The Sacrifice (55 page)

“Did you read this?” she asked.

“Yes. I've been around him a lot over the past few weeks. My assessment was that he is a smart kid with a bad attitude. I tried to befriend him but hit a brick wall. Now I know why.”

Scott leaned forward and picked up the papers.

Turning to the back page, he read aloud, “Frank has a morbid fascination with death. He views it as a positive event, both for himself and others, thus raising concern of suicidal/homicidal potential. He jokingly acknowledged occasional suicidal/homicidal fantasies involving one or all of the members of his family, but quickly added that it was only an imaginary outlet for the frustrations he'd experienced in the home. Although he does not admit to auditory hallucinations, it would be consistent with his profile and is suggested by some of the test data.”

Scott looked up. “Frank would try to kill a member of his family and claim he heard a voice telling him to do it.”

“Possibly.”

Scott put the report on the edge of the desk.

“What are you going to do with this?”

“Try to get him help, but his father's lawyer may send him to another psychologist who will say there's nothing wrong with him.”

“Are they fighting over custody?”

“No, Vivian doesn't want Frank, but she requested an evaluation to back
up her claims about the negative influence of Frank on his little sister, Jodie. Vivian doesn't want Jodie visiting her father if Frank is in the house.”

“This should help you on that issue. Are you going to notify the school system?”

“And then who would be sued?” Ann asked.

Scott nodded. Ann was right. The report was confidential.

“Yeah, it would be up to the mother to contact the school. What do you think she will do?”

“I don't know. Her focus has been on keeping Frank out of her hair and away from his sister. Her initial goal was to send him to a private school, not the psychiatric ward of a hospital. Since this report contains more than she bargained for, she may have to rethink her position. I'm going to recommend that she limit her contact with him since the most likely objects of his anger would be the members of his family.”

“Or anyone that looks at him the wrong way on the wrong day,” Scott added.

Still troubled by the report, Scott returned to his office. He had a voice-mail message from Kay.

“Hi, Scott. I've been thinking about you and Lester all day. Let me hear from you when you have a few minutes. Bye.”

Scott looked at the clock. Kay would still be in class for another hour and a half. He decided not to leave her a message at the school about Lester's case.

On the edge of Scott's desk were the mock trial materials. He dictated a memo to his secretary to open a file so he could keep the information for use the following year. Scott was hooked. He'd enjoyed working with the students, and Janie's request that he help in the future could not be denied. Kay's involvement was the icing on the cake. Scott had one regret. He wished he'd known the seriousness of Frank Jesup's problems. The young man needed professional help, but Scott wondered if he could have helped by trying harder to reach out to him rather than getting so easily frustrated with the student's attitude. By next year, Frank would be lost to graduation, and it would be up to college to give him the stimulus and challenge that could lift him out of his inner darkness.

After finishing with the mock trial materials, Scott also gathered together the multiple folders that made up
State v. Garrison
in a larger folder. In a few weeks Lester would make the journey to the boot-camp program near Fayetteville, and the pleadings and documents would make a brief trip to the closed file depository. Scott wondered what an extensive psychological evaluation would reveal about Lester Garrison.

Larry Sellers, the maintenance supervisor for the school system, found the list while doing a routine inspection after the students left the building on Monday. He opened a cleaning closet and saw a piece of wrinkled paper wedged against the doorframe. When he picked it up to toss it into a nearby trash receptacle, a crude design at the top of the page caught his attention. It was a simple drawing of a human skull. He flattened the crumpled sheet of paper. Underneath the skull was a crudely written list of twelve names.

There was a Catawba high-school yearbook propped between two plastic containers of floor-cleaning compound in the closet. Larry opened it to see if there were students at the school whose names matched those on the list. The first name he checked was a sophomore boy. The second was a junior girl. The third was a junior boy; however, one thing was different. The student's name was printed in the column on the left-hand side of the page, but his class picture was missing from the book. It had been cut out with sharp scissors or a razor blade.

Larry paused. He turned to the fourth name on the list, found the student, but no picture. It was the same with the next four students. The next student's picture was in the book, but the final three were not. He flipped through the yearbook. There were several other pictures cut from the student sections that did not correlate to the names on the list. But the connection between the list and the cutout pictures was too important to ignore. Under the security guidelines issued by the superintendent's office, the sheet of paper had to be reported. The possible connection with the yearbook made the situation more suspicious. He took the sheet of paper and yearbook with him and called Dr. Lassiter at home.

After listening, the principal asked, “Where are you now?”

“In the administrative offices. I have the sheet and yearbook with me.”

“Who has access to the closet where you found them?”

“Everybody on the janitorial crew and the faculty or staff members who have a master key. Of course, you know how hard it is to maintain an accurate inventory on keys.”

“Yes. I'll investigate it in the morning. Put the items in my office.”

Before he left the office to go home, Scott called Kay at her apartment and gave her a factual report of the outcome in Lester's case.

“I don't understand,” she said. “How could he plead guilty if he didn't do it?”

“I can't go into it because of attorney-client privilege, but it was a bizarre turn of events at the end. I've learned that the law is not a science; it's a poker game.”

“Will Lester come back to school?”

“Yes. Regular school attendance is mandatory until a space opens up for him in the boot-camp program. If he skips out, he will be in a cell at the youth detention center within twenty-four hours.”

“Okay. I'll be praying for him.”

Scott chuckled. “You are a woman of great faith. If it's okay with you and God, I'm not going to think about young Mr. Garrison or his father for a while.”

Scott wanted to mention the information he'd learned about Frank but couldn't think of a way to bring it up. He settled for something general.

“How's Frank?” he asked.

“He was in class today. I thanked him for serving on the mock trial team.”

“What did he say?”

“Nothing. I don't remember that he responded.”

“Do you think I should try to spend time with Frank?” Scott asked.

“Why?” she asked with surprise. “I thought he shut the door on you.”

“He did, but he is such a smart kid, and I know his parents are splitting up. I'd hate for him to take a violent”—Scott caught himself—“uh, negative turn.”

Kay didn't notice his slip. “I guess you could give it another try. It would be outside school.”

“I might call and invite him down to the office.”

“Do you need his number?”

Scott knew Ann Gammons would have all relevant phone numbers. “No, I can get it.”

“I wanted to ask you about something else,” Kay said. “I'd like to set up a special lunch on Wednesday for the students who were in the mock trial program. Can you fit it in your schedule?”

“At the school?”

“Yes, I think we're having tacos, and I know how much you like them.”

Scott paused. “Are you laughing at me?”

“Only on the inside.”

He looked at his calendar. “I can come anytime between eleven-thirty and one o'clock.”

“That will work. Make it 12:15. I'll meet you at the office.”

“I know where to go. I've eaten at the cafeteria more times than I'd like to remember.”

“Just meet me at the office.”

Scott understood the unspoken message. The students were preparing something for him, and he needed to show up at the right time.

“Okay.”

Kay spent the evening thinking of a word or two that characterized each student on the mock trial team and writing a few lines of encouragement to share while they ate their meal. Earlier in the day Dustin had perfected an impersonation of Scott that perfectly captured the way the young lawyer acted when showing the students how to question a witness. Janie had written a humorous lyric about the mock trial competition. She and Alisha were going to sing it to the theme song from
The Beverly Hillbillies
. Dr. Lassiter had agreed to attend, and Mr. Humphrey would make a surprise entrance toward the end of the meal. Several mothers were going to bring snacks. Yvette Fisher's mother had baked a cake.

It was going to be a fun day.

43

The die is cast.

J
ULIUS
C
AESAR

R
ecently, Tao had thought about the words he'd heard at the river near the refugee camp and wondered again why he was in America. It was enough to be in harmony with the will of the One who loved him, but deep down he suspected there was something more.

Tao didn't see himself as a man of destiny. Self-centered ambition was not his area of weakness. He was from a respected family in his home village, but the notion that one man could make a difference across an entire society was more American than Asian. Tao saw himself as the part of a larger whole, a perspective that helped him relate to the biblical idea of the church as a group of many members working together.

Thus, it was a challenge for him to be in isolation at the school. He was surrounded by hundreds of people, but they were in a different world. His relationship with the Tuesday group was a hidden secret known only to himself. Thus, his heart's cry for fellowship with others during the workday was not satisfied on a practical level.

He prayed about the situation and the Lord answered by enriching Tao's inner communion with the Lord himself. The janitor enjoyed a relationship with Jesus that filled the void left by interaction with people during the day. Perhaps that was why he came to America, he concluded. In aloneness he found a greater intimacy.

The bomber sat in the parking lot of the high school until the first wave of his classmates flowed through the front doors on their way home. Many of the young people were laughing and smiling. The components of the bomb were hidden under a sheet on the floorboard of his vehicle. It would take three trips to transport everything into the building. The bomber wanted to make his trips at the proper time. He didn't want to attract attention by being so early that the number of people still roaming the halls would make secrecy a problem, and he didn't want to be too late and risk being questioned by a teacher or member of the administration.