Morganstern confirmed her instincts by not overreacting. “Did they check the spouse? Husbands are a whole lot more likely to kill their wives than kids are to kill their mothers.”
“I thought that too. But Graham was the obvious choice. The dad’s a lawyer with a long record of pro bono defence work.”
“Which means jack, if you set it next to a marriage he didn’t want.”
Sarah was starting to like this woman. She stretched. The cramps had let up, but her back ached.
“Coffee?” Morganstern asked.
“Yes.” When they both had a fresh cup, Sarah said, “Can I ask you something?”
Morganstern set her cup down and waited.
“Is it definite that it was heroin?”
“There was a lethal dose in his blood, and there were needle punctures. Three of them were fresh.”
“Why three?”
“Just one of several quirks to this case. But I’m telling you more than I should. Why do you ask about the heroin?”
“It seems weird that he would have extended his arms so stiffly. That much heroin would hit fast, and he’d be a rag doll. Besides, he was practised. The kids told Colin he’d been shooting up pretty regularly for months.” Wingert had confirmed it, but Sarah couldn’t mention that. “How could he overdo the dose that dramatically?”
Morganstern shrugged. “Stronger stuff. An impulsive death wish. Or he’s not the one who overdid it. We tried to get fingerprints from his skin.”
“And?”
She gave a tight smile. The flow of information had stopped. Still, ‘tried’ implied a lack of success. “Even if somebody else shot him up,” Sarah said, “wouldn’t Philip have been the one to fill the syringe?” Careful, she warned herself. She couldn’t let on that she knew the stuff was already liquid. Not without explaining that her informant was both a cop and a drug dealer. “Also, wouldn’t it be possible to put a syringe into an unconscious person’s hand and press his fingers around it?”
“It would.”
“So if somebody was trying to kill him, why didn’t they do that?”
“Good question.”
Sarah swept tendrils of hair off her face, annoyed by any distraction. She had to think. “What else did the M.E. find?”
“You should call her. You’re a reporter.”
“I’m not writing about this case. I meant that.”
“And I believe you. But Aubrey Gradwohl doesn’t know that.”
Sarah raised her coffee mug in a salute. “Good point.”
*
Tossing Simon’s duck quieted Sarah’s mind. Fetch and return, fetch and return. When he finally flopped down, content to have the slobbery duck in his mouth, she called the county medical examiner’s office.
Gradwohl took the call, her cultured voice calm and assured. “How are you, Sarah?”
“Confused, actually. I’m trying to figure out what went on at Matteo Academy. Can you tell me what you found in the autopsy?”
“Nobody’s asked me to keep it under wraps. Cause of death was a drug overdose.”
“How much heroin did you find in his body?”
“None.”
“None?”
“Heroin is diamorphine. Once it’s in the body, it breaks down, so all we can analyse is the level of morphine. He had plenty. Death would have come quickly.”
Draining away all that life. Philip, raising pencilled eyebrows at the folly of the adult world. His smile intimate, implying that Sarah understood what most people didn’t.
She carried the phone to the window and looked out at grey sky. “Would death have come too soon for him to arrange his arms in a symbolic crucifixion?”
“Off the record? I’d say somebody else did that. But the science isn’t conclusive − we’re never sure exactly how an individual will react.”
“It does look like he shot up, though?”
“There were blood spots at the injection sites, so they were fresh. I would have thought he just gave himself a hot shot, a double dose . . .”
“But the syringe is gone,” Sarah supplied.
“That, and there are three fresh puncture marks, not just one. Which is odd. Odder still, there’s blood spatter on the sheet. It’s his blood. But how and why so much of it spattered, I have no idea.” A professional clearing of the throat signalled her pronouncement, “This was definitely a suspicious death.”
Sarah felt a cold tingle. Not surprise, just . . . it was official now. No chance of finding out there’d been some freak accident, nobody’s fault, go on home folks.
“Tell me more about heroin,” she said. “What happens in an overdose?”
“Heroin crosses the blood-brain barrier a hundred times faster than morphine. There’s a sudden rush − some people talk about it as a ‘whole-body orgasm’. Your skin flushes warm, your mouth goes dry, your legs get heavy, your reactions slow. The mind basically detaches, and any anxiety dissolves. You don’t have a worry in the world.”
“Sounds wonderful.”
“Until it stops you from breathing,” Gradwohl said sharply. “Some deaths come so fast, the body still has the needle in the arm. Others take hours. The person seems to be snoring, but really it’s that they can’t get enough air. Eventually foam starts running out of their mouth and nose. We found saliva traces all the way down this young man’s neck.”
Sarah wrote the words in her notebook mechanically, not letting herself picture them. “Thank you, Dr. Gradwohl. This helps. Anything else that was significant?”
“That would depend on who killed him. We found traces of a spermicide, nonoxynol-9. Also polyethylene glycol − an ingredient in sexual lubricants − and amorphous silica particulates.”
“Which are?”
“The powder that keeps a condom from rolling up.”
*
Matteo’s basketball court was a paved rectangle on the far side of the dorm, the markings painted on by one of the boys. Ben, who’d become a great shooter after a few relentless months of solitary practice, passed the basketball to Stan Ruzicka, a stocky kid with none of the nervous energy the game required. He bounced it five times, eyeing the basket between each bounce, brought it to his chest, took the shot, and hit the rim. Jimmy stepped on to the court, snagged the rebound and swished the ball through the net. “I need to ask you guys something,” he said.
“Sure, Father Cadigan. S’up?” Ben said. He’d also been practising slang, trying to loosen his careful English.
“Does anybody else here use boy?”
“Philip was gay,” Stan said, bouncing and catching the ball.
“Dribble it, dude,” Ben called. “And, that’s not what he means. Boy’s heroin.”
Stan stopped, ball in hand. Then he dribbled slowly, drumming the ball into the pavement. “Doesn’t matter. Same answer.”
Jimmy moved off the court. He’d never get an answer with Stan around. As he’d hoped, Ben followed him to a bench a few yards away.
“He’s just a hater,” Ben said, grinding the toe of his sneaker into a clump of dead grass.
“Is anybody else using?”
Looking toward the dorm, Ben said, “You won’t tell anybody, right?”
How to answer that one honestly? Ben was just naïve enough to think this was a schoolboy secret. “Not in a way that would get anybody in trouble,” Jimmy said.
Ben nodded. “Luke shot up.”
“He the only one?” Jimmy made his voice casual.
“Yeah. And I only know of once he actually did it. I think most of the time he just talked about it to sound cool.”
“That’s astute of you,” Jimmy said. “Thanks for telling me.”
Alone on the court, Stan shot and missed. The ball banged off the rim, and he let it go and came toward them. Here goes, Jimmy thought. Keep the judgement out of your voice, say it nice and easy, but beat him to the punch. “You didn’t much like Philip, did you Stan?”
&
nbsp; Just looking at the kid’s stolid expression, Jimmy wanted to throttle him. Ruzicka was a present from Ehrlich, who must have a sense of humour after all. Colin had practically gone down on his knees begging for scholarship kids, so Ehrlich had promised to find a sponsor for a poor kid from the city. And he’d sent a white kid, from the south side of the city. His criminal record? Picketing an abortion clinic every Saturday morning.
“Philip wasn’t really Catholic,” Stan said.
“He didn’t have to be,” Jimmy pointed out. “You have a strong, clear faith, Stan, so I’m sure you’re not threatened by anybody who plays around with ideas the way Philip did.”
“It’s not about being threatened.” The kid had the square jaw of a middle-aged man, and it jutted forward. “He opposed the Church. Faith’s not something to play around with, Father. You’re a priest. You should know that.”
Jimmy clapped a hand on the boy’s shoulder, which was about as friendly as he could bring himself to be. “Belief’s more complicated than it looks. We’ll talk about this sometime.”
With a disgusted look, Stan stepped back on to the court and retrieved the basketball. His shot circled the rim, then swished through.
“You got the roll, man,” called Ben, but Stan’s expression didn’t change. He threw the ball to Jimmy − throwing it a little too hard − and stalked off the court.
*
The condom hadn’t dried, sticky and limp in Philip’s wastebasket. It had vanished along with the syringe, and that had to mean the murderer took it. Did that eliminate Graham? Sarah couldn’t be sure he was straight, and, besides, a lot of kids saw bisexuality as a rite of passage. Were they really that fluid, she wondered, or was it just a way to erase their parents’ stereotypes?
After checking to make sure the coast was clear, she slipped over to the dorm. What she was about to ask Graham would give Colin a heart attack.
She found the boy stretched out on his bed, no doubt cutting his last class, door wide open. “I’ve got two questions for you,” she said.
Unhurried as a cat stretching after a nap, he sat up and pulled out his earbuds. “Ask away.”
“First, are you straight or gay or bi?
“Why, Ms. Markham, are you flirting with me?”
“I could have changed your diapers. Just trust me, okay? I’m asking for a good reason.”
“Well, before the operation, back when I was Greta . . .”
“Please.”
“Straight as an arrow. Never got the bi thing. Although it would be convenient. Next question?”
“I’m assuming Philip was gay.”
“He declared himself ‘omni,’ which as far as I’m concerned was proof of poofdom. Why?”
“Do you know who he slept with?”
“Not me. Young Steven perhaps? An initiation?”
He didn’t know. “Next question,” she said.
“You’ve already asked two.”
“I flunked math. In your mother’s hospital room, only you and your father were around, right? Is there any chance he could have touched that dial? By mistake, I mean.”
Graham stiffened. “My father doesn’t make mistakes. He fixes other people’s mistakes.”
“But if he was just trying to read the screen better?”
“He’d put on his glasses.” Graham popped the earbuds back in, picked a different playlist and slid the volume bar all the way to the right.
She took the hint and left. Back at the milkhouse, she plugged her phone into the charger, washed her face, and climbed the loft’s narrow stairs.
Near the top, she gasped and nearly pitched backward. Grabbing the handrail, she made herself look again. Tucked between sheet and blanket, propped against her pillow, was a tiny figure, bits of frizzy human hair sticking out from under its orange cotton headwrap. Sarah climbed the last two steps, walked over to the bed and jerked back the covers.
Someone had put a Haitian vodou doll in her bed.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
It was a kid’s trick, had to be. Sarah plucked the doll from her bed and held it up gingerly, keeping the rough bright cotton and frizzled black hair at arm’s length. She’d mentioned Haiti in that first conversation with Graham. He’d probably ordered this thing on eBay to scare her.
Simon padded over and sniffed the wizened little figure intently. A million clues, if only she had his nose. Had he barked when the person came in? The walls were so thick, nobody outside would have heard. “At least they didn’t hurt you,” she said, kissing his curly black topknot. “But who was it?”
Head cocked, he waited for another clue to what she wanted. When all that came was an absent pat, he lay across her feet, which got her nowhere but felt immensely comforting. Should she call Colin? He’d just make a royal deal of it and send her home for her own safety. She tossed the doll in the trash and opened her laptop, determined not to be creeped out.
A minute later she went to the trash, pulled out the doll and ran her fingers over it. No pins, so at least she hadn’t been cursed. Absurd to feel so relieved. Should she take this seriously? That depended on who Graham really was.
And she knew exactly what she needed to do to find out.
When she walked into Colin’s outer office, Connie waved her through his half-open door.
“I want to talk to Graham’s mother,” she announced.
“You can’t,” Colin said, his back to her as he pulled a book from his shelf and flipped through it. “You have no official connection with the school.”
“Then I’ll talk to her as a journalist. I need to know more about his background.”
He dog-eared a page and turned to face her. “First of all, this is a murder investigation now, and we’ve got no part in it. Second, anything you say to her could go straight back to the bishop. If she’s pissed, it will jeopardise the scholarships. And that’s the only reason I let him come here in the first place.”
Heat rose to her face. “What happened to the chance he was innocent? An arrogant kid who just got mislabelled? Now that label’s made him a murder suspect!”
Colin sighed the way parents do when they’re making a point of being patient. “Look, I know I brought you into this mess, and I’m sorry, but we’ve got far bigger problems now. I need you to let this part of it go.”
“Well, I can’t. Not without knowing more. You dragged me into this. You’ve got to let me dig far enough to understand him.” She walked to the door and blew him a kiss. “Plausible deniability. I’ll find her address on my own, and you can say you never authorised it.”
*
As she merged on to the highway, Sarah jammed the stick shift up to fifth gear. Colin’s made-for-PBS school had started to feel a little claustrophobic. Vibrating like an electric sander, the car hesitated, then shot forward.
When she reached the suburbs’ edge, she glided off the highway and drove past strip after strip of flat-roofed retail with neon signs. God. Why hire an architect when you can use a kindergartener’s drawings? At least Faith Hospital’s medical tower was set back from the roadside ugliness. Laurel Dennison’s waiting room had no receptionist, just a sign on the wall asking patients to please be seated; Dr. Dennison would be out as soon as her current session ended. Only one patient waited, a bald man of about fifty who looked up from his BlackBerry every few seconds, the darting glances never long enough to acknowledge Sarah’s presence.
She picked up a magazine that touted the homespun life. ‘Low-cost root cellar? Bury a boat!’ ‘The lost art of cooking with lard!’ When the inside door opened she was scribbling a recipe for red-pepper jam. She tossed the magazine aside and shot to her feet. “If this kind gentleman will allow me, I need just a few minutes of your time, Dr. Dennison.”
Caught off guard, he bobbed his head. Sarah thanked him effusively and went through the door before Laurel Dennison could stop her.
A discreet box of Kleenex and shelves of reassuring book titles about family
systems all managed to suggest generations of unhealed (and no doubt unhealable) emotional trauma. A teddy bear sat in the corner of the sofa, his glassy button eyes suggesting he’d heard far too much.
Laurel was tall and slender, dressed in fine wool slacks and a pale yellow cashmere sweater. Her hair was a smooth champagne-blond bob, but a line of grey and brown showed at the part, and her coral nail polish had chipped. So she was still trying to hold it together, but she couldn’t manage more than one day at a time. With a quick, jerky wave, she gestured Sarah to the sofa and took the armchair.
Instantly her hands found each other again, fingers interlacing and twisting. Her polite smile had gotten stuck, and it was starting to wobble. “What can I do for you?” she asked.
Sitting on the edge of the sofa, a teddy-bear paw jammed against her backside, Sarah explained her book on juvenile behaviour problems. Explained it so vividly, she believed herself. Haiti, she thought with a pang. I’m supposed to be writing about Haiti.
“It sounds like a fascinating project,” Laurel said, still polite. Her voice tightened. “I gather my son is included?”
“Colin − Father McAvoy − introduced us, and your son was good enough to talk with me. I wanted to know a bit more about him before we talked again.”
“I’d like to know more myself.” Her mouth twisted. “Graham is complicated.”
Sarah laid down her pen and notebook. No point beating around the bush − they both knew what she wanted to know.
“Laurel, do you think your son tried to kill you?”
The other woman pushed back her chair. Sarah tensed − was she about to get evicted? But Laurel was only making room to cross her legs. Clasping her hands around one knee, she drew it closer. “I would rather answer that question any other way. But the truth is, I just don’t know.”
“Wait − do you mean you’d rather say yes?”
“At this point, I honestly would. Not knowing your own child’s heart is a whole lot worse than finding out he hates you.” She chipped away a bit more nail polish, uncovering the cloudy yellow of a fungal infection. “I swing back and forth between thinking it’s all crazy nonsense and wondering why my son tried to kill me. There’s just no resting point. No place where it all comes together and makes sense.”
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