* * *
The formalities done, Joey finished several minor announcements before turning the meeting over to PJ with a very proper, “Madam Vice President.”
“We have...” PJ paused, drew in a deep breath, and told herself to put thoughts of Walter Curtis away. Away with the rest of the crud that didn’t really matter. Didn’t matter at all. Stuff that one day would fizzle away of its own accord. ‘Time heals all,’ Miss Austin had told her. Everyone had time. It and breath were the only truly free commodities common to all God’s creatures.
“PJ?” Mary said.
PJ cast Walter Curtis in with the crud, in with memories of Guy, and snapped out of her temporary daze. “Yes, Miss Austin?”
Mary said nothing. Her reassuring countenance and a tip of her head urged PJ on better than any words could.
“We have a little more than three weeks until the...until the conference at Camp One Wing,” PJ began. “The class council still needs more ideas from you so that we can send them to the conference committee. They’re going to put them in an agenda to be shared with other schools at camp.”
A hand poked up from the third row.
“Tommy?” Joey said, recognizing the questioner.
“Have we raised enough money yet?” Tommy Barrow asked.
“Bryce?”
With the prompting from Joey, Bryce opened the ledger and found his place on the third page. His glasses slid as he bent to read the figures. “We need two hundred and eighty more dollars.”
Satisfied smiles ricocheted among the class.
“We can raise that in...” Joey looked to PJ “When do we have to have our registration money in?”
“Three weeks from today.”
“We can do that,” Jeff said as he scribbled the minutes with his off hand. “We’ve got the refreshment stand at the autumn pageant this year.”
Two seats behind Tommy Barrow, Judy Devaux raised her hand.
“Judy?” PJ recognized the questioner.
“Is room sixteen going?”
“All the sixth grade classes in the district are going,” PJ answered. “I think there’ll be three from our school, two classes from Greenwood, and two from Bravehill.” She looked to Miss Austin for confirmation and received a satisfied nod.
“That’s a lot of kids,” Judy commented.
“Camp One Wing’s big,” Joey told her. Having worn himself blissfully ragged there for a good part of the last three summers, he felt qualified to throw his two cents in. “It’s really cool. You’ll like it.”
“All right,” PJ went on, “so we need your ideas, remember. Write them down, anything you think should be discussed between the schools, and drop it in the suggestion box.”
Chris Bickle already had something noted, and went quickly to the large, sticker-covered box near the coat closet and pushed it through the slot in the top. A mildly sour look from Miss Austin was not lost on him. “Sorry.”
“We wait until all business is finished, Christopher,” Mary suggested.
“Sorry,” Chris repeated, and took his seat.
Joey glanced at the agenda on their teacher’s desk. “Do you have anything else, Madam Vice President?”
“No, Mr. President. That’s it.”
The last item on the agenda drew a second, confirming look from Joey. “Miss Austin. You have a...” Sound it out. D-I-S-C- Silent C. “...discipline item to talk about?”
Mary stood, but did not move from her position on the sideline. “Yes. Thank you, Mr. President and Madam Vice President. This morning when I arrived I had a conversation with Mr. Carter.” The slightest motion from the room’s center caught her eye. “He reported to me that a student in this class was caught on campus yesterday, outside this room.” She knew it to be unnecessary to go into what the motivation for such a transgression was. It was further not requisite to mention any name. Others were now sneaking glances at Greg Cosentino, who had identified himself quite clearly by hanging his head. “The accused will meet with the council after school to discuss this incident and any punishment. Mr. President, Madam Vice President...”
Joey nodded and took the gavel in hand. PJ took the agenda and passed it to Jeff, who was making some final notations in the minutes. Bryce closed the ledger and pushed his glasses up. Michael stood at ease, red and white stripes draped behind.
“This week’s meeting is closed,” Joey said, and gave the gavel one sharp tap on the desk. This time no one jumped.
* * *
A few blocks from the cemetery where their youngest was forever planted in the earth, most of the Edmond family had gathered in their comfortable living room to talk to the detective from the big city.
“There was no reason for this,” Nate Edmond said, swallowing hard after the pronouncement. He sat on a small couch, his wife misty-eyed at his side, two of his three remaining children standing behind. One thick hand lay easily on his wife’s leg, the other kneaded pensively at his own knee and seemed eager to form a fist. His thin black hair, bodiless, trickled over his scalp like fine veins of coal. “Our Guy was a good boy.”
Mr. Edmond looked away, fighting for composure, his family consoling him with hugs. Dooley politely averted his eyes, taking a framed photo from the end table near his seat. A family smiled at him from the frozen moment. Now they were six minus one. “Guy was your youngest?”
Catherine Edmond answered for her husband with a nod. After a few seconds Nate Edmond sniffled into a handkerchief and said, “Our little boy.”
Dooley garnered the other Edmond childrens’ attention when their heads came up. “Who is the oldest?”
“Chuck,” Candy Edmond answered. “Then me, then Buddy.”
“You’re Buddy?”
“I was just a year older,” Buddy Edmond managed to say, then emotion overwhelmed him and he collapsed over the back of the sofa and into his mother’s arms.
“Our children are close in age so this is...hard for them,” Mr. Edmond explained. “Buddy is fourteen, Candy fifteen, and Chuck is seventeen.”
“That is close,” Dooley agreed sympathetically.
“Chuck is a senior,” Mr. Edmond said proudly, as if telling Dooley that his oldest was an engineer, or a brain surgeon. “He graduates next semester. He has a test today, or a paper due, or something. I’m not sure. He had to go to school.” Tears welled without restraint. “He loved his little brother.”
“We all loved him,” Candy added.
“I’m sorry if this is difficult...”
Mrs. Edmond shook her head slowly, a sad, stoic gesture. “Losing a purse is difficult, Detective Ashe. Not losing a son.”
“No words work well at a time like this,” Dooley observed.
“That’s right,” Buddy agreed sharply, angrily, his fit of sorrow not gone, but pierced by a self more hate than anguish. “Words don’t do nothing. Nothing!”
“Buddy...” Mrs. Edmond begged, reaching for her son as he stepped around the couch toward Dooley.
“So what are you gonna do? Talk?” Buddy’s young face cocked crookedly at the detective, his eyes slitting. Dooley thought the teen frighteningly familiar with this side of himself. “You’re here talking, just like all the others. Talk! TALK! TALK!”
“Buddy!” Mr. Edmond yelled.
A flash of venom, part frost, part fire, erupted upon Buddy’s face. He looked back to his father, then again to Dooley, then struck out, at Dooley by coincidence, connecting with the adjacent lamp by design. Its shade became a projectile, wobbling across the room and into the hall. The lamp itself tipped like a felled tree and was noisily reduced to ceramic trash.
Silence followed the bedlam, a silence that ended as Buddy spun and rushed from the living room, hands over his face, the lampshade getting a final kick as he disappeared down the hall.
Mr. Edmond nodded bitterly. “This is what’s happened to my family.”
Dooley could have told the man that he’d seen the same, even worse during his career. Words again. How easily th
ey could hurt.
Yet some things that hurt had to be done, or said. “I’m just going to ask you this straight out. Did Guy have any trouble with Buddy, or Chuck, or...”
“Or me?” Candy completed the question, sneering.
“Our children?” Mrs. Edmond asked incredulously.
“Yes.”
Mr. Edmond aimed a thick, trembling finger at Dooley. “A family is a family. They protect each other. They don’t...” The hand waved back and forth. “No. They had no problems. None.”
“He had trouble at school,” Dooley said, moving on to an area he was sure would draw more steam from the head of the Edmond clan.
“He was a good boy,” Mrs. Edmond said, almost a plea to Dooley, as if she wanted him to believe it.
“Him? No.” Mr. Edmond bared his teeth, hard breaths whistling through them. “They picked on him.”
“Who is ‘they’?”
“They. Them. All of them. All the little bastards in that class. They picked on him, and then they’d blame him. Get him in trouble for nothing.”
“Why would they do that?”
Mr. Edmond tossed up his hands. “How the hell would I know? Pick a reason. I mean, why the hell did they kill him? Is there any reason for that?”
“Not in my mind,” Dooley said. “So you believe the kids in his class murdered him.”
“Everyone knows they did. But they’re not kids,” Mr. Edmond added, almost spitting with disdain. “Kids don’t do what they did to my son. They’re monsters.”
Dooley put the photograph he’d been holding back in its place. Beyond it, through the Edmond’s front window, Cougar Mountain was dusted in white, not yet in its full cloak of snow. “Did Guy mention anyone by name?”
“The police asked us all these questions,” Mrs. Edmond said tiredly. She stared at her shoes for a moment then stood, straightening her dress at the waist. “And it doesn’t matter which one of them did it. It was her fault.”
Her fault? “You mean his teacher,” Dooley presumed. “How was it her fault?”
Mrs. Edmond shook her head. “Buddy was right.” She looked to her husband. “I’m going to see if he’s all right.”
The quietly grieving mother left the room. Candy took her place on the couch and held her father’s hand.
“That woman, she could have prevented it.” A snarl threatened on Nate Edmond’s lips. “She could have protected him, but instead she always took their side.”
“Everyone knew that the whole class hated Guy,” Candy said. “My friend’s little brother goes to Windhaven and she said that he told her all about it. How no one liked Guy.”
So little Guy was an angel. And everybody else? It was quite clear to Dooley that Cougar Mountain wasn’t the only place where snow had left its mark. There was plenty in this house. Plenty to go around. “Everyone is lying, then, Mr. Edmond?”
“I’ll tell you this much: I believe my children. If you don’t, then...”
“I’d like to talk to Chuck sometime.”
“He doesn’t like talk,” Mr. Edmond said. “More than Buddy, even. They prefer action. Like their father.”
“Still, I need to.”
“I’ll tell him.”
Dooley nodded.
“You’ve got to make the ones that did it pay,” Candy said. A heartfelt wish from a sister. A wish not for justice, however. A wish for vengeance.
“Whoever did it will,” Dooley said.
“You make sure of that, Detective Ashe,” Mr. Edmond said. “I’ll take care of the rest.”
The man of action was speaking, but what was he saying? “Mr. Edmond, please don’t do anything that will make things worse.”
“I’m going to do just that—for a few people.” A smile burned on Nate Edmond’s face for the first time in days. “That teacher. The school. The whole bunch of them. I’m going to sue them into the ground.”
Dooley left the Edmond home without another word. Here he had met those to whom Guy Edmond meant something, those to whom all bad things thought or uttered about him were fabrications, vindictive conspiracies come to life.
He stopped at the curb and turned back to the house. The home of a good little boy, and his sweet little family, and their perfect little existence.
If he had wanted lies, Dooley would have started with the suspects.
He slid into his Blazer and picked at the seam on the leather-wrapped steering wheel. This was where the good little boy had lived. It was a part of his story.
Part...
Five
“Pages ninety-six and one-oh-five are extra credit homework,” Mary said above the clamor of the 3 o’clock bell. The day that mattered was ending. Standing at her desk she breathed and reminded the class, “Three points each.”
Desk lids closed without slamming and sneaker soles squeaked on the floor as the room emptied. Greg Cosentino remained, as did those who would judge his alleged transgression.
Joey came to the desk as Miss Austin was gathering her things and asked, “Is Mr. Carter cleaning the floor today?”
Mary’s eyes came up from the stack of history tests to be graded that night. It was Monday. The floors were always cleaned on Monday. Joey knew that. They all knew that.
“Yes. You don’t need to lock the door when you finish.” He lingered after her answer, seeming to want something more, she thought. “Is that all you wanted to know?”
Joey nodded, lips tightening to a compressed smile, as if he’d tasted something pleasingly sour.
Mary fit her things into a leather bag and slung that on one shoulder. Michael and Bryce had already moved the review table into place near the flag and were seated at its ends. Three chairs on one side waited for Joey, PJ, and Jeff. One chair faced those, lonely as the accused neared.
“All right,” Mary said warmly. “I’ll be in the teacher’s lounge for a while if you need anything.”
“Have a good night, Miss Austin,” Jeff said cheerfully.
Mary turned and left them. The door hissed shut behind her.
Joey took his place in the middle seat, PJ to his right, Jeff to his left. “Greg. Come on up.”
It seemed that the eleven year old was walking his last steps, looking fearfully at the wood and steel chair as if there were electrodes attached to it, and wires snaking to a lever hidden somewhere that would be thrown once he was in place. This was the end. His end, he was sure. Never in trouble before. A Straight ‘A’ student since last year. And now this.
Finished by curiosity, just like the cat.
Greg Cosentino lowered himself into the hard institutional chair and lifted his head. “I’m sorry.”
“Huh?” Joey said.
“I wanted to see it up close,” Greg explained sheepishly. “Lance said he saw a puddle of blood that froze and—”
Joey held up a hand. “You’re admitting it then?”
A nod, then the face dipped away.
“All right.” Joey’s shoulders bolted as he looked to PJ, and his eyes begged the question, What’s his problem?
“Greg,” PJ said. “This isn’t a safety violation. Your parents won’t hear about it.”
The frightened face slowly tilted upward.
“Unless you tell them,” PJ added.
“This isn’t a big deal,” Joey said. “You shouldn’t have hopped the fence on a weekend, but it’s not like you were running in the main building or something like that.”
In that instance his parents would definitely know. Running where one shouldn’t was a definite safety issue, and the quickest way to a parent conference was to break a safety rule.
“So, what happens then?” Greg asked, more wonder than fear sculpting his expression now.
“Well, since you admit it, that kind of shortens this whole thing,” Joey said. “After you go we’ll come up with a punishment. Maybe picking up trash after school, or something else.”
“That’s it?” Greg pressed, perplexed.
Jeff smirked, knowing that he was
n’t the coolest of the cool, but he was certainly no dork like this guy. “Relax. Haven’t you ever been in trouble before?”
“Not at school,” he answered. The way Jeff had asked the question Greg was embarrassed by his answer.
“Okay,” Joey said. “We’ll tell you tomorrow what your punishment is. Okay? You can go.”
The speed with which the non-catastrophe had run its course weighed on Greg, the surprise stunting his rise from the chair, and the trip back to his desk for his backpack, and the short walk to the door. There he stopped. “So I’m not in real trouble?”
“Just don’t do it again,” Joey said. Greg beamed and left the room, the door whispering slowly shut. “Lock it, Mike.”
“It’s Monday,” Michael reminded the class president. “Mr. Carter will be by to mop.”
“I know. We can’t have him walking in. We need to talk.”
Michael now understood. He locked the door, checked it twice, and took the seat of the accused at the table of the suspected.
“Jesus, we pulled it off,” Jeff said with muted glee.
“You shouldn’t be that happy, Jeff,” PJ told him.
“She’s right,” Joey seconded.
“It’s better than getting caught,” Jeff responded.
“What about Elena?” Bryce asked, and silence was the foremost response.
“She didn’t look good after it happened,” Michael commented. “She looked like she was going to lose it.”
“Would you look good?” PJ challenged him harshly.
Joey hushed his vice president with a look.
“I’m sorry,” PJ said, first to the table top, then directly to Michael. “Sorry.”
“No biggie,” Michael assured her.
“Okay, let’s not think about Elena right now,” Joey instructed. “How did everything go with you guys?”
“Fine,” Jeff answered cockily, leaning his chair back on two legs. It was a safety violation, and the looks of his friends reminded him of that quite clearly. Planting all four legs on the floor again he added, “My folks bought it.”
“What about the police?” Bryce asked. “They talked to me for like ten hours.”
“Try four hours, Hool.” Jeff leaned forward on the table, his cast clunking on the wood. “Did you tell them anything?”
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