When Fowler specified ballroom dancing as the focus of the search, she laughed in his face. Until that moment she hadn’t realized how much she had soaked in the opinions of the other cops. She checked herself, apologized, and said she would get right on it.
Fowler slammed down the receiver. He was getting ready to write up his report. He decided to fingerprint and interview Schwerin, the boy who had discovered the body. He didn’t find out anything new. When he asked the boy which direction the shoes in the garbage can were pointing, Schwerin contradicted himself, reversing the position of the shoes at least five times. Fowler noticed there was some nervous exhaustion in the boy. He called the infirmary and suggested to one of the nurses on duty that the boy be given some time off, maybe a free weekend.
Ballard walked up the stairs around 3:15. Fowler liked to interview the boys in their own rooms to get a sense of who they were. He wanted to take this one’s statement himself.
In room 401, Nick Fowler asked Cary to sit at the desk, where he placed the black print pad on the green blotter.
“Don’t worry.” He smiled.
He pulled the ends of the boy’s fingers, and after he had rolled each finger on the ink pad and pressed it into the squares on a large white card, he handed him an alcohol wipe.
Bill Rodney rapped on the door, asking to speak to the lieutenant. They stepped out into the hall, where Rodney signaled him into the empty room that had become their temporary office. Fowler looked down at the receiver lying on its side on the table. He thought it might be Judy Bayard, the girl he had just spoken to.
Fowler picked up the phone. “Hello?”
On the other end he heard the precise, formal voice of Edwin R. Koenig through a thread of static. “Lieutenant Fowler?”
“Yes.”
“We just got the toxicology report. It identified a large dose of tranquilizers taken approximately an hour before death.”
“Anything else?”
“Very severe bruises on the heels.”
“Interesting.”
“Yes.”
“I appreciate your work, Doctor.”
“Not at all.”
Fowler hung up. Bill Rodney closed the door; his tired face looked like it was hanging from a clothesline. The old detective lit up a nonfiltered cigarette.
“Uh, Nick,” the tired voice said, “this just in: Latent fingerprints were lifted from the tie found wrapped around the victim’s neck. It looks like the print of an adolescent.”
Fowler watched Rodney’s face fade into a cloud of cigarette smoke. It gave him an instant to think. As the crusty face reappeared, he placed the prints he had just taken from Cary in the gnarled hands.
“Push a check through on these, just in case—they’re the Ballard kid’s prints. He was the one missing his tie.”
Back at the boy’s room, Fowler knocked. Waiting for Cary’s reply, he glanced up at the sprinkler above the door. He looked down again, turning the knob, and something caught his eye. Peeking out from under the lip of the old painted doorknob, he could see something sticking out. Then he noticed marks that had worn the paint off the bottom of the door. He pushed the door open. Inside the boy was waiting, sitting on the side of the single bed, looking at the floor.
“Just a minute,” he said to Ballard. He fished out his pocketknife. He was able to slip the blade of the knife under the metal knob, working something out through the crack. It was a tiny piece of brown rubber, used in extension cords. He couldn’t help but notice that the old white paint was rubbed brown along the neck of the doorknob.
“What do you remember from last night?” he said. “Exactly.”
“Nothing,” said Ballard.
“Do you know what this is?” He held out the fragment of the electrical cord under the boy’s face.
“No.”
“It’s a torn piece of an extension cord.” Ballard shrugged. “Do you mind if I have a quick look around your room?”
“No.”
Fowler opened the closet door, searched under the shoes on the floor. A pair of Cary’s bedroom slippers had tar on the soles; Fowler touched them—still tacky. He put them aside. He then scoured the top of the shelf above the rack of hanging clothes—there was an old tennis racquet, scrapbooks, old sweats, a jockstrap, and knee pads. He ran through the pockets in Ballard’s coats. He found some laundry tickets, some notes from a classmate in study hall.
Finally in Ballard’s winter coat, forced against the wall of the closet, he saw something bulging out of a pocket. Using his handkerchief, he pulled out two pieces of extension cord, one long, one short.
“What’s that?” Ballard said.
Fowler didn’t hear him. He combed the surface of both pieces to find a mar in the sheath. He sat down at the desk, turned on the light, and worked the long electrical snake through the cloth, staring particularly at the edges. Toward the middle of the small cord, he found it. A piece of the rubber had been shorn off, possibly by the lip of the door knob. When he placed the small piece near the tear in the cord, it fell into place.
Fowler quietly placed the cord on the desk, dropped the piece in the handkerchief, and looked up at Ballard. “Did you leave your room at any time last night?”
“No.”
“Did you go to the bathroom for a long time? Did you take a walk?”
“No.”
“Were you out of your room at any time during the night?”
“. . . Not that I remember.”
“What does that mean?” Fowler remembered his interview training, not to push too early, but he felt impatient. “Are you in the habit of not remembering?”
“No, I just mean I don’t remember going out.”
For a long time Nick Fowler stared at the door, then back at the boy. He abruptly opened the door, pointed to a semicircle of scuffs in the old white paint on the outside of the lower end of the door.
“Know what these are?” he said, looking up at Ballard.
The boy looked at the marks, shrugged, and looked back at Fowler. “No. What are they?”
“Heel marks.”
“So.”
“We just found out the body of the deceased sustained severe bruises on the heels.” Nick Fowler stood up. He looked down at the boy. “Ed Crawford was strung up out here in the hallway. After the killer had some fun . . . the boy’s hands were bound and tied . . .” he said quietly. “To this doorknob, with this extension cord.”
Ballard’s eyes grew to twice their size. “That’s impossible,” he said.
“I hope, for your sake, it is.”
Ballard was now gasping for breath as he took in the full weight of what the man was saying. “I didn’t kill him,” he blurted out, his voice up an octave.
Nick Fowler looked at the boy’s eyes. “Suppose you tell me then how this could have happened if you were here sleeping.”
Now Ballard was shivering. His eyes had welled up. His head kept drooping as he shook it, repeatedly, to clear his thoughts. “All right, I did slip out.”
“How early?”
“Around two.”
“Why is there tar on your bedroom slippers?”
“I—I had to go up on the roof, then down the fire escape. They have electric eyes on the administration floor.”
Fowler felt heat hovering over the skin on his face. He knew he was reddening. “Where did you go?”
“I—I can’t tell you.”
“I’m going to ask you to make a statement, Cary, which you will have to sign, so I want you to listen to me very carefully. Whoever you’re protecting, whatever reason you have for withholding evidence, stop. It’s not worth it.”
“I’m not protecting anyone.”
“Then where did you go?”
“You won’t tell anyone?”
“If it’s not admissible, then—”
“What?”
“If it’s not evidence that can be used in court, then it’ll be . . . between you and me.”
Ballard rubbed his
thin palms together. “I went to the graveyard.”
Fowler impatiently flipped out his pad and pencil. “What graveyard?”
“The old one above the lake—on the hill that looks over the school.”
“Why?”
“There’s a girl that . . .”
“I’m listening.”
“They say she does things.”
“You went to meet her?”
“No, she doesn’t know me—she meets, I mean, they said she meets football players there and—you know. I wanted to see.”
“Did you?”
“No,” Ballard said, his voice getting quiet. “There was no one there.”
“What time was this?”
“Three—three-thirty—I think.”
Fowler studied the boy’s pale face. “What’s the girl’s name?”
“I don’t even know.”
“How would you know who it was then?”
“I heard what she looked like.”
Fowler adjusted his tensed shoulders. “All right, what does she look like?”
“. . . Blond hair, bleached. Pretty, but hard looks. Wears a lot of makeup. Tight black jeans—look, don’t tell her I sent—”
“Who told you this?”
“. . . Gluckner. He’s a football player.”
“You’re sure this was three-thirty?”
“Yes.”
“Try to think,” Fowler said quietly. “The crime was committed around that time. You were in the graveyard?”
“Yes.”
“I’m going to have to seal this room. Don’t touch anything. Just stand up. Walk with me.”
Nick led Cary out of his room. He kept his eyes fixed on the boy as he stood in the hall, his face lit up as he stared toward the windows; he was crying.
Fowler got on the phone and ordered the print man back in. He dropped the cord and torn piece of rubber into a plastic bag, labeled it, and asked Bill Rodney to find out what student was living just under Ballard’s room on the third floor. Rodney already had it charted out. He flipped through his clipboard—the room was empty.
Fowler decided to take Ballard to the infirmary. He could stay there the night while the team combed his room for evidence. As the bell for the memorial service rang, Cary thought the entire student body must have seen him walking next to the lieutenant on the sidewalk in front of the chapel.
IN THE WHITE-TILED admitting office of the infirmary, Ms. Ross, the school nurse, a woman with inclement gray eyes and a lined face, seemed confused at first by Fowler’s request. She nervously adjusted the small white folded hat across the top of her silver hair as she watched both sets of eyes fixed on her. Ballard thought her hat looked like a large origami bird.
“You see, ma’am,” Fowler explained, “the boy’s room has been sealed pending the accumulation of data.”
“What does that mean, Lieutenant?” she said.
“It means, until we can clear the room, we need Mr. Ballard to stay here, as if he’s sick.”
“Is he?” she said as her jaw began its ascent.
“If you have a toothbrush and a towel for him, I’d like him to be excused from classes.”
“I can’t do that, Lieutenant.”
Fowler craned his neck as he sized the tall woman up. Her jaw was now firmly installed at an acute angle high above her small, quivering Adam’s apple. “Let’s put it this way, Ms. Ross, Mr. Ballard is a suspect—but I’d rather not let that get around.”
The nurse’s eyes immediately fastened on the boy with horror. “What did he do?”
“Nothing that we can prove yet, but I need some time. I also need your assurance that what I’ve said is confidential—that means no one—not even your husband.”
“My husband wrapped a Ford around a tree last year, Lieutenant. It took them two days to cut him out. I doubt he’s in the listening mood.”
“I’m sorry,” Fowler said, dropping his eyes for a moment. “I’d like one of my men to sit outside the boy’s room while he’s here.”
“Why?”
Fowler planted his feet as he stepped closer to her. “You see, Ms. Ross, this boy may have to interviewed, even interrogated before we’re through. He may also be in danger.”
Ms. Ross led the boy and Fowler to a room on the second floor. Before he left him, Fowler asked Cary if he could bring any books or personal possessions back for him. The boy asked for his schoolbooks, his diary, his warm-up clothes, and the picture of his mother on top of his dresser. Fowler nodded and pushed the hair out of the boy’s eyes.
When Ballard heard the door close, he felt the fear come back. He couldn’t say what it was, but it slowly took hold. His heartbeat instantly began to pound as the lieutenant’s footsteps retreated down the stairs.
On Fowler’s way out, Ms. Ross stood up at her wide oak desk and walked out to the foyer, holding a manila folder.
“Lieutenant, I was looking at the boy’s medical records. He is in the care of a doctor.” She turned so he could peer over her shoulder.
“Who?”
Her finger ran down the page. “Dr. Clarence, who is also the school psychologist.”
“Does it say why?”
“Some sort of disturbance. It says here . . .” For one moment they both silently read a paragraph from the boy’s doctor. One recurring symptom made Fowler very curious. It said that Ballard would often “disconnect and slip in and out of reality.”
He looked up, blinking into the woman’s gray eyes. “Where can I find this Dr. Clarence?”
“Well, he’s at the murdered boy’s memorial service now. So is the whole school.” She rubbed a bony finger over her bottom lip, then looked down at her wristwatch. “Here,” she put down the file and picked up the school yearbook lying on a table by the entrance and began leafing through the pages. “Here he is. You can spot him coming out of chapel.”
Fowler looked down at the clear pink glasses, the severely trimmed hair, the skull-like head, the perfect bow tie of Dr. Nathan Clarence. He thanked Ms. Ross and left.
10
INSIDE THE CHAPEL, the students shuffled in and took their assigned seats. A few boys flinched when the sacred music began to blare from the massive gold-leaf pipes of the organ behind them.
Usually the music lifted the boys’ minds away from their studies into a strange, exalted world. Those who weren’t believers could contemplate the supernatural aspects of blood turning into wine, of bodies rising high above the earth. Mostly it was a time for reflection. And sleep.
Today was different. There were no heads nodding. Agitation was everywhere. The boys seemed uneasy, sullen, quick to anger, their emotions threadbare after the day of tension. There was a rumor the school might be closed; on that they could only hope. They had all heard the gruesome descriptions of Crawford’s death.
As the light outside the tall windows was fading, the assistant chaplain, with the aid of a grid on his lectern, subtly recorded attendance. Then a loud major chord announcing the opening anthem descended on the boys, and they fumbled for their hymnals.
After the anthem, there was a breathless silence in the room. Mr. Fitz, the chaplain, stood up, adjusted his wire-rimmed glasses and smoothed his vesper garments. “Faculty and students of Ravenhill School,” he said. “Today the worst tragedy in the history of the academy has befallen us. A terribly inhumane crime has been committed—and one of our own has fallen.”
He walked slowly to the podium. “I read to you now from the Book of Job, chapter two, verse three.” There was a pause as his fingers lifted a wilted page out of the book. His voice echoed off the back walls. “‘And the Lord said unto Satan, From whence cometh thou? And Satan answered the Lord, and said, From going to and fro in the earth, and walking up and down in it.’”
The chaplain cleared his throat.
He walked around the podium, leaned on the side of the lectern, and took off his glasses. “Now, boys, I didn’t read this quote to suggest that Satan himself is walking up and down in our mi
dst. Rather, consider for a moment what might happen if we ponder the lessons of Job, how we might steel our minds against the panic that is clearly sweeping our campus.” The chaplain’s fierce eyes panned the rows of rapt young faces. “Think for a moment how, even though it appears that a kind of Satan is going to and fro on our campus—although we may be forced to acknowledge that presence—we must not curse God for our misfortune. We must hold fast to our faith and recall how, even though Job was set upon a dung heap and covered with boils from head to toe, he never renounced his belief in God. And in the end, the Almighty returned to Job twice as much as he had before.”
A strange pall fell over the room. For the next ten minutes, Mr. Fitz extolled Ed Crawford’s virtues, his good study habits, his interest in extracurricular activities. Anecdotes were mentioned of the boy’s kindness toward his fellow students. During this eulogy, a strange phenomenon was taking place. There were murmurs across the audience. Students all around the room were looking from side to side, staring behind themselves as if they might actually behold Satan in their midst, standing perhaps by the back wall, sitting calmly on the aisle.
When the chaplain turned the program over to Dr. Hickey, the headmaster seemed flustered as he stood up at the podium, groping for his speech inside the incalculable expanse of his gown. He too had been looking uneasily around the room.
This left him no choice but to make some impromptu remarks on his pet peeve—chewing gum wrappers on the grass—as he searched for his speech. When he found it, he gazed solemnly down at the boys and began to talk about the ideals that Ravenhill ascribed to. He became vehement when he began to express how nothing, no tragedy, no act of violence could shift the firm bedrock upon which the tenets of the school were founded back in 1852.
At that point, Dr. Hickey had actually redeemed the service. However, he then chose to ask faculty members to stand and offer, from their own experience, any words they could pass on to the boys about death occurring close to them. To his surprise, something eerie had taken place. No one had the strength to stand up and speak. It was as if the whole congregation was under a spell, all thinking the same thought: Satan was in our midst. The faculty members who were usually so vocal seemed mesmerized, unable to get out of their seats.
Kiss Them Goodbye Page 5