School Days

by Robert B. Parker

  “Good God!” I said.

  “I know,” he said. “I know.”

  “You must have had some success,” I said. “He played football.”

  “Yes, God, she hated that.”

  “You teach him?”

  “No, not really. The only thing I did, I got a box at Foxboro. I took him once to see the Pats play the Jets. She had a fit. I never took him again. Doesn’t seem like such a fucking crime.”

  “You ever teach him to shoot?”

  “Jesus, no,” he said. “His mother would have . . . no. I never taught him to shoot.”

  “Somebody did. He and the Clark kid fired thirty-seven rounds and scored on twenty of them.”

  Grant didn’t say anything.

  “You shoot?” I said.

  “I know how. I was in the service.”

  “Own a gun?”

  “Revolver,” he said. “.357 for plinking burglars.”

  “No semiautomatic weapons?”

  “No. Revolver’s so much simpler,” he said. “And six rounds is enough.”

  “Why do you think he did what he did?”

  Hollis sat for a time, looking at his fist resting on the tabletop.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I think Wilma blames me. I suppose I sort of blame Wilma.”

  He shook his head.

  “Is there a Mrs. Grant?” I said.

  “No.”

  “Was there?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what happened to her?” I said.

  “She left.”

  “When?”

  “June twelfth, 1993.”

  “You know where she is?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know if she’s in touch with her grandson or her daughter?”

  “No.”

  Spenser, grand inquisitor, give him a few minutes and he can find the topic to shut off any conversation. Maybe if I moved on.

  “You said Wendell was hard to be close to. Why was that?”

  “His mother filled his head with crap. I mean, she’s my daughter, and I love her, but her head got filled with crap by her mother. Not the same crap, but she was fucked up, and she fucked up her kid.”

  “What did Wilma’s mother fill her head with?”

  “Ladylike,” he said. “White gloves. Dinner parties. Her mother filled her head with silly shit, and Wilma rebelled.”

  “And filled her head with rebellious silly shit,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “Have you seen Wendell since the shooting?”

  “No.”

  “Because?”

  “His mother has denied my access.”

  “Do you know Lily Ellsworth?” I said.

  “Yes. Old money. Everyone knows Lily.”

  “She feels her grandson is innocent. She hired me to prove it.”

  “How you doing?” Grant said.

  “So far,” I said. “He looks guilty as sin.”

  “Like Wendell,” Grant said.

  “You know anything that would suggest he didn’t do it?” I said.

  “Except what I read in the papers,” Grant said, “I don’t know anything about the whole goddamned sorry mess.”

  “Sadly,” I said, “me either.”

  18

  SUSAN HAD BEEN SO compelling in Durham that one of the Duke professors had asked if she would stay into September and participate with him in his graduate seminar called Post-Freudian Therapy: the Practitioner’s View. I missed her. I wasn’t pleased. But I knew the recognition meant something to her, so I masked my displeasure.

  “Oh, balls,” I said on the phone.

  “I knew you’d understand,” Susan said. “And when I get home, we’ll have a very nice time.”

  “Snivel,” I said.

  “That’s my brave boy,” she said.

  We talked awhile about her meetings and my case. Her meetings appeared to be going better. At the end of her call, we talked dirty for a little while, which made me feel less fruitless. When we hung up, I went to the kitchen and made myself a drink and thought about supper. Pearl, in her wily canine way, divined my thoughts at once, and came and sat at my feet and looked at me closely. I gave her a dog biscuit.

  “I got some cranberry beans,” I said to Pearl. “And some local tomatoes and corn from Verrill Farm.”

  Pearl ate the dog biscuit.

  “I’ll start cooking that and see what develops,” I said.

  Pearl had finished her biscuit. Her gaze was again steady.

  I shelled the beans from their long, red-and-cream pods and dropped them in boiling water and turned down the heat and let them simmer. I drank some scotch. I gave Pearl another cookie. Then I shucked the corn and put it into a pan with some cold water and brought it to a boil and shut off the heat and put the cover on the pot. Pearl had taken her cookie to the couch and eaten it. I took a small steak from the refrigerator and diced it into little pieces and cooked them rare in the frying pan. Then I turned them out onto a paper towel and let them sit.

  Pearl returned.

  “I can’t keep giving you cookies,” I said.

  She looked at me steadily. I felt the steak dice. It was cool. I gave Pearl a piece. It must have struck her as exotic. She took it into the bedroom. My drink was gone. I took the corn from the pot with tongs and let it cool on the counter. Then I made a drink and took it to the couch and sat. Pearl came back from the bedroom and sat with me. I sipped my scotch.

  “I’m missing something,” I said to Pearl.

  Pearl was a good listener, even if she didn’t have much in the way of advice to offer. We sat quietly. I thought. I drank some scotch. Housman was right.

  “First of all,” I said to Pearl, “somebody said once that you probably can’t figure out the truth, if you think you know ahead of time what the truth is supposed to be.”

  Pearl made a little sigh and settled.

  “So I can’t go at this trying to clear anybody. I just have to find out what happened and why.”

  Pearl’s eyes were closed now. I got up and checked the corn and found it cool enough and cut the kernels off in long rows with a knife. I drained the beans into a colander, dumped them into a bowl with the corn, cut up some fresh tomatoes, added the steak, and tossed the whole deal with some olive oil, some cider vinegar, and salt and pepper. Then I let that sit for a while, freshened my drink, and came back to the couch. Pearl appeared to be asleep, but I pressed on.

  “So what am I missing?” I said.

  Pearl’s breathing was even and soft.

  “I’m asking the wrong people,” I said. “Goddamn it, I’m talking to the adults.”

  I took a long, self-congratulatory pull on my drink.

  Pearl made a soft sound. I bent toward her and listened more closely. She was snoring. I got up and put my supper on a plate.

  “I should be talking to the kids,” I said.

  I drank my drink and ate my supper with some French bread.

  19

  IT WAS AFTER Labor Day and instruction was under way when I walked into the Dowling School. Sue Biegler brought me into the president’s office, introduced me, and departed.

  The president was a middle-sized man with thinning hair, so that close up, he was balder than you first realized. He wasn’t fat, but he was soft-looking. His soft face had one of those perpetual blue shadows that no amount of shaving would eliminate. Nature is not fair. Too little hair, too much whisker. His name was Dr. Royce Garner.

  “First,” he said, “let me say that every one of us here at the Dowling School are heavy at heart of last spring’s tragedy. And we stand ready to help you in any way we can.”

  “That’s swell,” I said.

  “We do, of course, hope,” he went on, “that we can put it behind us as quickly as we can, and get back to what we do best.”

  “Educating the young,” I said.

  “Exactly.”

  He leaned back a little, with his fingertips pressed together, delighted with hims
elf.

  “What is your doctorate in?” I said.

  “Divinity,” he said. “I am an ordained minister.”

  “How come you’re a president,” I said. “I thought prep schools had headmasters.”

  He smiled indulgently at my lay confusion.

  “We are planning to expand into a junior college as soon as our fundraising for the venture is complete,” he said. “It seemed appropriate to assume the title in our quest to give credibility to our capital campaign.”

  “Of course,” I said.

  He smiled again.

  “So, how may I be of help?” he said.

  “I’d like to hang around the school for a time,” I said. “Talk with kids in their free periods, in the library, that sort of thing.”

  “Really?”

  I nodded.

  “What would you be chatting about?”

  “Last spring’s shooting,” I said.

  “We are trying to put that behind us, Mr. Spenser.”

  “Don’t blame you, especially when you’re trying to raise money.”

  “That is an issue, certainly,” Garner said. “But it is the well-being of the students that we are most concerned about. We cannot prepare them for college and a productive life with this terrible tragedy hanging ever over them.”

  “I understand,” I said. “It is, however, an unresolved tragedy. I’m trying to resolve it.”

  “Unresolved?” Garner said. “How so?”

  “We don’t in fact know for certain what happened.”

  “We know that good people, many of them still children, were killed by two individuals who are in custody.”

  “We don’t know why.”

  “And you think my students will know why?”

  “Ever hopeful,” I said.

  President Garner wet his plump lips. He put his fingertips together in front of his chin.

  “I’m afraid school policy will not permit it,” he said. “I’m truly sorry.”

  “Who’s in charge of school policy?” I said.

  “Myself and, of course, the board.”

  “Of course,” I said. “I bet that board is a collection of tigers.”

  He smiled.

  “They are dedicated people,” he said. “They care about the Dowling School.”

  “Isn’t that ducky,” I said.

  “No need to be offensive.”

  “The hell there isn’t,” I said. “Everybody wants this to go away—you, the cops, even the parents of the alleged shooters.”

  “I believe they are more than alleged,” Garner said.

  “They are alleged until they are convicted,” I said. “And that hasn’t happened yet.”

  “That is something of an equivocation,” Garner said.

  “Normally, when everyone wants something to go away, it’s because if it doesn’t, it will cause them discomfort. Maybe you’ll be revealed as a bad educator, or the cops will be revealed as bad lawmen, or the parents will be revealed as bad parents. And that will discomfort you all.”

  “I think that’s about enough, Mr. Spenser.”

  “Almost,” I said. “But I do want you to know that I am a carrier of discomfort. I am deeply committed to it, and I’m going to find out what happened.”

  “They killed people,” Garner said. “Isn’t that enough?”

  “No,” I said. “It’s not.”

  “I’m ordering you to leave school property,” Garner said. “If you return, I’ll have you arrested.”

  I thought about saying “I shall return,” decided it had been used before, and settled for walking out without a word and not closing the door.

  20

  IT TOOK ME a couple of days of hanging around outside the Dowling School, feeling like a pederast, to find where the kids congregated after class. It was a place called Coffee Nut, where they could sit in booths and drink coffee and eat doughnuts and smoke and impress one another. The owners of Coffee Nut had obviously written off the adult market they might have originally planned on, and decided to commit themselves to adolescence. There was music I didn’t recognize playing loudly when I came in. The place was half full, and everyone turned to look at me, as if I had violated a segregation law. Except that I was, of course, poised and debonair. Otherwise, I might have felt ill at ease.

  There were booths along one side and in the back. A counter ran along the other side. I sat at the counter next to a couple of schoolgirls who were giggling and whispering, maybe about me. Oh, Spenser, you dashing rogue, you’ve still got it. The girls were wearing what I would eventually discover most Dowling schoolgirls wore: short, pleated skirts and sleeveless tops. One was blonde with a pink top. One was brunette with a white top. I ordered coffee, which took a while, because I had to reject a half a dozen special coffee drinks, which I also didn’t recognize. There were two high-school girls in tan uniforms working the counter and an older guy wearing a tan overseas cap that said COFFEE NUT on it, who was making the coffee.

  I turned and leaned my back against the counter.

  “You girls go to Dowling School?” I said.

  “Yeah,” Pink Top said and giggled. “You?”

  “Couldn’t pass the entrance exam,” I said. “Everybody in here from Dowling?”

  “Sure,” Pink Top said. “ ’Cept them.”

  She nodded at the people working the counter.

  “You here last year when the shooting happened?”

  “I guess so,” the girl said.

  They had thought it sort of fun to get into conversation with a large older man, especially because they were surrounded by friends. But now they were uncomfortable.

  “My name’s Spenser,” I said.

  White Top poked Pink Top with her elbow.

  “See,” she said. “I told you it was him.”

  Pink Top said, “We had an assembly about you.”

  “Hot dog,” I said.

  “Mr. Garner said we weren’t supposed to talk with you.”

  “Why not?” I said.

  “Mr. Garner said you were trying to ruin the Dowling School’s reputation, and if you succeeded, we’d never get into a good college.”

  “Do you believe Mr. Garner?” I said.

  They giggled again.

  “Royce the Voice,” White Top said. “The People’s Choice.”

  “May I take that as a ‘no, we don’t believe him’?” I said.

  “Royce is gross,” Pink Top said.

  “Or Groyce,” White Top said, and they both giggled some more.

  “What would happen,” I said, “if he were right, and you didn’t get into a good college?”

  “My mother would kill herself,” Pink Top said.

  “My mother would call me a slut,” White Top said.

  “For not getting into a good school?” I said.

  “She calls me a slut whenever she’s mad,” White Top said.

  “You are a slut,” Pink Top said.

  “Takes one to know one,” White Top said.

  They both giggled some more.

  “Did either of you know the guys involved.”

  “You know, casually. Say hi in the hall.”

  “Any thoughts on why they did what they did?”

  The girls looked at each other for a moment. They were being asked to think.

  “You know,” White Top said, “what’s amazing is it doesn’t happen more often. You know? I mean, do you remember school?”

  “I do,” I said.

  “Did you like school?”

  “No.”

  “Good. It’s all bullshit, you know. It’s all the official pious crap.”

  “That’s my memory of it,” I said.

  “So I don’t know why they did it. But everyone’s walking around, barely able to stand it, and”—she shrugged—“these guys went kaboom, I guess.”

  “Anything set them off?”

  “I don’t know,” White Top said. “You, Janey.”

  “No clue,” Pink Top said.
>
  “Anyone in here knew them well?”

  “Guys at that table played football with Dell,” White Shirt said.

  “Grant,” I said.

  “Yeah.”

  Pink Top swung her stool all the way around, which, given the shortness of her skirt, was pretty daring, and said, “Hey, Carly.”

  She was too young to interest me, but she got Carly’s attention.

  “This is the guy old man Garner warned us about.”

  “No shit,” Carly said.

  She was not too young for him. He admired her legs visibly as he walked over.

  “This is Carly Simon,” Pink Top said. “This here is . . . I forgot your name.”

  “Spenser,” I said.

  I took some cards from my top pocket and gave one to each of them.

  “Name’s Carl Simone,” he said. “Everybody calls me Carly.”

  Carly was a prototype prep-school football player. He might even play small college ball, but would never beyond that. He was short and muscular with a thick neck. He probably weighed 160 pounds.

  “Carly’s the football captain,” Pink Top said.

  “Running back?” I said.

  “Yeah. Deep back out of a pro set. We went seven and two last year.”

  “And Wendell Grant was an offensive lineman,” I said.

  “Left tackle.”

  “Know him well?”

  “On the field,” Carly said.

  “And off?”

  “Off,” Carly said, “he was a creepy fucker.”

  He said fucker sort of aggressively, to see if I would react. I maintained my composure.

  “How so,” I said.

  “He hung with all townies,” Carly said.

  “Dowling’s a day school, isn’t it?” I said. “Aren’t you all townies?”

  “We’re all from around here. But there’s the kids go to Dowling. And the kids go to the Regional.”

  “Which is?” I said.

  “High Meadow Regional,” White Top said. “It’s in Melwood.”

  “And you don’t mix?” I said.

  “Not much,” Carly said.

  “How about Jared Clark?” I said.

  “Nobody knew him,” Carly said. “That I know.”

  “He wasn’t an asshole,” Pink Top said. “He was just, like, not there, you know?”

  “He didn’t seem interested in anything the rest of us were interested in,” White Top said.