East Salem Trilogy 01-Waking Hours

by Lis Wiehl

  From an office off the hall, Dani heard someone tapping on a keyboard. Three students shuffled past, their footsteps barely making a sound. At the double door to the east wing, a workman on a stepladder was mounting a bracket to the molding.

  “I have one just like that. I love my stepladder,” Tommy told Dani. “But it makes me sad to think I never knew my real ladder.”

  The headmaster, Dr. John Adams Wharton, approached from the door where they’d heard someone typing. He looked like what Dani thought a headmaster should look like, distinguished and wise and well-mannered and pretty much the last person you’d want to have dinner with. His smile was perfunctory and curt, and he gave the air of someone who was both relaxed and enormously busy at all times. He looked about sixty, with thinning white hair, tortoise-shell reading glasses on a chain around his neck, and a double-breasted gray suit with black buttons. His tie was striped in the school colors, red and purple.

  Phil made the introductions.

  “You’ll be meeting with Amos and Dr. Ghieri in Dr. Ghieri’s office. Dr. Ghieri is the head guidance counselor, but he’s also a practicing clinical psychologist, which I say to alert you to the fact that the things that he and Amos have exchanged in their private sessions are protected by doctor-patient privilege. But he’ll tell you what’s off-limits and what is not,” Wharton said. “Can I arrange for any refreshments before you begin?”

  “We’re good,” Tommy said.

  They were led by a secretary down a corridor past two sets of double doors that opened into a massive library. They turned down a hall where a sign marked Guidance Counseling and an arrow brought them to the counseling office. The secretary showed them to an oak-paneled waiting room. The carpet was Persian, Dani noted. The window was Tiffany glass and not an imitation, as far as she could tell. The grandfather clock was German. One of the doors off the waiting room had a brass nameplate that read Dr. Adolf Ghieri. There was no receptionist.

  “You don’t meet a lot of guys named Adolf anymore,” Phil commented.

  They waited less than a minute before a man opened the door. He was heavyset and bald, with a goatee that covered the better part of a double chin. He wore a blue shirt with the sleeves rolled up over his elbows, black shoes, black pants, and a school necktie, loosened at the collar. He looked, Dani thought, more like an aggravated supermarket manager than a psychologist. He introduced himself and invited them to come in. Dani saw a desk with two chairs on one side, one for the doctor and one for the boy, and two chairs opposite. Ghieri looked at Tommy, then at Detective Casey.

  “I was told there would only be two of you,” Dr. Ghieri said, not as in, Our mistake—let me get you a chair.

  “This is my assistant,” Dani said, gesturing to Tommy.

  The doctor only waited.

  “I’ll wait out here,” Tommy said, backing away and apologizing to Dani with a glance. “Not a problem.”

  Dani chided herself for not calling ahead for permission. Another rookie mistake. She’d have to make the best of it.

  29.

  Tommy was checking messages on his phone in the waiting room outside Dr. Ghieri’s office when a boy entered, a book bag slung over his shoulder. Must be Amos. He wore the school uniform, khaki pants, blue shirt and school tie, black shoes. He had fair hair, short on the sides and longer on top, parted on the left and neatly combed. His eyes were set widely apart, separated by an aquiline nose and thin lips. He looked like he probably didn’t need to shave more than once every two weeks. His complexion was pale, his cheeks lightly freckled. He had big hands.

  The boy did a double take when he saw Tommy. Tommy pretended he was still checking his e-mail and turned on the camcorder in his phone, pointing the camera at the boy surreptitiously, then smiled.

  “Yup. I’m that football guy,” Tommy confirmed. “You a fan?”

  “Yeah,” the boy said. “What are you doing here?”

  “Waiting for friends,” he said. “You ever go to any NFL games?”

  “My dad took me to a Giants game last year,” the boy said.

  Tommy ordinarily minimized his celebrity status. Today it was a card he could play.

  “Gotta love the Giants,” he agreed. “I hated their old stadium though. The visitors’ locker room smelled like fish. Our equipment guy had to spray it with air freshener before we could use it. And that didn’t help much.”

  Amos smiled, but in a way that seemed to Tommy more self-conscious than natural, the way a robot might listen to a joke and process the appropriate programmed response: If humorous, then go to: laughter/moderate; duration/ volume level two.

  “Are you in trouble?” Tommy asked. “That why you’re here? Dr. Ghieri call you in?”

  Amos nodded. “Are you?” he asked.

  “Am I what?” Tommy said.

  “In trouble,” the boy said. “For killing that guy.”

  “No,” Tommy answered.

  In the three years since the Dwight Sykes incident, most people had known better than to ask such a direct question.

  “Did that make you feel bad when it happened?” the boy asked.

  Tommy might ordinarily have presumed a degree of innocence behind the question. Kids Amos’s age often had a fascination with death. Tommy tried but had difficulty finding the innocence behind Amos’s question.

  “What do you think?” Tommy said.

  Amos shrugged. “It was just an accident,” he said.

  “It was,” Tommy agreed. “But even if you kill somebody in a car accident that isn’t your fault, you still feel bad.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Amos said. “I’ve never had a car accident.”

  “You like cars?” Tommy asked.

  “I like Mustangs,” Amos said.

  Tommy tried to conceal how startled he felt.

  “Have you ever watched the video of the play where you killed the receiver? It’s on YouTube.”

  “I haven’t seen it,” Tommy said. “Have you?”

  Amos nodded. “It’s pretty cool,” he said.

  Tommy felt something rising in him, a feeling he’d once cultivated, the strong desire to hit someone just to see them fall. Carl Thorstein had taught him how to forgive himself for it.

  “We’re aggressors by nature, because we need to protect ourselves and our families,” Carl had said. “You were one of the smallest middle linebackers in football—if you hadn’t trained yourself to be more aggressive than everybody else, you would have died. The instinct is good.”

  “I’m supposed to meet with Dr. Ghieri,” Amos said. “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Sure,” Tommy said.

  “When you hit that guy,” he said, “just for a split second, wasn’t there a part of you that felt glad?”

  Tommy felt his heart race. Amos had zeroed in on the worst of it, the way he’d crowed and strutted after the hit, filled with the glory of himself, suffused with the joy of combat, while another man was dying. That was something Tommy could never live down.

  “No,” Tommy said. “That’s not what I felt.”

  The door to Dr. Ghieri’s office opened. The doctor nodded to Amos to come in.

  Tommy made a V with two fingers.

  “Mir,” he said to Amos, using the Russian word for peace—a word he knew only because it was also the name of the orbiting international space station, a collaboration between the United States and Russian space programs.

  Amos made a similar gesture.

  “Igun,” he said.

  Rather than wait outside Dr. Ghieri’s office while Phil and Dani questioned the boy, Tommy decided to go for a walk, partly to clear his head but mainly because he knew there was absolutely nothing he could learn about anything sitting in the waiting room.

  He found a back door that opened out onto a green expanse, with a path leading around the edge of a pond. In the distance he saw the science building and the athletic facilities opposite it. He walked toward the pond, where he saw a poem by Robert Frost, “The Road Not Taken,”
on a brass plaque mounted at eye level on the trunk of a large oak tree. He decided, if he understood the poem correctly, that the plaque gave him permission to stroll down to the edge of the pond to have a look.

  It was a lovely body of water, with an island in the middle where a variety of marigolds still bloomed. Then he noticed, in the shallow water where the pond met the grass, a small frog, green with dark brown spots and stripes.

  He bent low and approached with as much stealth as he could manage, reaching his hand out until it hovered just above the frog. He’d caught more frogs than he could remember as a boy, playing around the vernal pools with his buddies. The trick was to get as close as you could, then make a sudden lunge.

  This frog allowed him to get closer than any ever had before.

  Odd.

  He held out a finger and laid it lightly on the frog’s back.

  It didn’t jump, or even blink.

  He picked it up and looked at it, his hand open and flat.

  “Are you sick?” he asked the frog.

  It was then that he heard a voice behind him say, “Sir, please step away from the pond.”

  30.

  In the doctor’s office, Dani envied the man’s library. She recognized tomes on child psychology and cognitive development by Piaget and Bettelheim and Kochanska, even one entitled Faith in Medieval Europe written by Tommy’s friend Carl Thorstein (unless there was more than one Carl Thorstein). She noted a shelf full of hardbound collected volumes of scholarly journals, and popular magazines like Wondertime and Parenting, and books on education. In one section she saw books listing Ghieri as the author or coauthor. In another, books that were more historically than currently relevant, biographies of Fröebel and Rousseau and Dewey and Montessori, and the works of Freud, Adler, Jung, Malinowski, and others, in what Dani guessed were original leather-bound first editions.

  The framed diplomas and citations and awards on the wall behind Dr. Ghieri’s desk indicated an extensive education, with PhDs from the Sorbonne in psychology and Princeton in sociology. Framed photographs below the diplomas told her Dr. Ghieri was an accomplished hunter and a successful lacrosse coach, also attested to by a display of trophies on a shelf. He had, on his desk, several framed photographs of what Dani assumed were family members. Also on his desk, she saw a closed laptop, a tobacco humidor, and an ashtray in which lay a meerschaum pipe carved in the shape of a bearded man’s head. The room smelled of tobacco, not a stale or sour smell but aromatic and sweet, more like baking bread. She finally noted, mounted high above a bookshelf where no one could reach it, a ceremonial Chinese sword. Its purpose was decorative, but she nevertheless found it odd to see a weapon on display in a child psychologist’s office.

  “Amos will be here momentarily,” Ghieri said, glancing at the clock on the wall. “Punctuality is one of the first things we teach.”

  Dani sat up in her chair when Amos entered. He looked like a clean-cut all-American boy, his fair hair neatly combed, his eyes a light hazel, his fair skin with just a faint spray of freckles across his cheeks, his school uniform hanging loosely on his gangly frame. When she shook his hand, it was surprisingly large and felt clammy and cold.

  Dr. Ghieri explained the ground rules to Amos. Amos would talk only about the party he’d attended and the people who were there on the night that Julie Leonard was killed. He should not feel compelled to discuss his own personal or medical history.

  Irene had told Dani she didn’t think she’d have any trouble getting a grand jury to subpoena the school for Amos’s psychiatric medical records if necessary. Compliance was another matter.

  “Do you understand?” Dr. Ghieri asked.

  “I think so,” Amos said.

  “Just tell the police the same story you’ve told me,” Ghieri said.

  “If you don’t mind, doctor,” Phil said, “it works better if we ask questions and take it one step at a time.”

  “Of course,” the doctor said.

  “How ya doin’, Amos?” Phil said. “You all right?”

  The boy shrugged.

  “You know why we’re here?”

  “I think so.”

  “We’re trying to figure out what went on at that party,” Phil said. “We understand that you were there, but that you left early. Who invited you?”

  “Logan Gansevoort,” Amos said.

  “How? How did he invite you?”

  “On Facebook. He sent me a message.”

  “And you knew him from grade school? It was where—East Salem Elementary?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Were any of the other kids at the party from East Salem Elementary?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “People you knew?”

  Amos nodded.

  “Who?”

  “I knew Liam from town camp. And Rayne and Khetzel, I think. But not the others.”

  “Liam didn’t remember you,” Phil said. “The girls didn’t seem to know who you were either.”

  “I was pretty quiet in grade school,” Amos said. “I didn’t know much English at first.”

  “How was that for you?” Dani said. “Trying to fit in. It must have been pretty hard to make friends if you didn’t speak English.”

  “This is getting into Amos’s personal history,” Dr. Ghieri cautioned.

  “It’s okay,” Amos said. “I don’t mind.”

  Ghieri gave Amos a withering gaze that said, I will decide what you can talk about.

  “Just the kids at the party,” Phil said. “You didn’t really have a relationship with any of them except Logan, is that right?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You knew him from Cub Scouts? Pinewood Derby? You made a car together? What’d it look like?”

  “It was silver,” Amos said. “It looked like metal, but it was wood.”

  “Don’t most kids build their cars with their dads?” Phil said. “It’s unusual for two kids to do it with each other.”

  “Logan’s dad was too busy,” Amos said. “My dad thought it would be better if I did it all on my own.”

  “Did you do half and Logan half?” Phil asked.

  “I did most of it,” Amos said.

  “You and Logan won first prize?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Except that the local paper always runs a picture on the front page of the winners,” Phil said. “Did you see the story they ran after you won?”

  “I don’t remember,” Amos said.

  “Help me understand exactly how this might be relevant,” Dr. Ghieri said.

  “Just that we found the newspaper,” Phil said, “and according to the newspaper, only Logan Gansevoort won. It doesn’t mention Amos at all. It looks to me like Amos did all the work and Logan took all the credit. Somebody did that to me, I’d be ticked off at him for a long time. I don’t think I’d ever forget it.”

  “I didn’t care,” Amos said. “I just thought it was fun to win.”

  Phil looked skeptical.

  “You lost touch with Logan, but you got back in touch via Facebook,” Dani said. “Did he friend you or did you friend him?”

  “I don’t remember,” Amos said. “I mean, you plug in what schools you went to and stuff and then people just show up on a list of suggested people and you click on whether or not you want to be their friends again.”

  “Did you know Julie Leonard before the party?” Phil asked Amos.

  “No, sir.”

  “You never instant-messaged her in some anonymous chat room?”

  “What part of anonymous don’t you understand?” Amos said.

  “Amos,” Ghieri cautioned.

  “It’s all right,” Phil said. “I phrased that poorly. Pardon my public education. So you had no contact with Julie Leonard, that you know of, prior to the party.”

  “No, sir,” Amos said.

  “You did have contact?” Phil appeared confused again.

  “I was agreeing with the negative statement you made by echoing it,” Amos said.<
br />
  “So, yes, you agree that you had no contact?”

  “Yes,” Amos said.

  Dani watched Amos closely, the way his eyes narrowed. His fingers became slightly arched instead of relaxed. His shoulders rose a quarter of an inch higher than they needed to be, and then he touched his nose, often a sign that someone was lying or about to lie. Phil was getting to him. Amos was clearly growing angry, frustrated by the stupid questions from the stupid man in the stupid sport coat who, for reasons Amos could not understand, had authority over him.

  Dani knew the detective was anything but stupid. There was a method to his presentation, and possibly to his wardrobe choices.

  “So Logan hits you up on Facebook about the party,” Phil repeated. “Did you save the message?”

  “Our system automatically deletes e-mails and social network content after three days,” Ghieri said. “Students may, of course, print out or copy and paste anything they want to save.”

  “You didn’t happen to print out Logan’s message, by chance?”

  Amos shook his head.

  “So the night of the party. Walk me through it. What happened?”

  “I was at Starbucks,” Amos said. “It’s kind of a hangout. I’d earned a midnight pass.”

  “Part of our system of rewards and reinforcements is to grant off-campus passes to students who’ve demonstrated consistency in various targeted behaviors,” Ghieri explained.

  “Go on,” Phil urged Amos.

  “I knew that was the night of the party. I was at Starbucks …”

  “You drive there?”

  “I took the shuttle,” Amos said. “My car is being repaired.”

  “What’s wrong with it?”

  “I don’t know,” Amos said. “It’s really loud.”

  “Where’d you take it?”

  “I took it to the Shell station in Ridgefield,” Amos said.