“Would you care for tea? No? Then come, follow me to the parlor.”
The parlor turned out to be a tiny room next to the kitchen. Two floral-printed armchairs, two tufted fussy-floral hassocks, a tea table, a bookcase, and a small red-enameled woodstove just about filled the space. Kale gestured to one of the chairs for Gurney, and he sat in the other.
“Now, Detective, the purpose of your visit?”
Gurney noticed for the first time that Simon Kale’s eyes, in contrast with his giddy manner, were sober and assessing. This man would not be easily fooled or flattered-although his dislike of Ashton, revealed on the phone, might be helpful if handled carefully.
“I’m not a hundred percent sure what the purpose is.” Gurney shrugged. “Maybe I’m just on a fishing expedition.”
Kale studied him. “Don’t overdo the humility.”
Gurney was surprised by the jab but responded blandly. “Frankly, it’s more ignorance than humility. There’s so damn much about this case that I don’t know-that no one knows.”
“Except for the bad guy?” Kale looked at his watch. “You do have questions you want to ask me?”
“I’d like to know whatever you’re willing to tell me about Mapleshade-who goes there, who works there, what it’s all about, what you did there, why you left.”
“Mapleshade before or Mapleshade after the arrival of Scott Ashton?”
“Both, but mainly the period when Jillian Perry was a student.”
Kale licked his lips thoughtfully, seemed to be savoring the question. “I’d sum it up this way: For eighteen of the twenty years I taught at Mapleshade, it was an effective therapeutic environment for the amelioration of a wide range of mild to moderate emotional and behavioral problems. Scott Ashton arrived on the scene five years ago with great fanfare, a celebrity psychiatrist, a cutting-edge theoretician, just the thing to nudge the school into the premier position in the field. Once he had a foothold, however, he began shifting the focus of Mapleshade to sicker and sicker adolescents-violent sexual predators, manipulative abusers of other children, highly sexualized young women with long histories of incest as both victims and perpetrators. Scott Ashton turned our school, with its broad history of success with troubled kids, into a disheartening repository for sex addicts and sociopaths.”
Gurney thought it had the ring of a carefully constructed speech polished by repetition, yet the emotion in it seemed real enough. Kale’s arch tone and mannerisms had been replaced, at least temporarily, by a stiff and righteous anger.
Then, into the open silence that followed the diatribe, from the flute in the other room flowed the haunting melody of “Danny Boy.”
It assaulted Gurney slowly, debilitatingly, like the opening of a grave. He thought he would have to excuse himself, find a pretext for abandoning the interview, flee the premises. Fifteen years, and still the song was unbearable. But then the flute stopped. He sat, hardly breathing, like a shell-shocked soldier awaiting the resumption of distant artillery.
“Is something wrong?” Kale was eyeing him curiously.
Gurney’s first impulse was to lie, hide the wound. But then he thought, why? The truth was the truth. It was what it was. He said, “I had a son by that name.”
Kale looked baffled. “What name?”
“Danny.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The flute… It… it doesn’t matter. An old memory. Sorry for the interruption. You were describing the… the transition from one type of clientele to another.”
Kale frowned. “
“But the school continues to be successful?”
Kale’s smile sparkled like glare ice. “There’s money to be made in housing the demented offspring of guilty parents. The more terrifying they are, the more their parents will pay to get rid of them.”
“Regardless of whether they get any better?”
Kale’s laugh was as cold as his smile. “Let me be perfectly clear about this, Detective, so that I leave no doubt in your mind what we’re talking about. If you were to discover that your twelve-year-old has been raping five-year- olds, you might be willing to pay anything for that lunatic child of yours to disappear for a few years.”
“That’s who’s sent to Mapleshade?”
“Precisely.”
“Like Jillian Perry?”
Kale’s expression moved through a small series of tics and frowns. “Mentioning individual student names in a context like this puts us on the edge of a legal minefield. I don’t feel that I can give you a specific answer.”
“I already have reliable descriptions of Jillian’s behavior. I only mention her because the timing raises a question. Wasn’t she sent to Mapleshade before Dr. Ashton altered the school’s focus?”
“That’s true. However, without saying anything one way or the other about the Perry girl, I can tell you that Mapleshade traditionally accepted students with a wide range of problems, and there were always a few who were far sicker than the others. What Ashton did was focus Mapleshade’s enrollment policy entirely on the sickest. Give any one of them a gram of coke and they’d seduce a horse. Does that answer your question?”
Gurney’s gaze rested thoughtfully on the little red woodstove. “I understand your reluctance to violate confidentiality commitments. However, Jillian Perry can no longer be harmed, and finding her murderer may depend on finding out more about her own past contacts. If Jillian ever confided anything to you about-”
“Stop right there. Whatever was confided to me remains confidential.”
“There’s a great deal at stake, Doctor.”
“Yes, there is. Integrity is at stake. I will not reveal anything that was told to me with the understanding that I would not reveal it. Is that clear?”
“Unfortunately, yes.”
“If you want to know about Mapleshade and its transmogrification from a school to a zoo, we can discuss that in general terms. But the details of individual lives will not be discussed. It’s a slippery world we live in, Detective, in case you hadn’t noticed. We have no secure footing beyond our principles.”
“What principle dictated your departure from Mapleshade?”
“Mapleshade became a home for female sexual psychopaths. Most of them don’t need therapists, they need exorcists.”
“When you left, did Dr. Ashton hire someone to replace you?”
“He hired someone for the same position.” There was acid in the neat distinction and something like real hatred in Kale’s eyes.
“What sort of person?”
“His name is Lazarus. That says it all.”
“How so?”
“Dr. Lazarus has all the warmth and animation of a cadaver.” There was a bitter finality in Kale’s voice that told Gurney the interview was over.
As if on cue, the flute began again, and the plaintive strains of “Danny Boy” propelled him from the house.
Chapter 33
