by Jane Haddam
“Yes, and yes,” Liz said. “We’re going out to the park, and I could get there sleepwalking.”
“Do you think this is healthy, the amount of time you spend obsessing about all this? Wouldn’t it make more sense to give them all a great big raspberry and get married to Jimmy and live happily ever after?”
They were at that fork in the road at the edge of town where the right veer went Liz didn’t know where and the left led out to Plumtrees. Liz took the left. “Do you know a science fiction writer named Lisa Tuttle?”
“I’ve met her a couple of times.”
“I’ve never met her,” Liz said, “but I read a short story of hers once in a collection. It was one of Mark’s collections and we were on a plane and I was restless and it was the middle of the night. I can never sleep on planes. Can you?”
“If I’m tired enough. Did you like this short story?”
“Well, yes, I did,” Liz said, “but that’s not the point. The point is, the story was about this woman who had been this ugly, acne-ridden, bespectacled hick in her little town in Texas or wherever when she was growing up, and then she left for college and started writing and she wrote this one science fiction novel that was just huge. Sold tons of copies. She was living in London or somewhere and she had contacts and the acne had cleared up and she was sophisticated and all that kind of thing. The only problem was, she couldn’t write. She tried and she tried, but she had something worse than writer’s block. And it went on for a couple of years.”
“And that was it? That was the story?”
“No, no, no,” Liz said. “The story was, she got an invitation to speak at this convention near her old hometown. And she went there to show off, but then she got caught up by a couple of geeky, acne-ridden fans. And the longer she stayed with them—she had to stay with them, they wouldn’t let her go—anyway, the longer she stayed with them, the more she sort of morphed back into being the geek she’d started out being. And then they started abusing her, calling her names, telling her how ugly she was. And it was true. She lost her contacts and had to put on glasses. Her skin started to break out. Her clothes started to look funny and wrong. She just got sucked right back into being the person she’d been in high school. But she could write.”
Bennis cocked her head. “Is that what all this has been about? You’ve got writer’s block and you’re trying to recapture the inspiration?”
“Not exactly. I think that the point of the story is that nobody gets to be successful at anything without something driving them, and that for a lot of us it was being what I was in this place thirty years ago. There’s an awful lot of people out there who are still playing In Crowd and making up for what they resent not having had by re-creating it—oh, God, you know. Private clubs with blackball votes. Coop apartment buildings where the board gets to reject people who want to buy in. Private schools where membership in the parent-teacher association is by invitation only. Do you know what I mean?”
“Absolutely,” Bennis said. “I stay as far away from that stuff as I can.”
“So do I. But that’s still what drives me. And that, you see, is why I got so screwed up that I didn’t realize I’d been making a mistake. That I had to have been making a mistake.”
“Making a mistake about what?”
“About something I heard. If I’d really thought about it, with my mind instead of my gut—God, you have no idea how many column inches I’ve eaten up telling people that we all ought to think with our minds instead of our guts—I’d have realized I had to be wrong. I dream about it, do you know that? I dream about it just the way I heard it, and every time I wake up from one of those dreams there’s something in my head telling me I haven’t been paying attention. And I haven’t been. I feel like such a damned idiot.”
“I feel trapped in a car with a manic phase bipolar,” Bennis said.
Liz pulled the car off the road and down the bumpy asphalted strip to an open place on the grass. They still hadn’t paved this parking lot, she thought. The place was deserted. She cut the engine and handed the keys to Bennis. She got out of the car and looked around. The rain had become an off-again, on-again thing. Just this second, it was off again.
“I remember the year this was built,” Liz said as Bennis came around to her from the other side of the car. “Everybody in town was so impressed. Our own park. Our own lake to swim in. No need to go hauling off to Rogers Park in Kennanburg. You ever been to the Caribbean?”
“Several times,” Bennis said. “It’s not my kind of thing. I’m a sit-in-tavernas-and-listen-to-strange-music-all-night person. I don’t tolerate sunbathing.”
“Jimmy’s got this place in Montego Bay. Big Spanish-style house right on the water. We spent a couple of weeks there this past winter. Hot and cold running shrimp and great big avocados and great big drinks that came in glasses so cold that they have a sheet of ice coating them. You see, the thing is, I never questioned it. Never. Not even when Jimmy and Mark tried to tell me. And Geoff, too, God bless him. Even Geoff tried to tell me.”
“Tell you what? That you had heard something wrong?”
“No, no. About Maris. You come up this way. Go through the gate and then halfway down to the beach but not all the way to the water.”
Liz strode along ahead. Now that she was really here, she was having a hard time containing her agitation. She felt as if she had electrodes shooting all through her body. Every part of her wanted to twitch. She walked through the gates and halfway down to the beach and stopped. If the tall lifeguard’s chair was new, it had been built to look just like the old one, made of gray weathered wood with broad flat arms on either side of the seat so that the lifeguard could put down his Coca-Cola and his tuna-fish sandwich without having to worry that they’d fall on somebody’s head. The water looked as murky and cold as ever. The raft out near the center of it shuddered and shook on top of the water. Liz waited just long enough to make sure Bennis was keeping up. Then she took off again, up the little hill, into the trees.
It was dark when she got in among the pines, but it could have been pitch and she would still have known where she was going. She got on the path and continued upward without even glancing at the signs that told her which way the men’s rooms were and which way the women’s. The closer she got, the harder her heart pounded. It seemed to her that she had lived her life, her whole life, to a sound track of somebody else’s music. She’d been starring in the wrong movie. She’d been trying to make the lyrics fit. It was like Jimmy said about the CDs she kept at home and in her car. She was always singing along to the competition. She thought she was going to be sick. She came out through a stand of trees and all of a sudden there it was, right in the clearing, the outhouses. They hadn’t changed, either. This place had remained intact, untouched, for thirty years.
Bennis came chugging up the path, breathing heavily. “Is this it? Because I wasn’t really ready for physical exercise. Oh—hot damn. Is this it?”
“This is it,” Liz said.
“Are these the same ones? They can’t be the same ones, can they? Wooden structures like these, loosely built. They’d have to be new ones by now.”
“Would they? I have no idea. I suppose they must have replaced the door to the one I was nailed into. I wasn’t actually conscious when they got me out, so I don’t remember myself, but somebody told me later that they’d had to take the door off by the hinge. So there’s that. It was raining that night the way it was raining here earlier today. It was totally insane. I can still remember the thunder rolling in. They were nailing the door shut at the same time and I was screaming and it was hard to tell what was what, but it was thunder. And in no time at all, it started to rain. And then I heard her screaming. And that, you see, is the problem. I thought I knew who it was.”
“Who it was who nailed you in?”
“No, who it was later. Who it was who was screaming. I always knew who nailed me in. I always knew that Maris was a part of it, too. Jimmy thinks I kid mysel
f about that, but I don’t. It was just—Maris was always so much better than I was, at everything. So much prettier. So much smarter. I always thought that she was the real thing and I was a kind of fake and that someday the world would get wise to it and my whole career would collapse and she’d be on her way. And then, when that didn’t happen, I felt guilty. So guilty. You have no idea.”
“I know you’re talking in the past tense,” Bennis said. “I’m hoping that’s significant.”
Liz walked around the outhouses in a big circle. They were just outhouses. Satan did not live here. She got back around to the front where Bennis was. “After a while when the storm really got going, I started to hear somebody screaming. A girl. A woman. Whatever. She was screaming ‘slit his throat slit his throat’ over and over again and it sounded like somebody having sex. Somebody having an orgasm. It was sick. It was nasty. It was depraved in a way we don’t use that word anymore. Morally corrupt at the core. And then when they told me in the hospital that Michael Houseman was dead and I heard a few of the details, I thought I knew what had happened. I thought I knew whose voice I heard. I remember thinking that when they heard about this, Vassar would rescind my admission. I don’t know why I thought that. It just felt as if it were my fault.”
“How could it have been your fault? You were nailed into an outhouse.”
“I know.” Liz saw a movement in the grass and leaned over to look. Slithering along on the ground was a small black snake, not even three-quarters of a foot long. When she moved the grass above it, it seemed to freeze. She leaned down and picked it up, holding it by the middle, so that it twisted between her fingers.
“Look,” she said, holding it out for Bennis to see. “The park is still full of them. You’d think they’d bring somebody in here to clean them up.”
“I thought you were afraid of snakes,” Bennis said warily.
“I was,” Liz told her, and thought—that was in the past tense, too. Then she pulled back her arm and tossed the snake out into the trees in a great, graceful arc.
2
The call from the superintendent of schools came at exactly 3:46 P.M., and although Nancy Quayde had been expecting it, she found she wasn’t ready.
The phone on her desk rang, and she jumped. She looked up and saw Lisa nodding at her from the desk outside. She picked up.
“Carol Shegelmeyer is on the phone,” Lisa whispered, as if she suspected that Carol would be able to hear her if she talked loudly, even if she’d put Carol on hold. “She’s clucking,” Lisa said, “and if you ask me, this isn’t good. Do you want me to tell her that you’ve already gone?”
“Yes,” Nancy said, and then, “no. Wait. That’s probably not a good idea. Did she say anything about what she wanted?”
“Just that she wanted to talk to you. I’d think it was obvious what the problem was. I mean, the police have been here today. She probably heard.”
“Probably,” Nancy agreed, thinking that if that were what Carol was worried about, there would be no problem. “Okay,” she said. “Listen. Give it about a minute and then put her through, okay?”
“Okay. But are you sure? There’s no reason why you shouldn’t have left for the day.”
“I almost never leave for the day before four, and Carol knows it. Give me a minute.”
Nancy put the phone back in the cradle and closed her eyes and put her head down in her hands. It was important to breathe regularly and without gulping. It was important to be calm. It was important to remember that this was not a surprise. She’d known for hours that Carol was going to call sometime today. She’d known for hours what she needed to say and why. The trick was to stay in control.
The phone on her desk rang, and Nancy jumped. She took two long, steady breaths and picked up.
“Nancy?” Carol Stegelmeyer’s voice said. “Is that you? This is Carol Stegelmeyer.”
Well, of course it is, Nancy thought. Who else would it be? Did Carol think Lisa didn’t bother to announce who was on the phone, or that Nancy took calls without knowing who they were from?
“Yes,” Nancy said. “Yes. Carol. Hello. What can I do for you?”
“Well.” Carol sounded stumped, as if this were a difficult question. She was such a stupid woman. “Well,” Carol said again. “I’ve had a rather disturbing day. Do you know a Mr. Asch?”
Nancy stopped breathing. This was the worst-case scenario.
“Nancy?”
She’d been quiet too long. “Sorry,” she said. “I’ve got a hot cup of coffee and I keep forgetting how hot. Yes. Yes, of course I know a Mr. Asch, if you mean David Asch. He’s the father of one of our students here.”
“Diane Asch,” Carol said.
“Yes, exactly, Diane Asch.”
“He said he talked to you today. Did he talk to you today?”
“He’s talked to me on a number of occasions,” Nancy said. “Diane has been having some problems. She’s—well, you know what I mean. She’s one of those teenagers who’s going through a particularly awkward phase, and she’s somewhat abrasive and obnoxious in her manner, so the other students—”
“Mr. Asch says they bully her. That they throw things at her and lock her in supply closets. I said that of course that wasn’t possible, because if a student was ever to behave that way to any other student, then the student who committed the offense would be suspended at the very least. That’s right, isn’t it? That’s our policy.”
“Of course that’s our policy.”
“Mr. Asch says that on several occasions you sided with the student doing the bullying. I don’t remember the names off the top of my head. Lynn somebody—”
“Lynn, DeeDee, and Sharon. Yes, I know who they are. Diane Asch is obsessed with them. And I do mean obsessed.”
“Well, Nancy, if they really are bullying her, and physically attacking her—”
“Oh, for God’s sake. Lynn is captain of the varsity cheerleaders this year. DeeDee is president of the student council. Sharon has been a prom princess three times and probably will be prom queen in a couple of weeks. It’s the same old story. Diane is awkward and heavy and she’s got a face like a pizza—”
“Nancy.”
“There’s no point in sugar-coating it, is there? I’ve tried several times to get David Asch to listen to reason. I’ve offered to make sure Diane sees a good counselor and that the district pays for it. He just won’t listen to reason.”
“He feels,” Carol said slowly, “that, under the circumstances, if Diane goes to therapy it will only ratify the charges of these three girls that she’s, well, that there’s something wrong with her.”
“I see what you mean, but it’s total hogwash. Lynn and DeeDee and Sharon aren’t ‘charging’ Diane Asch with anything. Mostly, they’re just leaving her alone. Oh, Carol, for God’s sake. You know what these situations are like. She imagines insults where none exist. She follows them around until they explode at her, which maybe they shouldn’t do, but it’s perfectly human. She’s a mess. She needs help. He won’t let her get it.”
There was a long silence on the other end of the line. Nancy began to twitch. Her throat was dry.
“He wasn’t the only one who called,” Carol said finally. “There was a man who said he was from the New York Times. He seems to be writing an article about Elizabeth Toliver, and he says—”
“What?”
“He says that there’s a police record. A sealed police record. Showing that you were picked up on the night that boy died, whatever his name was, and that you’d been involved in an incident where you and some other girls nailed Elizabeth Toliver into an outhouse out at the park along with some snakes. I’m sorry I sound garbled. I really didn’t understand the story.”
“If the police record is sealed, how did a man from the New York Times get to see it?”
“He says he’s got a copy.”
“Which could be fake, or forged, or anything. A lot of people were in the park the night Michael Houseman died. Peggy was
in the park the night Michael Houseman died. Chris Inglerod Barr was in the park the night Michael Houseman died. So what? What does it have to do with anything?”
“I don’t think it’s the death of that boy that’s in contention,” Carol said. “I think it’s this story about the outhouse.”
“I still don’t understand what it has to do with anything,” Nancy said. By now, she was being patient only by an act of will. “All that happened over thirty years ago. What does that have to do with Diane Asch?”
“What they’re going to do, as an angle on the story, is to say that you were always, uh, the word he used was vicious, I’m afraid, I did protest, but—”
“Vicious,” Nancy said. “He said I was vicious. Then what?”
“That you were always vicious to kids who were out of the social swim and not very popular, and you still are that way, only now you’re principal, so that’s why you don’t do something about the girls who are persecuting Diane Asch. I did protest, Nancy, I did. I think the whole thing is absurd, but he just went on and on about it. And I must admit it’s made me uneasy. Isn’t there any way you can call these girls to account?”
“How can I call them to account if they haven’t done anything?”
“Even if they haven’t done anything, maybe you can call them in, you know, and have a meeting between them and Diane Asch and maybe her father, and call their parents in, too—”
“And their parents will quite rightly have a fit,” Nancy pointed out. “They’ll scream bloody murder. And they won’t be any more sympathetic to Diane Asch than I am.”
“I don’t know,” Carol said. “If this gets into the papers, and people start saying that you play favorites among the students, the district might be put into the position of ordering an investigation, and if we did that, we’d have to suspend you—”
“If you tried it, I’d sue your ass off.”
“I’m sure you could institute a lawsuit if you wanted to, Nancy, but you wouldn’t win it and I don’t think the district would settle out of court. We couldn’t afford to do that with a case we’d probably win. And we would probably win it because everybody these days is very concerned about the states of mind the loners are in, and the students who don’t quite fit, and those people, because of all the school shootings. Not that I think Diane Asch is in any danger of becoming a school shooter—”