Heart racing, Ellie leaned forward. “Are you saying that Kingsley attended Far Ridge Academy and played a role in the deaths of those three boys?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying.”
“Hold up.” She lifted a hand as the pieces clicked together. Three mysterious student deaths at a school linked to Kingsley? She could have kicked herself for not suspecting. If Kingsley was involved, though, his family must have paid off a lot of people and pulled an entire puppet show’s worth of strings to keep it under wraps. In all of Ellie’s time investigating, she’d never gotten a whiff of young Kingsley being suspected of anything more than a few tardies.
This wasn’t the first time boarding schools had come up as Kingsley-related cases, though. Over the past year, one of the missing children she’d investigated had ended up at a special academy away from home. Poor William.
The Warrens had wanted the best for their son, the type of care for a kid who struggled with multiple spectrum-related issues that extended beyond the local public school’s capabilities. To his parents, the special boarding school had sounded like a godsend, so they’d packed William up and sent him off, praying for the best.
The hopeful couple never set eyes on their son again, because instead of a boarding school, William had been sold into one of Kingsley’s child trafficking rings.
Crime seemed to always circle back to Lawrence Kingsley.
“Okay, let’s back up and start from the beginning. What can you tell me about Far Ridge, particularly Letitia and Walter Wiggins?”
Crawford’s expression turned broody. He sucked on the cigarette while he stared off into space, slowly rotating the chair back and forth with one foot. “The things I could tell you about the Wiggins would curl your hair.”
“Her hair’s already curly.”
Crawford’s eyes narrowed on Charli while Ellie kicked her chair and shot a warning look. The detective met both with a blank face and innocent shrug.
Torn between laughter and annoyance, Ellie tensed and prepared to jump in as referee if necessary. Luckily, Crawford chose to ignore Charli’s ill-timed quip. “I can say with absolute certainty that neither Letitia nor Walter Wiggins belonged anywhere near children. I shudder to think how much cumulative damage they inflicted onto young, impressionable psyches over the years, mine included. Those three boys never should have died.”
He stubbed out the cigarette in an empty ashtray, then pulled a new one from the pack in his sweatshirt pocket. The lighter sparked, and the new cigarette glowed red at the tip. “Poor Walter Wiggins ended up as the fall boy for everything.”
Ellie puzzled over the phrasing. “But wasn’t he responsible? I read through the case, and it seemed pretty clear that Walter Wiggins abused those three boys and left them outside in the middle of winter to die.”
Crawford’s laugh turned into a hacking cough that wracked his emaciated body. When he caught his breath, he waved the cigarette with a grimace. “I know, I know. One of the downsides of self-medicating with nicotine. Hang on a sec. It’s getting a little stuffy in here.”
He set the lit cigarette in the ashtray and tugged the sweatshirt over his head. The t-shirt beneath rode up with it, exposing such sharp, bony ribs that even Charli flinched. After folding the sweatshirt and setting it on the floor, Crawford tugged his t-shirt down and grabbed the cigarette.
“Back to Walter Wiggins’s culpability in those deaths. The man was definitely no angel, but in this particular case, he got railroaded. That entire damned trial was a lesson in how privilege and wealth protects people from facing consequences for even the most heinous crimes.”
It was eerie how closely Crawford’s comment about privilege echoed Katarina’s from earlier. Ellie shoved the distraction aside. Later. “What do you mean?”
This time, the hand that lifted the cigarette shook a little. “One time, I was called into Headmistress Letitia’s office to be—”
Ellie held up a hand. “Headmistress? Isn’t she the headmaster’s wife?”
Crawford rolled his eyes. “She insisted we call her headmistress, the bitch. But anyway, she reprimanded me for putting on too much weight.”
Ellie recoiled. “What? That’s terrible.”
The podcaster nodded. “I know, we’ve hopefully left those days behind, but back in those days and at a private institution, that bitch had carte blanche to inflict her sadistic punishments.”
He settled back in the chair, his gaze distant. “First, she lectured me about the dangers of sneaking candy at night, then shoved me in the Blue Room.”
Ellie’s eyebrows rose. “The Blue Room?”
“Yeah. A fancy name for a crappy little hellhole where the headmistress or headmaster’s wife or whoever she was shoved students she felt needed to spend some time ‘reflecting.’” He air quoted the last word. “After leaving me in there with no food for days, she trotted me out and forced me to stand in her office in a uniform that was several sizes too small. I remember the pants dug into my waist so much, the red marks lasted for days. And the shirt was uncomfortably tight across my chest and so short that I was afraid to lift my hands away from my sides because I knew my stomach would show. I was already self-conscious. Not a big shock, I guess, that students at private schools can be every bit as cruel to bigger kids as anywhere else.”
His rich, podcast-worthy voice lost its usual inflection, turning monotone and flat. The brittle recitation made Ellie sense that while he’d likely shared this story a number of times, he’d never rid himself of the ghosts roused in the retelling.
Her cheek itched, but she was afraid to move, worried that
