Hades (21 page)

22

Nowhere more than academia did people look upon cops with suspicion and distrust. It was because, Justin thought, there was a type of so-called intellectual who could not deal with the black-and-white world that cops often had to live in. Academicians lived in a far grayer world, where actions often had no consequences, where theory did not have to relate to reality. Reality was not something this type of person particularly cared about. Reality was too physical, too harsh; so it was best to separate from it. In the real world, one’s mind could take one only so far before strength often took over. It was like being in the jungle and coming face-to-face with a lion. You might be a lot smarter than the lion, but the lion had far sharper teeth. And was probably hungry.

Quentin Quintel, the dean of Melman Preparatory Academy, fell most definitely into this category, Justin decided. He was a man frightened of bumping into sharp teeth. He fell into another category, too: superobnoxious, asshole snob.

Justin sat in the head of the school’s book-lined office, listening and doing his best to smile pleasantly as Dean Quintel lectured about Melman’s high academic standards and spotless reputation and then began rattling off the list of illustrious alumni who had attended over the ninety-eight years it had been sheltering and educating the best and the brightest the world had to offer. As the bow-tied man in the tweed jacket spoke, Justin let his eyes shift toward the window and take in the rolling Connecticut grounds and ivy-covered stone walls and all the accoutrements that helped keep the place so spotless. When he decided he’d let the dean pontificate enough to satisfy even his own outsized ego, Justin said, “It’s a very impressive place, all right.”

Dean Q beamed. “Thank you.”

“How long have you worked here?”

“It’s a funny thing. People always ask me that question and almost always ask it the same way. But I don’t even consider what I do to be work. I consider it a privilege.”

“Okay,” Justin said, “how long has it been your privilege to oversee the lives and curriculum of those also privileged to attend?”

Dean Quintel’s eyes narrowed, both in surprise at Justin’s ability to articulate the question with a reasonable degree of sophistication as well as in suspicion that the question was not entirely sincere. But he couldn’t find a flaw in the phrasing and he was not secure enough to argue with the tone, so he just said, “I’ve been dean for three years now. I was the youngest dean in Melman’s history.”

“Congratulations. I’m looking for information a little before your time, then.”

“What exactly are you looking for?”

“I need some information about the period when Evan Harmon was privileged enough to attend.”

“Evan Harmon?” The dean immediately looked uncomfortable. “Wasn’t he . . . I mean, wasn’t he . . .”

“Murdered. Yes.”

“That’s why you’re here?”

“That’s right.”

“But—but he was at Melman so long ago. In the eighties.”

“I know.”

“Then I don’t see how I can possibly help you.”

“I assume you have records of all the students who’ve been here.”

“Of course.”

“Academic records as well as anything that might have been notable—extracurricular activities, suspensions, anything out of the norm that might have required staff awareness.”

“Yes.”

“I’d like to see Evan Harmon’s records.”

Dean Quintel shifted uneasily in his seat. “I—I don’t think I can do that.”

“Then maybe there’s someone else who knows how to access the files.”

Quintel couldn’t help himself. He gave Justin the kind of pitying look he’d give a dumb puppy. “I know how to access the files. I meant that the information in those files is privileged.”

“Like you.”

“I’m sorry you feel the need to deride my attachment to Melman. And I’m afraid we can’t let anyone simply come in and rummage through our students’ histories.”

“First of all, I’m not anyone. I’m a member of the Providence, Rhode Island, police department and I’m working directly with the FBI on this case.”

“I don’t see how that changes anything.”

“Then allow me to explain it to you.” Justin leaned a little bit closer to the dean, putting his hands on top of the dean’s dark mahogany desk. “I kind of know a lot about this sort of place.” He told the dean where he’d gone to prep school in New Hampshire—a school that had a superior reputation to Melman, with even higher academic standards. Quintel didn’t do much of a job hiding his shock at hearing Justin’s academic credentials. “I know, it’s surprising that the old alma mater would produce a cop. Actually, it produced two, although I guess you’d have to say the other one isn’t just a regular cop, he’s the number two guy at the CIA. But I digress. The point is, I know how things work here. So if you don’t show me the records, I’ll get a court order, which I can do very quickly. And it won’t be to just look at Evan Harmon’s history. I’ll demand the phone numbers of every single parent of every single boy who’s currently attending this place. And I’ll call every single one of those parents and talk to them about what we’re afraid is going on in the dormitories. And as someone who lived in very similar dormitories, I know that things aren’t quite as pure and spotless as all the bullshit you’ve been spouting, so I can pretty much assure you I’ll be talking about drinking and drugs and fairly serious homosexual activity. All the stuff they know about but don’t really want to think about. Or discuss with federal agents. And since it’s summer and a lot of your students are home right now, I’ll bet a pretty decent percentage of them won’t be coming back after I have these conversations.”

Justin smiled even more politely and watched as Dean Quintel used his intercom to signal his secretary. When he answered, the dean leaned toward the phone and said, “Will you please make a copy of the complete file for Evan Harmon, please, Robby. Everything we have on record. He was one of our students, attended in the early to mid-eighties.”

The dean leaned back in his chair, not smiling back at Justin, and several minutes later his door opened and a thin, athletic-looking young man came in carrying a manila folder. He started to hand it to the dean, but Quintel nodded his head in Justin’s direction, and the assistant quickly swiveled to hand him the folder.

Justin riffled through the school records, stopped, and frowned.

“There’s material missing.”

“I doubt that,” Dean Quintel said.

“Evan Harmon left here when he was a junior. He spent his last year and a half at Madden Prep.”

“So?”

“There’s no mention of why he left. There are two pages missing, the page numbers are off sequence. Then there’s a handwritten notation that he transferred out. This isn’t the page with the original information.”

“If that’s what’s there, that’s all we’ve got.”

“There are no records at all of his last six months here.”

“It’s an old file. I suppose they just weren’t as diligent then as we are now.”

“Or the file’s been tampered with.”

Dean Quintel didn’t answer, nor did he seem concerned by the
accusation.

“Are there any teachers still here who were here when Evan Harmon was?”

“I really don’t know.”

Justin stood up. “Listen,” he said, “I don’t have time to screw around. So let me try to be as clear as I possibly can: I can make your life a living hell. I wasn’t kidding about the court order. If I have to close the school down, that’s what I’ll do. And believe me, I’ll really go out of my way to dog you personally. You’re gonna look in your mirror while you’re brushing your teeth and you’re gonna see my reflection. So unless you haven’t so much as taken an extra five dollars on your expense account, just give me the information and make your life a lot easier.”

Quintel didn’t even hesitate. “Leslie Burham. Miss Burham has been teaching here for over thirty years. And Vince Ellerbe. He runs our math department.”

“How long has he been here?”

“As a teacher, just about eight years. But he was a student here in the eighties. I believe he knew Mr. Harmon.”

“Is that it?”

“Yes. Those are the only teachers with ties to that period.”

“Where can I find them?”

“Miss Burham is taking her summer vacation in Turkey. I believe she’ll be back in another three weeks.”

“Swell. How about Vince Ellerbe?”

“He’s not teaching for the summer term.”

“Where is he? Afghanistan?”

“No. I believe he’s home.”

“Okay,” Justin said, “I’ll bite. Where does he live?”

Dean Quintel couldn’t hide his disappointment. “Approximately fifteen minutes from here,” he said.

“Evan Harmon was an asshole then and I’d be willing to bet a year’s salary he stayed an asshole,” Vince Ellerbe said. “I mean, I’m sorry he’s dead, I guess. Oh hell, no, I’m not. I wouldn’t wish him dead, let’s put it that way, but I don’t really care one way or the other.”

“Sounds like you two weren’t exactly close,” Justin said. He was sitting on a lawn chair in Ellerbe’s backyard. The math teacher’s wife had poured them both some lemonade—Justin would have preferred a beer but decided decorum called for a yes to the lemonade—and their eight-year-old daughter brought out a plate of chocolate chip cookies she’d helped her mother bake the night before.

“Very few people were close to Evan in those days.”

“Why is that?”

“He wasn’t a guy who invited people to
get
close. He had a very superior attitude, as if he were a different breed from most of us. And he was a bully. You know the type: his friends were mostly sycophants. He usually found one or two brainiacs who were frightened of him and that’s who he spent time with. He’d get them to do some of his work for him and run errands for him—that kind of BMOC shit. I never understood it, but there were definitely a few of those kinds of kids who looked up to him and were almost in awe of him. Not to mention terrified.”

“So you didn’t know him all that well?”

“I knew him well enough. We were in the same grade. We were on the baseball team together—he was a pretty decent first baseman—and the track team . . . You know, there’s a good example. It’s a little thing, but when we were on the track team, Evan signed up for long-distance running, five and ten K races. At the beginning, we were kind of running partners. We were the same basic skill level, so we paired off well together for pace. So it wasn’t so monotonous, we didn’t just run on the track, there were a couple of country runs the coaches mapped out. After two or three sessions, Evan decided he hated running. But he couldn’t quit. His father had been a long-distance runner back in the day and there was all sorts of weird family pressure, which is why I used to cut Evan some slack. Anyway, after a couple of practices, what he used to do was wait until there was a break in the running line—he’d deliberately fall behind or sprint ahead until he could do this without being seen—and then he’d duck out of the run and sneak off and have a cigarette or get a soda or whatever and then he’d just kill an hour or so, wait until we’d be heading back, wait until there was a natural break, and then get back in and run the last quarter mile back to school.”

“Never got caught?”

“No. He really had it down pat. He’d cover himself with water so it looked like he was sweating up a storm, and he’d pant like crazy as if he were exhausted. I knew he was doing it, but no one else did. Evan was funny about stuff like that. I think he had to let someone know he was cheating—or it wouldn’t have been worth it. Someone had to be aware that he was beating the system or I don’t think he would have done it. I think he would have just kept running with the rest of us.”

“How’d he do in the races?”

“That’s the thing about Evan. He did fine. He didn’t need the practice. He’d finish third or fourth or fifth. If he’d actually run hard and worked at it and trained, he could have finished first. But he didn’t care enough to do it. He liked the cheating better. He was just basically dishonest.”

“Is that why he got thrown out of school?”

Ellerbe thought long and hard about this. Took a swallow of tart lemonade, then another one. “No, I don’t think so.” He spoke slowly and carefully. “I think there were always problems with his grades—cheating on papers and exams, I mean. He got caught a couple of times, but somehow he was always able to weasel out of it.”

“So what was it?” Justin asked. He wondered if it was safe to ask for a beer yet. Decided he should just stick with what he had and not rock the boat.

“Look,” Ellerbe said, “the family’s gone out of their way to keep this quiet. And I don’t even know if it’s true. I only got this secondhand.”

“From who?”

“Evan was friendly with a guy named Bart Peterson. B. P. was another guy who liked to play a little fast and loose with the rules, also kind of an arrogant kid. Evan told him about this and B. P. told me.”

“And now why don’t you tell me?”

“What Bart told me was that Evan needed some money and his parents had cut him off. So he got another kid here to stage a fake kidnapping. I think Evan even got a TA to go in on it . . .” He saw the brief look of puzzlement in Justin’s eyes, so he said, “Teaching assistant, sort of a faculty member in training. That was also one of Evan’s—um—talents. He could always get people in authority to look the other way, to break the rules just for him. What B.P. told me was that Evan tried to get a hundred thousand dollars from his parents. But the whole thing got botched pretty quickly and Evan was transferred out.”

“How’d the Harmons manage to keep this so quiet?”

Ellerbe rolled his eyes and said, “Do you really need to ask that question? Money.”

“Enough money to get the school to expunge any record of Evan’s behavior?”

“I do know for a fact that almost right after this supposedly happened, Evan’s father donated a few hundred thousand dollars . . . I heard half a million . . . to Melman for the music building. The H. R. Harmon Music Building.”

“Would have been cheaper to pay off his son.”

“But not the Harmon way. You protect your children, but you don’t reward them.”

Justin pondered this last comment, then asked the amiable math professor, “Do you have a yearbook from the last couple of years you went to school with Evan?”