Dangerous Habits

by Susan Hunter

  “What website?”

  “Where they post the videos. For the SLB.”

  “The SLB?”

  “His club. His friends. The St. Lucian Boys—that’s what they call themselves. The ones he brought us for.”

  I almost dropped the phone. “These friends, Danny, they were people Palmer went to school with?”

  “I guess.”

  “How many are there? Did you know any of their names? Was there a Joseph?”

  “There were different ones. Mr. Joe. He was the worst.”

  “If I showed you a picture, would you recognize him?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Just a sec.” I pulled the diocesan website up on my phone, did a screen capture and texted it to him. “Have you got it?”

  “That’s him. Mr. Joe.” Danny had just identified the Most Reverend Joseph Ramsey.

  “Did you tell Lacey about the website?”

  “She said if we could find it, prove there was a website, we could go to the cops. They’d have to believe us. They’d shut the SLB down. I’d be safe. But we didn’t know how to get to it. So, she gave me her MP3 player to record Palmer. I was supposed to get him to say something about the website, but I was too scared, I couldn’t.”

  “You were really brave just to record him, Danny.”

  “I wasn’t brave like Lacey. The night we tried to run, I started to cry when her friend left us. She put her arm around me and she gave me this big smile. She said, ‘Don’t worry, Ralphie. The eagle has landed. I’ve got what we need.’ Then she went to get a car, but she never came back. It started to snow. I waited two hours, and she never came.”

  “I don’t understand. Did she mean she found the website?”

  “I don’t know. Look, all I have left is my little brother. And the only way I can keep him is to lie to him. I can’t help you. Please, leave me alone.”

  “But, Danny—”

  It was too late. He was gone.

  I called him back but he didn’t pick up. I texted. “Danny. Please. I need you.”

  I got one back almost immediately. “This ain’t Danny.”

  I called again, and a woman answered.

  “I’m trying to reach Danny Howard?”

  “Well, I’m not him. Quit callin’ my phone and textin’ me, will ya? I let him borrow it for 10 minutes. I wasn’t plannin’ on startin’ a datin’ service.” The call ended.

  I tried Facebook, but he was gone. Not just not online, gone. He’d unfriended me or deactivated his account. Either way, he wasn’t interested in talking to me again.

  Thirty-Six

  So that was it. Reid Palmer had some kind of freaky pornography site that he shared for fun—and maybe profit—with his friends from prep school. Their housemother was Sister Julianna, strewing throwaway kids in the path of the St. Lucian’s Boys in exchange for Palmer helping cover up her own crimes. And Lacey had died because she found out and tried to rescue Danny.

  Palmer probably uncovered the embezzling when he joined the DeMoss Academy Board, and “set things right,” as Sister Margaret had said. But he set them right in exchange for Sister Julianna’s help in securing suitable boys for himself and his SLB friends. Palmer and Sister Julianna knew about Hegl’s felony. Sister Julianna and Hegl knew about Palmer’s sexual crimes. The three of them were an unholy trinity of mutually assured destruction.

  It was 8 a.m. Mom was still sleeping. I couldn’t stand to sit at the kitchen table a minute longer, my mind running in circles. I cleared away my dishes, went to my room and threw on jeans, a T-shirt, and pulled my hair into a ponytail. Then I put on a Badgers cap, wrote her a note, and let myself quietly out the kitchen door.

  The streets were full of traffic. People who hadn’t lost their jobs all had somewhere to go. I wondered if Miller Caldwell would be making his big announcement today. Odds were he’d be losing his job then, too, and probably a whole lot more. I tried to stop thinking and focus on just moving ahead, one step at a time. I walked through familiar neighborhoods, past my old elementary school, the park, JT’s Party Store.

  I walked until the sidewalk narrowed and the concrete squares were heaved up at crazy angles by erupting tree roots. In some places, there was more dirt than cement showing, and, finally, at the edge of town, the sidewalk stopped altogether. The street petered out, ending with a broken down wooden barricade topped by a Dead End sign.

  I sat on a downed tree that lay half across the road, facing the fields beyond the barricade. As soon as I paused my forward motion, the peaceful not thinkingness I’d cultivated on my walk disappeared. I had to find that website. And, somehow, I had to get Hegl to tell me what really happened the night Lacey died. I considered my options.

  I could talk to Coop and tell him what Danny had said and what I’d figured out. But could I trust him not to go to Ross? Probably not. It was Ross’s case, Ross’s jurisdiction, and Coop would have no choice. And Ross would just screw things up.

  I could boldly go out to the Catherines’ and run a bluff on Hegl. Tell him I knew everything. Tell him Delite was coming forward, and Danny was going to testify. Tell him he couldn’t trust Palmer, that he’d already tried to throw him under the bus. Tell him he needed to get ahead of the curve, or he’d be saddled with Lacey’s death. But he was up to his neck in everything, and I couldn’t be sure he wouldn’t turn on me like a cornered rat.

  Then there was the X factor. Was Sister Mattea’s death an accident? Or, was she killed not because she knew about Lacey’s sexual abuse, but because she had figured out something about the financial fraud even before her brother had used his super-duper software?

  And there was also me. Who pushed me off that river bluff? It had to be Hegl, Palmer, or Sister Julianna, and I sure wasn’t going to let any of them get away with it.

  And what did Lacey mean the eagle has landed? What kind of word game was that? Why couldn’t she just say, “It’s all good, Danny. I have the address, and here it is.”

  I was so intent on trying to untangle the threads and formulate a plan that I didn’t hear the approaching sound of bike tires behind me. But the little hairs on the back of my neck began to prickle and I whipped my head around. There was Vesta straddling her bike, flowered grandma dress riding high on nonexistent hips, decorum preserved by the pair of rolled up men’s khakis she wore underneath it. Her little dog was asleep in the basket attached to her handlebars, snoring gently.

  “Vesta! Hi. I didn’t hear you,” I said, in the overly loud and cheery voice I sometimes use with very small children and the elderly. “How are you?”

  “Lord, dost thou not care that my sister hath left me to serve alone? Bid her therefore that she help me.”

  I blinked. That was a little too apropos to be entirely comfortable. She got off her bike and put down the kickstand. I stood up from my tree seat as she walked the few steps toward me. She kept coming until she was well within my personal space comfort zone. Her hair was damp with sweat, and she had a pungent, garlicky smell. I took a half-step backward, but the branch at my back didn’t give me much room.

  “Your sister is gone.”

  “I know, Vesta. I know you found her. That was a long time ago.”

  “For nothing is hidden except to be made manifest; nor is anything secret except to come to light.” She was getting that agitated look again, the way she had when I dropped the box off at her house. I took care to speak in a low, almost crooning tone.

  “OK. Right, that’s true, I know. You’re right about that. It’s good to see you, but I’ll let you get back to your riding. I’ve got to get home myself. If I could just scoot around you here?”

  I tried to move past her, but as I did she clutched my arm. Her dog woke with a start and emitted a sharp little bark. I tried to ease out of her grasp, but she was stronger than she looked.

  “For the prophet and the priest are defiled: and in my house I have found their wickedness, saith the Lord.”

  Her faded blue eyes were big and almost bese
eching. Vesta spent long hours—both day and night—rambling the county roads. Fences and property lines meant nothing to her. She was such a common sight, and had been for so long, that people didn’t even see her anymore. But that didn’t mean Vesta didn’t see them.

  “Vesta, did you see something the night Lacey died?” I asked with an urgency that seemed to scare her.

  She released my arm and started to shake her head and back away. Her little dog Barnacle began softly growling.

  “Vesta! Vesta! Is it Father Hegl? Are you talking about Father Hegl? What did you see?” This time it was my turn to grab her. I held her twitching fingers in my hand. I shook her, and she jumped and pulled away. She looked at me, eyes wide with fear.

  “I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!” I said.

  She began to scuttle backward as I repeated, “I’m sorry, please. I didn’t mean to frighten you.” Tears were streaming down her face, and I felt horrible. “I’m so sorry, don’t cry, please.” I took a step toward her and she moved with surprising agility and speed. She jumped on her bike and turned it so rapidly Barnacle, who had begun barking frantically, almost fell out. She pedaled down the road, leaving me calling after her.

  When I got home, a note on the table said my mother had gone into work to try and organize things, and let clients know that the office would be closing. It hadn’t occurred to me until that moment that my mother, like me, was now out of a job. I sighed as I put the kettle on for tea.

  What had Vesta tried to tell me? Had she been there that night? Had she seen Lacey being carried through the dark woods, to be dumped like an old mattress or a sack of trash at the bottom of the ravine? Did her tangled thoughts and her fear prevent her from describing it? But she hadn’t abandoned Lacey. She’d gone back until Lacey was found.

  I heard my mother’s car pull in the driveway. When she came in, I said, “You better sit down, Mom. I know why Lacey was killed, and I know what’s going on at DeMoss Academy, and it’s really, really bad.”

  Thirty-Seven

  I told her everything—Sister Julianna’s embezzlement, Hegl’s complicity, Palmer’s perversion, Danny’s recording, the website, my encounter with Vesta. She listened without saying a word. Then she went to the cupboard, got out the Jameson and two glasses, and poured it for us straight over ice. By the time I finished this investigation, we’d both be candidates for detox.

  “Mom. It’s only one o’clock.” But I took a sip anyway.

  We carried our glasses into the living room. She took the couch, and I took the rocker. In the back of both our minds was the image of Karen sitting on the now empty wingback chair. Neither of us wanted to go there.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know what to do. I’ve got the recording, but I’m not sure we’d be able to prove it’s Palmer. And without Danny’s cooperation, I won’t even be able to prove he’s the boy talking. If I could get to that website, I’d have something solid. Without something tangible like that, Ross is not going to listen or do anything. He hates me, and I hate that everything I have is circumstantial, and I’d be going up against a nun, a priest, and a rich guy. And I’m already not the most credible source in the world, thanks to Karen’s texting on my behalf.”

  I stood up and started pacing around the room. When I got by the bar, I stopped and pounded the top three times shouting, “Damn it, damn it, damn it!” As I did, the force of my blows sent Lacey’s sketch book flying off the bar, and it fell to the floor with pages fluttering.

  “Well. That was productive,” my mother said, getting out of her chair and stooping to pick it up.

  “Sorry. It’s one of Lacey’s old sketchbooks. I found it in the box of her things.”

  She started leafing through it and smiling. I stood looking over her shoulder as she paused to study a page. It was the drawing of a bird, only now that I was paying closer attention, I saw it wasn’t a random bird. It was an eagle. I stared at it. Hard. The eagle has landed.

  “Mom, what’s the legend about Zeus and Ganymede?”

  “The god Zeus fell in love with a mortal boy, Ganymede, and took him to live with him in Mt. Olympus. Zeus is sometimes shown as an eagle or a swan.” She waited for me to explain my out of left field query.

  “So, basically Zeus was a pedophile and Ganymede was his boy toy?”

  “That’s one way of putting it. But the ancient Greeks thought that a relationship between an older man and an adolescent boy was a good thing. Leah, what—”

  “I’m sure that’s what Palmer and his St. Lucian Boys tell themselves. They’re not sick predators. No, they’re wise mentors to young boys, like the ancient Greeks. This eagle Lacey drew. It’s rougher, not as detailed, but still it looks a lot like the one in a pencil sketch of Zeus and Ganymede that Palmer has in his office. He has the same statue at his summer home.”

  “But why did Lacey sketch the eagle? And how would she know Palmer had the drawing in his office?”

  “She was in there for almost half an hour when Palmer “rescued” her from the scene with the kid who flipped out the morning she was waiting to see Sister Julianna. Palmer’s sketch is very good. It would have caught her eye. It did mine.”

  I paused lost in thought. Lacey loved the hand-drawn Christmas cards my mother’s friend Adrienne sent every year. Adrienne always cleverly concealed her name somewhere in the picture—in the mane of a horse, the bark of a tree, the curl of a wisp of smoke—the feathers of a bird.

  “Remember how Lacey loved to find the hidden letters in Adrienne’s cards? You and I missed them half the time, but Lacey could always see them.”

  “Yes, but—”

  I took the sketch pad from her hand and stared at it, willing my eyes to see what had to be there. After a few seconds letters and numbers began to disentangle themselves from the shadows and hatch marks that made up the eagle’s feathers. I grabbed a pen and frantically wrote them down.

  “Leah, what are you doing? What do you see?”

  I shook my head, intent on my task, searching carefully to make sure I had found them all. Then I looked at what I had written, and groaned in frustration.

  “What’s the matter?”

  I shoved the paper over to my mother. She read it out loud.

  “4PzsLBe?.onion. What is this, Leah?”

  “I thought it was going to be the URL for Palmer’s pornography site, but it doesn’t make any sense. The domain should be “.com,” or “.net,” or “.org,” or something like that. I’ve never heard of “.onion” as a domain. This can’t be right. We’re back to nowhere.” I slumped down on the bar stool.

  “Just try it, see what happens,” my mother said.

  “It’s not going to work, Mom. There’s no kind of address like this, or else it’s some kind of code. And Lacey was the word game code breaker, not me.” I sat mired in frustration and self-pity for a minute before my mother spoke. When she did, it shook me up.

  “Leah, think about Lacey sitting there alone in Palmer’s office. Wondering if Sister Julianna was on to her plan to get Danny out, probably scared out of her mind. She notices Palmer’s sketch. Goes over to look at it to distract herself. Then she sees it, the numbers, recognizes it’s a web address. She starts a quick sketch, not knowing when he’ll be coming back, roughing out the bird, inserting the letters and numbers, maybe finishing it just before she hears him coming down the hall.

  “It’s the key to everything, Leah, it has to be. It’s what she was saying when she called you that night. Not ‘legal,’ she was saying ‘eagle.’ She trusted you, and I trust you, Leah. You can figure this out. You’ve come all this way on your own, but Lacey’s with you now, you know that, don’t you?” She had gripped my arm and was holding so tightly it hurt.

  I don’t share my mother’s faith in the belief that our dead continue as benevolent presences in our lives, watching or encouraging us from afar—or at least I didn’t used to—but I knew she was at least partly right. Lacey had trusted me. And the answer was
here somewhere for me to find.

  I got my laptop, and I typed the URL in my browser. Nothing. “Cannot find.” I tried a browser with a different search engine. This one brought up a list of sites for The Onion a satirical newspaper, and recipes for onion rings, and nothing remotely related to perverted sex sites. I tried inserting http// in front of the string of letters. Still nothing.

  “Nothing. I am so sick of this!”

  My cell phone rang. My mother picked it up and glanced at the caller ID.

  “It’s your friend Ben.”

  Ben. I’d forgotten all about him. He called when? Was it really only two days ago?

  “Hi, Ben.”

  “Leah. I’ve been trying to get hold of you.” His voice was tight and clipped.

  “I meant to call, but a lot’s been happening. Look, I’m gonna have to call you back I—”

  “I wasn’t sure you got my message. But after talking to Miller this morning, I’m pretty sure you did. Leah, you seriously thought I stole your phone and tried to set you up? What the hell?”

  I didn’t have time for this.

  “Listen, Ben, I’m trying to find out who killed my sister. Someone pushed me off a cliff the other day, I got fired from my job, and the one thing I was counting on to give me the answers turned out to be a bust. I can’t deal with your hurt feelings right now. I’m sorry I suspected you. Truly. I was misinformed. Now, I’ve got to—”

  “Wait, wait, hold on! Don’t hang up. Is that for real? Someone tried to kill you?”