Shadow of the Lions

by Christopher Swann

  I sat back in my seat, staring at him. “You know Ahab was insane, right? Melville wrote that, too.”

  Briggs picked up his fork and speared a slice of hard-boiled egg. “Everybody searches for something, Matthias,” he said. “You telling me Fritz isn’t your white whale?”

  He chewed his food, watching me as I sat across from him at a loss for words. “So,” he said, swallowing, “what did you find out about Davenport?”

  WE SPENT ANOTHER TWO hours talking in the diner. It’s probably more accurate to say that Briggs interrogated me and I answered his questions. He wasn’t satisfied with what Wat Davenport had told me about the two NorthPoint employees selling secrets to Chinese clients. Frank Davenport might not have had the two investigated, he argued—he may have lied to his brother. Or he may have sat on whatever information he’d learned from private detectives. “You need to go back to Wat Davenport, see what else he knows,” Briggs said.

  “I’m not doing anything until I solve my problems here,” I said, a bit heatedly. “We need to find out who tried to frame me at Blackburne.”

  Briggs grunted and pulled a small worn notepad from his hip pocket. “So we make a list,” he said.

  It was a short list. Ren Middleton was at the top, then Travis Simmons, followed by his son, Paul, and then the hypothetical “Paul’s friends/customers.”

  “I don’t buy that a kid did that,” Briggs said. “Got drugs into your desk and apartment. They’d need access to keys, for one thing.”

  “Blackburne’s got an honor code,” I pointed out. “People are trusting. Makes it pretty easy to lie and steal things.” Briggs raised his eyebrows. “Well, it does,” I said stubbornly.

  “It’d still be easier for an adult,” he insisted.

  “Like Ren Middleton.”

  “I get that you want it to be him. Guy throws you out on your ass, you’d like him to get what’s coming to him. But all he had to do was just wait another month or two, tell you he wasn’t going to offer you a contract, and send you on your way.”

  “Maybe he feels threatened. He tried to get me to lie about Paul Simmons and the drugs.”

  “He’s not threatened by you in any way that firing you doesn’t take care of. What about Travis Simmons? He’d be pissed about his son—maybe he blames you.”

  “And he gets me by planting drugs?” I shrugged. “I don’t see it, but it’s possible. Maybe he’d see it as ironically fitting. Which brings us to Paul.”

  “Who’s ‘out in Utah,’ according to you.”

  “His friends at Blackburne, then. He gets them to set me up out of revenge. If Paul Simmons knew how to get that shotgun out of that locked cabinet, he could get into my apartment and classroom without a problem.”

  “His father’s the headmaster, for Christ’s sake.”

  “Exactly. His son could get access to anything at Blackburne if he wanted to.”

  “Which comes back to my problem with a kid doing this. I mean, the oxy they could steal from a parent or relative, but where’d they get that much pot? Most kids would smoke it instead of holding on to it.”

  “Okay,” I said, rubbing my eyes, “let’s go over it again.”

  “You’d make a decent cop,” Briggs said, using the back of his hand to stifle a yawn.

  “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  “You know,” Briggs said, “what about Terence? Maybe he has friends who were pissed about what happened to him. Or they’re pissed that you could mess things up for them with your half-assed drug investigation. Who did Terence hang out with?”

  I shrugged. “Ben Sipple, although I don’t see him doing this. We . . . have a history, but we worked it out.” When Briggs gave me a significant look, I added, “Trust me,” thinking about Ben in Saint Matthew’s, where he had ripped off the altar sheet and then sobbed against my shoulder. “Paul Simmons, obviously. Other than that, I don’t know. Terence was kind of a loner.” I thought about Terence’s journals, the odd, fragmented poems. His mother’s face rose out of my memory, beautiful and sad. Lost in thought, I stared out the window, my eyes wandering over Briggs’s truck. It had oversized wheels. Wheels . . .

  The steel wheels

  Turn and turn and turn

  In the night

  Shining with light

  As if they burn . . .

  burning wheels light up the bricks

  as fate rolls down the path toward me

  “Son of a bitch,” I said aloud.

  “Excuse me?”

  I turned to Briggs. “I need to get to Blackburne. Tonight.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Briggs dropped me off by the lions at a quarter past ten. It was dark, a heavy shield of clouds raised against the moon and stars. The road was deserted, patches of snow scattered over the fields on one side, the woods looming on the other. There wasn’t a sound, not a car or an owl or even the low keen of the wind. Briggs and I could have been the only two people left on Earth.

  “You sure about this?” Briggs asked for the tenth time.

  “Positive,” I said, making sure my iPhone was in my outside coat pocket.

  “Trespassing is a serious crime, Matthias.”

  “They won’t let me back on campus.” Saying it aloud, hearing the words in my mouth, stoked my anger. “I can’t just walk back up there in the open. They’d call Sheriff Townsend in a second.”

  “And if they see you tonight, they’ll do the same thing,” Briggs said. “You could end up back in jail. You willing to risk that?”

  I pulled on my gloves. “Yes,” I said. I wasn’t being cocky or brave—it was simply a statement of fact. “Just stick to the plan and I’ll be fine.”

  Briggs’s face was in shadow, but I was pretty sure he was frowning. “All right,” he said finally. “But don’t be stupid. Just get what you need and come back.”

  I opened the car door and went out into the night. It was like stepping into icy water. I shut the door, and Briggs drove away slowly, past the entrance. He would pull off the road about a hundred yards away or so. I checked my boots to make sure they were laced, more out of nervousness than anything else, pulled my wool hat a bit lower on my head, and set off up the drive. I passed the stone lions without a glance. Inside the gate, I left the pavement and moved about five yards into the trees on the left-hand side, in case there was a bus returning late.

  It was slow going. I didn’t want to risk using a flashlight because of the guard at the security booth just beyond the tree line, so I made my way through the dark carefully, not wanting to run into a tree trunk or poke my eye out with a branch. It occurred to me that I was making the reverse journey that Fritz had made all those years ago—he had escaped Blackburne, while I was sneaking in. My earlier anger about being banned from campus still burned in my gut. It was as if I had been expelled, only worse—this was karma for cheating all those years ago. Was I a victim, or an offender finally getting my due?

  Eventually I reached the edge of the playing fields, the trees a wall at my back. The Hill and its lights lay ahead of me, a beacon in the dark. Much closer, about thirty yards away, stood the security booth, soft yellow light illuminating its window and revealing a single person, one of the Slater brothers, seated inside. He looked like he was reading a magazine. Even if the light would ruin whatever night vision he might have, I needed to be careful. Snow glimmered on the ground, but otherwise the fields were covered in shadow. I gingerly stepped out from the trees and began walking slowly but steadily across the fields.

  By this time, I was breathing somewhat heavily, the air rasping in my throat. My legs were heavy, and the Hill had never seemed so far away. I crossed a soccer field and glanced back—no one had stirred in the security booth—and then started up a sloping fairway that led straight to the base of Farquhar Gym.

  When I finally reached the gym, I could see, by the ground at the bottom of the wall, a row of skylights ablaze with light. This was what I had been looking for. Crouching, I crept over to the
skylights, a dogwood hedge shielding me from view of anyone, and peered through the glass.

  Below me was Pelham Greer’s gym apartment. Greer was home. He was in his wheelchair, his back to me, emptying something into a tall garbage can by the door that led to the inside stairwell, the door through which I had first entered his apartment last fall. Then he turned. I leaned back automatically from the skylight, afraid he might catch a glimpse of me, and then slowly leaned forward again. He had rolled over to his kitchenette, where he opened a cabinet and retrieved a spray can. He then sprayed his apartment for a good thirty seconds or so, thoroughly spraying into every corner. When he seemed satisfied, he put the spray can back into the cabinet, rolled his head to stretch his neck, and then wheeled over to his bed. As he started to swing himself out of his chair and onto his bed, I backed away from the windows and glanced behind me down the hill to make sure no one was around. The golf course remained empty. I glanced at my watch: eleven o’clock, lights-out.

  I made my way to the right, heading toward the front of the gym, until I reached a Dumpster. Behind the Dumpster was a half-hidden set of double doors. Reaching into my pocket, I withdrew the set of keys I still had, including the one gym key all faculty had so they could use the gym and other amenities. I’d had these in my pocket when I had been arrested, and I had received them along with my other personal possessions when I had been released that afternoon—Blackburne had forgotten to request their return. I could have gone into Greer’s apartment through the door I had entered all those weeks ago last fall, but that would have meant entering the gym another way and possibly encountering someone else. Besides, Greer’s bed faced that door.

  I inserted the key into the lock very slowly, then pulled out my phone, opened an app, and put the phone back in my pocket. Then I turned the key. The lock moved smoothly and quietly. Quickly I turned the knob and opened the door, stepping inside and then closing it behind me.

  I was at the top of the shallow ramp that led down to the floor of Greer’s apartment. To my left, Greer jerked his head up toward me, a magazine forgotten on his lap and his mouth open in surprise. “Jesus, you scared the hell out of me!” he said.

  “Good,” I said, turning the dead bolt in the door.

  Greer was momentarily shocked by my appearance—I was counting on that. But he had been a soldier, and as I walked down the ramp to the floor, his training and instincts kicked in. He moved with uncanny agility for his wheelchair, parked right next to his bed. But before he could do anything other than get into the chair, I walked to the kitchenette cabinet and opened it, retrieving the spray can I had seen him use earlier. The label on the can read Ozium. I turned and held it up to him as he rolled out from behind his bed, scowling.

  “What the fuck do you think —” Greer began.

  “Citrus scent,” I said, cutting him off. I waved the can in the air. “Sort of a potpourri smell. Gets rid of smoke odors. Guy I knew in college swore by this stuff.”

  I couldn’t tell if I imagined Greer glancing at the trash can or not. “You aren’t even supposed to be here,” he said. “You got arrested. Fired. You—”

  “Because of you,” I said. “Because of what you put in my desk.”

  Greer blinked. “I don’t—”

  I headed for the trash can. Instantly Greer was wheeling forward to intercept me, but as I passed the card table, I reached out and grabbed the one chair at the table, pulling it over onto the floor in Greer’s path. He stopped short, and then reversed and maneuvered around the chair easily enough, but it bought me enough time to reach the trash can and open the lid.

  “Get out of my shit!” he yelled.

  With my free hand—I was still holding the can of Ozium—I reached into the trash can and pulled out the wilted end of what must have been a rather large joint. My hand was flecked with ash, no doubt from the ashtray I’d seen Greer emptying into his garbage can not two minutes earlier.

  There was a quiet snick behind me, and I turned to see Greer right behind me, moving his arm back. A long black stick had magically appeared in his hand. I ducked to the side, just in time for the stick to miss me on the downswing. It smashed into the plastic trash can, cutting a deep gouge into its side. Greer yanked it back, freeing it from the trash can, while I backed up, a spray can in one hand and the butt-end of a joint in the other. Then the baton slashed through the air, its tip just catching the back of my left hand. A burst of white-hot pain seared my hand, and the joint I had been holding sailed across the room. I backpedaled, holding my hand to my stomach. It felt as if it had been sliced open. Greer was working his wheelchair with both hands, the baton in his lap, but before I thought to rush him or do anything else, he stopped pushing the wheels and picked up the baton in his right hand. Instinctively, I stepped to my right, away from the baton—he’d have a harder time hitting me across his body. But Greer’s left hand reached down to the wheel and palmed it back, and he spun to his left like a kid on a skateboard, bringing his baton arm around to me. I avoided being hit in the face only by leaping backward, striking a wall as I did so. Greer wheeled forward and raised the baton again, his face taut with anger. There was no furniture I could throw down in front of him this time. I dove to the left, the baton striking the wall behind me hard enough to chip the paint.

  I got to one knee as Greer whirled around and advanced, the baton raised again. I threw the Ozium can at him as hard as I could, and when he raised his baton arm instinctively to deflect it, I got to my feet, ran forward, and leapt at him. I didn’t think about it beforehand, just acted—I was as surprised as Greer was. I crashed into him, pinning the baton between our bodies. The momentum carried him back and tipped his wheelchair over, and both of us fell to the floor. He struck his head on the floor, while some part of his chair hit me in the ribs like a solid kick, and I bounced off the chair and rolled over, gasping, a sharp pain in my side now joining the pain in my hand. Groaning, I turned my head toward Greer in time to see him on his back, the wheelchair on its side like an overturned vehicle, one wheel spinning in the air. He was groping for the baton, which lay next to me on the floor just beyond his fingers. I snatched the baton and flung it away so that it hit the card table with a loud smack before falling back to the floor, well out of reach.

  Greer blinked at the ceiling and let out a moan. I got to my feet, shakily, my ribs and hand both complaining about it. “Are you all right?” I asked, a bit harshly.

  “How’d you know?” he managed to say.

  “Terence Jarrar,” I said. Greer turned his head to stare at me. “Or his poems,” I continued. “He wrote about you. ‘The steel wheels / Turn and turn and turn / In the night, / Shining with light / As if they burn.’ There was more, about burning wheels on the bricks and fate rolling toward him. Took me a while to get it.”

  Greer closed his eyes, a look of disgust on his face. “Fucking chair,” he said. He opened his eyes and looked venomously, not at me, but at the wheelchair toppled over onto its side, a wheel still turning.

  “So, when did you start selling to him?” I said. “He wrote about getting stoned, too. That part I got. I just didn’t connect it with you until later.”

  Greer shut his eyes again.

  “He was stoned the night he died,” I continued. “He and Paul Simmons. They were high, on pot or oxy or Vicodin, and they were fucking around with a shotgun by the river, and Terence shot himself. You were the one who sold to him. And when you got scared that I might figure that out, you planted those drugs in my desk. How’d you get a student to find them? You suggest that they look in there? Ask them to get you a piece of paper or something?”

  Greer remained silent. Then, his eyes still closed, he said, “It was detention. I had a kid helping me clean desks, getting gum off the undersides. He ran out of paper towels, and I told him to look in your desk—sometimes teachers keep some in there.” He opened his eyes. “It was easy.” He said this without pride or scorn.

  “And Terence?” I prodded him.


  “Help me,” he said, struggling to sit up.

  “What about Terence?”

  He gave up and lay back, breathing hard. “Help me,” he spat.

  “Tell me about Terence,” I said, insistent. “Did you sell to him?”

  He lay there, staring at the ceiling. “Fuck you,” he rasped. “You have no idea.”

  “Enlighten me.”

  He turned his head to look at me, anger and disgust mingled in his face. “Enlighten you?” he said. “You see my legs?” He jabbed a hand toward them. “I got shot, in Kuwait. Sniper got me in the spine. Instant paraplegic.” His eyes burned into mine, furious. “Doctors saved my life, but they wouldn’t save my legs. I could have spinal surgery and get prosthetics. I could walk again, like a real man. But it costs fifty grand to get the surgery, and the VA won’t cover it. Instead, they gave me that fucking chair. Meanwhile, I get headaches like someone’s in my skull with a jackhammer trying to get out. And nothing touches the pain unless I take enough meds to start drooling on myself.”

  “So you started smoking to manage the pain,” I said. Suddenly I felt very tired. “And then, what, you figured you’d start dealing to make a little money on the side? Save up for your surgery?”

  He stared at me. “Except for the army, I’ve worked here my entire life,” he said. “Even when I was a kid, I worked here summers. And now people like you look at me like I’m some sort of sad, weird fucker who’s just good enough to pick up your trash. Grads come back and high-five me and shit, want to have a beer with the cripple to show they weren’t like that, they were decent human beings. You think one of them’s gonna pay for me to have surgery? You think I’d ask?”

  In spite of everything, I burned with shame at the truth in his words. I recalled Porter Deems’s initial reaction to Greer at the faculty party back in August: Creepy dude in a wheelchair. I looked at Greer, lying on the floor with his useless legs splayed out in front of him. He would never walk again without a surgery he couldn’t afford. It was almost enough to make me reconsider everything. But then I thought of the Jarrars in Ren’s office, Mr. Jarrar’s sorrow so great he could not speak, Mrs. Jarrar’s grief so intense it broke my heart, and their son lying dead on a rock in the middle of the river. And if that sounds too noble, I admit I also thought about my own neck, about the county jail and the charges against me.