Last to Die (10 page)

In the hallway outside her door, footsteps creaked past. She heard men’s voices.

“… We’re not sure whether the threat is real or imagined, but Dr. Welliver seems convinced.”

“The police seem to have the situation in hand. All we can do is wait and see.”

I know that voice
. Maura pulled on a bathrobe and opened her door. “Anthony,” she called out.

Anthony Sansone turned to face her. Dressed in black, standing beside the much shorter Gottfried Baum, Sansone seemed a towering, almost sinister figure in that dimly lit hallway. She noticed his wrinkled clothes, the fatigue in his eyes, and understood that his journey here had been a long one.

“I’m sorry if we woke you, Maura,” he said.

“I had no idea you were coming to the school.”

“Just a few issues to deal with.” He smiled, a wary smile that did not reach his eyes. She sensed a troubling tension in that hallway. She saw it in Gottfried Baum’s face, and in the cool distance with which Sansone now regarded her. He’d never been an openly warm man, and there had been times when she’d wondered if he even disliked her. Tonight that reserve was more impenetrable than ever.

“I need to talk to you,” she said. “It’s about Julian.”

“Of course. In the morning, maybe? I won’t be leaving until the afternoon.”

“You’re here for such a short time?”

He gave an apologetic shrug. “I wish I could stay longer. But you can always discuss any concerns with Gottfried here.”

“
Do
you have concerns, Dr. Isles?” said Gottfried.

“Yes, I do. About why Julian’s here. Evensong isn’t just any boarding school, is it?”

She saw a glance pass between the men.

“That subject would be better left for tomorrow,” Sansone said.

“I do need to talk about this. Before you vanish again.”

“We will, I promise.” He gave a brisk nod. “Good night, Maura.”

She closed her door, troubled by his remoteness. The last time they had spoken was only two months ago, when he had stopped at her house to drop off Julian for a visit. They’d lingered on the
porch
, smiling at each other, and he’d seemed reluctant to leave.
Or did I imagine it? Have I ever been wise about men?

Her track record was certainly dismal enough. For the last two years she’d been trapped in an affair with a man she could never have, an affair she’d known would end badly, yet she’d been as helpless as a junkie to resist it. That’s what falling in love really amounted to, your brain on drugs. Adrenaline and dopamine, oxytocin and serotonin. Chemical insanity, celebrated by poets.

This time, I swear I’ll be wiser
.

She went back to the window to shut the curtains and block the moonlight, said to be yet another source of insanity so praised by those same witless poets. Only as she reached for the drapes did she remember the figure that she’d spotted earlier. Staring down at the garden, she saw statues in a silvery landscape of shadows and moonlight. Nothing moved.

The girl was gone.

Or had she ever been there?
Maura wondered the next morning when she looked out that same window and saw a gardener crouched below, wielding hedge clippers. A rooster crowed, loudly and lustily, proclaiming his authority. It seemed a perfectly normal morning, the sun shining, the cock crowing again and again. But last night, under moonlight, how unearthly everything had seemed.

Someone knocked on her door. It was Lily Saul, who greeted her with a cheerful “Good morning! We’re meeting in the curiosities room, if you’d like to join us.”

“Which meeting is this?”

“To address your concerns about Evensong. Anthony said you had questions, and we’re ready to answer them.” She gestured toward the staircase. “It’s downstairs, across from the library. There’ll be coffee waiting for us.”

Maura found far more than just coffee waiting for her when she walked into the curiosities room. Lining the walls were glass cabinets filled with artifacts: carved figurines and ancient stone
tools
, arrowheads and animal bones. The yellowed labels told her this was an old collection, perhaps owned by Cyril Magnus himself. At any other time she would have lingered over these treasures, but the five people already seated at the massive oak table demanded her attention.

Sansone rose from his chair and said, “Good morning, Maura. You already know Gottfried Baum, our headmaster. Next to him is Ms. Duplessis, who teaches literature. Our botany professor, David Pasquantonio. And this is Dr. Anna Welliver, our school psychologist.” He gestured to the smiling, big-boned woman to his right. In her early sixties, with silver hair springing out in a cheerfully undisciplined mane, Dr. Welliver looked like an aging hippie in her high-necked granny dress.

“Please, Dr. Isles,” said Gottfried, pointing to the coffee carafe and the tray of croissants and jams. “Help yourself.”

As Maura took a seat beside Headmaster Baum, Lily placed a steaming cup of coffee in front of her. The croissants looked buttery and tempting, but Maura took only a sip of coffee and focused on Sansone, who faced her from the far end of the table.

“You have questions about our school and our students,” he said. “These are the people who have the answers.” He nodded to his associates around the table. “Please, let’s hear your concerns, Maura.”

His uncharacteristic formality unsettled her; so did this setting, surrounded by oddities in cabinets, and by people she scarcely knew.

She answered him with equal formality. “I don’t believe Evensong is the right school for Julian.”

Gottfried raised an eyebrow in surprise. “Has he told you he’s unhappy, Dr. Isles?”

“No.”

“Do you think he’s unhappy?”

She paused. “No.”

“Then what is the nature of your concern?”

“Julian has been telling me about his classmates. He says that a number of them have lost family members to violence. Is this true?”

Gottfried nodded. “For many of our students.”

“Many? Or most?”

He gave a conciliatory shrug. “Most.”

“So this is a school for victims.”

“Oh dear, not victims,” Dr. Welliver said. “We like to think of them as
survivors
. They come to us with special needs. And we know exactly how to help them.”

“Is that why you’re here, Dr. Welliver? To address their emotional needs?”

Dr. Welliver gave her an indulgent smile. “Most schools have counselors.”

“But they don’t keep therapists on staff.”

“True.” The psychologist looked around the table at her colleagues. “We’re proud to say we’re unique that way.”

“Unique because you specialize in traumatized children.” She looked around the table. “In fact, you recruit them.”

“Maura,” said Sansone, “child protective agencies around the country send children to us because we offer what other schools can’t. A sense of safety. A sense of order.”

“And a sense of purpose? Is that what you’re really trying to instill?” She looked around the table at the six faces watching her. “You’re all members of the Mephisto Society. Aren’t you?”

“Maybe we could try to stay on topic?” suggested Dr. Welliver. “And focus on what we do here at Evensong.”

“I am talking about Evensong. About how you’re using this school to recruit soldiers for your organization’s paranoid mission.”

“Paranoid?” Dr. Welliver gave a surprised laugh. “That’s hardly a diagnosis I’d make of anyone in this room.”

“The Mephisto Society believes that evil is real. You believe that humanity itself is under attack, and your mission is to defend it.”

“Is
that
what you think we’re doing here? Training demon hunters?” Welliver shook her head in amusement. “Trust me, our
role
is hardly metaphysical. We help children recover from violence and tragedy. We give them structure, safety, and a superb education. We prepare them for university or whatever their goals may be. You visited Professor Pasquantonio’s class yesterday. You saw how engaged the students are, even with a subject like botany.”

“He was showing them poisonous plants.”

“And that’s precisely why they were interested,” said Pasquantonio.

“Because the subtext was murder? Which plants can be used to kill?”

“That’s your interpretation. Others would call it a class on safety. How to recognize and avoid what could harm them.”

“What else do you teach here? Ballistics? Blood splatters?”

Pasquantonio shrugged. “Neither would be out of place in a physics class. What is your objection?”

“My objection is that you’re using these children to advance your own agenda.”

“Against violence? Against the evils that men do to one another?” Pasquantonio snorted. “You make it sound like we’re pushing drugs or training gangsters.”

“We’re helping them heal, Dr. Isles,” Lily said. “We know what it’s like to be crime victims. We help them find purpose in their pain. Just as we do.”

We know what it’s like
. Yes, Lily Saul would know; she’d lost her family to murder. And Sansone had lost his father to murder as well.

Maura looked at the six faces and felt a chilling sense of comprehension. “You’ve all lost someone,” she said.

Gottfried gave a mournful nod. “My wife,” he said. “A robbery in Berlin.”

“My sister,” said Ms. Duplessis. “Raped and strangled in Detroit.”

“My husband,” Dr. Welliver said softly, her head bowed. “Kidnapped and murdered in Buenos Aires.”

Maura turned to Pasquantonio, who stared down in silence at the table. He did not answer the question; he didn’t need to. The answer was there, in his face. She suddenly thought of her own twin sister, murdered only a few years earlier. And Maura realized:
I belong in this circle. Like them, I mourn someone lost to violence
.

“We understand these children,” said Dr. Welliver. “That’s why Evensong is the best place for them. Maybe the only place for them. Because they’re one of us. We are all one family.”

“Of victims.”

“Not victims. We’re the ones who
lived
.”

“Your students may be survivors,” said Maura, “but they’re also just children. They can’t choose for themselves. They can’t object.”

“Object to what?” said Dr. Welliver.

“To joining this army of yours. That’s what you think you are, an army of the righteous. You gather up the wounded and turn them into warriors.”

“We nurture them. Give them a way to spring back from adversity.”

“No, you keep them in a place where they’ll never be allowed to forget. By surrounding them with other victims, you take away any chance of them seeing the world the way other children do. Instead of light, they see darkness. They see evil.”

“Because it’s there. Evil,” Pasquantonio whispered. He sat hunched in his chair, his head still bowed. “The proof of it comes from their own lives. They merely see what they already know exists.” Slowly he lifted his head and looked at her with pale and watery eyes. “As do you.”

“No,” she said. “What I see in my work is the result of violence. This thing you call
evil
is merely a philosophical term.”

“Call it what you will. These children know the truth. It’s burned into their memories.”

Gottfried said, reasonably, “We provide them with the knowledge and skills to make a difference in the world. We inspire them to take action, just as other private schools do. Military academies
teach
discipline. Religious schools teach piety. College preps emphasize academics.”

“And Evensong?”

“We teach resilience, Dr. Isles,” Gottfried answered.

Maura regarded the faces around the table, evangelists all. And their recruits were the wounded and vulnerable, children who had not been given a choice.

She rose to her feet. “Julian doesn’t belong here. I’ll find another school for him.”

“I’m afraid that’s not your decision,” said Dr. Welliver. “You don’t have legal custody of the boy.”

“I’ll petition the state of Wyoming.”

“I understand you had the chance to do that six months ago. You declined.”

“Because I thought this school was the right place for him.”

“It
is
the right place for him, Maura,” said Sansone. “To pull him from Evensong would be a mistake. One that you’ll regret.” Was that a warning in his voice? She tried to read his face, but like so many times before, she failed.

“This is up to Julian, don’t you think?” Dr. Welliver said.

“Yes, of course it is,” said Maura. “But I’m going to tell him exactly how I feel about this.”

“Then I suggest you take the time to understand what we’re doing here.”

“I
do
understand.”

“You just got here yesterday, Dr. Isles,” Lily said. “You haven’t seen what we offer the children. You haven’t walked in our forest, seen our stables and farm, observed all the skills they’re picking up here. Everything from archery to growing their own food to learning how to survive in the wilderness. I know you’re a scientist. Shouldn’t you base your decisions on facts and not emotions?”

This made Maura pause, because what Lily said was true. She had not yet explored Evensong. She had no idea if there was a better alternative for Julian.

“Give us a chance,” said Lily. “Take the time to meet our students, and you’ll see why Evensong is the one place that can help them. As an example, we’ve just taken in two new kids. Both of them have survived two separate massacres. First their parents were killed, then their
foster
parents. Imagine how deep
their
wounds must go, to be twice orphaned, twice a survivor?” Lily shook her head. “I don’t know of another school that would understand their pain the way we can.”

Twice orphaned. Twice a survivor
. “These children,” Maura said softly. “Which ones are they?”

“The names don’t matter,” said Dr. Welliver. “What matters is that they
need
Evensong.”

“I want to know who they
are
.” Maura’s sharp demand seemed to startle them all.

A silence passed before Lily asked: “Why do their names make a difference?”

“You said there were two of them.”