“Later. Run.” Forgetting quiet or attempts at concealment,
we raced for the driveway, then rushed back the way we had come. The ice on the drive proved nastily treacherous because of our haste. Twice I slipped. Once Scott fell in a heap. I dragged him up and we kept going. I heard the car behind us roar to life.
“Through here,” I shouted to Scott. No choice now, and by hurrying cross-country, we could cut closer to the car. We stumbled, fell, struggled on. The snow dragged at our feet, making it harder than running in sand. Branches whipped our faces as we dashed past threatening trees.
We hit the road. The black Trans-Am sat at the end of the driveway. If he decided to go left, we could make a dash to our car. We had a 50 percent chance. Scott scrabbled on the ground. He heaved a large slab of ice to his waist. The slab was larger than a grapefruit and had jagged edges. He hefted it carefully, then wound up and pitched it far over the waiting car. It thumped with satisfying loudness through a mass of pine branches at least fifty feet to the other side of the car. After a moment's hesitation, the Trans-Am took off in that direction.
We watched the taillights for a moment, then ran to our car and threw ourselves in. I jammed the keys into the ignition. It roared to life. The tires squealed in protest, spun on the ice, almost sank into the snow. I swore. I eased up on the gas pedal for a second, let the tires catch, then swung an arc to U-turn away from pursuit. As we circled, I saw the taillights on the other car glow bright as it braked. It began its turn. I righted the Porsche and floored it. For a few minutes, the diminishing lights of the following car pursued us; but I had the Porsche flat out. Fortunately, no one else had chosen this night for a pleasant excursion. Countless times, we plowed through growing drifts and I thought I might lose control of the car, but the tires caught the road each time and the car purred on beautifully.
At the first crossroad, I turned north. We hit Route 178 near
Rouyn. We roared back north through the sleeping town. Two miles beyond, we hit Interstate 80. For the first time, I slowed to something approaching the speed limit. I unhunched my shoulders and looked at Scott.
“Let's do that again, say sometime when we're in our nineties.” He drew a deep breath. “What did you see?”
I filled him in.
Scott said, “We should tell the cops.”
“What?” I said. “That we trespassed?”
“The guy followed us.”
“And we followed him. We don't have a case.”
He grumbled awhile. I told him that whenever we next saw Frank, I'd mention it, but I doubted they could do anything based on what had happened.
He'd tried to memorize the Trans Am's license number, too. With all the excitement and even pooling our memories, we couldn't remember any of it.
We drove the last half hour in silence. By the time we got to New Lenox, Scott's head rested on the window as he slept. I kept myself awake with thoughts of what all of it meant. I didn't feel we were close to clearing Jeff or finding out who killed Susan. Montini and Windham were hip-deep in some kind of shitâwith the mystery man I'd seen tonight, I presumed. What and how I wasn't sure, but drugs were a good bet.
At home, we quickly undressed and crawled into bed. I snuggled close to Scott, draping an arm around him as he lay on his side, my chest against his back.
He yawned. I caught it and did the same. “Thanks for sticking with me,” I said.
“No problem,” he muttered. “One of us has to keep sane in this relationship.”
I rubbed my five-o'clock shadow gently around the back of his neck.
“Shit,” he said.
“I thought you liked this,” I mumbled into his neck.
“I do. I forgot. Your mom called today with last-minute changes in Christmas plans.”
Nigh on to perfection he may be, but besides nagging about cars, he forgets messages. I was too tired to go over that argument. We discussed familial logistics for a few minutes.
“No word from your folks?” I asked.
“Nope.”
“They'll come around,” I assured him. The Judy Collins tape I'd placed on the stereo clicked off. We listened to the wind, once again raised to a galelike howl. As we'd pulled up to the house, I couldn't believe how high the drifts were, three feet in some places, and this with only blowing snow from the last storm. Drowsiness and comfort crept over me.
The phone rang. “What the fuck?” I glanced at the clock. “It's one in the morning,” I moaned. I plodded to the living room to pick up the phone. I'd put off getting an extension for the bedroom for ten years. As I answered the jangling thing, I could see Wolf Road out the picture window. Not a car moved on it.
“Mr. Mason, I'm desperate.” I recognized Jeff Trask's voice.
“Where are you, Jeff?”
“In a phone booth at the gas station across from the high school.”
I heard Scott pad up behind me.
“What are you doing there?”
“I can't go home. Can you help me? I'm cold.”
“I'll come get you. Hold on and don't go anywhere.” I hung up.
Scott asked, “Who was that and where are you going?”
Back in the bedroom, I explained as I dressed. Scott started pulling on his winter gear.
“I can go,” I said. “It's only a few minutes' drive.”
“No way. In this weather, even without somebody after you, it's too easy to get stuck in a drift or skid off the road.” On the way out, I glanced at the thermometer hanging outside the back door. It read twenty-one below. I drove my car through eerily deserted streets. It took twenty minutes instead of the usual ten.
We saw Jeff in the phone booth, stamping his feet and pounding his arms around his chest in attempts to keep warm. We installed him in the backseat of the Chevette.
“What happened?” I asked.
“My mom bailed me out around four today. When I got home, she started in on me. When she got back from the hospital with Eric, she started in again, ranting endlessly. She wouldn't stop. Finally, I blew up. I smashed the TV in my room. I threw my stereo receiver and turntable against the wall. She tossed me out of the house. She wouldn't let me take the car.”
“You should have called from home,” I said.
“I tried to, but you weren't home. I tried calling all my friends for a place to stay. If parents answered, they told me no. The few kids I did talk to didn't want me at their house. I guess I have even fewer friends than I thought. Nobody wants a murder suspect around.
“So I walked to the movies and sat through
Scrooged
and
Rain Man.
But the movies closed around twelve, and you still weren't home, so I tried walking around. It was too cold. I hung around the White Hen across from school as long as I could, but I think they were getting suspicious, so I decided to give your place one last chance. You said to call anytime, Mr. Mason.”
“It's okay, Jeff. We'll put you up tonight, then figure out what to do tomorrow.”
“I won't go back there,” he announced.
At home, I got him a few blankets and set up the couch for him. It was nearly two. Tomorrow would be soon enough for questions and answers. I did give his mother a quick call to let her know he was safe. She thanked me and agreed to the solution. She sounded grateful, relieved, and at her wits' end.
Jeff stumbled into the kitchen the next morning while I made the automatic coffee maker do its duty. Scott had brought me the simplest one on the market for my birthday. I'd managed to break three others. Machines don't like me. Or they see me coming and nudge each other and say, “Hey, Harry, here's a live one,” and they break. When Scott comes into the room, they whistle innocently as if it were all my fault.
Scott entered the room and yawned good morning. He was
in jeans, a University of Arizona sweat shirt, and white socks. I wore my school clothes. Jeff had on the faded blue jeans, navy blue sweater, and gym shoes from the night before. Scott rummaged in the refrigerator. We found enough food to make an adequate breakfast.
Over last cups of coffee, Jeff said, “You're Scott Carpenter, the baseball player.” Introductions the night before had gotten muddled in the cold and immediacy of the rescue.
Scott smiled and nodded.
“You live here with Mr. Mason?”
“Sometimes. I have a place of my own. Other times, he stays there with me.”
“Oh,” the kid said.
In my home, there's one bedroom with one king-size bed. It used to be a three-bedroom home, but I converted the other two into a one-room office-den filled with books in floor-to-ceiling bookcases and with the ultramodern electronicsâcomputer, printer, and copierâthat Scott had bought me. No other bedroom existed. The night before, Scott and I had made no secret of going to the same room. We also hadn't pranced to bed naked in front of the kid.
However, I explained briefly about us: how we'd met; how long we'd been together.
Scott said, “We're lovers.” He sipped his coffee.
Jeff said, “You guys don't look gay. I mean you don't act swishy or anything. I never thought an athlete would be gay. And Mr. Mason, you said you played sports in high school and college.” Toward the end of his statement, he'd begun to stumble over his words and turn red. He finished with, “I don't get it, you guys don't have earrings in your right ears.”
We didn't burst out laughing at his misconceptions, and there wasn't time for a lengthy lesson on stereotypes and prejudices. I gave him a short course, but gentlyâto ease his embarrassment.
I asked, “How do you feel now that you know about us?”
“Okay, I guess. It's your business, not anybody else's. I still don't believe it.”
“It's true,” Scott said.
Silence ensued for several minutes. Finally, Jeff said, “What's going to happen today?”
“I'm going to school,” I said. “You and Scott can meet me afterward.”
“What about tonight?” Jeff asked.
“I'm going to talk to your dad and mom today,” I said. “If either one will take you back, would you go?”
“No way. Can't I stay with you guys?”
I let it drop. I wasn't going to argue about it. During the day, I'd check with the police and maybe the social worker.
At any rate, he seemed content enough with Scott for the moment. How many kids could say they spent the day with Scott Carpenter, baseball megastar?
Outdoors, the wind had died. Bitter cold gripped the depressingly white landscape.
The announcer on WFMT, a major fine-arts station in Chicago, droned in his usual calm voice that it was twenty-three below zero, a new record. Somehow I expect that if an incredible disaster occurred, the WFMT announcer would say in the same calm drone, “The entire state of Kansas disappeared today, and in fine-arts news, a new recording of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony will be previewed during the seven-o'clock hour this evening.”
Â
For teachers, the day before Christmas vacation is perhaps the toughest day of the year, rivaled only by the last day of school. The kids are nuts, hyper, and off the wall. You'd think that by high school, the excitement of Christmas coming would have faded in their jaded minds; but no, vacations's coming and they're ready. The only ones worse than the kids are the teachers. By Christmas, we're more than set to escape.
I found my classroom door unlocked. Another rude awakening was Oliver Sandgrace perched on the edge of my desk. Who needs superintendents at seven-thirty in the morning? I'd never met him. I introduced myself. He didn't invite me to sit. I sprawled in the chair behind my desk, causing him to twist uncomfortably and finally to reseat himself.
A prissy little man in his late fifties, he has a birthmark in the middle of his bald forehead, about three inches to the left of where Mikhail Gorbachev has his, only Sandgrace's is rounder. It looks as if he's gotten sunburned on the one spot, while the rest of his head gleams pinkly. He wore a black business suit with a red tie.
He said, “Several board members have brought complaints about you, Mr. Mason.”
“And why is that important?”
“We're here to serve the public. Dealing with the community is part of our job.” This was delivered in a severe tone.
“I thought we were here to teach kids.”
“I'm not going to argue with you, Mr. Mason, I'm telling you.”
I interrupted. “Have I broken the contract, state law, or school code? Is there a problem with my performance in the classroom?”
I got a frosty “Don't interrupt me until I'm quite finished. I don't like your attitude.”
“I apologize for interrupting. I don't care if you don't like my attitude.”
“We may be talking about your status as a teacher in this district,” he huffed.
“You threatening to fire me?” I laughed. “Let's call in the union president, then. Make your threats in front of him. I'll stack my sixteen years of excellent evaluations against anything you've got.”
He got off the desk, paced the room a moment. When he resumed talking, he switched tactics. “You haven't given me a chance. Maybe I started out overly harsh. I've read those evaluations.
You are a good teacher. But you're meddling in murder, for which you have no expertise or training. And you're upsetting people in the district.”
“Who?”
“I'm not at liberty to say.”
“Then you'll need to familiarize yourself with Article Seven, Section A, paragraph two of the current board-union contract. It says that a teacher has the right to know the name of the complainant and the nature of the complaint.” Being union building rep, I'd had to read the damn contract several million times. I can quote parts of the stupid thing in my sleep.
“I don't need you to tell me what's in the contract,” Sandgrace said.
“Obviously you do.”
“Why are you so hostile?” he asked.
We stared at each other a moment. He broke the contact first. I watched his gray eyes dart about the room. They came back to rest on mine.
“I'm here representing the Board of Education. They are your and my bosses, whether we like it or not. They told me to tell you to cease your activities connected with Jeff Trask. Specifically, not to talk to the kids, teachers, or parents involved.”
“On what authority do they make that demand?”
He looked nonplussed.
“They have no jurisdiction over my activities outside of school. I have broken neither the law, which you are in no position to enforce, nor have I violated school code, union contract, or job description.”
“You can't keep harassing parents. I won't have it. If necessary, I'll talk to the police about your activities.”
“Then it's the police's problem, not yours, isn't it?” I asked.
“I can't have one of my staff involved in a criminal investigation,” he said.
“Is there a job-related issue here?”
“How dare you defy me? You teachers and your union are not all-powerful.”
“Neither are you and the board.”
He gave up trying to sound reasonable. “You realize there will be repercussions for you, Mr. Mason?”
“What will those be?” I asked.
“The board will decide at its next meeting.”
“Keep your idle threats, but do remember: if necessary, the union can tie you up in hearings for years if you try harassing me.”
He shook his head and left.
Administrators are such assholes. I suspected a cover-up of some kind before; now I was sure of it. I knew I'd keep digging. I'd also need to be more careful. I might sneer at Sandgrace's threats, but I didn't want to push anybody too far beyond their limits. He was just a guy doing and protecting his own job.
The instant the bell rang for lunch, Meg appeared outside my classroom door. She waited for the kids to leave. She wore a wicked grin. It usually meant somebody was in deep shit.
She closed the door and motioned me over to the windows. She looked over her shoulder.
“A little melodramatic, Meg?”
“You won't believe this. I've got hot gossip, and I mean torrid.” She gave a dramatic pause. She'd studied drama in college before getting her library degree. “First, you must understand this is from an unreliable source.”
“Then what good is it?”
“Listen,” she said, thumping my elbow. “George Windham and Pete Montini are the major source of drugs in the school. They're part of a major drug network. I can't prove they sell directly to kids. They have students doing the actual selling. They work through intermediaries so the kids at school won't know who's behind it.”
I told her what I'd heard from Eric and what George had told me without revealing my sources.
“It's true, then,” she said.
I shrugged. “You say your source is unreliable. Do I believe George? He claims he's stopped, and that he only bought drugs. Certainly, I think he and Pete are up to something. At least Pete is.” I told her about the chase and the house.
After numerous warnings to be careful and a reconfirmation of lunch Saturday, she left.