The Twisted Thread (13 page)

Because they both knew she had been about to say “because I'm going to miss you,” and this was certainly not the time to be embarking on something as delicate as discussing feelings that might be mutual. Fred burned with happiness. But it was so confusing. There was nothing much either of them dared say right now. He drank down a gulp of Guinness, Madeline gloomily ate fries and ordered another plateful for them to share. Gradually, he became conscious that the men in the booth were speaking a language other than English in a soft, lilting rhythm that might have been Spanish but wasn't.

“Portuguese,” said Madeline, having noticed that Fred was listening to them. “My mother lives near New Bedford, and when I visit, all you can get on the radio are Portuguese stations. That's what those guys are speaking.” Fred looked at the men a little more closely. Cape Verdeans, perhaps, workers in the last of the Greenville mills. They were neatly and simply dressed and drinking Budweiser from bottles. All of them had on Red Sox caps and appeared to be watching the game. Often, Fred and Madeline would stay out long enough to hoot Boston toward victory, but that wouldn't happen tonight.

Fred was about to ask Madeline if she wanted to go back when the door to the bar swung open with almost as much violence as it had when Madeline arrived. A girl with long hair flew in and brought with her a gust of hard rain. She glanced around the room and found the three men at the booth. Darting over to the oldest of them, she spoke rapidly in Portuguese. Then the girl happened to spin around and see Fred and Madeline looking at her. There was no reason they shouldn't have; she had burst in so suddenly. But when she returned their glance, all that filled her face was terror. For some reason, she was frightened of them. She ran out of the bar as fast as she'd arrived, followed by the man she had spoken to so urgently. He threw a few bills on the table, murmured what was probably an apology to his friends, and turned to follow the girl without casting a look at anyone else. Fred saw that Madeline was staring at the door, and she was frowning. “Do you know who she was?” she asked.

Fred shrugged. “Never seen her before. But she was pretty upset to see us. How about you?”

Madeline pulled on her baggy raincoat. “No,” she said. Fred asked Bill Price for the check. He and Madeline fished out the money each owed. Passing him the cash, Fred asked the owner if he knew who the girl and the man were.

Bill said, “No clue. He and his buddies come in once in a while to watch baseball. Never seen the kid before.” He wiped down the bar, cleared their plates. Madeline had eaten every fry.

Outside, the wind blew loudly, whipping Madeline's raincoat into a series of tan sails that threatened to fill and whisk her off to the next county. She waved to him, said good-bye. They wouldn't talk tonight; the weather was too disturbed and their moods as well. There was no sign of the girl or the man.

Fred didn't sleep well, tossing as he thought about the Brooklyn loft, Madeline and the spool of thread, the wild fear in the girl's eyes. He thought, too, about Llewellan and Edward Smith until he finally slept near dawn and dreamed in what he later remembered as the hiss of Portuguese.

CHAPTER 12

I
t was the third time that Matt had sat in a room with Scotty
Johnston, and each time he liked him less, which was quite astonishing given that he had really disliked him the first time he met the kid. Scotty looked a great deal like his father. Tall and aggressively fit, with a shock of blond hair, a lean jaw, and blue eyes notable for their lack of humanity. What a trait to pass on, Matt thought, contempt for the human race. If you really felt it that strongly, it would be hard to choose to have children, who would also be forced to deal with all the inferior people occupying the world. But Mr. Johnston, as he frequently reminded Matt and Vernon, was the father of four boys, which was very different, Vernon had noted at one point, from saying you had four kids you really cared about.

They had chosen the smallest, most claustrophobic interrogation room. Vernon and Matt were tall, but Scott and Mr. Johnston were of the looming sort of huge, and the room felt clammy and tight. The white walls were scuffed, the plastic chairs deeply uncomfortable, and the fluorescent lights gave you a new feeling for the word
institutional
. The décor, such as it was, was intended to remind everyone that outside the day was beautiful, hot, and clear after the rainstorm. How much more pleasant it would be for Scott to simply admit what he knew and get back outdoors to enjoy this gorgeous Thursday morning. Vernon lounged on a chair, almost getting it to the point where it tilted on two legs into the wall. Matt's chair remained firmly grounded, but he knew how Vernon felt. It was hard to take the self-important bluster of the man in front of them entirely seriously. Yet it was also very clear that in his tightly bunched fists Scotty was holding on hard to quite a bit of necessary information.

“Scott, Mr. Johnston,” said Matt, trying to sound equable. “We know Scotty has been through a lot. By all accounts, he and Claire were close. And we don't want to interrupt his return to classes.” Was this laying it on? Vernon lifted an eyebrow, but Matt thought he could probably get away with it. Irony was a quality to which neither of the Johnstons appeared susceptible. Perhaps that, like their height and Nordic coloring, was genetic. “We also know,” he continued, holding up a hand to block the oncoming train of protest Mr. Johnston was about to release, “that none of our discussions are taped, recorded, or otherwise on record because Scott is a minor until September. But Scott knew Claire better than anyone, and we feel it's important to be sure we understand her from his perspective.”

That quelled the elder Johnston for a moment and allowed Matt to ask, “What about the Reign of Terror? Were they involved in all this?” Vernon pursed his mouth; he'd had the group explained to him and added it to a growing list of reasons why he'd never send his own girls to private school. Mr. Johnston merely looked confused, as if wondering what the French Revolution had to do with Claire's death. But the question appeared to alarm Scotty not at all, and for once, he just answered. He shifted his large shoulders forward and said, “No. Claire was sick of them all. Sick of all the stupid shit they got up to.” Matt wondered when parents had stopped minding if their children swore in front of adults. His own father, Joseph, had slapped him in the face once for swearing in a parking lot after Matt slammed his thumb in the car door. Even extreme pain didn't justify that kind of slackness.

“And what kind of shit did they get up to?” Vernon asked, still tilted, arms behind his head.

Scotty shrugged. “Idiotic things like telling girls what they could and couldn't wear. Where they could sit in the Commons or the library. Claire could have cared less. She didn't want to be Robespierre. But if they pick you, it's hard to refuse. They tried to boss her around, tell her what she had to do as head, but she didn't listen. It pissed them off.” Mr. Johnston was clearly not following a word of this, though for the moment he refrained from barging into the conversation.

“Enough for them to kill her or take her baby?” Matt asked. Since Madeline had told him on Tuesday about the possibility that the Reign was involved, he had tried to corner each of the girls she'd named, as well as the new recruits Claire had initiated. But three of the four new ones were still under a doctor's care; the fourth had been whisked off campus. Of the other girls, two had had their parents retain lawyers and two had left early, citing stress.

Scotty shook his head. “No, I don't think so. I don't know how it happened, but I don't think it was them.” His eyes looked glazed, and he hunched farther forward. Claire's death, its utter realness, kept striking him at unanticipated moments, Matt suspected.

“So who does, Scott?” Vernon said. The front legs of his chair hit the linoleum with a clang, and he stood up slowly to his full height. “That's what we need to find out. More precisely, what we need is for someone to tell us who fucked Claire. Because my guess is that the same guy who fucked her also killed her.”

No one in the room, probably not even Scotty, expected what happened next. In a flash, the boy stood, grabbed the desk where he was sitting, and hurled the entire sizable piece of furniture at Vernon's head. It was mostly plastic, but some of it was steel and it came very close to connecting with Vernon, who, lucky for him, had excellent reflexes and got out of the way. The desk crashed into the wall, and its metal legs vibrated as if it were an ungainly, robotic insect stuck on its back.

“Shut the fuck up!” Scotty shouted. He was standing, dark red in the face and neck, chest heaving, hands open and ready to grab. Matt stood as well and walked deliberately to the other side of the room to right the desk. Vernon adjusted his tie, quite collected given that a large piece of office equipment had just been flung at him. “Just shut the fuck up,” Scotty roared.

For once, Mr. Johnston appeared subdued. He went over to his son and tried to comfort him, but Scotty swatted away his father's hand. “Let's go home, Scott,” Mr. Johnston urged, and Scotty screamed, “No fucking way. I am not going anywhere but school.” His volume was impressively constant.

“We'll let you resolve Scott's destination,” Matt said, “but please tell us where we'll be able to find him. We'll need to talk with you both again sometime soon.”

Vernon and Matt went slowly down the hall toward their office. Vernon was sending a text. “What are you doing?” Matt asked.

“Getting you some lunch. We're taking twenty minutes outside before we go back up there. Your turkey sub will be here momentarily. I even got you Diet Coke,” Vernon said, though he shuddered slightly as he admitted that detail. He reached into the short fridge he had brought in from home and took out his brown-bagged meal. The office icebox was a far too scary and carnivorous environment to which to entrust his clean food.

Matt smiled, and they headed toward the parking lot and the picnic bench there to wait for Matt's sandwich. “What I like about you, Vernon, is that, for a vegetarian, you're not that judgmental.” The temperature was verging on uncomfortably warm, and the leaves of the linden trees had unfolded to their full, heart-shaped green. The air was flecked with insects. Still, it was a far better idea to talk outside the station. Vernon dusted a yellow jacket off his sleeve. “I'm a vegan, not just a vegetarian, and you're wrong. I am totally judgmental. But that doesn't mean I don't know what you need to function.”

They sat at the picnic table. Vernon was glancing into the paper bag and removing a series of complicated little glass pots with tight lids that Kathy had assembled for him. Unsnapping a lid, Vernon peered in and said “Quinoa” without a lot of enthusiasm. There were days, Matt knew, when despite his most recent statement, it would have been quick work to steer Vernon toward a cheeseburger. Nonetheless, he gamely started to munch away on his whole grains, and Matt said, “Delicate choice of words back there. Scotty remained so relaxed, so in control.”

“I think he broke the desk. Can we send a bill to the father?” Vernon asked. “I was actually very proud of the fact that I resisted the temptation to arrest him for harassing an officer.”

“Yes, that showed real strength of character. And I think it was a move that allowed us to learn some interesting things. One, Claire didn't take the Reign of Terror seriously but the other girls did. Why was that?”

Vernon shrugged. “She was already queen of the world, the real Marie Antoinette, and she didn't think they could do anything to her.” He began to eat some celery sticks. “Your lunch is here,” he said, looking behind Matt. A uniformed officer had brought it out, and Matt thanked him and gave him the cash needed to pay the delivery kid at the entrance to the station. “May I point out another benefit to the meat-eating life?” Matt said. “It's a lot less noisy.” Vernon made no effort to stop crunching his pale stalks.

Matt unwrapped his sub and popped open the Diet Coke. After a sip, he said, “There were two other items. Scotty said he didn't know how she had been killed. How it had happened. But he didn't say he didn't know who had done it. And he had no intention of going home. He plans to stay put.” He ate some turkey and looked at the brick cube of the station. People passed in front of windows, a human hive of industry tracking clues and mapping patterns and looking just as primitive as the bees beginning to huddle around his soda. FBI in their shiny shoes clacking up and down halls. If anything, Matt had more faith in the efficacy of the insects. Vernon took off his jacket, folded it under his head, and stretched out on the bench. Matt did the same on the opposite side and immediately felt better. It was good to be horizontal, and the overhanging edge of the table provided some relief from the sun.

They both knew this reprieve was limited. But it was necessary to take short breaks, think through things aloud, and plan small, concrete next steps. They didn't need, however, to discuss how much they didn't know, a point the media in every form had insisted on making repeatedly. Even after three days of exhaustive searching, the case had turned up remarkably little hard evidence. The laptops and phones were still being scanned but so far had revealed nothing. These kids, savvy as they were, must have realized how easily traced all these electronics were. This might be the rare case that didn't have an Internet shadow, though Claire could have had and probably did have accounts under assumed names that they hadn't yet found. Scotty was stonewalling, an effort that almost everyone at Armitage had joined him in, along with the doctors and lawyers and parents intent on preventing access to their sensitive charges. The autopsy results had yet to be completed, and the one alluring clue, a bloody rag a handyman had found in the basement, was still at the lab. Norm Parker was taking his usual endless amount of time. The computers that the art teacher had told them about in the basement had already been removed by the time he told the cops; they'd been hauled out the next morning to Paul Revere, glad for the donation of barely used technology. All the rain had made it difficult for a complete search of the campus to go forward, and it had wiped out remnants of footprints and smells. As for the baby, it was so disheartening that it was almost better not to think about it. Despite calls coming from New Jersey to the Bahamas, the FBI had not found one viable lead. For all intents and purposes, the infant had disappeared. Matt looked over at the government cars. The black vehicles the federal agents preferred winked in the steaming lot. They were everywhere, but they were facing the same slow slog as he and Vernon.

Vernon had draped his arm over his eyes. “You asleep?” Matt asked.

“No, just getting my dose of vitamin D and thinking about all the people we have to see up there today.” He ticked off the names. Harvey Fuller, who had yet to account for why he'd been skulking around the third floor. Claire's parents, who were doing quite a job of being both antagonistic and incredibly unforthcoming. Scott's adviser and dorm head.

Vernon's phone beeped with a text. He raised himself partially and looked at the screen. “Lady named Betsy Lowery needs to see you and only you. Urgently. Who the hell is she?”

“The Barfmobile,” Matt said and explained the phenomenon of the stinky car to his partner. He reached up for the Diet Coke, nearly inhaled a bee, then finished off almost the whole can. When he was done, he sank back into the gloom below the table. He had been trying to pretend that he had not had a headache for three days, low and deep in his skull, in almost precisely the same place where Claire had sustained the blow that killed her.

“We could use backup,” said Vernon, his eyes draped again with his arm. “Lots of people up there. And we need to make some progress or Angell is going to destroy us. Oh, and I forgot. We've got a meeting tonight with the headmaster, too.” Vernon sounded weary. Neither of them had been off for more than three hours since Monday morning.

“It's local. It's worse than local. Some of those kids know exactly what happened,” said Matt to the underside of the tabletop, through which bright lances of sunlight were streaming.

“But that does not tell me precisely why you're so unwilling to let a few uniforms help with the interviews,” Vernon prodded. “I have my guess, however,” he added.

“Which you are now pleased to share with me.” Matt knew what was coming.

Still speaking with his arm over his eyes, Vernon said, “You're worried some townie won't get it up there. You think they're not going to pick up the nuances and that the snobs will walk all over them. You think you've got that angle covered.”

Matt sighed. It was partially true. Armitage was hard to translate if you hadn't experienced it. He knew exactly how the people up there talked about the town, the police, the villagers of Greenville, conversation that ranged in tone from polite acceptance of the fact that people of different origins actually existed to open disdain.