line of discussion. Up to this point, his position had been only that of the authority who needed to be briefed. Yet if he resented this shift in their attitude toward him, he gave no overt sign. “Of course. I woke at five thirty. I got dressed and checked e-mail; there were a number of issues heating up before the next board meeting.”

  Having spoken to the head of the board, Colson Trowbridge, Matt knew about some of them. A controversial proposal, Porter’s, to allow same-sex couples to live together in faculty housing and another, from Sarah Talmadge, to require students to spend at least part of a semester abroad and not only, as Trowbridge put it, “somewhere clean, like Sweden.” Porter, according to Trowbridge, didn’t seek out fights and was good at brokering alliances where least expected. They rarely turned him down, though what he called the gay faculty problem wasn’t likely to be an easy sell.

  “Then I walked the dog, which I usually do as Lucinda sleeps later than I do and Gretel gets impatient,” Porter went on. He stared out the window down toward the Bluestone.

  “Is that where you walk her, Mr. McLellan? By the river?” Matt asked. If he answ
ered yes, this would contradict Betsy Lowery’s information; the river was on the other side of campus from Portland.

  “No,” Porter said slowly. “I was looking at the river and thinking of a prank the seniors played last year. I’m sure you remember those, Detective.” In spite of himself, Matt found his own mind alive with the time boys in his class had led a cow into this dining hall, a cow that had been suddenly overwhelmed by its circumstances and responded the only way it knew how, which was to go berserk and then head charging through the plate-glass window that led to the wide green expanse at which Porter was looking. Explosive sound, shards of glass, flailing black-and-white hindquarters. Indelible.

  Vernon had stopped typing and was about to interrupt, to pull Porter back to the question at hand, but with a tilt of his index finger, Matt stopped him. “The faculty woke up and couldn’t find their dogs, and then this incredible howling rose from the river and everyone ran down to see what was happening. The students had loaded every dog they could get their hands on, including Gretel, into rowboats. It was a protest about the leash law. They claimed they were going to find new homes for all the animals who couldn’t walk around on campus anymore. They liked the roaming dogs. It was the faculty and parents who didn’t. But Gretel doesn’t like boats. Since then, she doesn’t want to walk by the river. I walk her in the woods. Not far from Portland.”

  “Did anything unusual happen with her that morning?” Matt asked.

  Porter paused, looking at his hands. “Yes, now that you mention it. She had slipped her lead. I was looking for her.” His voice was soft now.