Darkness peering (9 page)

He considered her question, eyes narrowing. "I think there's a
connection because it was the same kids involved, yeah. And we found a
cat bell in Melissa D'Agostino's hand ..."

"That disappeared, I know. You don't think--?"

"I'll tell you what I think if you'll sit down a minute." His tall
forehead and alert eyes contrasted sharply with the rigidity

of his jaw and those deep parenthetical lines around his lips, lips
she had once kissed and which, if she admitted it to herself, she still
wanted to kiss. "I think one of the boys who was there that night went
back and decapitated those cats. I don't think it was your brother,
though. I think Ozzie Rudd killed Melissa D'Agostino."

"That's ridiculous." She tried to picture the soft-spoken truck
driver--her brother's childhood friend, the football coach's son, now a
devoted father himself--killing someone ... anyone ... but couldn't.
She'd known Ozzie since they were kids and he'd always been kind to
her, giving her an occasional Milky Way bar or a bottle of toilet
water.

"I disagree." McKissack sat forward. "I think Ozzie Rudd shot those
cats, then went back later on and decapitated them for kicks. I think
he dropped Melissa D'Agostino off at Black Hill Road, then returned
later on to strangle her. I think he's one sick fuck."

"So why wasn't he arrested?"

"He had an alibi, if the girl is to be believed. "An old rage flared
in his eyes, then dissolved into resigned bitterness. "We couldn't
make a strong enough case to satisfy the D.A."

"Ozzie's no murderer."

He shrugged. "You asked."

Her stomach constricted as she held his eye. "I'd like to reopen the
case."

"What for?"

"We owe it to her parents."

He crossed his arms, and the body language book she once read would've
said he was shutting her out, being noninclusive. A lowered chin meant
insecurity, folded arms meant distrust. "We don't have the manpower.
We don't have the funds."

"Please," she begged. She'd never asked him for a favor before. He
rubbed his eyes, smoke rib boning from his nose, and she wondered if he
missed her as much as she missed him. She could

fee! the heat emitting from his body. He couldn't help himself, he
radiated vigor.

"Rachel. I'd strongly advise against this. You never know what you
might uncover."

"Like what? The truth?"

Wearing a slightly defeated look, he tamped out his cigarette. "Do it
on your own time."

"Thanks," she said, grateful. "I promise it won't interfere with my
regular duties."

He leaned back in his chair. His desk was old wood. Oak. "I got my
picture in the paper right after the murder. Somebody cut out the
article, but I had to throw it away. I didn't want to be reminded."
His lips, pressed against one another, grew pale. "Doesn't matter how
many homicides you handle, you never get used to the death of a
child."

She picked up the file. "All the more reason to find out what
happened."

He gave her a wry smile. "You're more like your father than you
know."

EVERY MORNING AT 8:30, BILLY STORROW WAITED FOR CLAIRE

Castillo to join him in the lobby of Pelletier Hall, where together
they greeted their students. Claire taught the lowest-functioning
class of juniors and seniors at Winfield School for the Blind and
Special Needs, and Billy was her teacher's aide. Their students ranged
in age from sixteen to eighteen and most lived on campus in cottages
named after characters from Beatrix Potter books. The double doors of
Pelletier Hall--a grab bag of nineteenth century architecture--opened
into an ornate lobby with two

banks of grillwork elevators and a central staircase. The lobby
glittered with glazed terra-cotta tile beneath a domed stained glass
skylight, and Corinthian pillars supported the fourteen foot ceilings.
Billy spotted Claire among the throng of students pouring into the
lobby and waved.

"Hi, you," she said, slightly out of breath from walking up the front
steps. Her cheeks were flushed, and her long red hair was shiny and
brushed off her face, and he felt light-headed just standing next to
her.

"Hey," he said as casually as he could.

"I can't believe it's Monday already."

"Do anything fun over the weekend?"

"Naw, just sat around in my underwear, mostly."

He was backed against the stairs, carved mahogany balustrade supporting
his spine. Oh fuck, he wanted to say. Jesus. She was the most
beautiful woman he'd ever known, with hair the faded red of an over
laundered shirt. She had to have the longest legs in the world, which
today's calf-length brown skirt partially hid, and she never seemed to
care about the runs in her panty hose.

"You?"she asked.

"Huh?"

"What'd you do this weekend, work on your novel?"

"Oh. Yeah," he lied.

"I'd love to read it sometime."

"Let me think about it," he said. He hadn't written a thing, not one
blessed word.

"I understand," she said with a sweet, understanding smile, and he felt
like the worst kind of fraud. "Artists are sensitive."

Now one of their students came barreling across the lobby toward them,
swinging his cane, and Billy narrowly prevented him from crashing into
them. "Whoa, Gus, where's the fire?"

"I dunno." Gus had lived at Winfield since he'd lost his sight in an
automobile accident at the age of five. All the bones in his face had
been painstakingly reconstructed, leaving him with the look

of someone who'd collided with a brick wall, disbelief stitched into
every expression. His blond hair was cut so short you could see the
pink, exposed skin of his scalp.

"You almost whacked into us," Billy said.

"I did?"

"You're like a lethal weapon with that thing."

Gus had a snuffy little laugh.

"It isn't funny," Claire snapped, ever the disciplinarian.

"I know."

"Then why are you laughing?" But before Gus could respond, she hunched
her shoulders and gave a few hacking coughs. Claire had asthma, and
twice she'd wheezed so violently in Billy's presence he was afraid she
might choke to death. She reached into her leather bag and pulled out
her inhaler. "You've gotta be more careful, Gus," she said between
coughs, spraying the medicine directly into her mouth. It took a few
moments for the attack to subside, then she continued as if nothing had
happened. "There are other people in the world besides you, you know,"
she said, eyes shiny bright with tears.

"I know." Gus crossed his arms defensively.

Her features softened. "Pretty sick of my lectures, huh?"

"No." Gus had a charming smile, two of his front teeth missing. He
was supposed to wear a bridge but hated the thing and was constantly
losing it. Once Billy found two front teeth sticking out of the soil
of a rubber plant in the cafeteria.

Now Luke came sauntering toward them, a towering teenager over six and
a half feet tall. He wore an extremely nerdy outfit chosen with great
care and carried a boom box. On certain days, he would only respond if
you called him Elvis. He loved rockabilly music and was constantly
snapping his fingers to the incessant beat inside his head. He'd been
born three months premature and had lost all vision in both eyes after
being removed from the incubator.

Billy touched Luke's arm to let him know they were there. "Hey,
Elvis."

"I'm not the King today."

"Oh. Hi, Luke."

Taller than his teacher by several inches, Luke reached down to pat
Billy playfully on the head, "How's the weather down there, Teach?"

"Ha ha ... funny guy." Billy slid Luke's hand down over his face so
Luke could feel him grinning. "How was your weekend, buddy?"

Luke's smile snuck up on one side. "I got a Supremes tape."

"Ooh. Ow. I love the Supremes!" Claire swiveled her hips and snapped
her fingers, her voice endearingly off-key. "Love child ... never
meant to be ..."

"Is that you, Ms. Castillo?" Luke asked.

"Yeah, it's me. And here comes Gabie and Tony and Eric."

"Where's Brigette?"

"Here I am!" She tugged on Billy's jacket sleeve.

"Oops. Sorry, honey. I didn't see you." Brigette, a petite albino
teenager, was low-sighted but could see well enough to get around
without a cane. The students at Winfield had varying degrees of vision
loss; many were partially sighted, meaning they could see shapes, or
lights and shadows, or narrow bands of images. Enrollment had dropped
in recent years due to main streaming and medical advances. Meningitis
could be cured with antibiotics now and fewer babies were being born
blind from their mother's rubella. The future of Winfield rested in
the hands of crack babies and premature births, and only the most
complicated cases were sent here--behavioral problems, head injuries,
deaf-blind, severely impaired. Billy loved every single one of them.

"You guys ready? Let's go."

They were heading up the stairs when Billy spotted his sister entering
the lobby. At twenty-seven, Rachel was strikingly pretty

despite the conservative gray pantsuits she always wore. Her leather
holster showed beneath her jacket, her Smith & Wesson38-caliber
revolver entirely inappropriate in the school's sundrenched lobby.

"Hey," Billy called out, and she met him at the bottom of the stairs.
She had their mother's tall milky forehead and imperious chin, which
was offset by her sweet smile. Her blond hair was pulled into a
ponytail so tight her eyes seemed slanted, and he still had a hard time
thinking of her as a cop.

If Billy thought about it, he had to admit he was jealous. She'd
followed in their father's footsteps, whereas he wasn't even a full
fledged teacher, just a teacher's aide. It was a constant source of
embarrassment for him. Not that he'd ever wanted to be a cop. Billy
had higher aspirations. After graduating from college, where he'd
majored in English, Billy moved around a lot-from Cambridge,
Massachusetts, to Seattle, from Buffalo to New Mexico. Over the years,
he kept trying to settle down and write that novel, but to date he
hadn't written a thing. Instead, he'd ended up waiting tables and
working in bookstores, searching all across America for good material.
Three years ago, right before their mother died of breast cancer, he
finally returned home, feeling like a failure. Lately, he'd been
considering writing a book about the blind.

"Listen, Billy, we need to talk," Rachel said.

"Class is just starting. What's up?"

"Nothing's up," she said, but her voice was pinched. "We need to talk,
is all."

"Lunch?"

"Sounds good."

"Noon at the picnic tables out back?"

"Sure. See you then."

"Hey. Everything okay?"

"Yeah," she said a little too brightly, and he knew she was lying.
"Everything's fine."

BY MIDMORMNG, THE. SUN WAS HEATING THE BACKS OK THE

students' heads. Gus and Luke were dozing, and Eric was brail ling
secrets into Brigette's tiny hand. Billy knew they'd lost them
somewhere between 1775 and 1783, but Claire kept charging gamely ahead,
refusing to accept that her class would never truly grasp their
country's complicated history.

"Okay, now, the American colonists were protesting what?" Claire
prompted. The desks formed a horseshoe, and she paced back and forth
in front of them, clutching the delicate gold crucifix at her throat.
She was a lapsed Catholic who for some reason clung to the trappings of
the Church. "What were they protesting? Anyone? Eric?"

"Huh?" Eric sat abruptly forward. He had an unruly red mane, a
freckled face, large feet and an even bigger heart. He was the
brightest kid in this class of especially slow learners, and Claire
couldn't help constantly turning to him for answers. She and Billy had
a running dispute about it. How would the others learn if Eric kept
bailing them out?

"What were the American colonists protesting?" Claire asked again,
cheeks flushed from the excitement of teaching.

"Um ... the British?"

"That's right, the) were protesting British domination, and that was
what started the Revolutionary War. Okay?"

She looked around at their blank, upturned faces. Billy caught her eye
and smiled encouragingly, despite the fact that he knew it was
hopeless. Sixty percent of the students at Winfield were handicapped
beyond their blindness; many suffered some degree of delayed
development, a polite term for mental retardation.

Here at Winfield, the brochure explained, each child was measured
against himself, not some outside norm. The best many of these
students could hope for after graduation was a room in a state-funded
community residence and a menial job, although there were notable
success stories: a professor of history at the University of Maine, a
state senator, a printer of large-type books, the owner of a dry
cleaning establishment, an innkeeper. Blindness doesn't mean
limitation.

"In 1775," Claire continued, fingering the gold cross at her throat,
"we fought to gain our independence from what country? Gus? Am I
boring you, Gus?"

So far their relationship hadn't progressed the way Billy had hoped it
would. At first, he hadn't liked Claire very much. She struck him as
arrogant, a bit of a snob. She was a strict disciplinarian in the
classroom and a cipher outside of it. She listened to his problems and
gave him advice, but shied away from revealing too much about herself.
Whenever he probed too deeply into her past, she clammed up, lips
pressed shut like the licked flap of an envelope. All Billy wanted to
do was witness her loss of control.

"Anyone? Brigette?"

"Yes?" Brigette sat fingering her pencil and gazing at the brilliant
slash of sunlight slanting across the blackboard. She had milky white
skin, cottony white hair and flickering pink eyes that seemed to take
everything in--although that wasn't quite true. Brigette had a
doughnut-shaped field of vision, which meant that objects swirled
before her like planets disappearing into a black hole. Unlike Gus, to
whom light and shape were but distant memories, Brigette could
differentiate between shades of gray and vibrant shapes. She carried a
ring of keys that rattled noisily, so you always knew when Brigette was
coming. The keys didn't open anything she owned.