Drowning With Others

by Linda Keir

  Before doing anything else, she keyword-searched bracelet.

  No results.

  Moving on, she started scanning, eyes peeled for even the vaguest hint that Cassidy held too special a place in her teacher’s heart. An investigative journalist’s equivalent of the verse Dallas had composed solely for Andi and yet chalked on the board for all to see.

  At the time, Andi had been so flattered by the attention. And while her feelings now were complicated—recognizing that their passion had been real, even if it was wrong—it made her sick to think she’d been naive enough to be taken in by a man who was the same age as she was now. A seventeen-year-old was not a woman.

  She couldn’t let Cassidy be seduced like she had.

  So far, she hadn’t found anything in any of the documents that was unusual beyond seeing her daughter’s name more often than she might have liked. While Cassidy was officially assigned as leader of Group Five: Persons of Interest, she also seemed to have contributed information to groups one through four. Andi’s and Ian’s names cropped up with troubling frequency, too.

  In the file named School Records, Faculty, and Extracurriculars, Andi, Ian, or both were listed as 1996–1997 members of the student body, members of the class (Andi), members of the Cue Sports Society (Ian), and organizers of the spring poetry slam (Andi again). Andi’s name also appeared in a list compiled by Cassidy of the college alma maters of the poetry class.

  She had to give grudging credit to Kelly for the impressive amount of information the kids had collected on both faculty and students. Especially as she scanned their collective Still Needed to Be Done or Determined file:

  —Police reports from the time of Dallas Walker’s disappearance (public record?)

  —Fall grades in Dallas Walker’s class: original marks vs postsemester corrected grades.

  —Exclude random motives, e.g., robbery gone wrong

  —College applications vs acceptances for class members. Did anyone get rejected from first-choice schools as a result of poetry class grade?

  —Persons of Interest Interviews: Curtis Royal (Roy)

  Andi was relieved to see Irregular schedule, not interviewed yet written beside his name.

  Less comforting were the former student interviews in which Cassidy had reported every word Andi and Ian had said about Dallas Walker, from Ian’s description of Dallas as a blowhard to Andi’s comment about his prescient fear of the future.

  Along with their comments were a number of inconsequential interviews with classmates and members of the Cue Sports Society.

  He was cool, but kind of scary. (Clair Sommerfeld Cramer)

  He had the best car of all time. Probably worth six figures at Mecum Auctions now. I can’t believe they found him inside it. (Michael Reynolds)

  I learned a lot from him. Until he disappeared, that is. Do you really think he was murdered? (Crystal Thomas Ronello)

  After everyone and their parents complained about our fall grades, Dallas raised them to what they should have been, I got into Princeton, and everything turned out fine. For me, that is. (Philip Martin)

  One comment triggered a surprisingly familiar stab of jealousy.

  He was flirtatious with the headmaster’s wife, said Roland James, their chemistry teacher. I mean, we all were, but I wouldn’t have been entirely surprised to hear there was some hanky-panky going on there.

  Andi did another keyword search for Miranda Darrow and headmaster’s wife to see if anyone had looked into that particular angle. Finding nothing, she made a note of her own.

  The longest alumni interview by far was that of Georgina Holt Fordham.

  Naturally.

  And just as Georgina had reported, she actually had told Liz Wright, her student interviewer, that most of the guys thought he was kind of a douche, but all the girls thought he was sexy as hell.

  Andi shook her head, growing even more bothered, just like the day she’d found a fiery red hair on Dallas’s dark peacoat.

  “Georgina hugged me because I gave her an A on a paper,” Dallas had said.

  Georgina, who had told Liz in a second interview about her then boyfriend Tommy Harkins and the poetry grade that doomed him to a state school, not that he was all that smart anyway.

  There was more, most of it noise and random gossip and Georgina’s explanations that none of her classmates had anything to do with Dallas’s death because she just knew.

  Georgina had also let slip the one sentence there was no reason at all to blab.

  Other than Dallas’s disappearance, it was a completely uneventful year. Besides Andi Bloom and Ian Copeland’s spectacular breakup and makeup, that is.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Detective Deno Gavras looked like an insurance salesman, thought Cassidy. He wore pleated chinos, a V-neck sweater over a not-too-crisp button-down shirt, and a shapeless sport coat. On his feet were the kind of rubber overshoes she associated with grandparents—not her grandparents, of course, but the kind of grandparents who shoveled their own snow and brought their groceries home in two-wheeled carts via city sidewalks.

  Although, come to think of it, as he and Mr. Kelly conferred while the students slowly straggled in, it looked more like Mr. Kelly was the salesman and Detective Gavras was the reluctant customer, his nods and body language noncommittal in the extreme.

  When the bell rang, Mr. Kelly called the class to attention.

  “Settle down, journos. As promised, we have a real live detective here, and he’s agreed to give us half an hour of his extremely valuable time. So let’s make the most of it. I hope you are as prepared as I asked you to be.”

  It didn’t look to Cassidy like Gavras was busy or in any particular hurry. In fact, he projected a kind of blankness that almost looked like stupidity. But her first impression of a not-too-bright insurance salesman disappeared as soon as he opened his mouth.

  “Can you tell us a little bit about your role with the sheriff’s department, Mr. Gavras?” asked Mr. Kelly quickly, seeming anxious to get the preamble over with.

  “I’ve been on the force sixteen years, detective for five,” said Gavras, in a voice that sounded like he smoked, drank, and yelled enough to have fried his vocal cords. “We investigate any crimes that take place outside municipal jurisdiction and also have agreements with a number of the towns that aren’t big enough to handle their own criminal investigations.”

  “And you’re the lead detective on the Dallas Walker case?”

  “Yes,” said Gavras flatly, folding his arms. He had parked his ass on Mr. Kelly’s favorite desk corner, leaving her teacher to pace in no-man’s-land.

  “Can you think of a case similar to this one, in your experience?”

  “Not in my experience, no.”

  “Is there anything about the evidence that suggests Walker’s death was suspicious in nature—that is, anything other than suicide?”

  Gavras gave Mr. Kelly a look that was so hostile Cassidy would have yelped if it had been fixed on her. But Mr. Kelly didn’t even seem to notice. He must have talked to hundreds of cops and other people who didn’t want to answer his questions, she thought. He would have very thick skin.

  “I told you I wouldn’t talk about any details of the case,” said Gavras.

  “I wouldn’t ask you to reveal anything that’s not public knowledge,” conceded Mr. Kelly.

  “Well, until we conclude our investigation, I can’t tell you what we think.”

  Mr. Kelly took a deep breath and walked around the perimeter of the room, winding up at the back, so he was talking to Gavras across the rows of students. It made Cassidy feel like he was one of them, that they were all facing Gavras, all thinking the same questions.

  She flashed back to Mom all but asking her if she had the hots for Mr. Kelly. God, no. He was awesome, but who looked at their teacher and thought, yeah, I want to get my mouth all over that middle-aged face?

  “Detective Gavras, is the fact that you’re still investigating after two and a half mon
ths unusual?”

  Which was a good question. Were they just not taking this seriously?

  “You tell me,” said Gavras.

  “I’ll tell you what we do know,” said Mr. Kelly. “And it’s not a lot. We know that Dallas Walker was a popular if controversial figure during his time at Glenlake. He was an iconoclast who was known to have let his guard down around the students: He swore in class, asked his students to call him by his first name, and could be capricious in his grading. He also coached, if you can call it that, a pool team or club called the ‘Cue Sports Society.’ One of its former members confirmed that on at least one occasion, he provided them with beer.”

  “Wayne, I told you I would talk about general police procedure, how we solve crimes,” said Gavras, annoyed, the faintest trace of complaint in his voice.

  “Kids don’t learn from generalities, Detective Gavras,” said Mr. Kelly. “Which is why we are investigating the same case as you. We don’t flatter ourselves that we’ll actually be able to solve it, but by following the investigation in the same way a professional journalist would, my students will learn the necessary skills.”

  “In other words, fake news,” said Gavras dryly.

  “We’ve done a lot of research into the background and character of Walker,” continued Mr. Kelly. “We know what he was like. We know when he arrived on campus, when he was reported missing, and when his body was discovered in the lake by Tate Holland.”

  Tate slouched down in his chair as Gavras spotted him and gave him a nod. Cassidy was glad Mr. Kelly didn’t remind everyone that Tate was still on academic probation for the rest of the semester, even if Mr. Kelly had talked him into taking his class.

  “How do you go about identifying suspects, Detective Gavras?” asked Mr. Kelly.

  Gavras took his hands out of his pockets and looked, for the moment, ready to play along. “Well, obviously we analyze the crime scene for physical evidence and look for anything that would point to someone else being present at the time of death. In this case, there wasn’t much to go on. We found a few things in the car we’re looking at. Then, we canvass. If it’s something that happened recently, we knock on doors. If it’s something that happened in the past, we create a timeline and then try to locate the last people who saw him, and so forth.”

  Who was the last person to see Dallas Walker? It could even have been Mom or Dad. Some purely random moment as Walker drove off campus, no one realizing it was the last time the poet would be seen alive.

  Of course, if Walker was murdered, then they wouldn’t have been the last people to see him alive.

  “Do you also try to identify who had motive, means, and opportunity?” asked Mr. Kelly.

  “That’s right, Columbo,” said Gavras with a smirk.

  Once again, Mr. Kelly let that one roll off him. He didn’t try to one-up Gavras—he didn’t even act as if he’d noticed.

  “And you won’t tell us who’s on your list,” confirmed Mr. Kelly.

  Gavras didn’t say anything.

  “Well, as a purely hypothetical activity, these students have assembled a list of suspects,” said Mr. Kelly, walking over to the whiteboard at the side of the room where they’d gradually built their list.

  Noticing it for the first time, Gavras squinted with interest. Cassidy thought he probably had a pair of glasses in an inside pocket and was too vain to put them on.

  “You’re really doing this?” asked Gavras.

  “It’s not much of a list,” said Mr. Kelly, confirming the obvious. Most of the entries consisted of things like Students who got bad grades? Robbery gone wrong? Students in his class? Students in his club? But there were several names.

  Racing through Cassidy’s mind was Students in his class? She had thought nothing of it at the time—just another scribble on the whiteboard during a brainstorming session—but students included Andi Copeland, formerly Bloom. And then Dad, under Students in his club? Suddenly, with actual law enforcement scrutinizing it, Cassidy felt uneasy about the implication that her parents might have been involved.

  She now regretted riding back to school with Jane. Dad, not Mom, probably would have driven her, and she could have asked him again why they broke up during their senior year. Maybe whatever had happened would give them both alibis.

  “Who told you about Roy?” demanded Gavras, perusing the list.

  “We can’t reveal our sources, either,” said Mr. Kelly, eliciting a laugh from the kids even though his tone was completely neutral.

  “Roy totally did it!” said Noah, prompting a bigger laugh.

  Something had been building while the class watched Kelly and Gavras spar, and now, even though Mr. Kelly tried to quiet them with a classic quiet down gesture, it seemed to Cassidy like it might be too late.

  She surprised herself by speaking up. “Despite my classmate’s unfortunate way of phrasing his suggestion, it does seem like Curtis Royal would be a person of interest in any investigation. He has a criminal record and was a known associate of Dallas Walker.”

  Gavras looked like he was ready to walk out the door. “Do you realize how irresponsible this is, Wayne?” he snarled. “Getting these . . . kids to speculate about who might have murdered somebody? We haven’t even determined it was a murder.”

  “These young men and women are getting ahead of themselves, and I apologize,” said Mr. Kelly pointedly to the room and not their guest speaker. “But if you’d be willing to answer any questions that don’t leap to conclusions, I would truly appreciate a few more minutes of your time. If we’re off base, tell us how.”

  Hannah’s hand shot up, and she blurted out her question without waiting to be called on. “Could a teenager get away with a murder?”

  “If they got away with it, it means we didn’t catch them, so we don’t know the crime was committed by a teenager,” said Gavras curtly.

  The class laughed and Hannah blushed, her hand falling to her desk with a lightly audible slap.

  “Do you think bad grades could be a motive?” asked Rowan.

  Cassidy wished the class would move on from the idea that a student could be guilty.

  “Literally anything can be a motive,” said Gavras.

  “What about Roy?” asked Cassidy, trying again. “Have you questioned him? He works at Glenlake now.”

  “No comment,” said Gavras, looking for his overcoat.

  Cassidy felt embarrassed by the detective’s disdain for her classmates and angry he wasn’t taking them seriously. At the same time, she couldn’t totally blame him.

  Noah, who still seemed to think the class project was some kind of hilarious joke, raised his hand, and Mr. Kelly called on him.

  “What if someone was going to kill him but he killed himself right before it could happen? Would you still go after the first guy for attempted murder?”

  Detective Gavras pursed his lips and, finding his coat on a chair, put it on. “I think we’re done here.”

  Mr. Kelly thanked him and followed him out into the hall but opened the door again almost as soon as it had closed behind them, returning in time to quell the holy shit! hubbub in the classroom.

  “Well,” he said, once they were listening, “that didn’t go exactly as planned. Did we learn anything?”

  “Gavras shops at Marshalls?” volunteered someone in the back of the room.

  An annoyed look crossed Mr. Kelly’s face. “You want adults to treat you with respect? Then treat your work with respect,” he snapped.

  Much to Cassidy’s relief, the giggling stopped.

  “Break up into your teams and use the rest of your class time wisely,” said Mr. Kelly, sitting down behind his desk and opening his laptop.

  Without too much more jackassery, the kids moved their desks into their working groups and opened their laptops, too. Cassidy watched Tate concentrating on his screen. He was her big secret. How long could she keep him from her parents?

  Cassidy’s job was to track down Roy, but so far, she hadn’t had much
luck at it. She’d called the facilities department number repeatedly, only to be told that he wasn’t working or wasn’t available. She’d located a home phone using 411, but it rang and rang without an answer or even a voice mail prompt. And she hadn’t seen him on campus. According to her dad, he had been there during parents’ weekend, but at that time, Cassidy hadn’t even known he existed.

  If she was honest with herself, she hadn’t given much thought to the existence of any of the groundskeepers, but that was a liberal-white-guilt matter for another day.

  The class researchers had been unable to locate a photo of the elusive Roy, but she had little doubt she’d recognize him when the time came: neck tattoos weren’t exactly common around Glenlake.

  Eyes watering from the wind, she pulled her scarf up over her nose to make it easier to breathe. Passing the field-hockey fields, where the frozen snow looked like whitecaps on a lake, she went by Fairleigh House, where her mom and Georgina had once been roommates. A narrow lane led to the facilities compound, which consisted of a tiny house that served as the office, a large wooden shed, and a big brick building with four garage doors.

  Cassidy walked right past the office, where her phone calls had been so unhelpfully answered, and headed for the door at the side of the big brick building.

  After letting herself in, she saw a large, open space filled with various vehicles painted Glenlake green. It was warmer than outside, but still cold enough that she could see her breath. In the near corner, a smaller room—really, a building within the building, with a roof and windows and a door—looked occupied.

  And what if he actually was there today? Her fantasies of cracking the case and catapulting to fame as a seventeen-year-old journalist ready for the big time started to fall apart with the realization that she didn’t know how to start the interview. Did she really think she was going to get a murderer to confess?

  Her feet were getting literally cold, too.

  Before she could turn around and leave, the door to the room opened, and a man wearing coveralls, mittens, and a thick cap came out. He looked surprised to see her. With his coveralls zipped up to his throat, there was no way she could see if his neck was tattooed, but at any rate he looked too young to be Roy.