Chapter 62
I kept a close eye on Roger Teal as Berrien made the introductions, his features running the gamut of emotions from annoyance, through fear, before settling on muted defiance.
I didn’t know what he was guilty of, but he was guilty of something; if he’d never been caught with his hands in the cookie jar, he remained worried about the possibility of crumbs trapped under his fingernails.
“Mind if I take a seat?” I asked, taking a seat.
“Why bother asking,” Teal replied, “if you’re going to do it regardless?”
He spoke mildly, but with a flash of teeth; not a church mouse, then, but closer to the cat that stalks it.
“My apologies,” I said. “I can stand if you’d prefer. But personally, I don’t like looking down on someone during a conversation, or having to look up to them. It might be the socialist in me.”
Teal backed off, but marginally.
“The workday is almost over,” he said. “I was worried that if you got too comfortable, I’d be caught in traffic.”
“I’ll try not to take up too much of your time.”
I opened my notebook to a fresh page.
“May I ask who you’re working for?” said Teal.
“A lawyer. His name is Alcock. I imagine the schoolyard was hard for him.”
Teal registered the joke.
“I went to middle school with a kid called Seeman,” he said. “His parents ended up homeschooling him.”
I noticed that Teal had a stillness to him.
After the initial disturbance caused by my arrival at his door, he was now sitting back to watch and wait.
Even the exchange over the chair had an air of contrivance to it: he’d spoken only to see how I’d react.
But in everything he did, however slight, he would give himself away, which was how it worked.
What could I have said already about Roger Teal? With certainty, only this: He didn’t have a high opinion of people who weren’t named Roger Teal.
“And who is the lawyer Alcock working for?” Teal continued. “Lawyers don’t work for themselves. Like clockwork toys, they need winding.”
I had no reason not to share the identity of the client with him. I’d be visiting Spero soon enough.
“Alcock has been engaged by a man named Ward Vose. His son was a student at the Spero School.”
“Was?”
“He drowned.”
“Scott Theriault,” said Teal.
“You’re aware of the death?”
“How could I not be? It was in all the papers, for those of us who still read them. Also, anything to do with the school stands out for me. I feel proprietorial about it. I was engaged with Spero for years as a departmental inspector, which is presumably why you’re here.
I think it’s trying to do good work. What happened to Scott Theriault will be used against it—is being used against it. ”
“Have you remained in touch with the authorities at Spero?”
“Yes.”
“Is that usual, an inspector keeping tabs on a school with which the department is no longer involved?”
“Who says I’m keeping tabs on it?”
“If not, then what?”
“I provide advice,” said Teal. “And I help out on a voluntary basis. I was asked to join the board of trustees, but I felt it would be a step too far, and I doubt the department would have agreed anyway. I’ll wait until I retire.”
“What kind of advice and help do you provide, Mr Teal?”
“Whatever is required. When the school stepped down from state funding, I guided it through the transition, beyond the general departmental assistance offered as a matter of course. At the school itself, I’ve painted dorms, put up fences, aided in the transfer and transportation of students—”
“Midnight abductions?”
Those teeth flashed again.
“I wouldn’t call them that.”
“What would you call them, then?”
“I’ve already answered the question: transfer and transportation.”
“It doesn’t strike me as a healthy way to deal with troubled children. It sounds like a recipe for trauma.”
“Your observation contains the answer,” said Teal.
“They’re troubled. Some of them have shown violence toward parents, siblings, teachers, and fellow students.
Yes, they’re teenagers, but frequently housed in adult bodies.
Spero is a last resort, or next-to-last, and not one they’re keen to embrace, not at first. And who could blame them?
I wouldn’t want to leave my family, my friends, my refrigerator of food on demand, my computer games, to be sequestered in rural Maine, where even the privilege of watching TV for an hour in the evening has to be earned.
Few of them accede willingly, and at the other extreme, a number fight hard against it.
So yes, there are times when the school authorities have to come in the night and take a boy when he’s tired and disoriented, but only minimal force is ever used, and restraints if there’s no option, as much to prevent the boy from hurting himself as anyone else.
Is it traumatic? Yes, but we explain what’s happening to them throughout, and they calm down soon enough. ”
Teal was the soul of reasonableness. But then, the worst men had the ability to make even the unconscionable sound acceptable, and it always ended the same way: with dead children.
“Do you enjoy it?” I asked.
“No, Mr Parker, I do not. I have a daughter of my own and would hate for anything similar to befall her. That’s one of the reasons I stayed involved with Spero.
I wanted to develop a system that worked for all, but primarily the students, beginning with their first encounter with the school.
That means being in the van with them, especially in the most challenging of cases, and later on-site as they adjust to their new circumstances.
I view it as an extension of my work with the department.
With luck, what I learn may subsequently be applied at similar schools. ”
I let it go. I’d never tried to force a terrified teenager into the back of a van in the dead of night, so the mechanics of the operation were beyond my remit.
I just knew it wasn’t something for which I’d volunteer.
I expect there were those who were prepared to do it for money.
You can get people to do anything for money, assuming you have the right people and the right money.
It’s harder to get them to do dirty work for free, especially if it involves inflicting suffering on others—unless they don’t find it dirty at all, but instead kind of like it.
We have a name for those people: sadists.
“And how does the department feel about the assistance you provide to Spero?”
“I’m not being paid for what I do,” said Teal, “so it’s not a concern. I’m not the only person here who volunteers at a school.”
It was notable that Teal was making no effort to hide his ongoing links to Spero. Nevertheless, he was hiding something. He was too open not to be.
“Were you part of the team that took Scott Theriault from his home?”
“No.”
“Any particular reason why you weren’t?”
“I was otherwise engaged. I have a full-time job and a family. I assist at Spero when I can, but I’m not on call.”
“Did you ever meet Scott Theriault during your visits to Spero?”
“I might have. I don’t recall.”
“What about the principal, Dante Santopietro? How closely do you work with him?”
“We speak regularly. Dante is Spero. Without him, it wouldn’t exist.”
“I hear he was once a student at élan. That wasn’t a great place to end up.”
“No, apparently it wasn’t.”
“Were you there as well?”
“Thankfully not, but I have a friend who wasn’t so fortunate.”
“Was Santopietro the friend?”
“No, the friend—he went missing some years ago. He struggled greatly after élan. The assumption is that he took his own life. But I’d really prefer not to talk about that. It’s very painful.”
“I’d still like his name.”
I pressed because Teal was now being openly evasive.
“Mike Hurvich.”
The words came hard to him.
“What about Santopietro? Does he speak much about his time at élan?”
“He has talked about élan, but it’s not for me to share those confidences. I can say that his experiences colored his views on behavior modification for troubled teens. Spero doesn’t tolerate violence in any form.”
“Outside of nocturnal abductions.”
“On which we’ve agreed to differ.”
“I haven’t agreed to anything,” I said. “However, violence must occur. Even the best of schools have to deal with fights between students.”
“There are processes in place at Spero, systems of punishment involving denial of privileges, treat restrictions, extra chores, ascending in severity according to the nature of the infraction. Even striking a staff member isn’t automatically an expulsion offense.
It’s discouraged, to put it mildly, and the penalties are severe, but every dog is allowed one bite.
Spero can’t change these kids overnight, and some of them it won’t change at all, but the ethos of the school is to keep trying until forced to admit defeat, and such defeats are rare.
A lot of the students are looking for discipline, but they don’t know it.
Spero is tough only because it has to be.
Ultimately, it’s built on care, and frequently Dante and the staff show more tenderness toward those boys than their own parents ever have. ”
And you know, I believed what Teal was saying, or I believed that he believed it, which was close enough. He spoke of Spero with messianic zeal.
Teal made a show of looking at his watch. “Is this conversation heading toward a conclusion? I have no desire to be unhelpful—in fact, I’m trying hard to be as helpful as I can—but I don’t know what you want from me.”
I glanced down at my notes. So far, I’d written only a handful of words, and doodled a dangling man. I closed the notebook.
“I’m not sure what I want from you either,” I said. “But when I figure that out, I’ll come back.”
“What did Berrien tell you about me?” Teal asked.
“That you were the person in the department most closely associated with Spero.”
“Is that all?”
“All that’s relevant. Why do you ask?”
“Because she doesn’t like me. She never has.”
He sounded hurt, like a child rejected by the pretty girl in the schoolyard.
“How do you feel about her?”
“You expect me to admire someone who doesn’t like me?”
“I don’t expect anything,” I said. “That way, life is full of pleasant surprises.”
But Teal didn’t seem in a hurry to embrace this as his new philosophy, and once again a career in greeting-card messages remained tantalizingly beyond my reach.
“What I’m saying is,” he continued, “you shouldn’t believe everything you hear, especially when it comes from someone who’s bitter.”
“And why would Jenny Berrien be bitter?”
“She’s been promoted as far as she can rise,” said Teal.
“She had leadership ambitions, hopes of a management position in the commissioner’s office, but she’s not the leader type.
The public affairs job was a sop, a sideways move because she didn’t make director of communications. And there were complaints.”
“What kind of complaints?”
“About her attitude, and the language she used. Her competence.”
“Were you one of the complainants?”
Teal swerved to evade the question. “I just know that complaints came from various sources.”
Which I took to mean “yes.” Some of what Teal was claiming might have been true, and Berrien herself admitted to feeling discontented, but those scales rarely balanced perfectly.
I’d been doing what I did for a long time, and learned that my instincts about people were more often right than wrong.
Roger Teal couldn’t have made my skin crawl any worse had he been made of bugs.
I thanked him for his time and placed one of my cards on his desk. Teal offered his hand and I shook it. I counted my fingers when he was done, and they were all present and accounted for.
I took a moment at the door. All those years spent watching Columbo weren’t wasted on me.
“I was just wondering how long it will take,” I said.
“For what?”
“For you to call Santopietro and tell him I’ve been asking questions about Spero.”
“I won’t lie to you,” said Teal. “It won’t take me any time at all.”
“Why?”
“Because he has a right to know.”
“A right, really?”
“He’s a good man. What happened to Scott Theriault wasn’t the Saint’s fault.”
“The Saint?” I said.
“A nickname,” said Teal, “among friends.” He waved it away. “Am I the first person you’ve spoken to in the course of your inquiries?”
“No.”
“And were any of the others favorably disposed to Mr Santopietro and the school?”
“Some more than others,” I allowed.
“Then he knows you’re on the way. He’ll be open with you, just as I’ve been. We have nothing to hide.”
We.
“This isn’t a criminal investigation, Mr Teal,” I said.
“I don’t have the same legal powers as law enforcement.
I can’t perform an arrest, demand information, or conduct searches.
All I can do is ask questions, collect evidence, and then, if it’s deemed necessary—whether by a client, a lawyer, or me—present it to the relevant authorities.
The internal politics of this department don’t hold much fascination for me, and as for your relationship with Spero and Principal Santopietro, it would be of relevance only if you knew anything about Scott Theriault that could shed some light on the circumstances of his death.
You’ve assured me you have no such information.
Should you later recall anything that might help, you have my number. ”
“I’ll keep the card close,” said Teal.
I opened the door.
“And Mr Parker?”
Huh. Maybe Teal had watched Columbo too.
“Yes?”
“Tell Jenny Berrien to go fuck herself.”