Nwodo went ahead. I hurried after.
The interior of the hut was a single open space, fifty feet wide and twice as long, dazzlingly lit by hundred-watt bulbs that drooped from the ceiling on thick, black cables. What appeared to be the entire student body was present, sitting on benches or beanbag chairs or lolling on the floor in nests of pillows. Heads draped in laps. A stew of shoelaces and denim coagulated around a central dais made of unvarnished pine.
There couldn’t have been more than a hundred of them. But I felt like I’d run up against a billion-headed beast. And silent, so silent, an underwater pressure that threatened to stave in my eardrums.
You’d think it was impossible for that many children to keep that quiet, especially given that the ceiling was a giant acoustic reflector.
A very few faces turned toward us, bored or curious. But most of them remained focused on the speaker.
Not a woman; a prepubescent boy. Elevenish, bespectacled, with unruly black hair. He paced the dais, fingers woven behind his back, holding forth in a piercing voice.
“It isn’t fair,” he said. “Why should the rest of us have to suffer just cause she read some retarded book? If she—”
“It’s not a book.”
The interruption came courtesy of a toothy girl the same age, slouched on a stool at the edge of the dais like a boxer between rounds.
“It’s a study,” she said, sitting up, “in a scientific journal.”
Completing the triangle was a second girl, presiding at a lectern. She clapped a gavel, her ponytail swinging.
“The chair reminds you that you had your turn,” she said, fixing the toothy girl with an admonishing eye. “Thomas has the floor.”
The toothy girl sulked.
“You may continue,” the chair said to the boy. “But please don’t use the word retarded or the chair will be forced to take away your time.”
A snicker arose, was instantly and sternly quashed.
“Three minutes,” the chair said.
Thomas said, “As I was saying…”
At issue was a proposed ban of white sugar in the school kitchen, based on a study in a nutrition journal. Thomas opposed it. He had yet to get to his reasons before Nwodo nudged me.
Across the room, the girl in the nightgown was whispering into the ear of a woman with dark-red hair who sat on a beige papasan, balancing a child on each knee.
The principal, Camille Buntley.
Her gaze trained on Nwodo and me. It was then that I realized that she wasn’t the only adult present. There were others, five or six in total, mixed in among the younger bodies and faces. I’d failed to notice them because they were so vastly outnumbered, like pennies packed in a barrel of sand.
Except for Camille, they appeared quite young themselves, snuggled up against their smaller neighbors. A woman with close-cropped hair lay on her stomach, kicking bare feet behind her, wiggling her toes. A man in a purple down vest and rimless glasses sat knees-to-chest, occupying less space than his natural bulk demanded.
I saw them now because it was they, the adults, who’d taken notice of us, while the kids stayed riveted to the scene playing out onstage.
Camille freed herself and headed toward us, keeping close to the wall.
An iPhone alarm sounded.
Ponytail Chairperson rapped the lectern solemnly. “Time.”
Kids clapped, a group of boys Thomas’s age providing most of the enthusiasm.
He bowed, exited the dais, and hopped onto an open stool.
“The chair requests a motion to bring the question to a vote.”
“Motion” came a voice.
“Seconded” came another.
“The motion carries. We will now proceed to a vote. All in favor.”
Arms swayed.
The teachers rose to assist with the tally.
“Please keep your hand up till you’ve been counted,” the chair said.
Camille drew near, finger to her lips.
We stepped outside.
I heard all opposed and then the doors swung shut.
* * *
—
THE AIR WAS newly brittle, summoning a twinge in my knee. Camille Buntley faced us with a searching smile. She wore green corduroy pants, a Fair Isle sweater, hiking boots caked with dried mud.
She said, “You must be lost.”
Nwodo frowned.
I said, “Ms. Buntley?”
“I’m Camille, yes. You are?”
Nwodo said, “Police,” and produced her ID.
Camille scanned it, then mine. The sudden appearance of law enforcement sets most people on edge, but she returned the cards to us and gave a placid nod.
She said, “This way, please.”
Her office was on the south side of the campus, in a clapboard structure slightly larger than the others. She beckoned us through a dim foyer, the floorboards moist and soft underfoot, into an overwarm room that stank of pine resin.
There was a Navajo rug, askew, and a porcelain pedestal sink. Furniture comprised a motley assortment of spindly tables and flabby armchairs backed against tongue-and-groove paneling, painted brown. Loose paper covered a small writing desk—placed not centrally, as you’d expect, but off to one side.
No barriers here. Open communication. Everyone an equal.
Beside a snuffling potbelly stove hung the portrait of C. E. Buntley that appeared on the website: the Man Himself, tweeds, pipe, teeth. Here the photograph looked old and oddly shrunken, rippling behind smudged glass.
Nwodo said, “You might want to know that one of your students was playing in the middle of the road.”
“Which student?”
“The one who came to give you a heads-up.”
“Althea.” As if the name cleared up any confusion, made everything okay.
“I almost hit her with my car.”
Camille knocked her boots against the stove, molting brown flakes.
“It was very close,” Nwodo said.
Camille motioned for us to sit.
I pulled a chair up to the desk. Nwodo remained standing a moment before doing the same, her shoulders aggressively cantilevered over her knees. Beneath her outward calm, she was wrestling with the urge to grab Camille Buntley by the ears and wring sense into her idiot head.
I found the principal’s nonchalance no less bizarre. We’d come within feet of killing one of her charges.
The pages on the desktop were bills—septic, water—several of them stamped PAST DUE. Invoice from a company called We-B-Klean, with a logo that looked like a cross between a vacuum cleaner and a Formula One car. Mold in Eden? Seeing me staring, Camille swept the paper into a stack and slipped it in the drawer, taking her seat and folding complacent hands on the desktop.
“She wasn’t dressed for the weather, either,” Nwodo said. “Althea.”
Camille Buntley tilted her head. “She looked dressed to me.”
“It’s fifty degrees outside.”
“I’m sure if she felt cold, she would put on more clothes.”
“She was playing,” Nwodo said, “in the road.”
Camille Buntley smiled patiently. “I understand why you’d think of it like that.”
“How do you think of it.”
“You were driving in her play space,” Camille Buntley said. “One could just as easily describe it that way, yes?”
She spoke with a light shimmery accent, delicate ornamentations atop the r’s and l’s. According to the website, she’d been a student at Watermark, then a teacher, before taking over after her father’s death. Her preternatural ease made me wonder how often she stepped foot outside the valley.
“Come to think,” she said, “that might be a more accurate descri
ption. This is her home. She has every right to be here, or there, or wherever she wants to be. You, on the other hand, are a visitor. I’m not sure what entitles you to dictate where she plays.”
Before Nwodo could respond, I said, “We were surprised, is all. To us it looked pretty dangerous.”
“Children are less fragile, and more capable, than people give them credit for.”
Nwodo’s lips pursed. Then she nodded. Fine, be a fucking imbecile.
I put the list of credit cards on the desk. “Are you familiar with these people?”
“May I ask why you’d like to know?”
“Routine inquiry.”
“I’m sorry, but you’ll have to try harder than that.”
Our game plan, worked out over the course of the drive, was to proceed obliquely, avoid accusations. Already it felt too late for that.
I said, “These are individuals who’ve recently had their personal information compromised. The connection between them, we believe, is that they went to school here. We were hoping you could help us confirm.”
Camille Buntley still hadn’t touched the page. “Personal information.”
“Birthdays. Social Security numbers. Things of that nature.”
“You keep student records,” Nwodo said.
“Of course,” Camille said.
“How far back do they go?”
“I couldn’t say. It’s not as though I sit around reading them for fun. A fair ways, I imagine.”
“Who has access?”
“Access?”
“Do you keep them on computer,” Nwodo asked, “or on paper?”
“There’s a room,” Camille said.
“Who has the key?”
“No one. It’s not locked.”
“Anyone can walk in and take a file?”
“In theory, I suppose. No one would. It’s against the rules. You find that hard to believe.”
“I think you have a remarkable amount of faith in your students,” Nwodo said.
“I do, indeed.”
I said, “Be that as it may, someone did take the information.”
“And you know this because…”
“It was used to open fraudulent credit cards,” Nwodo said.
“I see. And you’re assuming that the perpetrator is a member of our community.”
“Not necessarily,” I said. “It could be an outsider.”
Camille said, “We don’t get many of those.”
She was helping our case, without intending to. Nwodo smiled. The smile all detectives get when a corner is turned.
Camille Buntley said, “If you suspect one of the children, you could try asking them directly. In my experience that’s the fastest way to find out the answer to a question. I don’t see what a bunch of papers is going to tell you.”
I glanced at Nwodo, who gave a little shrug.
New game plan. Kick it up.
She placed a printed photo of Jane Doe atop the list.
“This is the individual we believe took the information,” she said.
Blank, stony, Camille Buntley sat; but I could sense a seismic shift taking place.
The earth sliding away beneath her, the world howling on its axis.
Comprehension, spreading through her like an ink stain.
Who we were and why we had come here.
Why the young woman in the photograph had cheeks the color of fish belly.
I also understood. I saw, now, subtle commonalities of facial structure between the two women, each a distortion of the other.
What we’d done, throwing down the picture, had been a strike of brutal efficiency.
Camille Buntley emitted a short, mechanical rasp, gears grinding before finding their mesh.
With savage energy she leapt up and bounded to the sink, snatching an oxidized copper kettle from the floor. Twisting open the tap, she gazed at the kettle intently as it filled; changing her mind, she tipped it violently down the drain, droplets spattering the wall, her sleeves, glistening on her shirtfront like birdshot.
She set the kettle in the sink with a ping and fell into her chair, gripping the photograph so hard that tremors streaked through the paper. Beneath her eyes shone watery red crescents; a mad, pinched smile seized her mouth.
“Ms. Buntley,” I said. “May I?”
Camille balked, then released the photo to me.
She turned to stare at the list of names, regarding it as one would an enemy.
“Well,” she said, “but it’s ridiculous. I mean, it’s absurd. Winnie couldn’t possibly know any of these people. They’re well before her time.”
“Winnie,” I said.
“Do you understand?” Her plummy voice had gone shrill. “It’s absurd. So you can just take that nonsense and get rid of it now, right now.”
I put the list in my pocket.
A raucous thrum had arisen outside the building.
Squeals, pleas, childish laughter.
Life, resumed.
“Pretty name,” I said. “Winnie.”
Camille bowed her head.
I said, “Is it short for something?”
“Wynemah.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard that before.”
“It’s Miwok,” Camille said. “ ‘Female chief.’ They were the indigenous tribe around here. Did you know that?”
She sounded hungry for a chance to teach.
I shook my head.
“They still are,” Camille said. “We had a school tradition, we used to build a bark shelter. We haven’t done that in a while. I forget why we stopped. Anyway. It felt appropriate, because of that, and we liked the way it sounded. Of course it gave her fits when she was little, because she had trouble with her w’s. For the longest time she couldn’t pronounce it.”
She laughed. “Imagine that? She’s running around with her hands in the air, yelling Vinnie, like I’ve given birth to an Italian grocer, and all the while I have to sit there, watching her and wondering to myself, My God, what have I done.”
CHAPTER 18
Camille Buntley’s reaction to learning that her daughter had been murdered was no more or less coherent than any of the reactions I’ve encountered over the years.
She was fine, thank you.
She didn’t need a moment. Would a moment change anything?
Go ahead and ask your questions.
Not Buntley; Winnie Ozawa.
For her father, Mickey Ozawa. An artist in batik and linocut prints.
May 5, 1997. A hundred yards away, in fact, in the infirmary.
Mickey? Gone. He died when Winnie was eight.
Beyond that, there wasn’t much Camille could provide. No idea as to Winnie’s current address. No knowledge if Winnie was ever married. Though she considered it unlikely. Always a free spirit.
She couldn’t attest to her daughter’s recent mental or physical health.
“We haven’t seen each other for close to two years.”
I explained the procedure for releasing Winnie’s body.
I provided my contact information.
And with that, my job was pretty much done.
I had identified the decedent.
I had notified the next of kin.
I turned to Nwodo.
Her demeanor had softened, now that she realized she was dealing not with a petty bureaucrat but a bereft mother.
She said, “Ms. Buntley, first off allow me to say I’m sorry for your loss. I will do everything in my power to find the person who did this.”
Camille tugged at the neckline of her sweater.
“Let’s back up,” Nwodo said. “You said you last saw Winnie two years ago.”
“And at that time, where was she living?”
“I don’t know.”
“Was she local?”
“Did I not just tell you? I don’t know.”
“What if we go back a little further? What was the last point you did have knowledge of her address?”
Small shake of the head. Not resistance so much as reluctance to admit more ignorance.
Nwodo said, “I’m trying to get a sense of the time line, understand what Winnie was doing, who she might have associated with.” A beat. “To establish a context.”
Camille Buntley tugged at her sweater.
She said, “I can’t stand it in here.”
She stood up. “I’m going for a walk.”
* * *
—
WE EMERGED INTO a landscape transformed: children, far and wide, galloping through the underbrush, conspiring by a culvert, at work or play, in groups or alone, filling the valley with a vivid vibration. The frenzy made a startling counterpoint to the hush of the meeting hall, as if a valve had been opened, pent-up energy whooshing out.
We followed Camille Buntley.
She maintained a brisk clip, bounding from paver to paver, automatically avoiding the wobbly ones. Through an open door, I spied a small, undistinguished classroom, a sueded chalkboard and sloppy bookcases. A group of middle schoolers occupied a circular table, engaging in an animated discussion. Observing them from a respectful distance was the teacher with the rimless glasses. He leaned against the wall, legs kicked out and ankles crossed, finger-combing his beard, content not to interfere. On the board was written ROMANTIC ERA and JOHN KEATS 1795–1821. That was as much as I caught before we moved on.
Those kids were among the few who had chosen the indoors. Most everyone else was busy running or playing or building or destroying. It was a spectacular amount of activity, very little of which conformed to what most people would call school.
I’d read the website, knew the Watermark philosophy, but words failed to capture the sweating, panting reality. An adolescent girl knelt on a stump, reading to a gaggle of six-year-olds who kept interrupting her to rewrite the story. Thomas the orator led his pals in the vivisection of a bicycle.
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