Adam and Evil (An Amanda Pepper Mystery)

by Gillian Roberts

  You’ll never work in this town again, Amanda.

  But the right thing to do. Morally correct. Ethically proper.

  And on the other side of the scales of justice, what did I have to offer up as an objection and counterweight? My convenience. My comfort level. My butt.

  “Also the police?”

  For once, I hoped Jill meant that question mark, that she didn’t know if the police needed instant notification.

  “Because it’s a crime, an actual illegal thing, her uncle Josh says.”

  “They’ll need to investigate? Uncle Josh says just because we wrote this thing doesn’t make it true legally for a case? That, like, the kids could sue for libel or something? So there has to be an investigation, like with detectives and everything? Uncle Josh thought maybe me and Nancy—”

  “Nancy and I,” I said, working by remote control.

  “Nancy and I could write the story for the big newspapers, too? Maybe? Maybe the Inquirer?”

  “Maybe,” I murmured. My pulse was going triple-time. The little idea that grew. Any higher profile, I’d have to be on Mount Rushmore.

  * * *

  Toward the end of the day, my seniors were in their circle, working on their movie projects. Adam’s absence was no longer physically visible—his chair removed, the circle made whole again, although Troy Bloester came up to my desk to whisper, “Adam’s okay. Thought you’d want to know.”

  “How do you know?”

  “He’s been around.”

  “Around where? What do you mean?”

  “Around here. This junior saw him early this morning. His mom—the junior’s mom—was dropping him off, and they both saw Adam and another guy in the alley behind the school.”

  That didn’t sound so okay to me. Adam was either unaware of being the subject of a manhunt or unaware of everything.

  “The mom called the cops, too, but Adam was gone way before they got there. Thought you’d want to know. I was glad he got away, and so was the kid whose mom was going to turn him in. Nobody wants Adam in bigger trouble than he already is. The guy’s a weird dude, but…”

  I waited.

  “He’s our weird dude.”

  I found that a rather elegant and suitable philosophy, and thanked Troy for the update.

  Sarah Adams, the tiny girl who’d missed the ruckus at the library, had seemed positively infected with her project since that day. Now, having gone back to the library each succeeding day that it was open, she was creating an involved story about a frontier woman whose adventures served as the basis of the books she both wrote and illustrated. Sarah hummed to herself as she drew. Every time I saw her and was again amazed by the transformation of an otherwise lackadaisical pupil, I smiled. With enough time, with enough breathing room to think about the students and to plan, I could… I squelched the joyous expansion of my heart—that touchdown feeling that always followed a teaching success, minor though it might be. The optimistic hopes for still more successes.

  I had to wean myself of those feelings. They had no future.

  A messenger entered with a note. I knew what it was going to say almost before I opened it, and I knew why the ancients used to kill the messenger. I tried not to glare at the hapless kid as I read: Miss Pepper, stop in the office before leaving school. Dr. Havermeyer needs to talk with you. Signed by the Office Witch herself, who’d carefully omitted any social pleasantries such as please or thank you. “I’ll be there,” I told the messenger, who seemed to feel the tension field surrounding the note, and who wheeled around and was immediately gone.

  Too soon after, I stood in front of a red-faced Havermeyer, a man so overwhelmed by impossible emotions that he could barely form an unintelligible sentence. “First and foremost,” he said, “I regret the necessity of immediately, as of this moment, suspending publication of the InkWire.”

  “The school paper? You aren’t going to let the kids print their last issue of the year?” I’m not sure why I found it necessary to ask questions to which I knew the answers, but I did. Just to hear the facts sounded in the land of freedom of the press.

  “Miss Pepper, you should have prevented a story of this magnitude—do you even begin to understand the ramifications of what those girls—have you any idea of the negative—I thought I communicated with you to the effect I wanted nothing more than to preserve the integrity of the school’s reputation—just when our scores and admissions were…” He obviously realized why we were suddenly doing so well, and clamped his mouth shut, but his skin tone could have been made into a crayon color called Stroke Victim.

  “They investigated on their own,” I said. “They aren’t doing this for personal gain. Do you want a crime like this to go unpunished? Do you want me to censor honest inquiry? What they’ve done is what we hope our students will do. What participants in a democracy would all do.”

  “No InkWire,” he said. “Publication indefinitely suspended.”

  “Why indefinite? We have only one more issue before the year ends. Those editors will move on.”

  “Then not indefinite. For the duration of this term,” he said. “And next term we will have to have a prior agreement on what constitutes responsible reporting—what is permissible in a school newspaper. This isn’t The New York Times. There was no need—”

  I was thoroughly incensed. Forget my job. Forget the stupid and petty politics of this wretched school. The baseline was that two tenth-grade girls had shown amazing gumption, done a bang-up job of reporting and putting together a story, and it was now considered an offense, something I should have squelched.

  “I think you’re making a mistake,” I said. “The police—”

  “We are delaying informing the police, pending our own investigation,” he said. “This school will undertake an inquiry on its own before we involve the entire city and the wider press. The girls’ parents and I have come to an agreement that will spare their daughters unnecessary and undesirable exposure and involvement in a criminal proceeding. Until such time as it may prove necessary, of course.”

  “Who? How?”

  “You may put your mind at rest and stop being bothered by that question, because it is no longer a concern of yours,” he said. “I have relieved you of that concern by virtue of suspending publication of the paper.” He turned his back to me and looked out the window at the street and the square beyond it.

  “They tried to do the right thing,” I said. “That’s all they did.”

  Outside, our students made their start-and-stop way across the square. I could see them around the silhouetted figure of my headmaster at the window. “I requested a low profile,” he said, his back still to me, “and this is anything but. Everything but. I do not feel that ours is a harmonious working relationship, and this insubordination and refusal to honor a modest request on my part, a protective desire for our school—all this leads me to believe that you might definitely find a more compatible working relationship and be happier elsewhere. I hope that such is the case, because I feel obliged to terminate your employment.”

  “Now? Today?” On a Tuesday in late April? It seemed ridiculous.

  “A leave of absence until the end of the year.” He finally turned and faced me. “Please leave your substitute your lesson plans and any finals you’ve prepared, of course. A brief sabbatical. Shall we call it that, then?”

  And that was it. The accumulated frustrations of this worst of all weeks—what felt like effort after effort to behave responsibly, to be a good citizen, a good teacher, a good adult—all of it misfiring and winding up here, with nobody trying to do the right thing by me—all of that exploded. Besides, I had absolutely nothing to lose.

  “I don’t think I’d call it a sabbatical,” I said. “I don’t think that’s the right word at all. I think we should call it being fired for allowing students to enjoy their constitutional right of freedom of speech. I think in fact what you’re doing is illegal and deserves a news story of its own. You’re not even giving me a chance
to say goodbye to my students, are you? I think they deserve to know what’s going on.”

  “No need to humiliate yourself. We’ll tell them you’re ill. Medical leave. In all honesty, your appearance…you might well require such leave.”

  “I’m not ill.” He thought I was. Mentally.

  But Adam wasn’t because his parents donated money to the school. “And I’m not humiliated to be fired for such a tawdry reason. I’m proud of it.” I stood up. “Is that it, then?”

  “Well, but…what is it you’re going to do?”

  “I don’t know, Dr. H. I’m going to have to think about it this weekend. I’ll let you know.”

  I was fired. For real this time. No, worse. I’d been banished—told not to darken the doors again. To plead sickness. It sounded like the old Soviet Union, where dissidents were put in so-called hospitals forever.

  Well, I’d be damned. I would not go gentle, and that was that. I couldn’t have said if this was about me or freedom of the press or simple stubborn stupidity, but as I walked outside, I saw Jill and Nancy, who waved.

  “Hey, girl reporters,” I said. “I have news. Bad news. The paper’s been suspended. There’ll be no story for any of us this year.”

  Both their mouths opened slightly. Their collective oh, no was silent, but I heard it.

  “And listen, this is awkward, but—I’ve been fired for having allowed you to think we’d print your story. I’d say I’d see you, but I don’t think I’m going to be permitted back in. Not even to say goodbye to anyone.”

  They were the best of all possible audiences, their faces registering the full spectrum of disbelief and horror at what was going on.

  “So—I’ll miss you. I hope you get the chance to run with the story—it’s an important one, and you’ve done a great job. Take care.”

  I walked around to the back of the building, where my car was parked, trusting that after all these years, I knew the power of two animated tenth-grade girls.

  News of my expulsion would be universally known within nanoseconds.

  It was the most—and least—I could do.

  Even if they didn’t care about me, they had to care about their story.

  Nineteen

  It had been a beautiful day for a firing, sufficiently crisp, green, and springlike—even in the city—to make the prospect of living on the streets not that unpleasant.

  Or at least walking on those streets, which was the method of transport Mackenzie and I chose to visit Beth in the hospital. She’d thought she’d be released immediately, but she had bonked her head when she fell, and that necessitated tests, scans, and observations. So far so good, and now she expected to go home the next day, but we thought we’d divert her attention from the fact that she was stuck there for another night. Boy, did those Pepper sisters know how to get attention—one fired, the other incapacitated.

  “Let’s buy her dinner,” I said. “Something suitable for the occasion.”

  “Unhealthy food, for when you’re bruised and bummed,” Mackenzie suggested.

  “Why not? What’s less healthy than getting hit by a car?”

  So we kept our eyes out for a sign of steak sandwiches en route, hoping we wouldn’t have to go all the way to South Street for a suitable one. There was lots of time to talk about things we should have talked about a while back, which we now did, in gingerly fashion, as if each sentence were a carefully placed stitch, mending our ripped edges.

  “I feel like a complete failure,” I said. “Everything I touch, or even try to touch, gets hurt. I only wanted to help. Didn’t want to be a bystander. An ‘I could have told you that would happen’ kind of person. And look where it’s gotten us all. Adam’s wandering around, sleeping wherever, in real danger from you guys, from his new best friends, and from himself. And I’m unemployed. Out of work. Mortified.”

  “I’m not gonna let you live on the streets, you know,” he said. “You won’t have to be like Adam, looking for shelter.”

  “Thanks, but it’s not all about that. I don’t want to be anybody’s dependent, the screw-up, your personal charity. It’s just that if I was mixed up a week ago about what I wanted to do, which direction I wanted to head in—if any—I’m a thousand times worse off today. I need to be in control of my life, or at least have the illusion that I am.”

  “Don’t let him fire you that way,” Mackenzie said.

  “What way should I let him fire me?”

  “Don’t go gentle into that dark night, I meant.”

  “I was thinking the same thing. Then I remembered—that poem’s about dying. I’m fired, not dead.”

  “Glad you’ve noticed.” His voice was mild, but his message hit me with enormous force. I was alive. Quit-your-bitchin’ time.

  “He expects you to disappear like a bad smell might. Don’t.”

  I thought about a counterattack as we walked. A legal fight, a taking-it-to-the-press fight. Any sort of fight at all.

  There was a general air of merriment on the streets, a new scent and texture, nature promising that winter was absolutely over. As of this evening, spring had arrived in all its infinite power. Mating season was on, and you could sense it on every city block.

  This weather could galvanize anybody into action, except, I realized, me. “I’m too tired for a battle,” I finally said. “I wasn’t sure I wanted to keep going, that teaching was really for me. Maybe this was an effective way of answering that.”

  He shook his head. “It’s wrong, is all.” Having made his pronouncement he walked along slowly, cogitating. Once again I noticed how his multitrack mind worked. He barely looked at the stores we passed—except for two, one selling used books and one stocked with kitchenware. He’s into equipment and tools, doesn’t matter for what—even if he’s lost in thought, his radar will nonetheless spot hardware stores and camera shops and electronics emporiums.

  I, on the other hand, tend to get caught up in the displays, imagining them on me or owned by me, and whatever else I’ve been thinking about gets pushed so far aside, I forget all about it.

  “How’s this?” he asked a block later. “Say I show up at the school first thing tomorrow, introduce myself as a member of the Philadelphia police force—”

  “He knows you are. He knows you’re with me, too,” I said.

  “Think so? I’ll bet we all look alike to him. But even so, doesn’t matter. I’m not speakin’ officially, just professionally, complimentin’ Dr. Havermeyer on his exemplary behavior. Which of course, I heard about from a fellow officer.”

  “Have I been missing something? Has Havermeyer ever in his lifetime done something outstandingly good?”

  Mackenzie nodded. “You mean you missed how he was immediately handlin’ this sad perversion of academic standards? This travesty being perpetrated on the SAT exams? You missed how he was upholdin’ the standards of Philly Prep, settin’ a great example for the rest of the city’s schools by callin’ the police in immediately for a full public investigation.”

  “Perfect.” Havermeyer had many more than two faces and would wear whichever suited the atmosphere around him. It was easy for him—there was nothing behind the mask except another mask. If Mackenzie could convince him that not only did the police already know about the cheating scam, but that they were under the delusion that he’d broken the ring, brought the corruption out into the air, the man would run with it. And with Havermeyer taking bows for his moral leadership, there’d be no point suspending the newspaper and firing me, at least for the moment, would there? Perhaps Mackenzie was right and I could walk out on my own terms.

  “My hero,” I murmured as he again came to a full halt.

  We had not come upon a steak shop. What we had come upon was the rare-book dealer I’d visited just days ago. The beautiful shop where the perfect Mackenzie gift was found and then lost by the imperfect Pepper price tag. It was closed, but it still had its calm and inviting air. “Nice place,” I said.

  “Bauman’s?” He nodded.


  “You know it?”

  “I go in when I’m in the neighborhood. Ever been inside?” My turn to nod. I told him about the Daniel Boone poem that he wasn’t getting, and he said the thought was what counted, and he loved the idea and was quite as contented with his life without the book as he’d been before he’d heard of it.

  “I never cared about anything except what was written in a book,” I said. “Never went into that sort of bookstore. But this last month—probably ever since my first trip up to the Rare Book Department, I…I really wish I could have those books. They’re beautiful. The man in there showed me lots of titles, and I don’t care about Americana—this was for you—but really, I wanted them. All of them.”

  “Careful. Book collectors are an entirely separate world. Very intense. An’ I don’t know if there’s even a twelve-step program for them,” Mackenzie said. “I do know that we don’t have the disposable income for them. I know, ’cause I’ve spent lots of time drooling and despairing, too, here an’ on the computer. This guy’s on the Net.” He disengaged from the window. “Think of all the books we aren’t going to buy,” he said. “Think of those price tags. A thousand dollars here, a thousand there.”

  “They had books at the library worth a hundred thousand,” I said. “More. They have books like the Gutenberg Bible, whose every page is worth fortunes.”

  “Let’s not buy those, either. Think about how much more we’re savin’!”

  Savin’. The word echoed, touching off vibrations. Savin. Wasn’t that the name I kept…no. Sabin. The polio guy, only he wasn’t. The man at Bauman’s. And the stickum at Emily’s… “Have you ever heard of somebody named Sabin, but not the polio guy? Something to do with rare or antique books?”

  “A reference, I believe,” he said. “Documents a book. Gives the provenance. The condition of specific editions and printings. Why?”

  “Just a thought, but all this talk about their worth made me wonder. Do you think Emily Fisher… she said she thought she had a way out of her financial mess. Do you think she could have been… would people buy books that were stolen?” I knew it was a stupid question as soon as I’d formed it. People would do anything.