The Twisted Thread (9 page)

It had taken weeks of rather clandestine work to gather even that much. And still, news about Edward was hard to come by. Then Fred had unearthed the library card with the distinctive handwriting. The archives were what was left, apart from combing Google or Porter's office, where Fred assumed some of the more sensitive material that heads had access to was still kept. And breaking into Porter's office was something he couldn't face. He felt a queasy parallel between himself and Malcolm Smith; he was beginning to understand what it might be like to live with a noxious obsession, and it had been only a couple of months. Opening the next drawer in the cabinet, marked merely “1950s,” Fred was visited with a brief panic that what he found out was going to change him in ways he would not find comfortable.

As an artist, he was supposed to savor difficulty: it was supposed to feed his work, keep him productively off balance. As a teacher with a safe, pleasant job, this prospect horrified him. He wondered for a moment what side of his personality would win out: the part that could spend ten-hour days in the studio week after week, painting with both wild focus and abandon, or the part that happily traded Sox gossip with Alice Grassley while nursing a cup of coffee. Knowing exactly how the year would progress in step by measured step. But that wasn't true, he told himself. Look how this year was ending. Then, toward the back of the file, he found a folder marked with the same handwriting that graced the old catalog card. He was on the brink of grabbing it when he heard a sound.

Footsteps, unmistakably. Someone was walking down the tunnel. And not exactly stealthily. He had to move fast. He wouldn't examine the folder tonight. And he couldn't risk being discovered in this room. Slipping out of the archives, dousing the penlight, and pocketing the keys, Fred cocked his head for an instant and followed the sound of the retreating feet.

Trotting slightly to keep up, Fred rounded a bend and saw, without a huge amount of surprise, Scotty Johnston. “Scotty,” he called, “slow down.” He saw the boy's back tense, the flicker of doubt run through his body as he decided whether to bolt or be caught. But Fred knew what he'd decide; he'd coached the boy since his freshman year, and he was more familiar with Scotty than he cared to be.

Scotty was the captain of the varsity soccer, squash, and crew teams. He was going to Harvard, as had his brothers, father, uncles, and grandfather, a thicket of relatives just as blond, tall, and self-assured. That he was also a major smoker of pot, probably a dealer, and almost universally disliked by the faculty hadn't prevented his acceptance. His erg scores probably had something to do with that. He was a moderately good student but an absolutely brilliant athlete. Magically, the marijuana had yet to diminish his performance. Six foot three, broad at the shoulders, the owner of blue eyes and a tapered waist, Scotty Johnston was catnip to girls and rowing coaches. Easygoing when it came to judging character, Fred had found that, after four years of exposure to Scotty, he had come to loathe him. With a prickle of discomfort, he was looking forward to what could be referred to in only the most technical terms as busting Scotty's ass.

But he wasn't prepared for the grin on the boy's face. “Hey, Mr. Naylor. Nice night for a little B and E. Find what you were looking for? Good move to score the keys from Jackson. Easiest mark in the crew.”

The only solution was to hit back as sharply as possible. A classic soccer move. Look up the midfield, then strike for the goal just when the goalie thought you were going to send the ball to a fullback. “Whose word carries more weight, Scott? Mine or yours? Ms. Phelan's been looking into that midnight raid when you were caught running to Claire's dorm. Anything to do with that situation? If I were you, I'd be careful about leveling accusations right now.” Joyce had sent out an all-faculty e-mail late Monday night, letting teachers know that Scotty had been seen hightailing it back from Portland. Fred had also heard that Scotty had been questioned by police that afternoon, but not about the outcome of that interrogation. People were being tight-lipped about their conversations with the police, maintaining a level of discretion unusual for Armitage's population, who traded gossip with the vigor and expertise of village women.

Fred would never have predicted what happened next. A look of pure panic ran across Scotty's face, and he looked as nervous as any scrawny kid on the first day of school. He charged past Fred and back down the tunnel. Too surprised to follow, Fred heard Scotty's quickly moving footsteps and then the slam of a door. Heading in the direction that the terrified boy had come from—it had been Claire's name, Fred was sure of it, that had sparked the fear—he went looking for traces of what Scotty might have been up to. As soon as he got out of the tunnels, he'd call security, and all of it would most certainly mean more trouble for Scotty, both with the school and perhaps with the police. He'd have to come up with some excuse about why he himself had been down there, but there was nothing for that. Satisfying his curiosity about what Scotty had been doing here would take only a minute. Touching the handles of the doors that lined the tunnel, Fred found them uniformly cool until he reached one about a third of the way down: the knob was warm, as if recently palmed. Opening the lock with the skeleton key, Fred was surprised to find himself in a storeroom with a lot of old computer equipment. He was even more surprised to find that the plastic roof and screen of a monitor near the door was almost hot to the touch. Someone, probably Scotty, had taken some care to unplug it and try to hide the cords below some plastic sheeting, but Fred guessed that he had been using this outmoded Mac. Fred looked more closely in the beam of his penlight: yes, he wasn't imagining it. The computer had been wired for dial-up. A few weekends before, he had gone to Connecticut to help his mother at last change hers over to a faster service. For some reason, Scotty Johnston had wanted to use the Internet without resorting to the school's network.

CHAPTER 9

T
uesday morning, Madeline returned from breakfast to dis
cover that the girls were no longer nestled in their sleeping bags on her floor. They hadn't straightened anything up but had managed to leave a short note, signed by Lee, on the coffee table. “Thank you for your hospitality, Miss Christopher.” Madeline had bumped into the tall, skinny police officer on the way back from the dining hall and asked to talk to him or one of his colleagues as soon as possible. The news about the Reign of Terror and Robespierre, as adolescent as it all sounded in the safety of daylight, was sure to be significant. He had assured her he would send someone to speak with her right away. But by the time Madeline stepped back into her apartment and glanced at Lee's note, Grace had pounced, saying, “There you are,” as if eating breakfast were something to be ashamed of. Grace looked a wreck, her eyes red not so much with grief but with anxiety, the skin drawn around her small, sour mouth. They had to supervise the removal of the girls from the dorm, she scolded. The poor things were traumatized and had to be escorted to other rooms for the remainder of the year. The ones who stayed, of course. Quite a few were already being packed up and whisked home, where their parents could make sure nothing could happen to them, now that Armitage had been revealed as a dangerous and scandal-tainted place.

“Sarah has reassigned everyone,” Grace said and shook a list in front of Madeline's nose. “Would you please take this copy and go see if you can help them out?” It was the lot of the intern to be treated as the dorm head's personal servant, and Madeline had no option but to agree. She brushed her teeth first, as if proper dental hygiene might be useful armor when dealing with teenagers unstrung by death and horror. If anything, the girls were more distraught than the day before. The reality of Claire's killing and the stark fact of the baby's disappearance were growing clearer to them, as was the loss of their cell phones and laptops. Madeline frequently had to pause and let one of them sob on her shoulder between bouts of stuffing duffel bags with lingerie that would have made most starlets blush. She really ought to have spent more time in their rooms this year; it was disconcerting to discover so much about them so late in the game and in such dreadful circumstances. For instance, their ironclad belief in beauty as a protective agent. “Claire was so pretty,” one mousy freshman kept saying, as if the girl's looks alone ought to have prevented her death.

Throughout, Madeline tried to listen for whispers about Claire, the Reign, anything that might have led to her murder. But the girls weren't just hysterical, they were frightened. No one said much of anything; they just sniffled, zipped, and gravely accepted Madeline's help as they pulled together their luxurious belongings and prepared to move. The morning rolled on: illegal tapestries were unpinned from the walls; beds were stripped; washing machines whirred. It was the activity that would have spun through the last days of school in any case. Just now it was accelerated and broken up with fits of tears and the bulky presence of police, who were still roaming the halls and poking around in Claire's room, which they had sealed off with what seemed to Madeline an ungodly amount of yellow tape printed with
CRIME SCENE
down its garish length. The girls worked quickly. They were eager to be gone.

Occasionally, Madeline spotted Grace sitting on an overstuffed suitcase, but she didn't catch a glimpse of Harvey or Marie-France, who either hadn't been asked or, more likely, had simply decided that offering such assistance didn't befit Armitage's senior faculty. At noon, Grace allowed her twenty minutes to get lunch, a reprieve for which Madeline was grateful. She sat at her usual place in the Commons and looked around for Fred. It would have been deeply reassuring to talk with him about this Robespierre business. As both an Armitage graduate and a more experienced teacher, he might have light to shed on it that would render the whole thing a little less ghoulish. But Fred was nowhere to be found, and to Madeline's surprise, it was Lee Hastings who came up to her. Lee grasped a tray that held mostly raw vegetables, a meager roll, and what was obviously skim milk, gray and watery. Madeline's own plate was home to a slab of corned beef and onion rings. How was it possible that these teenagers always had the upper hand, even when it came to nutritional choices? Weren't they the ones who were supposed to have all these unchecked appetites? Madeline asked Lee to sit down, pleased to have the company.

But Lee declined with a short nod and Madeline felt a slight sting of rejection, noting even so that these were the tactics by which Lee and Claire and their kind worked. An invitation that you allowed yourself to find gratifying, followed by a sliver of rejection that left you dangling and uncertain of anything except their power to wound. Lee had something to add to her curt dismissal. “Miss Christopher, please don't take this badly. But Olu, Portia, Suzy, and I were talking. We would really prefer it if you didn't say anything to anyone about what we told you last night.” What was interesting, Madeline thought later, was that Lee expected Madeline to do her bidding. Or at least she gave every impression of expecting that, even if she knew her request was irrational at worst and at best unlikely to be fulfilled. For a moment, Madeline experienced a craven desire only to please this tall, commanding girl and had a direct taste of what it would be like to be subject to the girls of the Reign. Yet her next response was unequivocal and, she thought with some pride, grown-up. Picking up an onion ring, she said, “Lee, don't be ridiculous. You know I can't possibly do that. It's not because I'm that eager to expose your”—and here she struggled for a word, since her first inclination had been to use the phrase
freaky cult,
substituting the more benign
group
—“but you and I both know it might have something to do with Claire's death. And anything that can help the police find out what happened has to be discussed.” She met Lee's glacial gaze with only a mildly pounding heart and watched the girl stalk with her irreproachable lunch back to the table she had secured with Portia, Suzy, and Olu. Madeline ate her whole platter of corned beef and went back for thirds of sweetened iced tea, all as they watched and whispered from their perch three tables away.

When she got up, she felt their cool stares follow her. Thank God, she thought, it's the end of the year. I could never have lived with this for more than a few weeks. On her return to the dorm, she helped move five sophomores to a few vacant spaces on the other side of campus. They'd looked a little like refugees, toting laundry baskets full of clothes on their heads. The image was slightly marred by the fact that the clothes spilling from a single container cost more than most Kosovars spent on an entire house.

Madeline did not encounter Lee and her coconspirators for the rest of the afternoon, and by four, she was back in the now-empty dorm. Grace, to her relief, was occupied elsewhere. Her phone was beeping with new messages. More from Kate and one from a man with a deep voice who said his name was Matt Corelli from the Armitage Police and he understood she wanted to speak with him. He had stopped by, but she hadn't been in. Could she please get in touch as soon as possible? She rang and was slightly relieved when the call flipped instantly to voice mail. It was blisteringly hot, and she went then to take a shower but discovered that she was entirely out of shampoo.

Well, that would be easy enough to find. She doubted the girls had packed with complete care and guessed that in their showers she'd find some partially full containers of Pantene she could scavenge. She took a shopping bag with her so she could hide her ill-gained booty should Grace be stalking the halls. But the first-floor bathroom was unusually clean; the custodians must have come through already. The second floor, still unscrubbed, held a treasure trove of bath beads and conditioners that claimed they'd do everything from giving your hair volume to boosting your self-esteem. Pretty impressive claims for a detangler, Madeline thought as she guiltily plucked the bottles from the shower stalls, reassuring herself that (1) she would actually finish off these products and not waste them and (2) she'd recycle all the containers. Still, she felt rather furtive as she crept out of the bathroom and down the hall with her rustling bag full of wickedly perfumy smells.

Then she heard someone walking behind her. She paused and realized the sounds were actually coming from the third floor. Someone was up there and about to descend the staircase. Madeline hopped into an empty room along the corridor, not wanting to be caught with her stash. She guessed it was the police, collecting, checking, investigating, whatever it was that police did, but she had the door cracked to peer out at whoever passed. To her total surprise, it was Harvey Fuller, and he was heading down the hall, back to the far wing of the dorm where he lived. He was going at a tremendous clip, body bent forward, head lowered, and Madeline got an impression of deep strain. She was intensely relieved as well that her childish instinct to hide had been a useful one. Harvey would be just about the last person she would have wanted to greet with armfuls of the girls' shampoo.

Still, it was extremely disconcerting. The only reason he could have had to be up there was to look at Claire's room. And what would draw Harvey Fuller there, and why would it have so upset him? What was really unusual, thought Madeline, was that she had never seen Harvey experiencing any kind of emotion before. It was too much to think about all at once, and she wanted to call the detective again.

Madeline sneaked back to her apartment, put her new assortment of goodies in the bathroom, and chose something peachy called Afternoon Storm for her hair. Just as she finished showering, she heard the phone ring and, still streaming with water, ran to grab it. It was Matt Corelli.

He was in town, he explained, and wouldn't need to return to Armitage until later this evening. Would she mind coming in to meet him in the next hour or so? “But won't I have trouble getting off campus?” she asked. He'd take care of it, he said and asked, a little sheepishly, if she'd mind meeting him at Ali's. He hadn't had a chance to eat all day.

“I love Ali's,” Madeline said and thought that she was actually going to look forward to speaking with this polite man who also appreciated falafel. They arranged to meet at five, which gave Madeline a few minutes to check e-mail and otherwise catch her breath. Porter had written several all-faculty notes, alerting them that classes lasting no more than forty minutes would start again on Thursday. Memorial services for Claire were being planned, with one taking place tomorrow on the Knoll at seven in the evening. Grief sessions were being held in the wellness center. Sports practices would also resume on Thursday, not with any intent of sending students off to competitions but because physical release was an important part of healing. Blah blah blah, thought Madeline. Porter was usually crisper than that, less prone to cliché. But perhaps fear and shock were enough to rob even the most articulate of originality.

Madeline then ignored several e-mails from Kate, who'd resorted to another means of communication since her phone calls were going unreturned, and wrote one to Fred that said, “How are you holding up? I stole all the shampoo the girls left behind. Need to talk to you about something weird.” By then it was 4:45, and she glanced out at the weather. Gigantic thunderheads had massed in the west, and although she would have preferred to bike down to Ali's, since it was less than a mile away, she decided to take her car in case it poured.

The detective was already there, standing in front of the laundromat. They had met very briefly the morning Claire died, but Madeline had assumed he had a lot more significant people to talk to than the intern. But as he shook her hand and held her eyes, she was conscious of feeling important. He was good at that, she guessed, making people feel at ease, making people feel listened to.

As they entered, Ali was shouting into a cell phone in Arabic, and he motioned to them to sit down on the bench that ran in front of a row of washing machines. Ali hung up at last. “Sisters,” he said, shaking his head. His youngest, at eighteen, had decided she wasn't going to go to university and would instead marry a barber in Damascus. “A barber,” he said. “What kind of life is she going to have with a barber? And without an education. Anyway, what can I get you?” It was peaceful here, too early for the dinner rush or a horde of people wanting to wash their clothes after work.

Matt ordered a falafel and shawarma sandwich, and Madeline ordered two, one for now and the other one probably, too. Ali jotted down their orders and said he was glad to have some police protection, with everything going on up there. He pointed upward with his hand, implying the sprawl of the academy. Matt laughed, and the sound had an unhinged edge to it. Madeline guessed he hadn't had much occasion in the last two days to find humor in many situations. But it was funny. If anyone was less in need of police protection in Armitage or Greenville, it was Ali Khalid. He was tall, powerfully built, and moved around his tiny kitchen with caged grace. They watched Ali heat up the oil and start to shape the chickpea patties from a tub of tan batter. His phone rang again, and he was speaking loudly in Arabic as the falafel began to fry.

“I wonder something,” Madeline said. “I wonder how running a falafel stand inside a laundromat in a small Massachusetts town stacks up against life as a Damascene barber?”

Matt looked at her. “Remember, he's an eldest son. He sends everything he makes back home. He's got six, seven sisters and a mother who's a widow.” Then he asked Madeline if she knew that Ali lived with an elderly lady in town and did all her yard work in exchange for rent.

“How do you know all this?” Madeline asked.

“I'm a cop,” Matt said. “People have a bizarre habit of talking to us.” And Madeline thought it wasn't that he was a policeman; more, it was the way he did his work, paying attention with a strict, almost unnerving intensity.