School Days s-33

by Robert B. Parker

  "I have had men in my life," she said. "But I never wished to marry them."

  "But you wanted a family."

  "I wanted," she said, "someone to share my life. I wanted to teach him and show him and talk with him and be with him. . . ." She stared down the long, still, tree-canopied, almost empty street. "I wanted someone that belonged to me."

  "Hard alone," I said.

  "You have no idea," she said.

  "Maybe I do."

  "He was nothing like that. It almost seems as if from the time he was born, he was angry and defiant and just exactly what I didn't want him to be."

  "Tell me about him," I said.

  She started to cry. I waited. After a while, she stopped.

  "What was he like?" I said.

  "He was a bully," she said. "My son, a bully. And he played football in school."

  "Not a good thing?" I said.

  "God, no. I think it's a brutal and dehumanizing game. All these loutish young men trying to hurt each other on the field, while the girls jump around and cheer and show their legs. It is frightful."

  "What position did he play?" I said, just to be saying something.

  "I don't know. I don't know anything about football."

  "Did you ever see him play?"

  "No."

  "How was he academically."

  She shook her head.

  "He had no interest in the life of the mind," she said.

  "Who taught him to shoot?" I said.

  "Shoot?"

  I nodded.

  "I don't know," she said. "Certainly there have never been guns in my house."

  "A woman living alone?" I said. "Not even for protection?"

  "I would rather be killed," she said, "than take a life."

  "No boyfriends, or uncles, or anyone that might have taught him?"

  "No."

  I nodded. We were quiet. A fat yellow cat came around the corner of the store and jumped up onto the table. Wilma picked him up and put him in her lap, where he curled into a fat yellow ball and went to sleep.

  "Where might he have gotten the guns?"

  "I don't know," Wilma said. "I know nothing of guns."

  "Maybe the other kid got them," I said.

  "Jared Clark?"

  I nodded.

  "I don't know. I barely know him."

  "He was pals with your son, wasn't he?"

  "I don't know."

  "How did you come to get Alex Taglio for a lawyer?" I said.

  "My father."

  "Your father recommended him?"

  "Yes."

  `And your father's name is Grant?"

  "Yes," she said. "Hollis Grant."

  "He lives in town?"

  "Yes."

  "How's he know Taglio?"

  "I don't know," Wilma said. "I suppose he asked one of his attorneys."

  "He has attorneys?" I said.

  "My father is a very successful man," she said. "Grant Development Corporation."

  "In town?" I said.

  "He lives here. His business is next town over."

  "Is he close to his grandson?"

  "Mr. Spenser, please don't put me through this anymore. No one is close to Wendell. He carries my name. But he is so unlike me I tremble to think what a terrible person my donor must have been."

  "You accept that he did it," I said.

  "Yes. My father and I have employed Mr. Taglio to see that his rights are protected. But he has committed an unspeakable crime, and he should go to jail and stay there."

  "So you don't wish him to get off?" I said.

  "No. We can only try to help him spend his time in a less unpleasant prison."

  "Like the easiest room in hell," I said.

  She didn't say anything. She stroked the cat, and stared down the empty street, and shook her head a number of times.

  Chapter 16

  "HOW MANY ROUNDS were fired in the school?" I said.

  "Best count is thirty-seven."

  "How many missed?"

  "Seventeen," DiBella said.

  "So some folks got shot more than once."

  "One took four rounds," he said.

  "Anything there?" I said.

  "Nope, nothing we could find. Rounds came from two different guns, but whose and why four times? Don't know. One of them might have shot him twice with each of his two guns, or two of them maybe shot him twice each with one of their own guns."

  "Who got the four hits?" I said.

  "Ruth Cort, Spanish teacher."

  We were in his car. Pearl, against all regulations, was in the back. She leaned her head into the front and sniffed DiBella's ear. He shook his head as if there were a fly in it.

  "Anybody spots me with a hound in the car," he said, "I'll be running radar traps on the Mass Pike again."

  "Claim it was my wife," I said, "and I'm insulted."

  "Sure," DiBella said.

  We were cruising through Dowling with the airconditioning on low and the windows up. In the cool silence, the thick, rural greenery and the white, exurban houses outside the tinted glass of the car windows looked like some sort of theme-park display. New England Land.

  "Know anything about Hollis Grant?" I said.

  "Wendell's grandfather? Sure, everyone in this part of the state knows about him."

  "Tell me what you know," I said.

  "Big developer in central and western Mass," DiBella said. "Shopping malls. Civic centers. That kind of thing. He's not much into residential, I don't beheve."

  "Successful," I said.

  "Yeah."

  "Rich," I said.

  "Yep."

  "Connected."

  "You bet," DiBella said. "Very active in politics. Donates a lot of money to a lot of people."

  "He a gun guy?" I said.

  "Hell," DiBella said, "I don't know."

  DiBella pulled the car off the road and into an overlook area by a small river. The river dropped off some short falls and washed over some tumbled boulders, and made white water. The trees flourished near the river and stood high and thick above us. The moving water had a green tone to it. DiBella shifted in his seat a little and put his right arm over the back of the seat and patted Pearl.

  "You think he's got something to do with this?"

  "No idea," I said. "I'm just channel surfing. The guns bother me."

  "Yeah," DiBella said. "Far as we can tell, there were no guns in either house, no shooters. Coming up with four nines is not all that easy for a couple of prep-school kids in Bethel County."

  "And how to use them," I said. "We maybe forget, because we're used to guns. But you get a sixteen-, seventeen-year-old kid with no experience and no knowledge, give him a nine with an empty magazine and a box of bullets, and he's going to have trouble loading the bullets into the magazine, and putting the magazine into the piece, and getting a round up in the chamber."

  "If he's mechanical and he has time, he could probably figure it out," DiBella said.

  "Probably, but to hit twenty out of thirty-seven shots.... " I said. "In a real shootout, not on the range, with a handgun..."

  DiBella nodded.

  "I been shooting most of my life," he said. "I'd take that."

  "There anyplace around here people shoot?"

  "Local cops use our range in Talbot," DiBella said.

  "Public welcome?"

  "No."

  "Any place where a private citizen could shoot?"

  "Pretty good deer and pheasant around here in season," DiBella said. "I think there's a couple of hunting clubs got private range licenses."

  "Names?"

  "I can get them," DiBella said. "We haven't been chasing this as hard as you are."

  "Of course not," I said. "You got one guy red-handed, and the other guy confessed. You got a slam dunk, why not take it?"

  "It's not like they didn't do it," DiBella said. "We'll send them to jail."

  "If they go," I said, "maybe somebody else needs to go with them."

&
nbsp; "I got no problem with that," DiBella said.

  "So where did they get the guns, and how did they learn to use them?"

  "I thought you were supposed to clear this kid," DiBella said.

  "I take what the defense gives me," I said. "I go where I can go, see what I find."

  Chapter 17

  FROM THE WINDOW Of Hollis Grant's unimpressive office in an industrial park he'd built, you could see straight across the parking lot and observe the westbound lane of the Mass Pike. Hollis himself was only a little better-looking than his office. He was a strong-looking, overweight guy with not much hair and a lot of red face. He was wearing khaki pants and work boots and a white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows. The office was small and full of architectural drawings and spec books. There was a drawing table along one wall. The walls were done in plywood paneling. Hollis himself sat not at a desk but at an old table littered with papers, a calculator, two phones, a computer, and a big, clearplastic T square.

  "I'm looking into that shooting your grandson was involved in," I said.

  "Why?"

  "Make sure everything is as it seems to be."

  "So what do you want with me," he said.

  "Do you know Jared Clark?" I said.

  "Kid that was with Wendell? No, I never met him."

  "You close with your grandson?"

  "Hard to be close with Wendell. There was no father in his life. I tried to provide him some of that..." He shook his head. "But my daughter didn't want me to teach him any of the things I knew."

  "Like what?" I said.

  "Sports, business, tools, stuff that men might know."

  "What did she want for him?"

  He shook his head slowly.

  "She wanted him to be her prepubescent toy forever."

  "Difficult to achieve," I said.

  "I tried to tell her he was going to grow up and would need to become a man. She said it didn't mean he had to be a man like me."

  "What did she mean by that?" I said.

  "You met her?" he said.

  "I have."

  "Miss Crunchy Granola. She was born in 1963 and grew up to be a hippie."

  "Timing is everything," I said. "What's her problem with you?"

  He shook his head again.

  "I'm, oh, hell, I don't know. I'm too rough for her. I like contact sports. I was in the Navy. I sometimes vote Republican."

  "Good God!" I said.

  "I know," he said. "I know."

  "You must have had some success," I said. "He played football."

  "Yes, God, she hated that."

  "You teach him?"

  "No, not really. The only thing I did, I got a box at Foxboro. I took him once to see the Pats play the Jets. She had a fit. I never took him again. Doesn't seem like such a fucking crime."

  "You ever teach him to shoot?"

  "Jesus, no," he said. "His mother would have ... no. I never taught him to shoot."

  "Somebody did. He and the Clark kid fired thirty-seven rounds and scored on twenty of them."

  Grant didn't say anything.

  "You shoot?" I said.

  "I know how. I was in the service."

  "Own a gun?"

  "Revolver," he said. ".357 for plinking burglars."

  "No semiautomatic weapons?"

  "No. Revolver's so much simpler," he said. "And six rounds is enough."

  "Why do you think he did what he did?"

  Hollis sat for a time, looking at his fist resting on the tabletop.

  "I don't know," he said. "I think Wilma blames me. I suppose I sort of blame Wilma."

  He shook his head.

  "Is there a Mrs. Grant?" I said.

  "No."

  "Was there?"

  "Yes."

  `And what happened to her?" I said.

  "She left."

  "When?"

  "June twelfth, 1993."

  "You know where she is?"

  "No."

  "Do you know if she's in touch with her grandson or her daughter?"

  "No."

  Spenser, grand inquisitor, give him a few minutes and he can find the topic to shut off any conversation. Maybe if I moved on.

  "You said Wendell was hard to be close to. Why was that?"

  "His mother filled his head with crap. I mean, she's my daughter, and I love her, but her head got filled with crap by her mother. Not the same crap, but she was fucked up, and she fucked up her kid."

  "What did Wilma's mother fill her head with?"

  "Ladylike," he said. "White gloves. Dinner parties. Her mother filled her head with silly shit, and Wilma rebelled."

  "And filled her head with rebellious silly shit," I said.

  "Yes."

  "Have you seen Wendell since the shooting?"

  "No. "

  "Because?"

  "His mother has denied my access."

  "Do you know Lily Ellsworth?" I said.

  "Yes. Old money. Everyone knows Lily."

  "She feels her grandson is innocent. She hired me to prove it."

  "How you doing?" Grant said.

  "So far," I said. "He looks guilty as sin."

  "Like Wendell," Grant said.

  "You know anything that would suggest he didn't do it?" I said.

  "Except what I read in the papers," Grant said, "I don't know anything about the whole goddamned sorry mess."

  "Sadly," I said, "me either."

  Chapter 18

  SUSAN HAD BEEN SO compelling in Durham that one of the Duke professors had asked if she would stay into September and participate with him in his graduate seminar called Post-Freudian Therapy: the Practitioner's View. I missed her. I wasn't pleased. But I knew the recognition meant something to her, so I masked my displeasure.

  "Oh, balls," I said on the phone.

  "I knew you'd understand," Susan said. "And when I get home, we'll have a very nice time."

  "Snivel," I said.

  "That's my brave boy," she said.

  We talked awhile about her meetings and my case. Her meetings appeared to be going better. At the end of her call, we talked dirty for a little while, which made me feel less fruitless. When we hung up, I went to the kitchen and made myself a drink and thought about supper. Pearl, in her wily canine way, divined my thoughts at once, and came and sat at my feet and looked at me closely. I gave her a dog biscuit.

  "I got some cranberry beans," I said to Pearl. "And some local tomatoes and corn from Verrill Farm."

  Pearl ate the dog biscuit.

  "I'll start cooking that and see what develops," I said.

  Pearl had finished her biscuit. Her gaze was again steady. I shelled the beans from their long, red-and-cream pods and dropped them in boiling water and turned down the heat and let them simmer. I drank some scotch. I gave Pearl another cookie. Then I shucked the corn and put it into a pan with some cold water and brought it to a boil and shut off the heat and put the cover on the pot. Pearl had taken her cookie to the couch and eaten it. I took a small steak from the refrigerator and diced it into little pieces and cooked them rare in the frying pan. Then I turned them out onto a paper towel and let them sit. Pearl returned.

  "I can't keep giving you cookies," I said.

  She looked at me steadily. I felt the steak dice. It was cool. I gave Pearl a piece. It must have struck her as exotic. She took it into the bedroom. My drink was gone. I took the corn from the pot with tongs and let it cool on the counter. Then I made a drink and took it to the couch and sat. Pearl came back from the bedroom and sat with me. I sipped my scotch.

  "I'm missing something," I said to Pearl.

  Pearl was a good listener, even if she didn't have much in the way of advice to offer. We sat quietly. I thought. I drank some scotch. Housman was right.

  "First of all," I said to Pearl, "somebody said once that you probably can't figure out the truth, if you think you know ahead of time what the truth is supposed to be."

  Pearl made a little sigh and settled.

/>   "So I can't go at this trying to clear anybody. I just have to find out what happened and why."

  Pearl's eyes were closed now. I got up and checked the corn and found it cool enough and cut the kernels off in long rows with a knife. I drained the beans into a colander, dumped them into a bowl with the corn, cut up some fresh tomatoes, added the steak, and tossed the whole deal with some olive oil, some cider vinegar, and salt and pepper. Then I let that sit for a while, freshened my drink, and came back to the couch. Pearl appeared to be asleep, but I pressed on.

  "So what am I missing?" I said.

  Pearl's breathing was even and soft.

  "I'm asking the wrong people," I said. "Goddamn it, I'm talking to the adults."

  I took a long, self-congratulatory pull on my drink.

  Pearl made a soft sound. I bent toward her and listened more closely. She was snoring. I got up and put my supper on a plate.

  "I should be talking to the kids," I said.

  I drank my drink and ate my supper with some French bread.

  Chapter 19

  IT WAS AFTER Labor Day and instruction was under way when I walked into the Dowling School. Sue Biegler brought me into the president's office, introduced me, and departed.

  The president was a middle-sized man with thinning hair, so that close up, he was balder than you first realized. He wasn't fat, but he was soft-looking. His soft face had one of those perpetual blue shadows that no amount of shaving would eliminate. Nature is not fair. Too little hair, too much whisker. His name was Dr. Royce Garner.

  "First," he said, "let me say that every one of us here at the Dowling School are heavy at heart of last spring's tragedy. And we stand ready to help you in any way we can."

  "That's swell," I said.

  "We do, of course, hope," he went on, "that we can put it behind us as quickly as we can, and get back to what we do best."

  "Educating the young," I said.

  "Exactly."

  He leaned back a little, with his fingertips pressed together, delighted with himself.

  "What is your doctorate in?" I said.

  "Divinity," he said. "I am an ordained minister."

  "How come you're a president," I said. "I thought prep schools had headmasters."

  He smiled indulgently at my lay confusion.

  "We are planning to expand into a junior college as soon as our fundraising for the venture is complete," he said. "It seemed appropriate to assume the title in our quest to give credibility to our capital campaign."