The Crazy School (32 page)

“I appreciate your saying so.”

“Do you think you’ll get this Santangelo person?”

“Hope to. He’s made bail, but we’re going after his assets.

Restitution to the families. Hard to track everything down. He owns property in Mexico, and there’s been talk of his reopening the school down there.”

“Wouldn’t want
that
,” said Uncle Alan.

“I understand he’s got some people down there already,” said Markham.

3 1 3

CrazySchool_HCtextF1.indd 313

28/5/08 2:45:17 PM

“How the hell would they get any students?” asked Uncle Alan. “I mean, after all this—trusting one’s child to these people? Nobody in their right mind . . .”

“Desperate measures,” I said, and Markham nodded sadly.

“Horrible,” said Uncle Alan. “Horrible stuff.”

We all drank more wine while Uncle Alan drummed his fi ngers on the tablecloth, seeking a way to lighten the mood.

There wasn’t one.

3 1 4

CrazySchool_HCtextF1.indd 314

28/5/08 2:45:17 PM

48

“I’m unemployed, I have no health insurance, and I’m
dying,
”

Lulu said before she was consumed by another horrible bout of coughing.

It went on for so long I was about to whack her between the shoulder blades, in the hope that she’d thereby gain a chance to inhale, but she shook her head at me, gasping.

“Won’t help,” she wheezed. “Just have to let it play out.”

Lulu and I were sitting in the apartment in Pittsfi eld. She was making collages of her photographs and paperwork from Santangelo, covering the sides of a dozen different cans she’d washed and saved for the purpose. Orange juice concentrate, V8, corned beef hash.

“These will be good for keeping things on your desk,” she said. “Pencils, paper clips, what have you.”

“Screwdrivers,” I said, thinking of Wiesner, whom I hadn’t seen head nor tail of since I’d pushed Dhumavati off the top of the Mansion. And possibly at the cemetery.

“Do you have any more Scotch tape?” Lulu asked.

“Second drawer, left of the stove,” I said.

3 1 5

CrazySchool_HCtextF1.indd 315

28/5/08 2:45:18 PM

“You know,” she said, getting up, “I still don’t get why Dhumavati went to all that trouble. Not just putting the necklace in your pocket but everything else besides.”

“Like framing me for murder?”

“Exactly,” said Lulu, her breathing still raspy. “We know she must have overheard you talking to Sitzman about Jonestown after class—then Mooney broke the window practically simultaneously, which meant
that
whole situation was coming to a head—”

“So she’s already stuck with making sure Fay’s pregnancy can’t threaten Santangelo,” I replied, “and then she’s got to worry whether I know too much about the Flavor Aid. Why not just kill me?”

“Maybe you were supposed to drink more punch.”

“How stupid would that look?” I said. “ ‘Yes, Offi cer, the teenage lovers committed suicide, but only after poisoning a kindly teacher in the middle of a party, carefully ensuring her fi ngerprints were prominently placed on the cups they drank from hours later’?”

“Bizarre campus love triangle leads to tragedy?”

I shook my head. “If I’m such a threat, cut my brake lines or something. Get rid of me.”

“So maybe she wants to punish you,” said Lulu, sitting down again with a fresh roll of tape in hand. “Santangelo decides you can do her job, and she’s pissed off. She’s gotta take out Fay anyway, before anyone else fi nds out about the baby.”

“And?” I prompted.

“And if Mooney dies too, she’s got Gerald as a fallback suspect with plenty of motive.”

“So one of us takes the rap, doesn’t matter who?”

3 1 6

CrazySchool_HCtextF1.indd 316

28/5/08 2:45:18 PM

“Exactly,” she said, taping a small photo over the last silvery gap on what had once been a quart-sized can of chicken broth.

“And this is because Dhumavati knew Gerald was about to fi nger her for Jonestown and Mary-Claire?”

Lulu’s eyes snapped up to meet mine. “She did?”

“She had to,” I said. “Unless she killed Sookie for sheer entertainment.”

“Shit,” said Lulu.

“Markham realized there must have been a bug in Gerald’s apartment,” I said. “Someone broke in a few weeks ago. Probably put one in Sookie’s offi ce too, which would explain why Dhumavati confronted me about the autopsy. She needed an excuse to send me up to Sookie’s. No other way she would have known where to fi nd us all that night. And that’s how she knew she had time to get Sookie out of the way while Gerald was waiting for his detective’s phone call.”

“
Shit
,” said Lulu. “Did the cops fi nd any bugs?”

I shook my head. “Someone did a good job cleaning up.”

She tapped the roll of tape against her knee. “Must have been Santangelo.”

“No way in hell he’s going to admit it.”

We both slumped down a little farther in our seats, like somebody’d turned up the gravity.

“Maybe Dhumavati was in love with him,” she said, after a minute.

“Santangelo?”

“I mean, she kind of had to be, didn’t she?”

I thought about that.

“She was jealous of you,” said Lulu. “And I bet she was jealous of those girls, too. There was no other reason for her to target you. If she knew Gerald was connected to Mary-Claire, 3 1 7

CrazySchool_HCtextF1.indd 317

28/5/08 2:45:18 PM

she knew she had to kill him eventually, right? So why not frame him to begin with, or just kill him outright?”

“Talk about
dark
,” I said, but I felt the skin on my forearms tighten with recognition, and didn’t have to look down to know that all the little hairs were standing straight up.

What if Dhumavati had never cared about loose ends, or getting caught, or even surviving? What if the point, all along, had been fi nding ways to demonstrate how much she was ready to put at risk as proof of her devotion?

Santangelo certainly wasn’t the only man for whom she’d been willing to murder a child. He was merely the last.

Whether or not she’d done it all for love, Dhumavati had told me the truth up on that roof: There didn’t have to be a reason. She was just fucking nuts.

“Did I tell you I ran into Tim?” asked Lulu.

“And?”

“And he told me he and Pete were going on a road trip together.”

“Where?”

“Mexico,” she said.

“You’re fucking kidding me!”

“David wants them on staff down at the new school. He’s planning to get it up and running after New Year’s, soon as he’s fi nished up with his court stuff.”

“They’d allow him to leave the country?”

“David certainly thinks so from what Tim was saying,” she said.

“‘Free to Be,’ ” I said. “God, doesn’t it just make you want to puke?”

“I have faith in Markham,” she said.

“When are they leaving?”

3 1 8

CrazySchool_HCtextF1.indd 318

28/5/08 2:45:18 PM

“Tim wouldn’t say. I think he suddenly remembered who the hell he was talking to, and the minute it sank in he couldn’t scuttle away from me fast enough.”

“Mindy going, too?”

“Already down there,” she said. “Canopy bed and all.”

“Jesus Christ. That’s just gross.”

“Tell me about it,” said Lulu.

We sat there in silence, sharing a long moment of mutual disgust.

“Do you want some coffee?” Lulu asked when we couldn’t stand it anymore.

“Love it,” I said.

She got up and bustled toward the kitchen, thank God, reaching for the can of Bustelo. A convert.

“How’d it go this morning?” she called back over her shoulder as she fi lled the carafe under the kitchen faucet. “You feel okay about that new shrink?”

I’d had my fi rst appointment with a doctor in Williamstown that morning. Someone who’d never even heard of Santangelo.

I still couldn’t believe I was ready to give therapy another shot, but I didn’t know what else to do.

“He seems okay, for a shrink,” I said.

“What’d you talk about?”

“I didn’t say much at fi rst, just walked into his offi ce and started crying.”

“How’d he handle that?”

I laughed, not in a particularly happy way. “He watched me for a while, and then, after about fi ve minutes, he said, ‘Do you feel this way all the time?’ ”

“I hope you told him yes,” she said.

3 1 9

CrazySchool_HCtextF1.indd 319

28/5/08 2:45:19 PM

I stood up and walked over to the window, watched the cars duking it out in the North Street rotary four stories down.

“I did,” I said. “’Fessed right up.”

I turned back around, lounging against the wall with both elbows propped on the high sill.

Lulu opened a cabinet, pulling two mugs off the second shelf.

“Did he ask you why?”

“You know, I fi gured once I admitted to him that I was pretty much constantly weeping, we’d get right back into the whole

‘and how does that make you
feel
,’ routine.”

“Of course.” Lulu checked the progress of the brewing, then turned to lean on the pass-through, waiting for me to go on.

“Thing is, that’s not how it went at all,” I said.

I walked over to the table, grabbed my Camels. “Want one?”

Lulu shook her head.

“Kind of knocked me for a loop,” I said, shaking out a smoke from the near-empty pack, “his actual response.”

I fl icked the lighter, took a drag, exhaled. “Left fi eld, et cetera.”

She waited.

“Well, fi rst he wanted to know how long I’d felt like this, so I said probably since I was nine years old, off and on.”

“Sure,” she said.

“So then he said he fi gured I was clinically depressed,” I said, tapping my ash onto the plate I’d reserved for the purpose.

“I said I’d tried therapy before but that I’d never really felt like it made any difference,” I continued.

The coffee was done.

“Guy said he wasn’t a bit surprised,” I said, settling into the sofa, “since talk therapy doesn’t do crap for depression.”

3 2 0

CrazySchool_HCtextF1.indd 320

28/5/08 2:45:19 PM

“No shit?” she said, shaking her head. “And after we went through all that damn Kleenex.”

She fi lled our mugs and ferried them out to the living room.

“He told me there’s this new drug called Prozac.”

Lulu nestled against the armrest at the other end of the sofa, bare feet toward me, mug propped on her knees. “Think you’ll give it a try?” she asked.

I slid my mug onto the side table and arched my back so I could fi sh the brown plastic bottle out of my pocket.

When I’d wrestled off the childproof cap, I shook two capsules out into my palm.

Pretty little things, those pills—one end jade green, the other tinted somewhere between butter and old scrimshaw.

“I’ll try anything once,” I said. “You?”

“Much obliged,” she said.

We plucked our respective doses from my palm, then washed them down with Bustelo.

“Ah,” said Lulu, “I feel better already.”

“Hard to feel worse.”

She clinked my mug with hers. “Amen to that.”

“You’re going to stay for Thanksgiving, right?” I asked.

“I want to avoid the Jell-O salad and scrapple at home for as long as I can,” she said, smiling.

I was glad, since Markham had said he’d come back out from Boston. I was hoping the two of them might hook up before she went back to work at the Econo Lodge.

Dean was still working at GE, and they’d said he could count on it going through December. I had a job lined up after Christmas—teaching ESL at a boarding school in Williamstown.

They’d never heard of Santangelo, either, and the kids I’d met there called me Ms. Dare.

3 2 1

CrazySchool_HCtextF1.indd 321

28/5/08 2:45:19 PM

This page intentionally left blank

CrazySchool_HCtextF1.indd 322

28/5/08 2:45:19 PM

Part VII

“Oh I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings . . .”

John Gillespie McGee, Jr.

“High Flight”

CrazySchool_HCtextF1.indd 323

28/5/08 2:45:20 PM

This page intentionally left blank

CrazySchool_HCtextF1.indd 324

28/5/08 2:45:20 PM

49

Sitzman and Wiesner sat on top of the ridge, high above campus.

It had snowed again. The air was crisp and dry, sharp in their throats. Cold as you’d expect on Thanksgiving.

“What if he’s not coming out?” asked Sitzman.

“He’s coming out,” said Wiesner. “You heard what Forchetti said.”

“Maybe he changed his mind,” said Sitzman. “I would. It’s goddamn cold.”

“Don’t start going all pussy on me.”

Sitzman shrugged. “I’m not. No guarantees about Santangelo.”

“He’s not going to change his mind,” said Wiesner.

“Listen, if he doesn’t come out in the next half hour—” said Sitzman.

“There he is. I
told
you.”

Sitzman squinted. “Where?”

“Dining hall.” Wiesner pointed.

“I don’t see him.”

“He just went behind that hedge.”

3 2 5

CrazySchool_HCtextF1.indd 325

28/5/08 2:45:20 PM

Below them, the fuchsia blob of Santangelo emerged from cover.

He crossed the newly plowed driveway, making for the twenty-foot square of helipad, just right of center on the snow-covered grass.

Sitzman shivered, thoughtful. “He’s not going up with that instructor today, right?”

“Forchetti overheard him saying he was all set to go solo. His fi rst time.”

Santangelo paused at the lip of the concrete to admire his fancy toy, the Bell 206B-3 JetRanger III. Little snub-nosed budgie-looking thing, white with two-tone-blue stripe swooshing along its undercarriage and up to the tail boom.

The man in pink waddled around to the pilot’s door and fl ung it wide, struggling for a second to hoist himself up into the cockpit.

“Couple more doughnuts and he’d need a forklift,” said Wiesner.

The door hung open. Maybe Santangelo was panting a little after such exertion.