“Sure, no problem,” she says, not hiding her eagerness.
Well, what the hell? “Okay, Ricketts,” I say. “Get me a list of all unsolved murders on the South Shore over the last decade. Focus on victims of knife attacks, or some spearing instrument.”
“Knife … or spearing,” she repeats, writing it down on a notepad.
“Stabbed, impaled, sliced, diced, whatever,” I say. “This guy likes to cut people.”
46
WHEN I ENTER Bridgehampton School, red brick and white pillars on Main Street—Montauk Highway, if you prefer—I am directed to the school principal, a woman named Paulina Jacoby. She looks like a school principal, conservatively dressed, her gray hair neatly combed, a humorless way about her. Her office is simply decorated, with a nice view of the massive school grounds to the south. Behind her, yearbooks going back to the seventies line an entire bookcase.
We spend a few minutes with small talk—they had a good relationship with the former chief, she tells me; she knows I’m his niece, pretty much everybody knows that by now. “We were … pleasantly surprised to hear from Chief Marks,” she says.
Chief Marks. It will take a long time before I’m used to hearing that.
“But we’re always happy to hear from the STPD. There is no such thing as a school that has too much security.”
True—but what she’s saying is, we called her, not the other way around. That isn’t surprising. Isaac was trying to find the least desirable assignment he possibly could for me, without being too obvious about it. If he assigned me to parking meter duty, it would be blatantly clear that he was punishing me. A school assignment is just perfect, from his perspective. Who can be against school security in this day and age? But that doesn’t change the fact that this is an assignment for a much younger cop than me. He’s a devious one, Isaac, that little fuck.
“We’ve been lucky,” the principal says, knocking on her wooden desk. “We haven’t had a school shooting for sixteen—well, now I guess it’s seventeen years.”
Right. That’s right. “The BB gun shooting in 1995,” I say. I point out the window. “Out there on the south grounds.”
She nods, looks through the window. “That was Halloween. We banned costumes at the school for over a decade after that.”
“It was Noah Walker,” I say. “Noah shot those kids with the BB gun.”
She looks at me, unsure of how to answer. Because Noah was a juvenile at the time, the criminal proceedings against him would have been sealed. The school would have been prohibited from publicly announcing his name.
“Well,” she says, “I guess it’s not much of a secret, after it came out last year during his trial.”
Not a secret at all. But she’s getting a little squirmy, so I don’t push the point.
“Well, let me introduce you to our security personnel,” she says, getting out of her chair. “Is there anything else you’ll need from me?”
“Maybe just one thing,” I say. “Could I take a look at the school yearbook from 1995?”
Once I have some time alone, after meeting with the school security personnel, and once I’m shown to a small office, cramped and windowless, that probably was once a janitor’s closet, I crack open the yearbook, heading to the index in the back and finding the name Walker, Noah.
I flip to the page and run along the names on the right column until I come to his. Noah would have been, what, twelve or thirteen back then. I admit to a curiosity—and maybe more than curiosity—about how a guy with a ripped physique and rugged good looks would have appeared as an adolescent.
I find his name, but when I look across to the corresponding picture, there is no face staring back, just a NOT PICTURED graphic. Okay, that probably makes sense; he was suspended from school after the Halloween shooting that year, so he probably was gone by the time they were taking yearbook photos. I let out a sigh, disappointed, but then catch myself—why am I disappointed? And why am I thinking about Noah Walker’s muscles?
Next to the graphic for Noah: a weaselly-looking kid with straw hair parted down the middle, a skinny face, and eyes too close together. He isn’t smiling or frowning; he looks confused, actually, like the invention of the camera was a revelation at that moment.
But I know this guy. I look at the name on the side and square it up. This is Aiden Willis. Right. Aiden Willis, the raccoon eyes, the squirrelly guy who works at the cemetery—I saw him at Melanie’s funeral, then again at the Dive Bar, when I bought him a beer and he disappeared.