“It doesn’t look like ‘horsing around.’ You and Fritz are buck naked and Iris is stoned or drunk. It looks like full-on sexual assault.”
“Austin said it was supposed to be a spoof. I couldn’t see the harm.” When he reached upper State Street, he slowed for a light.
She looked at him in disbelief. “Honestly? You screw the poor girl when she’s completely out of it and you can’t see the harm?”
The light turned green and he proceeded through the intersection, heading for the 154. “I guess it got out of hand. Anyway, she wasn’t that far out of it.”
“Yeah, right. I could tell.”
“It’s true. What you saw was edited, all the bloopers taken out. We were cracking up the whole time, laughing our asses off. None of us could keep it together. Like in one take, Fritz dropped the joint in his lap and about set fire to his pubic hair. Then Iris fell on her ass trying to do a striptease. I was laughing so hard I had beer spewing out my nose. We thought it was hilarious.”
“Oh sure. Hardy-har-har. What happened to the cuts? Because none of that shows up in the copy I have.”
“Bayard worked on edits. He must have taken out the hokey stuff.”
“Oh, come on. That’s bullshit. What I saw was horrible. Troy, if the cops get hold of that tape, you and Fritz will end up in jail. Austin doesn’t come off that well, either. He’s sitting by idly in a coat and tie, lording it over you, like he’s too good to participate. But then you hear him refer to himself as an ‘auteur.’”
“Jesus. Why don’t you do us all a favor and destroy the damn thing?”
“Good plan. I will. Better for everyone, including me.”
“Just don’t tell Poppy.”
“What if someone else spills the beans?”
“Then I’m fucked.”
“Could I say something on another subject? You know I had nothing to do with that anonymous note, don’t you? I’d never do such a thing to you.”
“Of course not. I never believed Austin’s claim. I forget now how he ended up pointing a finger at you, but once the idea was out there everyone seemed to fall in line. Not that it matters now, but it did take me out of the running for the Climping Memorial Award.”
Sloan said, “Oh, me too if the faculty suspects I’m guilty. I might be innocent as all get-out, but I’ve been tainted by the accusation. Everybody hates a snitch. Faculty opinion is bound to be affected, proof or no proof.”
The minute the words came out of her mouth, Sloan felt a tiny exclamation point light up in her brain. It hadn’t occurred to her to explore the issue of why the anonymous note was sent to the school in the first place. She’d been so caught up in defending herself that she hadn’t considered the motive or what was at stake. It suddenly dawned on her that Austin was the obvious beneficiary. Five juniors had been nominated for the Albert Climping Memorial Award, Austin among them. Patti Gibson and Betsy Coe weren’t strong contenders. Sloan could hold her own, but Troy was the impressive candidate in light of his community service. He did school-based mentoring of underprivileged boys. He volunteered time at the homeless shelter and he assisted in a program to provide holiday meals to families in need. In exposing Troy and then pointing an accusing finger at her, Austin had effectively knocked both of them out of the running.
She was tempted to run the idea by Troy to see what he thought of it, but decided to keep the notion to herself, in part because she wasn’t sure there was a way to confirm her hunch. The charge was serious and she needed to consider the implications. She wasn’t sure what action she might take even if she was right, but it made sense to explore the notion before she did anything else.
She stared at the road ahead and something heavy settled in her chest.
21
Friday, September 22, 1989
On my way through town after I left Margaret Seay, I stopped off at a bookstore, thinking a book was the perfect gift for Rosie, whose birthday celebration was coming up that night. A book has no unwanted calories and you don’t have to worry about sizes as long as the subject matter appeals to the recipient. Rosie’s life was about cooking. Also, bossing people around, but I didn’t think a book on bullies would be appropriate. I spotted a cookbook devoted to Hungarian cuisine and a quick riffling through the pages revealed recipes every bit as repulsive as the dishes she favored. I pulled out my credit card and gladly paid two dollars extra for the gift wrapping.
After that, I drove to the office, where I let myself in, locked the door, and armed the periphery. As was so often the case, my sense of progress was ever so faintly undermined by murmurings of another sort. At some point during the past couple of days, something had come into my consciousness that I hadn’t properly registered. I couldn’t for the life of me recall where I was at the time. I remembered a dim sensation of recognition, but my attention had been fixed elsewhere and I hadn’t grasped the significance. I knew the revelation wasn’t connected to Margaret Seay or to Sloan. An echo had reverberated in my brain without my catching the implications. I sat down at my desk, swiveling in my swivel chair, which made wonderful squeaking sounds. I closed my eyes, hoping to quiet the chatter in my head. It’s difficult to tune into that sixth sense with all that babbling that goes on.
What had I heard that I hadn’t taken in at the time?
In moments of doubt, my strategy is to go back and review my notes, which is what I did now. Information is odd. Facts can look different according to how you line them up. Sometimes I shuffle my index cards and then place them in a random sequence, unrelated to the order in which I’ve collected them. Sometimes I lay them out like a hand of solitaire or pretend I’m telling my own fortune with a Tarot deck. This time, I reorganized the cards according to subject matter, making one pile for the notes I’d taken about the tape, another pile for my notes about the cheating scandal, and a third pile about the shooting.
I picked up the stack of cards that pertained to the tape, which was the crux of my investigation. Then I sorted them according to the principal players: Iris Lehmann, Fritz McCabe, Troy Rademaker, and Bayard Montgomery. I turned them over one by one, letting my eyes drift down through the material I’d recorded in my self-generated shorthand after each of the conversations.