POLICE REPORT
Case No: 623347-98
Date: February 7, 2004
Reporting Officer: Det. David Lane
Incident: Body of 14-yr-old male student found frozen in woods behind St. Marguerite’s school.
Reason for Involvement:
Police were dispatched to the Outdoor Education facility of St. Marguerite’s Catholic School on Saturday February 7 after a teacher found the body of fourteen-year-old Bobby Hansen, lying in the snow.
Hansen had last been seen the night before after dinner. He left residence without a coat and wearing indoor shoes.
Action:
Police arrived, along with EMTs at 9:55 a.m. and were escorted to the woods by the director of residence. Paramedics pronounced the boy dead.
Residence students and staff were interviewed, but none remembered seeing Bobby after dinner. Nobody knew why he had left in the middle of the night. His roommate did report that Bobby sometimes walked in his sleep.
The door to the outside was found unlocked.
Conclusion:
The medical examiner confirmed that Bobby Hansen froze to death, somewhere between 1:00 and 3:00 a.m. on Saturday, February 7.
She waited until she arrived home that night before calling Morgan back.
“Is it just me, or does it seem like there’s way more to that story?” she said.
“I agree. Unfortunately, we’re not going to find out.”
“Why not?” She’d already been trying to figure out a way to interview Detective Lane without getting Morgan in trouble.
“That was his last case,” Morgan said, reading her mind. “He retired the next week.”
“So? We can still find him at home, can’t we?”
“Sure. If by home you mean Mount Pleasant Cemetery.”
Jil felt the wind shoot out of her. “The guy’s dead?”
“Sorry, Jil.”
“No, don’t be. Thanks for everything you’ve done on this case.”
Morgan didn’t say anything right away.
“What?” she asked.
“Nothing. I know what you’re going to say so I’m not even going to put it out there.”
She chuckled. “No.”
“You really would make a great cop.”
“I tried that, remember? I hated it.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“But I appreciate having you on the inside.”
“For all your theoretical questions,” Morgan interjected.
She grinned, even though he couldn’t see it. Always theoretically.
Chapter Thirteen
Knowing she had no hope of turning off her brain, and seeing that at least one hour of daylight remained, Jil quickly slipped into running gear, and popped one earphone in. She heard her mother’s voice in her head—though Aimee had probably never said this to her. Don’t walk alone at night listening to music!
Jil compromised. She’d enjoy her music with one ear, and listen for murderers and rapists with the other.
For a fleeting moment, she considered bringing that gun of Padraig’s, but decided she didn’t feel comfortable carrying it. It reminded her that danger lurked behind every conceivable cache, and that made her nervous. Not because of the danger, but because of the paranoia that could set in if someone allowed themselves to think that way.
During the first block, she limped along, her unwilling muscles so used to being cramped behind a desk or in a car that they’d forgotten what exercise felt like.
She stopped to prop her leg up on a rock and stretch some blood into it. Heel cord stretches, hamstrings, calves—nothing wanted to work today. After a good five minutes of stretching warm muscles, she began again. This would be so much easier with someone there to pull her along. Someone with four legs, specifically. For months, she’d wanted a dog—a Great Dane—but Tara didn’t want more responsibility. Ironic, since she was now engaged and pregnant.
Now, Jil realized, she could get any sort of dog she wanted.
Two more half-running blocks, and something suddenly released in her legs. “Ah,” she breathed, relieved, as she was finally able to take off. She visualized Tara, like a ball and chain, dropping from her ankle and rolling down the sidewalk toward an open gutter. That almost made her smile.
If she could finally get over her, might there be room in her life for a hot blond principal?
Who was not only straight but married she reminded herself.
What was it with her and out-of-reach women?
Dusk approached quickly these days. Twilight had set in atop the mature trees behind the park, and the lamplights on the neighborhood properties came on. She turned the corner that would set her on the loop back home to her warehouse loft.
Her building in view, she bent down to stretch again. As she walked the last block to the main entrance, she saw a light-colored CUV slowly pull away from the curb, driving away from her. She ducked behind her own truck, peeking out to read the license plate. In the half-dark, she couldn’t make out the digits.
She hurried inside and rode the elevator to her loft, glad that her lights came on automatically, and she immediately closed the front curtains. She locked the front door and set the alarm, then went upstairs to shower, keeping the bathroom door open to listen for anything that might disturb her.
*
By now, the morning page had begun to lose its novelty. “Ms. Kinness, please come to the office. Ms. Kinness.”
Jil put down her glasses and made sure to lock the door before heading into Jess’s office. This time, she knocked on the side door that came in to where the bookshelf used to be. Jil heard a lock slide back, and Jess opened the door.
“Hi.” Jil stepped inside. She looked through the window next to the common door just in time to see Buck Weekly leaving the main office.
Jess pulled down the shade to give them some privacy, and followed Jil’s gaze. “Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked seriously.
“Tell you what?”
“That you’re having a troublesome work relationship?”
“There’s nothing troublesome about it,” Jil replied. “He’s overstepping his boundaries, and I resent it. If he keeps it up, there will be no professional relationship. He’s not my boss.”
Jess nodded, as if this weren’t the first time she’d heard this complaint. Jil wondered how much of her workday Jess spent fielding problems with the staff.
“What did he say?”
“That you refused to hand in your report cards to him. Is that true?”
“No.”
“Really? So you have handed them in?”
“No.”
Jess tilted her head. “What’s up?”
“I’m not finished yet. I wanted my latest test scores to be included. He wanted me to give him the report cards almost two weeks before they were due and I said no.”
Jess just looked at her. “And?”
Jil sighed. “And I don’t like the guy.” She hadn’t meant to confess any of this, but for some reason, she couldn’t be bothered lying about something else when it already felt like her whole life was one big lie.
“Julia, he’s a good mentor for you,” Jess said, still adopting the party line. “He’s a model citizen. He’s taught here for—”
“I know, I know. Thirty years. I’ve heard it all.”
“Maybe he would help you cope with the fundamentalists in your class. You know, he does have some very creative ideas.”
“Jess, if he was in my classroom any more, he’d be teaching the course.”
Jess looked surprised. “What do you mean?”
“Is it part of his job to sit in?”
“No,” she replied, frowning. “Unless he’s been invited to participate. I mean, usually teachers do observe for a few days in the first week—perhaps—but they stop coming almost immediately.”
“He hasn’t.”
“How often is he in there?”
“At least twice a week. Lately, almost every day
.”
“No, no. That’s not right.”
Jil breathed a sigh of relief. She felt like she was unburdening a huge weight. “He arrives unannounced, sits at the back, and interrupts my class. On Monday, I’d finally had enough. I told him I wasn’t feeling well, and asked if he’d take my class.”
“Did he?”
“Of course.”
“And what did you do?”
“Other work. It’s absolutely ridiculous. I feel like I’m in a fishbowl.”
“This is very interesting,” Jess murmured, tucking her feet up.
“Yeah, interesting is one word for it. Annoying is the word I’d like to choose.”
“I wonder why he’s doing it.”
Jil shrugged and shook her head. “I have no idea. Maybe it’s a control issue. I don’t know.”
Jess exhaled slowly. “I’d say I’m sorry for calling you down, but in light of what you’ve said, I guess it’s good that we had a little chat. I’ll have to deal with this. I’m sorry to hear about this problem.”
Jil tried to rearrange her face to hide all the roiling emotion that bubbled over. Why did Buck get to her so much? It’s not like she was surprised he’d come to see Jess, but she was still indignant about being called up on the carpet for something as innocuous as not wanting to hand him her report cards.
“I can hand in my report cards directly?” Jil asked.
Jess sighed. “If you’d like,” she said. “I can understand why you wouldn’t want to be scrutinized. Maybe I’d better rethink your mentoring situation.”
“Is it mandatory?”
“Not really. Just recommended. We all have teacher-mentors. Giovanni DiTullio was mine when I first started.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Mmm hmm. And when I was a VP, Mark Genovese was my mentee. This is a good arrangement. It takes some pressure off you as a teacher.”
“Except that it’s putting more pressure on me.”
“Okay,” Jess conceded. “I won’t make you pair with Buck anymore. But I’m also not going to be the one to tell him. If you don’t want him as a mentor, you have to tell him yourself.”
It seemed fair. Reasonable. But also impossible.
She noticed that the furniture in the far side of the room had been rearranged. The small table that normally sat on the opposite wall had been dragged over to the newly-discovered door, almost blocking the entrance.
“Jess? Why is that table so close to the door?” When she’d come in that way, Jess had been standing there, and she hadn’t noticed.
“Security,” Jess replied, then looked as though she wished she hadn’t said anything.
“From what?”
She looked at the door, but didn’t answer.
“Is someone coming in here uninvited?”
Jess wavered for a moment. “I think I might be making too much of it,” she said finally. “But it seems to me that when I come in in the mornings, some things are not where I’ve left them at night. I’m usually the last to leave, and the first to arrive, but somehow, things are going missing.”
“Anything important?”
Jess sighed. “Yes.”
Jil waited.
“It’s nothing.”
“Well, it’s obviously something.”
“I can’t really tell you.”
“Because it’s me or because you’re the principal?” Jil said, her tone slightly mocking.
Jess tilted her head. “It’s one thing for a principal to turn a blind eye,” she said quietly. “It’s another thing to let our personal lives become public.”
“I’m not planning on taking out a news broadcast,” Jil returned evenly. “What’s missing, Jess?”
“A piece of jewelry,” she said. She didn’t specify from whom, and Jil didn’t ask.
“What does it look like?’
“Why? What are you going to do?”
Jil stared at her. “I’m going to take out a news broadcast.”
Jess smiled reluctantly. “It’s a ring.”
“Diamond?”
Jess pursed her lips. “Yes.”
“Gold or silver?”
“Would you like me to draw you a picture?”
Jil waited, and Jess sighed. “White gold. Tension setting. It has my name engraved in it too, in case you were planning on hiring a PI.”
Jil willed herself to maintain a straight face. “Why did you leave it here?”
“Too many questions.”
Jil said nothing. First trick of investigation—let the suspect fill the silence.
“This is where I…took it off, and this is where it stayed. In my desk. I can’t imagine what happened to it—unless I’ve lost it. I’m probably suspicious over nothing.”
Suspicious enough to move your furniture around.
“I’m sorry about what’s happening,” Jess said, changing the subject abruptly. “I will speak to Buck about visiting your class, if that would improve the situation.”
“Thanks.” If the line had been blurry before, it was damn well unreadable now. Her head reeled, because she was fairly sure she knew where Jess’s ring had gone.
“I’ve got to run. I have a meeting this afternoon for a charity event, but first thing tomorrow, I’ll get to the bottom of this, okay?”
“Sure,” Jil said. “Charity awaits. Starving kids in Africa?”
“No, dogs actually.” Jess rolled her eyes a little. “An old friend of mine runs the SPCA downtown, and he asked me to pop in to this meeting tonight. Wants to pick my brain.”
Jil smiled. “If you see a Great Dane waiting for a home, let me know.”
“A Great Dane?” Jess’s brows shot up. “You want a dog?”
“Yeah.”
“Feeling lonely?”
Such an innocuous question, but there it was again, that damn annoying pricking of her eyes. What the hell was the matter with her?
“Sorry,” Jess said gently.
“It’s all right. The loft is quiet, you’re right. Or maybe I just don’t like running alone at night.”
Jess looked at her curiously. “Leave me your number, and I’ll see what I can do. Henri says the big dogs are hard to get rid of, because no one wants to feed them.”
“I’ll bet.”
“He could probably get you a reasonable rate.”
“Yeah, well, it would be nice if I didn’t have to eat cat food in order to feed my dog,” Jil joked as she wrote down her number.
Jess smiled. “I’ll let you know.”
“Thanks.”
As Jil left the office—the same way she’d come in—she wondered why Buck would bother complaining to Jess now. They hadn’t exactly had a warm and fuzzy relationship up until this point. Unless, as Jess said, it hadn’t been much at all. Unless, perhaps, he was just looking for an excuse to get into her office. If he was using the meeting as an opportunity to do something else. Something like taking a key, perhaps? Spying? Feeling Jessica out for any information she might have?
Jil went back to her office, concentrating so hard on the what ifs that she almost missed the room. And as she doubled back, she saw it—stuck into the side of the door. A note. Sealed with red wax. Bex’s seal hadn’t been clear, but this one was. She stared at it, trying to make out the strange initials. The ornate letters stamped into the wax—almost Baroque—might have been SoA, but she couldn’t be sure.
Inside, the slanted writing, the texture of the paper; everything about it was the same as the note Bex had shown her. She ducked into her office, closing the door tight before she unfolded the paper.
WATCH YOUR BACK.
She folded it back up slowly and let out a long breath.
Buck did not show up at her second period class. Neither did Theo. Good thing, because the day’s topic was Islam, and if he’d objected to Buddhism, she wondered what his reaction would be to the Middle East.
Out of curiosity, she opened her attendance notebook and counted the absences. Theo had missed twenty-three cla
sses. When he’d missed over half the material, she could ask to have him removed from her class, which meant if he missed again tomorrow and Friday, he would be out. She crossed her fingers and hoped. It would certainly make Bex breathe a lot easier, as she would herself. He was a constant axe in her side as she tried to convey at least part of the course information to the students.
She felt guilty about not paying enough attention to the teaching aspect of her job. The students had signed up for a class, and even if it was just a cover job, her students were affected. Was she taking the easy way out? Was she challenging them? Was she doing her job? If she looked at herself seriously, she’d have to conclude that she could do better.
She made a firm resolution to concentrate on teaching—whether or not someone was rifling through her personal items and potentially parking outside her house at night. Whether or not she got cryptic notes under her door and hid students in her office for no apparent reason. Whether or not the principal at the school had reasons to be concerned about her office being pilfered. She would damn well do her job, and stick it out until the end of term. Hell, she might even stay on for next term just to piss off Buck Weekly.
With new determination, she launched into a lively lesson, her students perking up when they saw the enthusiasm on her face.
*
That afternoon, when the bell rang for lunch, Jil hurried down to the cafeteria to seek out Brian. “I need to know where Marcel is,” she whispered.
He looked around furtively. “What for?”
“There’s something I have to do, and I want to know that he’s safely out of the way.”
“What do you have to do?”
“Something.”
Brian puffed out his cheeks. “What kind of something?”
“A little look around.”
“Wish I wouldn’t have said nuthin’.” Brian shook his head. “If you go in there, and he finds you, you’ll be toast. I mean it.”
“Why? What do you think he’d do?”
“You don’t know Marcel,” Brian said. “He’s a mean son of a bitch when he wants to be.”
UnCatholic Conduct Page 15
