Chapter 13
When I finished my laps, I lingered, watching as Benjamin swam toward me and then stopped, eyes impossible to read behind his tinted goggles.
“I’m not done.”
“Okay then,” I said, tone artificially bright, determined not to be affected by his bad mood.
I proceeded to the empty chair two seats away from the man with the piles of reading material. There was something about his profile—the straight nose and the full, thoughtfully pursed lips—that vaguely reminded me of a favorite college professor I hadn’t seen in years.
“Gymnast?” the man asked me.
I followed his glance to the nearest lane, where Benjamin was progressing slowly, turning one somersault after another, kicking wildly enough that the nannies in the shallow end were staring at him, too.
“Oh.” I laughed. “No. It’s something he saw on YouTube. A way to practice your flip turn, away from the wall.”
“Is that right,” the man said, looking impressed. “My daughter could flip turn from a young age, but only as long as she was wearing a noseclip. I don’t remember how she learned. Not from me, that’s for sure.”
He turned in my direction, so attentive I didn’t feel right digging into my bag for something to read.
“My daughter used to swim competitively,” he continued. “She was on the Dartmoor team before she and my ex-wife moved hundreds of miles away.”
Divorce, plainly stated. Was he trying to flirt?
“You really don’t recognize me?” he asked, grinning.
“Sorry. I don’t.”
“Curtis Campbell. You were a student of mine.”
He pulled off his sunglasses. That’s when everything slotted into place: not just the nose and the mouth, but the thick eyebrows that had always reminded me of the actor Colin Farrell. Kind, dark eyes with long, thick eyelashes. Eyes that had made me feel safe. Like I belonged.
“Statistics for psych majors,” he said. “Followed by Abnormal.”
“Dr. Campbell?”
“In the flesh. But less of it.”
Dr. Campbell was an extremely heavyset man in baggy brown Dockers and unfitted dress shirts. Dr. Campbell used to hide his face behind a scruffy beard and mustache. Dr. Campbell, nice as he was, didn’t look like an Irish movie star.
“You applied to be my assistant,” he said.
“Yes, but I didn’t get the position.”
Dr. Campbell had dyslexia. That’s why he needed the help of an undergrad assistant. He was my only college professor who not only accommodated learning disabilities at a time when fewer teachers did, but honestly seemed to believe that one’s differences could become one’s strengths.
“I didn’t fill it once I knew I was taking time off, to work on the marriage problem. Listen to me, going on about my personal life.”
“No, please do. It’s been so long. I want to hear all of it.”
He smiled again—grateful, maybe a little shy.
“We tried to work things out. It was her idea to move closer to her parents, in Wisconsin. When we finally pulled the plug, I decided to come back to the North Shore.”
“But you didn’t want to return to teaching?”
“I decided to focus on my private practice and my writing. I’d had some unexpected success with a book about parenting.”
“I had no idea. But everything’s . . . good since? Aside from the divorce?”
“It was overdue.”
All along, I thought I’d been passed over for the position because I wasn’t good enough. I was about to ask more about his new book when my phone started vibrating.
The text read: Handed in the diary. B has nothing to worry about.
I was confused. Robert had said he’d returned the diary, without reading it, via the Scarlattis’ mail slot last night.
“Sorry,” I said to Dr. Campbell. “I need to take this.”
I grabbed my phone and walked behind the lounge chairs, to a high fence that separated the pool area from several outdoor tennis courts, dialing as I went.
On the closest court, a couple—lean, gray-haired man and a girl in a short tennis dress, probably his daughter—were finishing up a game and collecting loose balls from the court.
Robert had just picked up when I saw the gray-haired man lay a hand on the girl’s behind.
“Oh,” I said with disgust. Not his daughter, then.
“Yeah, hello to you, too,” Robert said. “I just wanted to let you know Benjamin’s name wasn’t in the diary.”
“You read it, then. You told me you hadn’t.”
“I had to, Abby.” He sounded harried. I could hear multiple voices in the background, like he was calling from a hallway or break room. “They ordered an autopsy on Izzy.”
“When will they have the results?”
I waited as Robert moved away from the hubbub to someplace that sounded echoey but quieter.
He kept his voice low. “Preliminary physical exam, they already have, but analysis of fiber, DNA can take months. All depends on the backlog and the type of test. There didn’t appear to be sex involved.
Which is a different story than her friend.
Sidney Mayfield had intercourse the day she died. ”
My head was spinning, all of my assumptions turned around.
Izzy, the sexually precocious one juggling three men, died somewhere twenty miles from here in a small town.
No intercourse was involved. Sidney claimed not to be interested in local boys and thought only about college.
She died at home, in a short span of time when no one else was around.
She may have had sex just prior to dying.
Someone was with her—a man, face hidden, spotted hurrying away from her house.
“It may have been consensual,” Robert said. “Or not. Hard to tell when there isn’t clear evidence of trauma. And of course, she could have been unconscious by that point, on account of the overdose.”
I groaned, caught off guard by the image of someone violating her that way. But Rita had said both girls were drugged. Why else would a man drug a young woman? Maybe Izzy’s anaphylactic shock scared him off, but only long enough to set his sights on Sidney.
“There’s a whole lot we don’t know yet,” Robert continued. “The department is keeping some details to itself, until we know more about who was with her. If we pick him up, we don’t want to feed him information he can use to construct an alibi. You didn’t hear all this from me.”
The tennis players were chatting with their backs to me. I wanted to shout. To tell that old man to take his hand off that girl’s nearly bare ass.
“So, you can see why I’ve been busy today,” he said. “I didn’t have time to update you on the diary. But once I saw what was in it, I had to hand it over to Hernández and his partner, Wood. They’ll need everything they can get.”
“You held on to the diary. You lied to me. And Benjamin knew you were lying. To me. His mother.” The next part hit me hard. “Which means he was watching you get away with it.”
“Whatever.”
“Not whatever. Benjamin’s hypersensitive to this stuff right now, and he seems to be getting more slippery with the truth. He’s watching me. I’m sure as hell he’s watching you. If a cop plays that fast and loose . . .”
Robert sighed. “I needed to make sure. I was worried Benjamin’s name would be in there. But it wasn’t. Lots of other guys, lots of innuendo. Nicknames and stuff.”
“Nicknames.”
“But Benjamin’s name isn’t in there. I swear.”
“What kind of nicknames?”
“I don’t remember.” Someone in the background was calling for Robert.
I dreaded asking. “Was one of them ‘Shrimp’?”
“Maybe. Actually, yeah. Shrimp. That was one of them.” The diary. The decoy. My son himself, as living evidence.
The shortest kid in the class.
“That’s Benjamin,” I said. I couldn’t believe it hadn’t hit me before.
“Oh, shit.” Robert lowered his voice. “Well, at least Hernández and Wood don’t know that.”
“But they will. Robert, they will. As soon as they ask other kids.”
When I got back to the lounge chairs, Dr. Campbell asked, “Everything all right? You look upset.”
“No. It’s fine.” I pushed my phone into my bag with shaky hands, the crinkle reminding me of what I’d already stashed at the bottom.
Benjamin continued flip turning down the lap lane. I wanted him to be finished, so we could leave, but it wasn’t like leaving would make things any better.
“I heard you went on to a master’s program,” Dr. Campbell said, pleasantly, as if he hadn’t noticed my distressed expression. “Are you teaching? Counseling?”
“Counseling. At a local private high school.” I couldn’t keep the dismay from my voice.
“Not Summit, I hope. The suicides?”
“They’re investigating them as homicides now.”
He took the statement in stride.
“You must be in shock. Of course you are. I’m sorry. It’s hard for any therapist, losing a patient for any reason.”
He glanced down, giving me time to recover before looking up again. Those eyes. I hadn’t thought of Dr. Curtis Campbell in years.
“I’ve lost my job, too,” I said. “They blamed me, at first, when they thought the deaths were suicides. They probably still do.”
“No reasonable person could blame you.”
“I knew those girls. I talked to them. Clearly, even if they didn’t take their own lives, they were involved in something, and I had no idea. Everything I thought about them was wrong.”
He nodded patiently. “You have malpractice insurance, of course, but do you have the support you need?”
“Not really . . .”
A shadow passed over my whole body. Cold water speckled my legs.
“Mom,” Benjamin said, shaking his head like a dog.
“Hey!” I shouted, then wished I hadn’t.
“Young man,” Dr. Campbell said, swinging around to face my son, “you are one hell of a swimmer.”
“Not really,” Benjamin mumbled.
“No, you are. Take it from a parent of a former competitive swimmer who wouldn’t do her laps without a coach.”
I spotted the changing angle of Benjamin’s chin as he looked up, taking in the praise. “Yeah, well. Motivation isn’t everything.”
“I’d gamble on you as the next Michael Phelps.”
The compliment was too much, and we both knew it.