They found the stairway. On the second floor landing, three teenagers sat on the floor, giggling to themselves. Wondero flashed his badge and one of the boys directed them to Bridgewater’s office, managing twice to call Wondero sir.
“You like doing that, don’t you?” Hardare said.
“It opens a lot of doors,” Wondero admitted.
Room 206 was at the end of a long hallway, and did not look like a walk any student would enjoy taking. They entered the office to find a disagreeable secretary guarding her boss’s door.
“Dr. Bridgewater is on a conference call, and cannot be disturbed,” the secretary explained.
Wondero hung his badge inches from her nose. She used the tip of her plastic fingernail to tap the inscription. “You’re out of your jurisdiction,” she said matter-of-factly.
“We have an appointment. It’s urgent we see him right now.”
She pressed the intercom on her desk. “Dr. Bridgewater, there are two men from the LAPD here to see you.”
Over the intercom a man’s voice said, “Give me two minutes.”
“Have a seat,” the secretary said.
The couch in the waiting area sagged beneath their combined weight. Hardare picked up an old yearbook from a coffee table and leafed through it. He came to a page with a photograph of Dr. Louis Bridgewater taken before Bridgewater was principal, and had been head of the school’s guidance counselors.
“Excuse me,” Hardare said to the secretary. “What field of medicine is Dr. Bridgewater a doctor of?”
“Psychiatry,” she said.
A few minutes later, Bridgewater came out of his office with an angry-looking teenage boy. Showing the boy to the door, he turned to greet his guests.
“Sorry for the delay,” Bridgewater said.
They entered his office. It was filled with expensive furniture and lots of diplomas. Bridgewater motioned to a pair of chairs while sitting down at his desk. He nervously interlaced his fingers together before speaking.
“You realize that, by law, I should refer you to the school attorney.”
“I understand that,” Wondero said. “Unfortunately, we don’t have much time. Mr. Hardare’s wife was kidnapped this morning, and we believe the culprit once attended your school.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Bridgewater said. “All right, I’ll try to help. Can you give me a description of your suspect?”
“White male, between twenty-five and forty-five years old, with classic sociopathic tendencies,” Wondero replied.
“Violent?”
“Very. His victims are all women.”
“And you think he went to school here sometime during the past twenty years.”
“Correct.”
Bridgewater opened up a file cabinet behind his desk. “The California school system currently uses MOSIAC to weed out problem children in our classrooms. Before MOSIAC, we employed Macdonald’s triad. Are you familiar with this?”
“Afraid not,” Wondero said.
“Macdonald believed homicidal maniacs share three similar childhood characteristics. Bed-wetting, starting fires, and torturing small animals. I know it sounds primitive, but those were the traits we looked for years ago.” Bridgewater tossed a file on his desk and closed the cabinet. “This file contains evaluations of students that fit the MacDonald triad, or what we used to call bad seeds. I was the school psychiatrist back then, and they were my patients. I’d be happy to look through the evaluations, and see if anyone matching your profile pops up.”
“Please,” Wondero said.
“Make yourself comfortable. This may take a while.”
Bridgewater put on his glasses and started to read. Hardare leaned forward, watching like a hawk. Magicians had been reading body language well before law enforcement had discovered its usefulness, and he looked for any tell-tale signs in the principal’s facial or physical expressions.
Thirty minutes later, one of those signs appeared.
Bridgewater lifted his head. Then, his eyelids half-lowered, as if falling asleep. The file had jogged something in his memory, and Hardare came out of his chair.
“What did you find?”
“I’m sorry. But this is very painful,” Bridgewater said.
Wondero rose as well. “Go on.”
“There was a student named Eugene Osbourne who tried to murder another student. I hate to use this term, but Eugene was crazy. I knew Eugene’s mother. She was a speech therapist here, a gentle, lovely woman. So lovely, that I asked her to marry me.”
“How many years ago was this?” Wondero asked.
“Twenty.”
“I know this is difficult, but you have to tell us about this kid,” the detective said.
“Of course. Please sit down. I’ll tell you everything,” Bridgewater said.
Eugene Osbourne had been a gangly, lop-eared tenth grader whose alcoholic father had died when he was a boy. It was a hard way to grow up, but nothing Bridgewater hadn’t seen before.
Eugene had visited his office twice a week in an effort to work out his problems. The sessions went well, with Eugene willing to explore the things which troubled him. He agonized over being rejected by a girl at the sock hop, and how he was always picked last when teams were formed.
Bridgewater had ached for him. There was no greater hurt than a boy’s bruised sense of worth. He could not make Eugene’s pain or the circumstances which had caused it go away, and instead, had tried to help Eugene cope.
“I miss my father,” Eugene had confided one day.
“What do you miss the most about him?” Bridgewater had asked.
“Do you really want to know?”
“Yes, Eugene, I do.”
“Watching him beat up my mother.”
“That’s not funny, Eugene.”
“It is to me,” the boy had said.
In his junior year, Eugene was caught setting fires, and sent to an outside psychiatrist for evaluation. The psychiatrist tested Eugene, and discovered that he had been born with an extra Y, or male sex chromosome. Based upon this, the psychiatrist determined that Eugene had a genetic affliction toward violence, and that little could be done to cure him.
Bridgewater had read the evaluation and thrown a fit. In his opinion, genetic destiny was as dangerous as racial stereotyping, and he had fought to have Eugene returned to Woodrow Wilson so that he could treat him by more accepted methods.
In his senior year, Eugene had attempted to murder another senior, a football player named Tony Capaletti. At the time, Capaletti did not have the slightest idea who Eugene was, having never shared a single class with him.
But Capaletti was dating a cheerleader named Rosalyn Summers, who Eugene had a crush on. Rosalyn thought Eugene had once asked her out, although she hadn’t been entirely sure.
The incident had taken place at a time when Bridgewater was certain he saw all the signs pointing toward Eugene’s recovery. Eugene was coming to school, working afternoons bagging groceries, and much to everyone’s surprise, had landed a minor role in the school’s production of Once Upon a Mattress.
By then Bridgewater and Eugene’s mother, Elaine, were dating. Bridgewater knew he was falling in love, and had planned to ask Elaine to marry him when the school year ended.
It was not to be.
Two weeks before finals, Eugene was found lying in the hall, barely breathing. While placing a poisonous snake into Tony Capaletti’s locker, the snake had slipped free, and bit him.
The doctors at San Diego General had kept Eugene’s heart going by pumping him with insulin. A remedy was prescribed by a local poison specialist that required another dose of poison. Only after Elaine’s consent was granted with Eugene given the shot.
The cure did not kill Eugene, but it came close. As his body temperature rose to 105 degrees, his hair had dropped out, and he had turned into a bald, screaming monster.