CHAPTER TWELVE
In Marcus's fantasy, he and Kate were laughing and joking like old pals.
From time to time, maybe resting a hand on the other's lap or leaning in for a quick kiss to show that they weren't just pals.
Elijah Cox was dead, an unavoidable circumstance during his arrest, where Marcus had no choice but to put one in between his eyes.
With Cox gone, his disciples vanished. The Commandment Killings were over.
Kate visited her father's grave once a month and didn't think about it otherwise.
There was no need to obsess over what she couldn't control or dig for answers that just weren't there.
They were happy and successful. Marcus was up for promotion, but he wasn't sure he wanted it because it meant leaving the field. Kate was bugging him to take it for the baby's sake, laying a hand on her small second-trimester bump as she did.
“Marcus?”
Marcus blinked, and the fantasy burst with an almost audible pop. “Yeah?”
“Everything okay?”
Why was that always such a loaded question? “Fine. Sorry, I just spaced out for a moment.”
“I’m all right, you know.”
Marcus looked at her. Her big brown eyes looked up at him, triggering every single protective instinct that males of the species possessed, for better or for worse. Her freckles sparkled on her face, and Marcus had to suppress an urge to cup her chin and kiss her urgently, possessively.
It was that last word that broke through. He didn’t possess her, not in any sense of the word. She didn’t belong to him, and the brief attempt they’d made at belonging to each other crashed and burned spectacularly.
She wasn’t fine either, but he was tired of thinking about that. Every attempt he’d made to fix that failed just as spectacularly.
“I know,” he lied. Then, before she could realize he was lying and press him, he stepped out of the car.
Brandywine Village High School tried very hard to look like a quaint colonial schoolhouse.
The maple trees planted in pairs in spacious rectangular planters in the parking lot were no doubt allowed to shed copious amounts of leaves that were never quite cleaned up.
The buildings—brick-faced with steeply sloping shingled roofs—were set far back from the lot, allowing room for a large lawn and several tall elm trees.
Oaks ruled the yard, providing ample shade for students looking to escape the summer heat or to sneak a make out session in between periods.
The illusion was somewhat ruined by the collection of old sports cars with colorful wraps, absurdly oversized wings, and exhaust that, try as hard as it might, could never make a four-cylinder sound like an eight-cylinder.
The kids standing next to these cars—exclusively boys—did their best to look unconcerned with the wider world.
Like the school, that illusion was ruined, in this case by the constant surreptitious looks to see if the girls noticed how cool they looked standing next to their modified Civics and Altimas.
Shocker of all shocks, none of them did.
“Good afternoon. Welcome to our school.”
The voice belonged to a middle-aged man with a horseshoe of gray surrounding a gleaming bald pate and a mustache that had the unfortunate effect of making him look even thinner than his gaunt frame suggested.
“Hey, Career Day was last week,” someone called over from the cars.
“Dude, cool it!” another cool guy said. “That chick’s hot. For an older woman.”
“You may feel free to leave the campus now, Mr. Wrobleski,” the middle-aged man called with the long-suffering air of a veteran of instructorship.
“Hey, you want a ride, baby?” Mr. Wrobleski called. “I’ll do it nice and smooth for you.”
The others giggled. Marcus turned to the boy and grinned. “Yeah? I’ll take a ride, handsome.”
The laughter silenced. Marcus took a step toward Wrobleski, and the youth opened his door and jumped inside faster than a groundhog diving into its burrow.
The car—in this case, an old WRX because Wrobleski was unique—burbled a long, drawn-out fart, then screamed so everyone could watch him pull a zero to twenty out of the parking lot.
“And this,” Kate said when the engine noise of the WRX and the half-dozen other pieces of crap faded away. “Is my overly sensitive partner, Special Agent Marcus Reid.”
Marcus rolled his eyes and extended his hand for the bemused school official to shake. “Jack Irving,” he told the agents. “I’m the principal.” He gestured toward the door with his head. “Come on. We’ll talk in my office.”
He led them into a hallway that could have jumped out of any high school coming of age movie ever made.
A line of lockers on both walls extended to the end of the hallway, interrupted every thirty feet or so by a door.
A pair of kids were locked in a tight embrace next to one of the lockers.
Irving cleared his throat, and the kids separated like the north poles of two magnets repelling each other.
They rushed out of the building, cheeks flaming red.
He led them to an office at the end of the hall. The office was about the size of a broom closet, with just enough room to fit the three of them, mostly thanks to Irving’s diminutive stature.
The principal sat behind his desk with a heavy sigh. He looked between the two agents for a moment, his smile gone, his eyes betraying the world-weariness that only the very old understood.
Marcus waited for him to speak. Kate shifted impatiently, but a look from Marcus stopped her. They needed to give Irving time to settle into the discomfort of the conversation they were about to have.
After a minute, Irving broke the silence. “Donna was not a kind woman.”
He left that sentence hanging. Kate prompted him gently, “So we’ve heard.”
“She was, however, an outstanding educator. Since I became principal, we’ve received more complaints about her than about any other teacher. We’ve also received more letters of thanks and appreciation about her than any other teacher.”
“Tough love type, huh?” Marcus guessed.
Irving nodded. “Oh, yes. Very much. She and I developed a friendship.” Seeing their eyebrows lift, he smiled.
“No, nothing romantic. I simply understood her, and she, in her own way, appreciated that. I asked her once why she was so hard on the students. She looked me squarely in the eye and said, ‘Life’s gonna fuck them harder than I ever will. If they haven’t learned to take it, then they’ll fall apart the first time it happens. ’”
Marcus chuckled. Kate frowned at him. Irving laughed and continued, “She certainly had a way with words.”
“Did she get along with the other teachers?” Kate asked.
Irving tilted his head. Marcus could sense a diplomatic answer coming and said, “The best thing you can do for her right now is to be honest with us, even if it’s painful.”
Irving sighed. “Then I would have to say, no, she didn’t get along with them. She didn’t really get along with anyone except for me.”
“Was there anyone in particular she had trouble with?” Kate asked.
Irving’s lips thinned. “As I said, we received many complaints from students and occasionally their families.”
“Can you share some of them?”
Irving leaned back and crossed his arms, a common defensive posture.
He didn’t want to cause any trouble. Marcus understood that, but trouble had already been caused.
“Mr. Irving, Donna was murdered in her own home. Murdered violently. I won’t share many details, but we believe she was the victim of a serial killer targeting people who lied about other people. ”
They’d heard the opposite about Donna, but Marcus wanted to see if Donna might have shown a different side of herself to her coworker than to her sister.
Irving slumped. “Ah. Yes. Donna rarely lied, but when she did, it was always… destructive.” He ran a shaking hand through his hair and sighed. “I just can’t see how it matters so much later.”
Marcus’s ears perked up. “It matters,” he said, “Tell us.”
Irving flinched a little, but Marcus could see his walls coming down.
He was working his way up to admitting the secret he wanted to keep.
Kate pressed a little further. “There could be other targets, Mr. Irving. If you help us find the person who killed Donna, then you’ll be helping us save lives. ”
Irving nodded. “It’s just that it was so long ago.”
“That fits with our profile,” Marcus said. That was sharing a little more detail about the case then he maybe should share, but he needed Irving to get over his reluctance.
Irving tapped the desk, looking miserable.
“This would have been over thirty years ago.
1994, I believe. Yes, it was. The fall semester.
We had a new student, a young woman named Nora Smith.
Donna took an immediate dislike to her. It was my second year as a teacher.
Donna was already a veteran of ten years.
“I remember Nora being a quiet girl, rather shy, fragile. I got the sense that life at home wasn’t the best. I tried to take her under my wing, lift her spirits a little. But Donna was…”
He shook his head. “I don’t know what made Donna behave so viciously. She was always hard, but that was the only time I’ve ever seen her cruel. She would drive poor Nora to tears every day. She would pick at her, and she wasn’t content until Nora collapsed.”
“What would she pick at her about?”
“Everything: her clothing, her homework, her voice, her behavior, her family—”
Marcus’s brow furrowed. “What about her family?”
“That they were trash. That they didn’t belong. That they had been granted an unfair escape from the consequences of their actions.”
“What actions?” Kate asked.
Irving leaned back and folded his arms across his chest. “You know, she never said. Like I said, it was odd. She seemed to truly hate Nora Smith. But whenever I or anyone else pressed her for a reason, she only replied, ‘She knows’.”
“So, what was the lie?”
Irving ran his hands through his hair again. “I wasn’t witness to any of this, but word got around through the staff that Donna was spreading rumors about Nora.”
“What sort of rumors?”
“Rumors that her family were drug dealers. That she was… inappropriate with boys. That they were criminals, and anyone who spent time around her was in danger.”
Marcus tried not to despise the victims of the killers he hunted, but his blood rose at that piece of news. “How was the situation resolved?”
“Well, needless to say, the Smith parents were irate. They complained to the school board alleging racism and discrimination. I forgot to mention that the Smiths were African American.”
“I see,” Kate said.
“But we had so many African American students. I never saw Donna behave this way to any of the others.”
“So, Nora was special.”
“She was. And to this day, I never understood why.”
“So how did they resolve it?” Marcus pressed.
“Well, Donna was brought to a meeting with the principal at the time and the superintendent of the school board. She was so angry. I’ve never in my life seen her so angry.
She was trembling with rage. For the first thirty minutes, she refused even to look at Mr. and Mrs. Smith.
It wasn’t until the superintendent threatened to petition for the revocation of her educator’s license that Donna finally gave in. ”
“And you were present for this meeting?” Kate asked.
“I was. She selected me as her peer advocate.”
“And you were willing to do this despite her treatment of Nora Smith?”
He smiled bitterly. “I was young. I thought that I could convince the board to give Donna a second chance and convince Donna to give Nora a second chance. I was right about the board. I was wrong about Donna. She agreed to stop persecuting Nora, then turned to the parents and said, ‘For the sake of my other students, I’ll stop reminding Nora who she is. For the sake of the world, you and your family should exile yourselves from society and live like the outcasts you would be if God truly cared.’”
“Jesus,” Marcus whispered.
“I remember it to this day. Donna was never so—pardon my use of the word in this context—eloquent. I’ll never forget the way she shook as she spoke with that family.”
“And she never told you why she hated them so much?”
“Never,” Irving replied. “To the day of her death, she never said. I think it offended her that she had to say it. I think it offended her that everyone else didn’t feel the same way, didn’t even understand why they should feel that way.
She put on a veneer of toughness, but at her core, I believe Donna was very fragile.
She viewed life as very unfair, and whatever punishment she felt the Smiths deserved, their avoidance of it struck her as the most egregiously unfair act of a cruel and capricious God. ”
He fell silent, looking between the two agents. His brows were furrowed now, his lips drawn down in a deep scowl. No doubt recalling the darkest act of his friend’s life had cast a shadow over his own mind.
“Well, the Smiths received their punishment,” he said eventually.
“Donna kept her promise and never again spoke so cruelly to Nora, but the Smiths were shunned by the other parents and by the local church. From what I understand, the pastor even asked that they stop attending. Nora never made friends, and the other children picked up the cruelty where Donna left off. The Smiths left the school and the state after that semester.”
He sighed heavily. “I believe there was good in Donna, real good. Even kindness in her own way. But she so hated the Smiths.”
Marcus looked at Kate. Kate shook her head briefly and got to her feet, signaling the end of the interview. Marcus stood and handed Irving a card. “If you think of anything else, call me.”
Irving took the card and replied, “I sincerely hope, agent, that nothing else comes to mind.”
“I don’t blame you.”
The parking lot was empty save for their rental. Kate called Darnell and asked him to reference the name Smith against Gerald Mace’s court records and identify anyone with a daughter named Nora.
Marcus drove them back to Philadelphia, his heart a little dimmer after their conversation with the principal.
He thought of Nora Smith, a shy, young, innocent girl scorned by everyone she met for a crime that her accuser wouldn’t even specify.
He wondered where Nora was now and if she’d ever recovered from the cruelty she’d suffered.
If she hadn’t, then it was easy to see how that cruelty could have sharpened within Nora to a hate that could kill.