The Watcher in the Wall (2 page)

But her dad had hurt himself, fallen hard off an oil barge onto the dock, and so he’d moved her in with her aunt and uncle in Southaven, which was pretty well Memphis, inland from the river and far from what few friends she’d accumulated, miles away from her dad.

“He kinda gave me up,” she told Windermere. “Said he couldn’t raise a daughter while he was laid up in recovery.”

“You think you’ll go back when he’s better?” Windermere asked her.

Rene scuffed her toe on the sidewalk. “Dunno,” she said. “It’s been almost a year. I get the feeling he’s enjoying the break.”

•   •   •

So that was Rene. Quiet, downcast, and lonely, rarely with a smile on her face. Taller than every girl in senior class, and meek as a mouse. But a decent person, a nice girl. Windermere found she didn’t mind walking home with Rene, kind of enjoyed the company, at least when they’d made it far enough from school that Wanda and her friends couldn’t see.

Wanda Rose was the queen of Martin Luther King High, the most popular girl in the school. She set the fashion trends, made the social rules, determined who mattered. She’d decided pretty quick that Rene Duclair didn’t matter, and the rest of the school followed her lead, even Windermere, who was kind of too-tall herself, kind of embarrassingly bookish, who was secretly grateful that it was Rene Duclair who’d captured Wanda’s attention, and not her.

Windermere had always been too smart to really fit in. She’d always been brash and competitive, an overachiever. She pulled top-of-the-class
grades, and she ate lunch alone. She was lonely. She envied Wanda Rose and her circle of friends, ached to be included.

So Windermere didn’t stand up for Rene when Wanda and her friends picked on her. When the girls’ locker room echoed with Wanda’s laughing, mocking singsong. “Big Bird, Big Bird, go fly away
.
”

Windermere didn’t set Wanda straight, not even as Rene was breaking down, fleeing in tears, even as she knew that Rene could really use the friendship. Windermere did nothing. She stood on the sidelines and watched as Wanda’s taunts got louder and the chorus grew behind her, watched as Rene withdrew, more and more.

And then one day Rene walked out of school and didn’t come back, not ever, and Wanda Rose and her friends just kept on laughing, as if they didn’t know, as if they hadn’t played a part in driving Rene to do what she’d done.

They graduated without Rene. Wanda Rose was the prom queen. She married a dentist, moved on to another chapter of her charmed, lovely life, and if she ever gave another thought to Rene Duclair, she didn’t show it.

But Windermere did. Windermere thought about Rene Duclair, couldn’t escape her. Windermere hated Wanda Rose for what she’d done to Rene. Hated herself even more for the part she’d played in it. She’d gone off to college mired in guilt, unable to shake Rene Duclair from her mind.

She graduated, got her law degree. Knew pretty quick that she was headed for police work. The Bureau. Took a post in Miami, hit the streets, went to work, and it turned out she was a damn good cop. She’d done good in the world, more than her share, and gradually Rene Duclair faded from her mind.

But now she was back, and Wanda, too, fueled by Adrian Miller, this latest tragedy. All that guilt and self-loathing had come flooding back, everything, and Windermere didn’t have the first clue how to deal with it.

<
6
>

The next day,
Windermere was waiting when Stevens came into the office. Knew from the look on his face that he’d had the same kind of night she’d had.

“The poor kid,” he told her, easing into his chair. “Had people posting pictures of him all over Facebook, doctored up so it seemed like he’d wet his pants.”

He laughed a little. “Andrea’s all out for justice. Wants the bullies tarred and feathered, I guess, and who can blame her? I told her I’d see what I could do.”

Windermere sipped her coffee. Felt that twinge again, deep in her gut. Couldn’t see that there was any justice to be had, not here, not in her experience. But she knew Andrea Stevens wouldn’t see it that way. “What are you thinking?” she asked her partner.

Stevens shrugged. “I made a few calls to the Saint Paul PD, told them what Andrea had told me about the jocks and the pictures on Facebook. Maybe they bring a few kids in on bullying charges, but so what? Doesn’t bring Adrian Miller back, does it?”

“No,” Windermere said. “It damn well doesn’t.”

Stevens caught her tone. “You okay?”

She nodded, reached for her coffee mug again. “Of course I’m okay,” she said. “Didn’t sleep well, is all. Mathers hogging all the blankets, you know?”

Stevens laughed again. Then his smile faded. “Andrea wants answers,” he said. “I don’t exactly know how to tell her there’s some things you just can’t make sense of in this world.”

Windermere took another sip of coffee. Saw Rene again, Wanda. Wanda the prom queen, Rene just gone.

“You got that right,” she said. “Shit.”

•   •   •

Life went on, though.

Kirk Stevens pushed Adrian Miller from his mind, tried to focus on the job. Went back to chucking paperwork, tidying up the last scraps of that sex-trafficking ring. Mostly busywork at this point, a few low-level thugs and a couple perverts with money, the organized crime units in New Jersey handling most of the actual legwork. The blockbuster stuff, the shootouts and car chases, was long over.

Then Derek Mathers knocked on the door to the office, poked his head inside. “Agent Stevens—Kirk,” he said, still waffling a little on the familiarity side of things. Still getting used to seeing Stevens in CID every day, a colleague, where he once might have been a rival for Windermere’s affection. “Got a couple visitors down at the front door. Your, ah, daughter and her boyfriend.”

Stevens put down the warrant he was scanning. “Andrea?”

“Said she needed to talk to you,” Mathers said. “Something about the Adrian Miller case.”

Across the office, Windermere was watching Stevens. “Uh . . .” Mathers said. “What exactly
is
the Adrian Miller case, you guys?”

“Guess we’re about to find out,” Windermere said, standing.

Stevens blinked, surprised. “You’re coming with?”

“This paperwork is boring the crap out of me, partner. Let’s go see what Andrea has to say.”

She was out the door before Stevens could argue, and he swapped shrugs with Mathers instead, stood, and followed Windermere across CID to the elevators.

<
7
>

The FBI building
was a fortress, a brand-new structure designed to withstand a terrorist attack. Located in Brooklyn Center, northwest of the Twin Cities, it had replaced the Bureau’s previous regional office, whose location in a skyscraper in downtown Minneapolis made it vulnerable to the kinds of threats the FBI tended to fixate on these days, the homeland security stuff, whether from al-Qaeda operatives or the Timothy McVeigh types. Security in the new headquarters was tight, and that meant Andrea Stevens had to wait for her father outside the metal detectors and checkpoints that guarded the building’s inner reaches.

Stevens followed Windermere out past the guards and scanned the lobby, wondering what had spurred his partner’s interest in this Adrian Miller thing. The boy’s death was a tragedy, to be sure, and Andrea no
doubt felt she was doing good by coming all the way out here, but Stevens figured he was on deck to spend an hour or so placating his daughter’s concerns before driving her back to school, nothing more. Adrian Miller was dead, an obvious suicide. It sounded harsh, but what else was there to say?

Andrea was sitting in an easy chair by the bank of windows near the front door, slouched in her seat like your typical bored seventeen-year-old, her blond hair lit gold by the light. She perked up when she saw Stevens and Windermere, and nudged the kid beside her—Calvin, her boyfriend, a thin, lanky boy with a couple of acne patches and an endearingly goofy smile. Both kids stood from their seats as the agents approached.

“Andrea,” Stevens said. “You should be in school, kiddo. What are you doing here?”

Calvin raised his hand, sheepish. “I drove,” he said. “My mom lets me take the car to school sometimes.”

“I have a spare,” Andrea said, glancing at Windermere. “As long as we’re back after lunch, I’m okay.”

“And Calvin?”

Calvin blushed a little bit. “It’s only history, Mr. S.,” he said. “I can just look it all up on Wikipedia when we get back.”

Stevens opened his mouth to argue. Didn’t get the words out before Windermere spoke.

“So what’s up?” she asked the teenagers. “What brought you all the way out here, anyway?”

“It’s about Adrian,” Andrea said. “The kid at my school who died.” She looked at Stevens again. “I know it’s weird that we showed up here, but this stuff—we didn’t want to wait until after school. We couldn’t.”

“Saint Paul PD promised me they’d send someone to talk to those jocks you were telling me about. They—”

“This isn’t about the jocks, Dad,” Andrea said. “This is about the real reason Adrian died. We figured it out.”

“Heck,” Stevens said, feeling his heart break a little. His daughter looked so earnest, like her mom working a case, trying to do good in the world.

She’s from a cop family. Still figures every injustice can be solved with solid police work and a decent attorney.

Windermere seemed to read his expression. “Let’s hear them out, Kirk,” she said. “This doesn’t sound like some misguided crusade.”

“No,” Andrea said, “it’s not like that. It’s . . . Adrian had a friend, this guy Lucas. I think you should hear what he has to say.”

She gestured behind her, down the bank of windows to the far wall, where another teenager stood in the shadows, staring out at the parking lot. He was tall, wore a varsity jacket. But he carried himself with a hunch to his shoulders, like he was trying to shrink or disappear. It had pretty much worked; Stevens hadn’t noticed him until now.

“This is big, Mr. S.,” Calvin said. “It’s really, really big.”

Stevens studied the kid across the lobby. Considered it. He’d been hoping to tie up the last of the sex-trafficking case today. Put a nice bow on it for Drew Harris, Special Agent in Charge of CID, and start casting around for a new bad guy to chase. But Windermere was looking at him, too.

“Whatever it is,” she told him, “it was important enough that they brought this kid out here, partner. We should probably pay attention.”

Stevens looked across the lobby again. Lucas stuck to the shadows, practically a ghost, and Stevens realized he was actually kind of curious.
What could this kid have to tell them that would make a difference in the grand scheme of things? He supposed he was going to find out.

“Okay, sure,” he said. “Bring him on over, then.”

<
8
>

His name was Lucas Horst.
He was a tall, good-looking kid, athletic. Probably played receiver on the Kennedy varsity team—didn’t have the bulk to play tight end, didn’t carry himself with the easy confidence of a quarterback. He sat in the little office and sipped a Coca-Cola and ignored Andrea and Calvin, studied the carpet instead.

“We weren’t friends, me and Adrian,” he told Windermere and Stevens. “Like, not exactly. We didn’t, like, eat lunch together or anything. We hardly ever even hung out.”

“Sure,” Stevens said. “But you knew him.”

Lucas hesitated. Looked over at Andrea and Calvin again. Turned a little bit red, but didn’t say anything.

Windermere studied him. She’d been watching the way he acted around Andrea and Calvin, kind of distant, almost shy. He was keeping a secret, something important.

“Why don’t you kids run off with your dad for a little while,” she told Andrea. “Hit the cafeteria, grab some lunch, okay?”

Andrea balked. Made to argue, but caught the look on Lucas’s face and, bless her, figured it out.

“Come on,” she told Calvin, taking his hand and fairly dragging him from the room. “This is a police station, right? Let’s see if they have any donuts.”

Stevens watched his daughter walk out, then turned back to Windermere. “Everything okay?”

“Go,” Windermere told him. “Everything’s fine. It’s just, we don’t need the peanut gallery hanging around.”

Windermere waited until Stevens had followed Andrea and Calvin from the room. She closed the door behind them and sat down again, across from Lucas.

“Just you and me,” she said. “You’re all right. Nothing you say leaves this room, if you don’t want.”

Lucas nodded, but he didn’t say anything. Just stared down at the carpet beneath Windermere’s desk. Then he sniffled. Spoke without looking up.

“I didn’t actually think he would do it,” he said. “Like, he talked about it a lot, how miserable he was at school, but everybody’s freaking miserable, you know?”

“Yeah,” Windermere said. “I doubt it’s changed much since I was your age.”

“I wasn’t really being truthful, what I said to Andrea’s dad,” Lucas told her. “Me and Adrian hung out a little bit. After school, mostly, in the park. Sometimes at my place, before my dad got home.” He met Windermere’s eyes. “I’m not, like,
gay
. We were just . . . I didn’t want anyone to know. I would have been so screwed if anybody found out.”

His eyes were bright, tears welling. “I made sure nobody suspected anything. I didn’t talk to him in the hall, didn’t hang out with him. I made him meet me a few blocks from school whenever we went to the
park. I didn’t, like,
defend
him when people made fun of him. I knew he was miserable, and I didn’t do anything.” He started to cry. “I just didn’t think he would actually
do
it. But he did. And I could have done something to stop it.”

Windermere pushed a box of Kleenex across the desk. Felt it in her heart for the kid. Figured she could pretty well pinpoint exactly how he was hurting.

“I’m sorry, honey,” she told him, wishing she was more like Stevens, a people person, instead of a blunt instrument, wishing she knew the words to offer comfort. “I’m really, really sorry.”

Lucas blew his nose. Took a moment. “He told me all about how he was going to do it,” he said. “He told me all about it. How he’d rig the noose, where he’d get the rope. He said he had some friend on the Internet, some girl who knew all the best ways.”