“Somehow I sense she’s not your favorite person.”
“I’m sure it’s mutual. She’s a grind, biding her time until pension. I wouldn’t count on getting any insight from her on the Burden girl or anything else.”
I said, “Speaking of insight, has Ahlward or anyone else from Latch’s office called yet?”
“About what?”
“Vis-à-vis informational flow,” I said in a puffed-up voice. “We good folks were supposed to get anything we wanted as soon as the police gave the old green light, right?”
“Promises, promises.”
“Not that it matters, at this point. In fact it’s better he’s stayed away. The kids don’t need any more political involvement.”
“Neither do the adults,” she said.
The noon bell rang outside in the hallway, loud enough to vibrate the office walls. I got up. “Time to heal young minds.”
She walked me to the door. “In terms of reaching the parents, I don’t know if Friday gives us enough time. How about Monday?”
“Monday would be fine,” I said.
“Okay. We’ll keep calling. I want you to know I really appreciate all you’re doing.”
She looked beaten.
I felt like putting my arms around her. Instead I smiled and said, “Onward. Non illegitimati carborundum.”
“Ah, on top of everything else, the man’s a Latin scholar. Sorry, Prof. I took Spanish.”
I said, “Inscription on ancient Roman tomb: Don’t let the bastards wear you down.”
She threw back her head and laughed. I kept the sound in my head as I went to class.
9
The children greeted me with eagerness, talking freely. I had the younger ones build replicas of the storage shed with blocks, manipulate figurines representing Holly Burden, Ahlward, the teachers, themselves. Acting out the shooting, over and over, until boredom set in and visible anxiety diminished. The older students wanted to know what had caused Holly Burden to go bad, caused her to hate them. I assured them she hadn’t targeted them, had been deranged, out of control. Regretted having little with which to back that up.
A sixth-grader said, “What made her crazy?”
“No one knows.”
“I thought that was your job, knowing what makes people crazy.”
I said, “Trying to know. There’s still a lot we don’t understand about craziness.”
“I got an aunt who’s crazy,” said a girl.
“She got it from you,” said the boy next to her.
And they were off…
I walked out of the last classroom sapped but feeling a sense of accomplishment, wanted to share that feeling with Linda and brighten up her day. But her office was locked and I left the school.
As I got in the Seville I noticed a car turn a corner and approach. Slowly. Silver-gray Honda. Dirty. Black windows.
It pulled up alongside me, stopped.
I power-locked the Seville. The Honda remained in place, engine idling, then suddenly drove off.
I snapped my head around and made out four digits and three letters of a license number. Held the information in my head until I could retrieve pen and paper from my briefcase and write it down. Then I sat there trying to figure it out.
Some kind of intimidation?
Or just a curious local, checking out the carpetbaggers?
I thought of the racist filth Linda had shown me and wondered if there could be a connection.
I looked over at the school grounds, graying in the autumn twilight. A handful of students remained in the yard, waiting to be picked up, playing under the watchful eyes of a teacher’s aide. The school buses were gone, transporting kids from suburbia back to the mean streets- but which streets were meaner?
I watched the children frolic. Enjoying their newly paroled schoolyard.
Hide and seek.
Kickball. Hopscotch.
Losing themselves in the game of the moment.
So trusting it hurt.
I looked up and down the street before pulling out. Drove home too fast and kept checking my rearview mirror.
The first thing I did when I got in the house was pick up the phone and dial West L.A. Robbery-Homicide.
This time, the new D-Three was in.
“Hey, Alex. Got your message, tried to call. Kind of crazy right now-”
“Strange things are happening, Milo. Let’s talk.”
“Sure. Later,” he said, in a voice that let me know he wasn’t alone. “Let me handle a few things and I’ll get back to you on that.”
He rang the bell shortly before seven and, operating on reflex, went straight into the kitchen. I stayed on the leather sofa, watching the roundup of the news.
Nothing new on the shooting: just close-ups of Holly Burden’s yearbook picture, a School Board official reporting that a “detailed and extensive manual search of several years of school records” had confirmed her attendance and graduation from Nathan Hale Elementary School but revealed no new insights. Then more psychiatric speculation, including one theory that she’d returned to Hale to take revenge for some imagined slight. When asked to fill in the details, the psychiatrist demurred, saying he was speaking theoretically- in terms of “classical psychodynamic wisdom.” Dobbs came on again, in a segment that looked prerecorded. Caressing his watch fob, still talking about his treatment program at Hale, blasting “society.” I wondered how long he’d keep up the charade.
Milo returned with a comice pear in his mouth, one of a dozen sent me each year as a gift by a grateful patient now living in Oregon.
He chomped. “Nice to see you’re buying good healthy food again.”
“All for you,” I said. “Nutrition for a growing boy.”
He patted his belly and sat down, scowling.
The camera drew back from Dobbs’s rubber face. The psychologist was stroking his beard, had put on a sad, sanctimonious expression- part mourner, part huckster.
Milo snorted and began humming “Jingle Bells.”
I said, “Yeah, the resemblance is striking, but this guy’s no saint.”
“Better be careful. He knows if you’re naughty or nice.”
Dobbs’s pronouncements on spirituality dissolved into a commercial.
Milo stretched his feet out and said, “Okay, you promised me strange. Time to deliver.”
I started with my encounter with Massengil and Dobbs.
He said, “I don’t know that I’d classify any of that as strange, Alex. Seems like good old politics as usuaclass="underline" the asshole feels the school is his turf, wants his boy in on anything that goes on there. You have to think like these guys do- power’s their dope. You’ve infringed. Of course he’s gonna get offended.”
“So what should I do about it?”
“Not a goddam thing. What can he do to you?”
“Not much,” I said, “but he might be able to do something to you. He talked about how your promotion had caused resentment.”
“I’m quaking,” Milo said, and wiggled his hand. “But he’s right in one regard. The troops are not happy with my ascension up the administrative ladder. One thing to tolerate a faggot; whole other ball of wax to take orders from one. Make things worse, the other D-Threes are getting antsy with my ‘approach to the job.’ Most of them are your basic desk jockeys, marking off time. My wanting to work the streets makes them look like the comatose slugs they are. The only other guy who stays active is the Homicide D-Three out in West Valley. But he’s a born-again, doesn’t like deviates, so there’s no bonding potential there. Still, no sense pissing and moaning, right? Don’t do the crime if you can’t hack the slime. Besides, getting rid of me would be more trouble than it’s worth- Department’s like one of those dinosaurs with the pea-sized brains. Impossible to budge, real easy to get around if you watch your step. So don’t worry about me, do your job, and forget it.”