Aaron laid out their schedule. He'd arranged three interviews for the afternoon. In his preliminary meetings with the people he hadn't told them much, just that a lieutenant of detectives was coming from New York to ask them questions about Beverly Archer. The case, he'd told them, was important and at this stage, highly confidential. As there were as yet no indictments, informants had been assured their cooperation would be held in confidence.
Something about the way Aaron was talking signaled Janek that he was holding back. "You find something?"
"Yep." Aaron grinned.
"Going to keep it a secret?"
"I think you're going to be surprised," was all Aaron would say.
Their motel, a standard low, sprawling complex, was situated beside a remote shopping mall. Janek checked in, unpacked his stuff, washed his face, then examined himself in the standard motel-room mirror. His tan, acquired in Mexico, had all but disappeared. What he saw was a middle-aged man in an inexpensive business suit with lines in his forehead and bags beneath his eyes. But he noticed something special about this man. He looks like a guy who doesn't give up. The idea of that made him feel good. He descended briskly to the lobby, then out to the portico.
"Okay, Aaron," he said, getting into the car, "I'm ready. Let's toll."
Their first stop was the Ashley-Bumett School for Girls. they drove awhile, entered a posh suburb of impressive homes, then came to an open gate which Janek at first took to be the entrance to a park. A discreet sign pointed the way down a winding, treelined drive. The campus extended on either side, athletic fields and lavish lawns covered with snow, crisscrossed by wellshoveled paths. Finally the school proper came into view, an impressive vine-covered red-brick building with two extended wings.
"This is one ritzy setup," Aaron aid as he drove into the visitors' lot.
"I didn't know real people sent their kids to joints like this."
As they walked to the administration building, Janek could hear the shrill cries of girls and the scampering of little female feet through the windows of what he took to be the school gym.
"How long did Beverly go here?"
"All twelve grades," Aaron said. "Old Bertha Parce was her high school English teacher." He glanced at Janek. "But later Beverly came back. It was just after she got her Ph.D. She spent a year in Cleveland trying to build up a practice. She was just starting out. Referrals were few and far between. to keep herself busy and make ends meet, she wangled herself a part-time job at her old alma mater as student counselor and school shfink." The headmaster's secretary, a pretty young woman in a naw skirt. asked them if they wouldn't mind waiting a few minutes in the reception area.
Aaron sat on a soft leather couch, while Janek inspected the display of school memorabilia on the walls.
There was a glass case full of trophies, most of them for arcane sports such as field hockey and equestrian dressage. There was an ornately framed wooden plaque emblazoned with the words "Head Girl" and the names of young women, student leaders in their respective years. There were also numerous class photographs. Janek asked Aaron what year Beverly was graduated. Aaron checked his notebook. "Class of '68," he said.
Janek found the picture, inspected it closely. Two dozen girls, all wearing the same school uniform of white blouse and blue and red tartan skirt, were posed in two rows before the main building of Ashley-Bumett.
He discovered Beverly in the second row on the end. She was standing slightly apart from her classmates. There was something separate, distant about her, something slightly alienated in her posture. But her face bore the same half-smile he had come to know so well, the thin-lipped half-smile that said "I have superior knowledge" and "Don't get too close."
"Mr. Bramhall will see you now."
Janek turned. The pretty secretary motioned them toward an inner door. Janek and Aaron followed her across polished parquet floors into a spacious creamcolored office. A handsome man in a beautifully tailored tweed jacket rose from behind an antique partner's desk.
"You must be Lieutenant Janek. I'm Jud Bramhall," he said, extending, his hand.
Janek studied @hini while they made small talk about the brutal Cleveland weather. He and Bramhall, he decided, were about the same aae, but there the resemblance stopped. Bramhall had the patrician good looks and arched eyebrows of an affable old-fashioned WASP politician, the kind that can't get elected in an American city anymore.
He had the same kind of old money voice as Stanton Dorance, a voice that spoke of a fine eastern education and all the privileges attendant thereto.
"Sergeant Greenberg tells me you want a briefing on Bev Archer's sojourn here as school psychologist."
Janek was pleased by Bramhall's crisp announcement that it was time to discuss the matter at hand.
"A certain confidentiality implicit in our relationships with former staff precludes my getting too specific. But after counsulting with our attorney, and based on the gravity of the matter, as explained by the sergeant here, I'm prepared to fill you in on a background-only basis. For anything more than that I'll require a subpoena."
Janek nodded. "That's fine. We're just trying to get a sense of what she was like."
Bramhall pulled a pipe from a rack on his desk, stuffed it with tobacco.
Then he leaned back, a signal he was going to be expansive. Watching him, Janek had the feeling Bramhall would tell his tale well.
"It was a strange thing that happened with Bev…
The events he described occurred in 1977. The school, Bramhall didn't mind admitting now, was then a fairly troubled institution. There were drug problems, student pregnancies, a general breakdown in discipline. Nothing that wasn't going on at other independent schools at the time, but he, Bramhall, had been appointed headmaster only two years before, he was the first male head in the history of Ashley-Bumett, and he was anxious to make innovations and turn the school around. So the idea came to him that a trained psychologist ought to be available to any student needing help. He took it to the board of trustees, the concept was approved, and then someone brought up Beverly Archer's name. She was qualified, she had just gotten her degree, and, best of all, as a fairly young alumna she would be in a position to identify with the particular problems of Ashley-Bumett girls, pertaining to the school and also to their social lives outside.
"We are, after all, a fairly special group." Bramhall finally lit his pipe. "We have minority students, and we hope to recruit more as times goes on. But basically our function is to educate the daughters of Cleveland's older families. I make no apologies for that. Ashley-Bumett is an elite school. We consider ourselves the equal of any young women's academy in the East."
He made this last statement with uncondescending pride, a pride Janek could not help admiring. The man carried the torch for a world he must know was increasing irrelevant, yet he did so without apology.
"That first autumn, when Bev came on board, I thought I'd made a pretty smart move. Here was an intelligent, well-motivated young woman eager to help her old school get back on track. And I have to admit that in the beginning at least things did seem to improve. As troubled kids turned to her for guidance, student and faculty morale tilted up. I got some calls from parents, too, always complimentary. A staff psychologist was a reat idea. Why hadn't we thought of it before?"
But then, Bramhall admitted sadly, the euphoria of autumn began to turn.
The winter term was always the hardest, he said, always the low point of the year. Cleveland's harsh climate was partially responsible. The gray skies and miserable cold forced everyone indoors. Kids caught the flu. Corridors resounded with sniffles and coughs. All educators are familiar with the phenom enon, a species of cabin fever that leads inevitably to a lowering of morale. But that particular winter, the winter of '78, seemed worse than usual. There was something indefinably miserable in the air. Bramhall, naturally concerned, called a number of staff meetings. Beverly, he remembered, kept fairly quiet. At the time he attributed that to shyness; she was new to the school and possibly intimidated by older staff. Then one weekend in late February disaster struck. A senior girl, a very popular one, too, hanged herself at home.