"Are there any teachers still here who were here when Evan Harmon was?"
"I really don't know."
Justin stood up. "Listen," he said, "I don't have time to screw around. So let me try to be as clear as I possibly can: I can make your life a living hell. I wasn't kidding about the court order. If I have to close the school down, that's what I'll do. And believe me, I'll really go out of my way to dog you personally. You're gonna look in your mirror while you're brushing your teeth and you're gonna see my reflection. So unless you haven't so much as taken an extra five dollars on your expense account, just give me the information and make your life a lot easier."
Quintel didn't even hesitate. "Leslie Burham. Miss Burham has been teaching here for over thirty years. And Vince Ellerbe. He runs our math department."
"How long has he been here?"
"As a teacher, just about eight years. But he was a student here in the eighties. I believe he knew Mr. Harmon."
"Is that it?"
"Yes. Those are the only teachers with ties to that period."
"Where can I find them?"
"Miss Burham is taking her summer vacation in Turkey. I believe she'll be back in another three weeks."
"Swell. How about Vince Ellerbe?"
"He's not teaching for the summer term."
"Where is he? Afghanistan?"
"No. I believe he's home."
"Okay," Justin said, "I'll bite. Where does he live?"
Dean Quintel couldn't hide his disappointment. "Approximately fifteen minutes from here," he said.
"Evan Harmon was an asshole then and I'd be willing to bet a year's salary he stayed an asshole," Vince Ellerbe said. "I mean, I'm sorry he's dead, I guess. Oh hell, no, I'm not. I wouldn't wish him dead, let's put it that way, but I don't really care one way or the other."
"Sounds like you two weren't exactly close," Justin said. He was sitting on a lawn chair in Ellerbe's backyard. The math teacher's wife had poured them both some lemonade-Justin would have preferred a beer but decided decorum called for a yes to the lemonade-and their eight-year-old daughter brought out a plate of chocolate chip cookies she'd helped her mother bake the night before.
"Very few people were close to Evan in those days."
"Why is that?"
"He wasn't a guy who invited people to get close. He had a very superior attitude, as if he were a different breed from most of us. And he was a bully. You know the type: his friends were mostly sycophants. He usually found one or two brainiacs who were frightened of him and that's who he spent time with. He'd get them to do some of his work for him and run errands for him-that kind of BMOC shit. I never understood it, but there were definitely a few of those kinds of kids who looked up to him and were almost in awe of him. Not to mention terrified."
"So you didn't know him all that well?"
"I knew him well enough. We were in the same grade. We were on the baseball team together-he was a pretty decent first baseman-and the track team… You know, there's a good example. It's a little thing, but when we were on the track team, Evan signed up for long-distance running, five and ten K races. At the beginning, we were kind of running partners. We were the same basic skill level, so we paired off well together for pace. So it wasn't so monotonous, we didn't just run on the track, there were a couple of country runs the coaches mapped out. After two or three sessions, Evan decided he hated running. But he couldn't quit. His father had been a long-distance runner back in the day and there was all sorts of weird family pressure, which is why I used to cut Evan some slack. Anyway, after a couple of practices, what he used to do was wait until there was a break in the running line-he'd deliberately fall behind or sprint ahead until he could do this without being seen-and then he'd duck out of the run and sneak off and have a cigarette or get a soda or whatever and then he'd just kill an hour or so, wait until we'd be heading back, wait until there was a natural break, and then get back in and run the last quarter mile back to school."
"Never got caught?"
"No. He really had it down pat. He'd cover himself with water so it looked like he was sweating up a storm, and he'd pant like crazy as if he were exhausted. I knew he was doing it, but no one else did. Evan was funny about stuff like that. I think he had to let someone know he was cheating-or it wouldn't have been worth it. Someone had to be aware that he was beating the system or I don't think he would have done it. I think he would have just kept running with the rest of us."
"How'd he do in the races?"
"That's the thing about Evan. He did fine. He didn't need the practice. He'd finish third or fourth or fifth. If he'd actually run hard and worked at it and trained, he could have finished first. But he didn't care enough to do it. He liked the cheating better. He was just basically dishonest."
"Is that why he got thrown out of school?"
Ellerbe thought long and hard about this. Took a swallow of tart lemonade, then another one. "No, I don't think so." He spoke slowly and carefully. "I think there were always problems with his grades-cheating on papers and exams, I mean. He got caught a couple of times, but somehow he was always able to weasel out of it."
"So what was it?" Justin asked. He wondered if it was safe to ask for a beer yet. Decided he should just stick with what he had and not rock the boat.
"Look," Ellerbe said, "the family's gone out of their way to keep this quiet. And I don't even know if it's true. I only got this secondhand."
"From who?"
"Evan was friendly with a guy named Bart Peterson. B. P. was another guy who liked to play a little fast and loose with the rules, also kind of an arrogant kid. Evan told him about this and B. P. told me."
"And now why don't you tell me?"
"What Bart told me was that Evan needed some money and his parents had cut him off. So he got another kid here to stage a fake kidnapping. I think Evan even got a TA to go in on it…" He saw the brief look of puzzlement in Justin's eyes, so he said, "Teaching assistant, sort of a faculty member in training. That was also one of Evan's-um-talents. He could always get people in authority to look the other way, to break the rules just for him. What B.P. told me was that Evan tried to get a hundred thousand dollars from his parents. But the whole thing got botched pretty quickly and Evan was transferred out."
"How'd the Harmons manage to keep this so quiet?"
Ellerbe rolled his eyes and said, "Do you really need to ask that question? Money."
"Enough money to get the school to expunge any record of Evan's behavior?"
"I do know for a fact that almost right after this supposedly happened, Evan's father donated a few hundred thousand dollars… I heard half a million… to Melman for the music building. The H. R. Harmon Music Building."
"Would have been cheaper to pay off his son."
"But not the Harmon way. You protect your children, but you don't reward them."
Justin pondered this last comment, then asked the amiable math professor, "Do you have a yearbook from the last couple of years you went to school with Evan?"
"I live twenty minutes from the school. I still teach there. I usually buy clothes that match the school colors. What do you think?"
Justin smiled thinly, then waited as Ellerbe went inside. It didn't take him long-his school-day mementos were clearly not packed away in some box in the attic-before he returned with two yearbooks. He handed them over and said, "I'd like them back, please. When you're done."
Justin promised. Took a long sip of the lemonade, and said, "Let me ask you something. Do you believe it? You think that's a true story, the one you just told me about the kidnapping?"
"Yes, I do. Two reasons. Bart Peterson was too dumb to make something like that up, so it had to come from Evan directly. And I think that, at heart, Evan Harmon was a crook. He liked to steal and he liked to lie. He just liked it."
Justin nodded. "And he was the kind of guy who did what he liked, is that right?"