Should he check the tunnel? No, that was a secret. No one would be in there at this hour. The only noise was upstairs; when he returned, he found that Russell had finished in the weight room and was now next door in the wrestling room, head down on a mat and serving as pivot as the boy spun and writhed and worked himself through an imaginary contest. This was a comfortable room, this box about twenty yards square, covered with mats on the floor and the walls, extra rolls of mats stored vertically like tree trunks against one wall.
“You scared me,” the boy had said upon his return. “What are you doing here, anyway?” And then, before any chance for a response, the boy had added, “Sorry. Stupid question.”
He had felt the heat pump into his face and had heard his own pulse in his ears.
“Let me show you a special move, Russell,” he had said, and the boy had let him. Why not? The boy had sat on the mat and had let him kneel down behind and take the boy’s head in his hands. Russell Phillips was strong, but he was tired, and he was not prepared anyway for a familiar adult to twist his neck suddenly and break it.
The boy had not died right away, and that part was bad, the eyes accusing him and the voice trying to speak but only choking. He had removed the boy’s shoes and socks from the motionless feet and then had replaced the shoes, retying them patiently, all the while listening to that increasingly labored breathing. Once done, he had gone next door for a barbell and had climbed the stairs and broken the lock on the door to the roof. Then he had dragged the limp boy up the stairs, still coughing and choking and gasping at first, but then finally quiet, and had thrown him off the roof.
Now that it was over, he was all cool reason again. And yet he nearly vomited when he remembered the boy in the theater in New York. That had been only yesterday, though it seemed so much longer ago. He was going to have to control himself. It was wrong, giving in to this passion this way. He would be strong. He would resist. He would try.
The Third Act
SCENE 1
Eldridge Lane, Ph.D. (economics, Rice University), for fifteen years headmaster of the Montpelier School for Boys, was furious.
“No one connected with my school is a murderer,” he said. “No one. The very idea is preposterous.”
Carol Scott said nothing. She looked like a bank officer calling to sell him a loan, with her gray wool suit, light makeup, short black hair pulled back with a gold barrette. She even carried a leather briefcase, which now rested on the patterned carpet at her feet. But Carol Scott was not a bank officer; she was an investigator with the county sheriff’s office, and she was willing to wait for Lane to finish his tantrum. She cut her eyes over to Horace Somerville, the only other person in Lane’s office. Horace Somerville was a vestryman at the Episcopal church in town where Carol Scott’s children went to Sunday school and where she and her husband sang in the choir. She had greeted Horace a few minutes ago by noting that his tie had its knot uncharacteristically lopsided. He had surprised her by straightening it quietly instead of excoriating her.
Carol Scott sat beside Horace Somerville in front of Eldridge Lane’s desk wishing she had not drawn this assignment. She knew Lane well and didn’t care for him at all. He complained too frequently about the way she did her job, particularly when it meant adverse publicity for Montpelier School. It was a great school, sure, with a national reputation, but that didn’t mean that the boys didn’t try to buy beer with fake IDs from time to time, or that an ounce of coke didn’t end up in somebody’s dorm room on occasion. Lane treated every one of her visits as an intrusion. Maybe she intimidated him. She was 5’10”, the same height as he. She guessed that he had probably parted that silvery hair of his on the same line for every one of his fifty-nine years, and she could not imagine him wearing anything but the traditional attire he had on today: charcoal gray suit, white shirt, striped tie, black tasseled loafers. She figured him as the type who didn’t like changes, including changes in the gender of the workplace.
It was clear that nothing had changed since the last time she had been in this office, which was what? Five or six years ago? Six years, she remembered. It was a hazy June day when she had arrested Lane’s youngest daughter, then seventeen, for possession of marijuana. Carol Scott had only been twenty-two then; it must have been one of her first arrests. She had made a special trip out to tell Lane in person that she thought the girl was probably dealing it, though she didn’t have any hard evidence. Back then Lane had sat behind the same expansive desk, had swiveled in the same green leather chair, had adjusted the position of the same brass desk lamp, had ranted just as vehemently. He’d been livid that they had actually arrested his child without telephoning him first. In the end, his daughter had managed to get by with a fine and probation. The experience had seemed to straighten her out, for Carol Scott had seen her picture in the paper last summer, the bride of some lawyer in Chapel Hill.
“This school exists because of the trust that parents place in us,” said Lane. “A false rumor could do serious damage to our admissions program, not to mention our fund raising.”
It was 9:00 in the morning, Tuesday, November 30, and Carol Scott was tired. She’d
