DiTullio swallowed hard. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“You do. You knew I would find out about the Sons of Adam. That’s why you hired us. You were part of the club—have been since you were a teenager. Why did you want them exposed?”
DiTullio loosened his tie. “I hired you to investigate contracts,” he insisted.
“Like hell. You know those things aren’t really enforceable. You hired me to expose the Sons of Adam. You knew Jess Blake wouldn’t let this bullshit stand at her school and would go to the wall to protect her students. Why did you want this secret out? Why now?”
DiTullio gasped for breath, hesitating a full minute before leaning forward. “This goes no further,” he said in a strangled voice.
“My word,” Jil agreed.
“My son,” he choked. “I wanted to send him to private school. I thought they’d be more accepting of him there. But what kind of example is that? The superintendent doesn’t even send his own children to the Catholic school board? St. Marguerite’s is his district school.”
“Your son is a student there?”
“Next year,” DiTullio said. “Next year, he’d have to go there and…with his…tendencies…I know…”
Jil stopped for a moment to let it all sink in, then stood up. “I understand.”
“No. I don’t think you do.” DiTullio straightened up. “Once they know you, once they target you, it goes on for life.”
“That’s why these students didn’t wait it out until graduation? They realized, somehow, that the SoA would follow them?”
“Into university. Their careers. It’s like a stain you can’t shake. They appear to be everywhere. The priesthood—”
Jil let out a low whistle. “I’m beginning to see now. Thank you, Mr. DiTullio.”
DiTullio collapsed back into his chair, wiping his brow with a clean handkerchief. “Thank you, Ms. Kidd.”
*
Jil thanked Megan Donnelly and headed down the front steps, away from the two-bedroom townhouse Megan now shared with her wife, Frances.
Her mind churned with information, but she couldn’t yet make sense of it.
Before she could forget anything valuable, she locked herself inside her car, pulled out her notebook, and scribbled down everything Megan had told her about the late Regina Francis, and their high school days.
Then she started on the four-hour drive home.
Chapter Twenty-four
The alarm buzzed, and a corrections officer showed Jil through the doors of the Rockford Penitentiary, Juvenile Division. “I’m here to see Gideon McPherson.”
“This way, ma’am,” he said and led her down a dark corridor to the visiting office.
When Gideon saw her, his face went pink, and he hurried to the table.
“Where are my parents?” he said as soon as he sat down.
“Your parents? Were you expecting them?”
“My social worker called them, but they’re leaving me here to rot!” Gideon sputtered, his eyes full of tears. “They haven’t come once. Not once!”
Jil reached across the table, and squeezed his hand. “Gideon, you need to relax, okay?” His shaking alarmed her.
“Miss, what’s going to happen to me?”
Jil squeezed his arm harder. “Breathe, kid,” she said. Across the room, a corrections officer moved toward them, and she released Gideon’s arm, mouthing “sorry.” The CO stepped back.
“I don’t know, Gideon. But Ms. Blake and I will work as hard as we can to get something done, okay?”
“Ms. Blake?”
“Yeah.”
At this, Gideon exhaled, seeming at last to relax a little. “Ms. Blake. You’re sure?”
Jil wasn’t at all sure what Jess could do, but since this was the only reassurance that seemed to be working, she put on a poker face and repeated, “I’m sure.”
“Okay, Miss.”
Jil was moved at how easily Gideon still flocked to her as his teacher—someone who should have been protecting him.
“Can you find out from my social worker what’s happening?” Gideon asked. “Even Bex, she hasn’t been here once either.”
“Bex isn’t allowed,” Jil said. “But I’ll tell her I saw you, and I know she’d want me to tell you to stay strong and hang in there. Okay?”
He nodded, his face flushed.
“Right now, I’m here to ask you some really important questions, okay?”
Okay.”
“And it’s really important—for you especially—that you don’t tell anyone I’ve been here.”
“Why?”
Jil just silenced him with a look. The less he knew the better. If anyone got wind of the fact that she’d elicited a full confession from this kid, and she was ever subpoenaed to his trial, it would be very bad for his case.
“Gideon, you don’t know me. Got it?”
He just nodded. “Got it, Miss.”
“I need you to tell me everything. Right from the beginning. Can you do that?”
Gideon clenched his jaw.
“Start talking. And start with the Sons of Adam.”
Gideon looked at her, wide-eyed. “How do you—”
“Gideon,” Jil warned him.
“I can’t tell you anything about them,” Gideon said, looking away.
“You don’t have a choice. Tell me who they are.”
“I don’t know.”
“Gideon, c’mon. I need to know. Things are getting way out of hand at St. Marguerite’s. They need help, and you’re the only one who can give it. I need to know who these people are.”
“They’re not just at St. Marguerite’s.” Gideon leaned forward. “They’re all over the place, Miss.”
“You mean at the school, or in the community?”
“Everywhere.” Gideon looked over his shoulder, like he expected one of them to pop out of the woodwork. “It’s like a fraternity. You know, you join in high school, and you’re with them for the rest of your life, kind of thing.”
Jil swallowed hard. “Okay. Who recruited you?”
Gideon shook his head. “That’s the thing,” he replied. “I don’t even know who they are.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re not allowed to meet any of them. Only to hear them.”
“Okay. Start from the beginning.”
Talking seemed to be helping Gideon to shake off his fear. Even though he was leaning forward, he didn’t appear as hunched or hampered as before. His voice was urgent, low.
“They sneak up on you. You don’t know who they are, but they always come as a surprise. They come up behind you in the bathroom or in the hall, and they shove you into an empty room. Then they blindfold you and tie you to a chair, or a post, or a desk, or something. And there’s always a group of them.”
“Guys or girls?”
“Mostly guys. But there are some girls. The girls usually come later. They don’t do the kidnapping part, mostly.”
Made sense that they wouldn’t send in the ladies to do the takedown. They were better at the subverted manipulation.
“How many times has this happened to you?”
“A couple of times,” Gideon replied. “After the first time, they said I would get notes in my locker after that, and that I had to follow what it said to do.”
“And did you?”
“Yeah.”
“And did you follow them?”
Gideon’s face fell. “Yeah,” he whispered. “At first, I thought it was kind of a game. Then I got scared. The worst part is not knowing who they are. Not knowing who to look out for or who to trust.”
“Did they do it to anyone else?”
Gideon nodded.
“Who?”
“Wyatt,” he replied. “He was the only one I knew for sure. And I only knew because he came to math one day and his hair was soaking wet from when they’d dunked him in the toilet. I asked him, kind of sneaky-like, you know? And he admitted it. That someone had jumped him in th
e bathroom.”
Jil recalled the day of the first tagging when she had met Gideon and Wyatt in the hall—their terrified expressions, their guarded stances.
“Why did they target him?”
“I don’t really know, but they spray-painted ‘Bastard’ on his locker one day, and another day, gave him a cloth letter A and told him to give it to his mother.”
“Is Wyatt’s mom single?”
“She never married his dad, if that’s what you mean.”
“I think that’s why he was a target.”
“They told him if he did what they said, they’d stop going after him.”
When did this start?”
Gideon shrugged. “September. Miss, I have to go to that school until grade twelve. That’s six whole years. Do you know how long that is? It’s forever. Forever.”
To a seventh-grader, absolutely, six years seemed like a life sentence.
“You said you got notes.”
“Yeah.”
“What did the notes say to do?”
“Mostly it was to just deliver stuff. Like, other envelopes to other people.”
“Anything else? Did they ever ask you to do any graffiti?”
Gideon looked genuinely surprised. “No,” he said. “Nothing like that.”
“Did they ever ask you to hurt anyone? Follow anyone?”
“No. Well, yeah, actually. Once, it was to…follow someone.”
“Who?”
“A girl. They said to wait until she went to the bathroom, by herself. Then I was supposed to put this mask on and scare her. Like, jump out at her, and call her names, then run away.”
“Did you?”
Gideon shook his head. “No. I could never find her alone. I tried, and when two days went by and I still hadn’t done it, some guy in a mask came up on me and dunked my head in a toilet. That’s how I knew about Wyatt. Because the same thing happened to him.”
“Do you know who it was that dunked you?”
“Some senior,” Gideon said, shaking his head. “It’s hard to see when someone has a mask on. All I saw was his student council shirt.”
“You’re sure it was a student council shirt?”
“Of course. They all wear them. White with the St. Mag’s crest.”
Jil took out a piece of paper from her pocket—the watermarked paper that contained her first warning.
Gideon looked at it, his eyes registering shock, then disbelief, then finally, understanding.
WATCH YOUR BACK.
“Was this the symbol?” asked Jil.
“You mean…” he said, “You mean…they were after you too? A teacher?”
“I’m not a teacher, Gideon. I’m an investigator.”
“An investigator? Like a real-life undercover private eye?”
Jil smiled. “Sort of like that. And I will get to the bottom of this. But I need you to understand how serious it is.”
If he hadn’t been on board before, Gideon certainly was now.
“Do you remember what you were supposed to say to the girl you had to follow?”
“Yeah. The first one, I was supposed to call her like ‘slut’ and ‘bitch.’ It’s because she was pregnant or something. I don’t know what happened to her, because she got kicked out of the school.”
Jil frowned. She remembered some announcement earlier in the year about a student withdrawing from the eleventh grade. A reason hadn’t been given.
“There were more you had to follow?”
“Just one more. I was supposed to put a note in her locker and then wait til she went into the bathroom. Then I had to follow her in there and yell ‘dyke’ while she was in the stall and couldn’t see me.”
“Do you remember who it was?”
“Yeah. She lives in residence too. But she got back at them.”
“Got back at them how?”
Gideon’s eyes twinkled, but he remained silent.
“With a little red paint?” Jil said, connecting the dots.
Gideon remained silent.
“Can you tell me her name?”
The boy shook his head. “I promised.”
“Can you describe her?”
“No.”
“Can you give me anything, Gideon? I’m trying to help you here.”
Gideon thought for a second, then pinched the tip of his nose and tugged.
A ring? A bullring?
Teegan.
Jil frowned. But she’d checked Teegan herself the morning of the fire alarm…and been so distracted with the pot in her bag that she hadn’t checked her hands. Wow. Awesome, PI.
“Teegan was vandalizing the school? Why?”
Gideon shrugged. “She didn’t like those student council kids always breathing down her neck.”
“The student council?” She remembered something Teegan and Bex had said at the climbing trip—something about the student council keeping the wayward Pathways students on a righteous path.
Things were beginning to click. The Sons of Adam had a front…
“She thought if she said anything out loud, she’d get kicked out of the program. So she decided to just write her message, you know?”
Jil sighed. Wished she’d thought of that.
“Yeah.”
“Dyke is like ‘fag,’ though, right? It’s like, a really bad name,” Gideon said, switching the subject.
“Yeah, you shouldn’t use that word.”
“Bex hates that word,” Gideon said quietly. “She says it’s discrim—discriminate…”
“Discriminatory. Yes. That’s right. She wouldn’t like it.”
“You know my sister’s like, you know. Gay, right?”
“Yep. I know.”
“Did she tell you?”
“Uh huh.”
“Well, see, the last foster parents we had, they didn’t like that she’s gay. They kept trying to make her straight. They even sent her to this camp to like pray the gay away. And they wouldn’t let her talk about it at home. They thought it was gonna—I don’t know what they thought. Before we moved to the Pathways program, I heard Bex arguing with them like a thousand times.”
“About you too?”
“Yeah. They thought it’d be harder on me if everyone knew she was gay.”
“Do you think it will be?”
“I dunno. But that’s why I did what they said with their stupid notes. Because they told me if I didn’t, that they would go after Bex, and I was afraid for her, because of what they did to other people.”
“And did they leave her alone?”
Gideon shook his head. “No. They started—” He sniffed, and his nose turned red.
“What?”
He gasped, trying to hold back the tears.
“What did they do?” Jil probed.
He wiped the back of his hand across his eyes. “Miss, you have to promise not to tell anyone I told you.”
“Is it bad?”
“It’s really bad.”
“You said they hurt Bex. That day in the hallway when I tackled you.”
Gideon nodded. “Yeah.”
“What did you mean?”
His chest heaved and he sniffed loudly.
“How did they hurt her?”
“She was with some other kids from her class.”
“Joey and Kyle?”
“Yeah. Them. I figured she was okay if she was in a group, so I went off to the rec room to play Wii. But when I saw her later that night, she was acting so weird, Miss. She was all white and she wouldn’t look at me. I asked her what happened and she wouldn’t tell me. I stayed with her for the whole weekend, but she didn’t look me in the eye once.”
“Did you find out what happened?”
“Finally. They raped her, Miss. The group of boys.”
*
Jil left the Rockford Penitentiary, her thoughts reeling. She dialed Jess’s direct line, all the while keeping half an eye on her GPS to make sure she was on target for her next appointment. Well, calling it an
appointment was rather a loose representation of facts. Usually an appointment indicated that both parties knew they were going to be meeting. The Deloittes had no idea she was coming—which made this more of an ambush than a rendezvous.
“Jess, it’s me,” she said when Jess picked up the phone.
“What did you find out?” she asked.
“He’s in the juvenile section. No lawyer. And his parents haven’t visited.”
“You’re kidding me. What about his sister?”
“Nope. Is she even present at school?”
“No. She’s been absent since last Thursday.”
Thursday—the date of the incident.
“Any idea where she is?” She felt her chest constrict.
“None. But I have the feeling I need to find out.”
“You need to find out now. She’s in serious trouble, Jess. Go to her dorm room, drag her out if you have to, but she’s got to get to the hospital.”
“What happened?”
“I’ll explain later. Promise me you’ll find her.”
“I promise. I’m going right now.”
“Okay. We’ll rendezvous at six.”
“Bye, Jil.”
Jil smiled. She still hadn’t got used to Jess using her real name. It was nice, somehow, to be known.
Chapter Twenty-five
At six p.m., Jil parked half a block from the school and took the long route around the football field to the side entrance where Jess was waiting for her. She felt in her pocket to make sure her tiny technological gift from Morgan was still there. She moved it between her finger and thumb, like a worry stone.
“Stick this in the USB slot,” Morgan had said that morning, as he’d slowed down in his car to pass it to her through the window.
She’d known better than to press him for details. It would do the job she needed, and the less she knew the better.
“Will it self-destruct?” she quipped.
He winked at her and pulled out of her loft’s parking lot. Now, if only she and Jess could get into Genovese’s office, they might actually be able to use it.
Jess ushered her inside.
“Who else is in the building?” Jil asked.
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