Chapter 67
At Spero, Patrick Elgot was checking the dormitories.
All the boys were supposed to be at movie night in the main hall, where this week’s presentation was another minor superhero flick that bombed at the box office before being rushed to streaming and physical release.
Elgot had picked up the Blu-ray used at Bull Moose in Bangor just days after new copies first appeared on the shelves.
Even if it was garbage, it would keep the boys entertained for a couple of hours and bring a bit of joy into their lives.
Elgot had taken the Spero job hoping he might be able to do good, and it paid better than some of the positions he’d been offered in regular schools, but Spero was sapping his spirit.
He feared that if he stayed much longer, he might lose any sense of vocation.
Scott Theriault’s death was the clincher in that regard, allied to the growing influence of James Renders.
In Elgot’s view, there was a badness to Renders.
It might have been that Principal Santopietro didn’t see it, or did but chose to ignore it because Renders knew his subjects, could control the boys, and whatever the badness was, it didn’t impact on his work.
The third possibility, one that Elgot had begun to embrace as he paid more attention to how Renders and Santopietro interacted with each other, was that Santopietro had some of the same badness in him, and Renders might have been hired because of, not despite it.
In the main hall, Elgot had done a head count to discover that one boy, Kaspar Filipowski, was missing, and none of the others could say where he was.
Even Leonard Levesque professed ignorance of Kaspar’s whereabouts.
If anyone was a candidate for inflicting harm on Kaspar Fillyourpantski, or Kaspar Shitstain as he was also known, it was Levesque, but the latter hadn’t been out of Elgot’s sight for hours.
So Elgot left the boys in Renders’s care, with the start of the movie delayed, to go looking for Kaspar.
Technically, Elgot was supposed to report even the most minor breaches of the rules, which included unpunctuality, but he tried to let as many of them slide as he could, the boys having enough to contend with as it was.
The school’s prospectus promised expert psychological care, but what it meant, in reality, was that Santopietro had taken a couple of online psychotherapy courses from a college operating out of a strip mall in Laconia, New Hampshire.
He’d even had the certificates framed and hung on his office wall, which suggested, worryingly, that he regarded them as consequential, even if one suicide and one more recent fatality offered compelling evidence to the contrary.
Elgot found no trace of Kaspar in his dorm, the ablution block, or any of the other rooms. Lord, he hoped the boy hadn’t tried to run away.
He wouldn’t get far, not after the Scott Theriault mess, but he’d be in a world of hurt when he was picked up and returned to the school, and Elgot would be forced to share the pain because Kaspar had wandered off the reservation on his watch.
Elgot stood in the hallway of John Ford and called Kaspar’s name.
“It’s Mr Elgot. I came to see if you were okay. You don’t have to be worried. It’s just me.”
He listened. Nothing.
“Goddammit, Kaspar—”
Then he heard it: a whimpering, like a puppy separated from its mother.
“Kaspar?”
He listened harder, following the sound, eventually tracing it to the laundry closet at the end of the hallway.
It was always kept locked to prevent the boys running riot with towels, sheets, and pillowcases.
Elgot hadn’t noticed that the padlock was gone and the door, although closed, was unbolted.
“Kaspar?” said Elgot again. “Are you in there?”
He opened the door and smelled urine. Kaspar Filipowski was curled up at the bottom of the closet, between the floor and the lowest shelf. Even though he was small, he could only have managed to fit in there with difficulty. He was crying, but softly, as if afraid of being heard.
“What in God’s name are you doing?” Elgot asked. “Never mind. Let’s get you out.”
But Kaspar didn’t move, and he wasn’t looking at Elgot but past him, over his shoulder.
Elgot followed the direction of his gaze and saw nothing.
He reached for the boy, who tried to shrink away, even though he couldn’t have retreated any deeper unless he went through the wall.
Kaspar spoke, but so quietly that Elgot didn’t catch what he said.
“What did you say?”
Kaspar repeated himself, and this time Elgot heard him.
“I’m hiding.”
“From who?”
Kaspar’s eyes found Elgot’s.
“From the dead boys.”