The Crazy School

by Cornelia Read

  “Not a one.”

  Cartwright exhaled through his nose, teasing the broken chain straight with the tip of his pen, then flipping over the little moon. There was engraving on the back.

  “I touched it,” I said. “I’m sorry. Didn’t know what it was before I took it out of my pocket—just something sharp when I put my hand in there.”

  “You had that jacket with you last night?”

  “I left it at the party. Felt so awful all of a sudden. I just wanted to get outside for some air, then I passed out.”

  I explained about Lulu and Pete taking me up to Dhumavati’s apartment, and Lulu washing my clothes after they’d put me to bed.

  “You probably know all that from Officer Hoyt’s notes,” I said, “but when he took my statement, I didn’t know yet about the necklace.”

  “MDL,” he said. “Are those the boy’s initials?”

  “Mooney LeChance. I don’t know his middle name.”

  “He gave her the necklace?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Fay told me she hadn’t taken it off since.”

  I watched him move the ballpoint’s tip away from the broken links of chain, tapping it thoughtfully against the table’s edge.

  “Doesn’t seem as though she’s the one who took it off this time,” he said.

  “No,” I said, “it doesn’t.”

  Cartwright looked up at me again. “When I spoke with Dr. Santangelo this morning, he expressed his profound remorse and grief that two students had chosen to end their lives while in his care.”

  I crossed my arms.

  “He then added,” Cartwright continued, “that while, of course, he and the entire staff of the Santangelo Academy were deeply saddened by this tragic outcome, he could not truthfully maintain that these two young people having committed suicide came as a complete surprise. Either to himself or to their respective therapists.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “I gather, Ms. Dare, that Dr. Santangelo’s last point is not one you agree with.”

  “You gather correctly, Detective Cartwright.”

  He smiled at that for a fraction of a second, though I bet he would’ve denied the hell out of having done so.

  “All right, then,” he said. “I’d like you to tell me why.”

  So I did.

  19

  They got me fingerprinted at the end of it all, and when I was dispatched from the back rooms of the building, I found Dean still waiting for me, not in the best of moods.

  His neck was all cordy. When Dean is truly pissed off, his eyelids seem to open a little wider than normal, as though there’s a buildup of something hot back there in his skull that wants to get out. A sharp hiss of steam, or sulphur, or maybe tear gas.

  He looked not at me but up at the old black-rimmed clock on the station wall, its yellowed face over a foot wide.

  “Three hours,” he said, “and forty-seven minutes.”

  He kept staring at the clock.

  “No shit,” I said. “Could we please go home now?”

  He didn’t move. I started walking toward the front door. When I was almost there, I heard him stand up to follow me, the soles of his high-tops squeaking on the polished floor.

  It was cold outside, and my jacket felt thin. The air rasped metallic on the intake, and the afternoon sky was low and dark—like some giant hand had clapped a stainless-steel bowl upside down over the surrounding hills.

  Dean drew alongside me at the bottom of the concrete stairs. I couldn’t see where he’d parked, so I slowed to follow his lead, uphill or down, just before the sidewalk bisected our path.

  He cut across me to the right. I turned in his wake, jogging to catch up and then stutter-stepping to match his strides down the block. He threw off such a force field of bristle that the sidewalk wasn’t wide enough for both of us.

  I hustled beside him, off the concrete and along the front edge of a half dozen lawns. My boots punched through a thin crust of ice with each step, making the frosted spindles of grass beneath crackle and pop as I mashed them flat. Dean’s rusted Mercedes sedan was another block down the street.

  I wanted to ask him why he was being such a dick, but the cold sawed at my ravaged throat and I was getting dizzy.

  I slowed down until I fell behind him, then stopped to rest against an old station wagon parked at the curb, hands cupped around my mouth to capture the warmth of my breath.

  Dean turned around, walking backward. “Bunny, are you all right?”

  I shook my head.

  He stopped ten yards away.

  I turned to brace myself against the car, then puked in the gutter, water and bile raining down on the exhaust-blackened chunks of snow at my feet. I heard Dean pounding back toward me, felt him lift my hair gently to get it out of the way. His other hand rested on my shoulder as I convulsed with dry heaves. He wrapped me in his coat when I’d finished.

  “So tired,” I said.

  He put an arm around my waist to steady me down to the curb. “I’m going to get the car. Will you be okay here for a minute?”

  “Mmm.”

  He pelted away up the street, and I wrapped my arms around my knees, shivering.

  I woke up in the dark again but knew right away that I was home this time from the sound of cars hissing through slush in the rotary four stories below.

  I shifted onto my side, saw Dean sitting cross-legged on top of the covers next to me, outlined against our bedroom windows by the soft glow of Pittsfield.

  “Hey,” I said, my voice ragged.

  “How are you doing?”

  “Shitty.”

  Talking made me cough, the effort hurting my belly and throat.

  “Can I get you anything?” he asked. “Juice?”

  “Please,” I said, checking the clock when he got up. Ten-thirty.

  He came back with a glass. Apple juice on ice. I took three gulps of it.

  “Drink slowly,” he said. “See if it stays down.”

  I set it on the bedside table after another two sips.

  “I don’t really remember getting into bed,” I said. “Just the car.”

  “You were so wiped out I practically carried you. Thank God there’s an elevator.”

  “How long have I been asleep?”

  “Five hours.”

  “Anybody call?”

  “Lulu did,” he said. “Twice now.”

  “Did she tell you about Fay and Mooney?”

  “Not a lot more than what she said this morning when I got to the school.”

  “So if you already knew what happened, why were you being such a dick down at the cop station?” I started coughing again and reached for the juice to make it stop.

  He waited until I could breathe, then said, “I was freaked out.”

  “ You were freaked out?”

  “They had you down there at cult central with two kids dead, and then you got whisked off by state troopers before I had a chance to see if you were all right, for chrissake.”

  “So you bitch me out the minute the cops cut me loose?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “I mean, Dean,” I said, “in case Lulu didn’t fill you in, as far as I can tell, somebody tried to take me out last night, too. I could’ve died out in the goddamn snow.”

  “And I’m supposed to be all sunshine and flowers about that?”

  “Touch of civility might’ve been appropriate, considering.”

  “I told you that place was fucked up weeks ago.” Dean sat up straighter in the half dark. “What am I supposed to do, sit here with my thumb up my ass until Nurse Ratched belts you down for the shock treatments? I’m supposed to start this job next Monday. What if it had been this week?”

  He took my hand. “Look, it’s just that you had me so worried.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I’m sorry, too, Bunny. I should’ve driven down there and brought you home the minute Lulu called last night.”

  The phone started ringing out i
n the living room.

  “Jesus Christ,” he said. “I’m about ready to yank that thing out of the wall.”

  “They’ll call back.”

  He stood up. “Fuck it, I’ll go see who it is. Maybe we’ve won the damn lottery.”

  He got it on the fourth ring.

  I listened to his voice rumbling and pausing. He didn’t sound happy with whoever was on the line.

  I hauled myself upright and shoved out of bed, unsteady as hell.

  “I don’t care how important it is. It’s after eleven at night,” Dean said, “and Madeline’s exhausted.”

  “Lulu?” I mouthed.

  He shook his head, saying, “So she can call you back in the morning, then.”

  He listened to some argument against that. “Why not?”

  I walked over to him. “Who is it?”

  He shook his head, put a finger to his lips.

  “Let me talk,” I said.

  “Fine,” he said, “now you’ve gotten her up.”

  He shoved the phone toward me.

  I took it and slumped into a chair, coughing again before I raised the receiver to my ear.

  “Madeline?” A guy’s voice.

  “Speaking,” I said. “Who’s this?”

  “Wiesner.”

  Great.

  “Wiesner?” I said. “This has been a long and horrible day. Please reassure me that your calling me from school does not in any way involve that screwdriver out of my desk.”

  “I’m not exactly at school.”

  “Care to be more specific?”

  “Well, I’m in Pittsfield.”

  “Pittsfield?” I covered my eyes with my free hand. “Jesus, Wiesner, how’d you get up here?”

  “I hitched,” he said, his shrug practically audible.

  “Where are you now?”

  “There’s this Dunkin’ Donuts, like, two blocks over from your apartment?”

  I sighed. “Wiesner, this is really a bummer.”

  “Your husband sounded a little upset,” he said. “I thought you might like to come down, grab some coffee and a Boston cream?”

  I figured I’d probably have to drive him back down to Santangelo, but didn’t think I could walk across the living room again without passing out.

  “We need to talk,” he said. “It’s important.”

  “I guess you should come over here,” I said, knowing Dean was going to lose his shit the minute I told him.

  “Cool,” said Wiesner. “Any place I can score some Marlboros on the way?”

  20

  You did what?” said Dean.

  “Look,” I said, “you’d prefer I met him for doughnuts? What the hell else was I supposed to do?”

  “I’d prefer it if you called the damn school and had them drive up here to corral the kid.”

  “What if he got hit by a truck before someone got to him?” I said.

  “So call the cops.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake.”

  “Bunny— you’re exhausted, you’re sick . . .” Dean closed his eyes and jammed his fingertips against his temples. “I know these kids matter to you—”

  “They do. A lot.”

  “I just . . . You matter more.”

  “Thank you,” I said, thinking it was a bad time to mention how Wiesner had bashed out Gerald’s front teeth the year before.

  “You should be in bed. We’re both tired as shit,” Dean said.

  “I know.”

  “Please call the school,” he said. “Have someone else deal with it for tonight. Lulu. Pete. Whoever.”

  “I will,” I said, “but I want to talk to him first, find out what he had to hitchhike up here to tell me about in person.”

  “Your eyes look like two holes burned in a blanket.”

  “Feel like it, too.”

  “Go lie down on the sofa,” he said.

  He brought me an unscorched blanket and topped up my glass with juice.

  When Wiesner’s voice crackled over the intercom from the street lobby, Dean buzzed him up.

  Wiesner sat in an armchair across from me. We were both smoking his Marlboros.

  “You tell anyone I bummed this from you,” I said, “and I will make your life suck forever.”

  He smiled. “Our little secret. Got any beer?”

  “Don’t push it,” I said. “Just tell me why you’re here.”

  He leaned back in the chair and crossed his legs. “Forchetti said you were down on the Farm last night.”

  I wondered how he’d managed a chat with Forchetti, then realized there was no way any kids would’ve been allowed to stay in the building once Gerald had found Fay and Mooney.

  “I know you set the cops straight about what happened,” he said, “but there’s something else you should tell them.”

  “You know what I told them already?”

  “That you think Fay and Mooney didn’t off themselves. That you think someone dosed you with whatever killed them.”

  “How’d you hear that?” I asked.

  “It’s a small school.”

  “Not that small,” I said.

  “Someone was in the hallway outside Lulu’s classroom when she was talking to Pete about it.”

  “Someone who?”

  “Doesn’t matter,” he said, “if what you said is true.”

  “I don’t know if it’s true or not. I just wanted the cops to check out the possibility, in case.”

  “Bullshit,” he said.

  “Wiesner . . .”

  “You are such a crappy liar, Madeline. And we both know there’s no way those guys killed themselves.”

  Dean rattled some cups in the kitchen, giving Wiesner a little hairy eyeball via the pass-through window.

  “Let’s hit the fast-forward here, kid,” he said. “It’s eleven-thirty, and we’re beat to shit.”

  Wiesner looked cowed. It had obviously been a while since he’d found himself in a room with a guy bigger than he was.

  He turned back to me. “You know about what happened to Gerald’s teeth?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Do you know why I hit him?”

  I shook my head.

  “Last year me and Mooney and this guy Parker were roommates in New Boys.”

  He tapped his cigarette against the ashtray and took another drag.

  “So this one night, when Gerald was doing bed check,” he continued, “he grabbed Parker’s dick.”

  “Gerald said you punched him when you were both in his classroom.”

  “Sure. That was a couple of days later.”

  “So what does this have to do with last night?”

  “Gerald’s court date is coming up,” he said, “and Parker’s family wanted Mooney to testify.”

  “Not you?”

  “I was in the bathroom,” he said. “Didn’t see it happen. And then, you know, the lawyers didn’t like the whole thing about me knocking Gerald’s teeth out.”

  “But you decked him because of Parker?” I asked, thinking better of Wiesner for that. Kind of.

  “Parker was an asswipe from the get-go,” he said. “Plus, his family took him home the minute they heard. I just didn’t want Gerald pulling that crap on me.”

  Well, okay, so it was still better than his having belted the guy for fun.

  “Why’ve they got you down there at Santangelo?” Dean asked him.

  Wiesner shrugged. “Guess it’s because I like to blow shit up.”

  I looked over at Dean.

  “My best student,” I said. “Tried to give him a gold star last week.”

  Wiesner grinned at me. “No shit?”

  I felt sheepish. “Gerald kind of talked me out of it.”

  He laughed. “So Forchetti told me Gerald was down there, too, last night. Serving the punch.”

  I nodded.

  “And he’s the one who supposedly found Fay and Mooney this morning, right?”

  I nodded again.

  Wiesner tilted his he
ad to the side. “You getting more of an idea why I thought it was important to come up here?”

  “Yeah, Wiesner, I am.”

  “You know that old joke? ‘I may be crazy, but I’m not stupid . . .’”

  He dropped his head and shot me a look through those long pretty lashes, tongue tip driving a sly bulge across the hollow of his left cheek—the side Dean couldn’t see.

  Wiesner left me three Marlboros.

  Dean said he’d drive him back to school, joking that maybe they could compare notes about blowing shit up on the way.

  Weisner paused in the doorway, then turned to look back at me. “Just promise you’ll make sure the cops know about Gerald, if they don’t already.”

  “Absolutely,” I said.

  I pulled the blanket up to my shoulders. The elevator dinged open out in the hallway. I could hear the two of them laughing until its doors slid back shut.

  I figured I’d catch some sleep while Dean was gone, but he came back through our front door a few minutes later.

  “Don’t tell me you put Wiesner on a bus,” I said.

  “He took off the minute we got down to the parking lot.”

  “Did you go after him?”

  “I didn’t really see the point, especially since he was so damn fast.”

  Dean lowered himself onto the sofa next to my blanket-swaddled feet. “He did stop and look back at me after he got over that fence. Said he appreciated the offer of a ride, but there was no way in hell he was sleeping down there, at least until Gerald’s arrested.”

  “Can’t say I blame him,” I said.

  “No, but I wasn’t about to let him crash here, either. He’s not stupid—I’ll give him that much—but he’s still shithouse-rat crazy.”

  “Kind of charming, though, huh?”

  “Sure,” said Dean, “charm to spare, right up until he knifes you in your sleep.”

  “Or blows you up,” I said.

  “Six of one.” He reached for my empty apple juice and carried it into the kitchen.

  I hiked the blanket around my shoulders and climbed off the sofa.

  “I should let Lulu know Wiesner was here,” I said. “She can pass it on.”

  “Tell her the kid was last seen sprinting up North Street.”

  I dialed Lulu. Dean turned on the kitchen faucet and started rinsing out my glass. He snapped his fingers. “Hey, I nearly forgot—Charm Boy wants you to know he still thinks you have a sweet ass.”