Sheriff Townsend kept his face neutral, although I thought I saw his eyes tighten just a bit. “He was a good officer,” he said. “Retired just last month.”
I nodded. “I’d like to thank him, for everything he did with Fritz’s case and all,” I said. “Does he live around here?”
He pondered this. “I believe he said he was moving to Florida,” he said. “Wanted to go fishing and live near a beach.” He held out his hand and we shook. “Good luck, Mr. Glass,” he said. He watched me through the glass doors as I walked to my car, his expression obscured by the sunlight glaring off the glass, transforming him into a shadowy apparition in the doorway.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The day that Terence Jarrar shot himself was a beautiful fall day: crisp, about sixty degrees, boundless azure sky. It was three weeks before Thanksgiving break, the height of autumn when the trees refuse to surrender their colors to the gray chill of winter lurking around the corner. The air that day was so raw and clear, it was as if it had been created mere minutes before. The low mountains to the west stood in stark contrast against the bright, open sky, and everything was both vast and close at hand in that strange light. Cheeks burned and hearts quickened at the sudden gusts of wind that blew over the playing fields and against the brick walls. More and more students had been gathering in the Brickhouse for french fries and hot chocolate during breaks. Teachers had begun wearing turtlenecks and the occasional tweed jacket, while students wore baggy sweaters and college sweatshirts. Expectations of going home hung almost palpably in the classroom, and everyone seemed to step with a little more bounce than usual.
To add to the general sense of excitement, the Game was one week away. Since mid-August, our JV and varsity football teams had been lumbering around campus in shoulder pads and cleats, looking for all the world like large stuffed dolls. The helmets, painted in Blackburne’s red and gold, were absurdly big. No one seeing those boys stumble to the dorms after practice could imagine them walking straight, much less running downfield. And yet their weariness would slough off when, limned in mud and sweat and occasionally blood, they crouched down in formation, leaping forward at the snap of the ball.
For parents, who returned to campus for Parents’ Weekend and the November Blackburne–Manassas Prep game, a century-old contest known simply as “the Game,” football was a metaphor for watching their sons grow into men. Each time those boys left the field, clotted with mud and torn grass, they left a part of their boyhood behind them, and it was a bittersweet thing to see that disappear into the wet earth.
It was a Saturday and I was on weekend duty, which meant I was responsible for any recreational activities, the checking out of equipment, locking up the gymnasium, and making sure students signed out before going off campus. It wasn’t too much trouble, but it kept me busy until late afternoon. The majority of the kids were either shooting basketballs in the gym or getting ready for a mixer at Chatham Hall. Laughter spread from the showers as boys scrutinized themselves in the mirrors and boasted about their prowess with girls. I walked the hallways, urging the boys to hurry up. Finally all my charges trooped out of the dorm and headed to the bus with much fanfare and whooping. Off duty until dinner, I couldn’t bring myself to face the stack of ungraded tests waiting in my apartment, and so I walked over to the infirmary, where Porter Deems sometimes hung out, sitting on the building’s wraparound porch and grading papers. As I walked across the Lawn past the chapel, shadows stretched long across the Hill as the sun dipped westward. The trees on the Lawn were just starting to go bare, their leaves beginning to blanket the grass below.
I found Porter on the porch. Wearing sunglasses and sitting comfortably in a rocking chair, he was reading and sipping out of a mug. He looked up as I mounted the steps. “Kids gone?” he asked.
“Just got them on the bus,” I said, and collapsed into another rocking chair. “I’ve been on duty since this morning.”
“Want some tea?” Porter gestured at me with his mug.
“My, how civilized. Are there scones, too?”
“Nice. I offer you tea and you make fun of me.”
“Okay, I’m an asshole. I’m sorry. Yes, I’d love some tea. Please.”
“Bite me,” he said, but he got up and went inside, the screen door banging shut behind him, and he came back with a steaming mug.
We sat on the porch and watched as the sun seemed to melt behind the mountains, spreading red and gold behind the darkening hills.
“Where’d you get the tea?” I asked.
“Betty lets me make tea in her kitchen sometimes,” Porter said. He took a sip.
“Betty?” I drew a blank at first. “Wait, Mrs. Yowell? The nurse?” Betty Yowell was a formidable, matronly woman who had been the school nurse when I had been at Blackburne. She did not come across as the kind of person who would let someone like Porter make tea in her kitchen.
“I just asked nicely,” Porter said. “Women love that shit. Butter up to Betty and she’s like a big teddy bear.”
“Dude, she’s like sixty.”
“Get your mind out of the gutter.” He whacked me on the back of the head with his paperback. “I’m talking about being fucking polite, is all.” He made to whack me again.
“Okay, Jesus.” I swatted the book away. “What are you reading, anyway?”
Frowning, he took a moment to decide I wasn’t worth smacking with the book anymore, and he held it up so I could see the cover. “The Killer Angels,” I read aloud. “I remember that.”
“My U.S. History class finishes studying the Constitutional Convention next week. Thank God,” Porter added, laying the book down in his lap. “I’m sick of explaining the Bill of Rights. Thought I’d get a jump start on next semester.”
“I read that when I was here,” I said. “The Killer Angels. My AP U.S. History teacher had us read it for class.”
“Great fucking book,” Porter said. “Everything hinged on Gettysburg. We’ll get to it in January.”
“Good time for it,” I said. “Weather’s lousy and everyone’s stuck inside. I remember Mr. Conkle reading Hamlet out loud to us in February on a real nasty day, with dark, heavy clouds and this moaning wind. Perfect setting for a ghost story.” I sipped some tea, welcoming the warmth of it. “I like the fall, though. It’s more mysterious, you know? More . . . melancholy, I guess, but beautiful at the same time.”
“There’s nothing like fall, is there?” Porter said. “Kind of—”
That was when we heard the gunshot, a loud, flat explosion. We both turned and looked east toward the river. From the ring of trees at the foot of the Hill, three quail burst out of hiding, their flight low and fast toward the infirmary. Fifty yards out, they cut to our right and vanished behind the dogwoods lining the driveway.