15

Rachel hadn’t planned to call Detective Smith. Not ever.

Well, probably not ever. Certainly not until she’d gotten her life significantly more put together. But if the same person who scratched the last message backstage had also added this one, Rachel felt compelled to set her own issues aside.

Detective Smith’s phone rang once, twice, three times. What if he didn’t answer? Would she leave a message? How would she even explain it? Why hadn’t she planned her explanation out before dialing?

She glanced around for somewhere to sit down.

“This is Ian Smith.”

At his cool greeting, Rachel felt her heartbeat slow. Her breathing evened out. Her focus narrowed. Detective Smith would know what to do. He would help.

“It’s Rachel,” she told him. “Rachel Cooper. I’m at school right now, and I need a favor.”

“Should I bring back up?” He might have been teasing. She didn’t care.

“No. Nobody’s in immediate danger. But I need to show you something, and I need to ask you what you think it means.”

“I’m not far. I’ll be there soon.” He hung up without saying goodbye.

Rachel waited for Detective Smith outside so that she could let him in. He didn’t ask any questions, seeming content to follow her lead. They walked in silence together down the long auditorium aisle, up the steps, across the stage, and into the dim skeletal system of the half-built set. She waited as he leaned down to read the words scratched on the inside of a wooden post in neat, tiny all-caps. He read the words aloud, his voice low in the stillness.

“When I am dead, and over me bright April

Shakes out her rain drenched hair,

Tho you should lean above me broken hearted,

I shall not care.”

“Lest you think I’m being dramatic,” Rachel told him, “I found this other one first.” She gestured toward the section where she’d found the first poem, leading him to stand beside it.

“They’re both quotes from the same thing,” she said as he read it in silence. “A Sara Teasdale poem. Some people think it’s her suicide note.”

He folded his arms across his chest and tilted his head back. Rachel could practically see the wheels turning.

“Sara Teasdale’s an American poet. I don’t know if you’ve heard of her.” She realized that she’d started to teach but seemed incapable of stopping. “She died in the 1930s, but before that, she wrote a lot of poems. Some of them are quite lovely.”

“As was she.”

Rachel’s head snapped up. “You know Sara Teasdale?”

He gazed down at her, his eyes inscrutable. “Am I not allowed?”

“Of course you’re allowed.”

“Good,” he said. His voice took on a smooth cadence as he continued.

“I have remembered beauty in the night

Against black silences I waked to see

A shower of sunlight over Italy

And green Ravello dreaming on her height

I have remembered music in the dark,

The clean swift brightness of a fugue of Bach's,

And running water singing on the rocks

When once in English woods I heard a lark.”

Rachel couldn’t help it. She literally gasped. His eyes crinkled around the edges. “It’s from the preface to her collection Love Songs. That’s just the first stanza.” His eyes left her face and roamed the set. “The second’s my favorite.”

Rachel felt glad the lights backstage were dim because she suspected she might be turning an embarrassing shade of puce.

While she worked to recover herself, Detective Smith stepped back and crossed his arms again. “But to answer your question, I don’t think you’re being dramatic.” He gestured toward the writing on the set. “You’re right to be concerned.”

Rachel struggled to concentrate. Her brain had set up a loop of Ian Smith quoting poetry. We can think about that later, she assured it. For now, she must focus. “It gets worse. Apparently someone’s been leaving increasingly suicidal graffiti all over the school since the beginning of the year. These—” Rachel gestured toward the two offerings backstage, “—point toward it being one of the drama kids.” She swallowed hard. “Before you got here, I talked to my boss on the phone. Ms. Martinez—remember her? She’s been working with the guidance counselor and a few of the teachers to narrow down who they think it could be, but so far they haven’t had much luck.” Rachel shook her head, her mind still reeling. “They’ve been trying to keep it quiet so they wouldn’t push whoever it was into a panic. And now I’m involved, but I have no idea where to start. You know how to investigate, so I thought…well…what do you think I should do?”

Detective Smith’s gaze cut to Rachel’s face. “I would think you would know the next step better than I would. Doesn’t your school have protocols for this?”

“Well…” Rachel rubbed the back of her neck with one hand, working the stiff muscles at the base of her skull. “Sort of. There are protocols for if we hear specific threats or sense suicidal tendencies in particular students. Things like that. But unless I know who wrote this, I don’t really know what to do.” She shifted back and forth. “Ann and Lynn tried to tell me that I should do something a while ago, but I thought it was just somebody messing around. The kids write stuff backstage all the time. But then I thought, what if it isn’t just somebody messing around? What if this really is somebody’s cry for help, and I miss it?” She dropped her hands to her sides. “That would be terrible.”

“You don’t recognize the handwriting?”

“I make my students write in cursive or type everything.”

“And nobody’s been acting strange lately?”

“They’re teenagers,” she reminded him. “Someone’s always acting strange.”

The corners of Detective Smith’s eyes crinkled. It wasn’t exactly a smile, but it was something. Rachel had to look closely to catch it.

“Nothing out of the ordinary. At least, not that I’ve noticed. Then again…I’m not the best at noticing things.”

“You noticed this.” He indicated the Teasdale poem.

“I mean that I don’t notice things about people. I can’t read them well.”

Rachel expected that he would reference how they’d met. He didn’t. “I assume you’ve taken mental health seminars?”

Rachel’s head snapped up, her face heating. Why would he assume that? He must think she was crazy. Of course he did—look how she’d behaved last year. Well, no matter. She’d only called to get his professional help, anyway. Who cared what he thought about her, as long as he could help them figure out who was writing all of this stuff—

“Because you’re an educator,” he added slowly. “I just assumed you’d be required by the state to attend seminars—”

“Oh, yes,” Rachel stammered in relief, lifting hands to her flushing cheeks. “I’ve gone to one of those conferences.” If Detective Smith had any doubt that she needed to attend a mental health seminar, she’d probably just cleared that right up. She prayed for a sinkhole to open under the auditorium and swallow her whole. “I probably have my notes at home in a box somewhere. I’ll dig them out tonight.”

“Don’t worry about it.” He stepped back and allowed his eyes to scan the rest of the set, taking it all in. “I think I have something that can help. In the meantime, keep your eyes open. The fact that you’re on the lookout means you’re already doing better than you give yourself credit for.”

~*~

Before Rachel drove home, she sat in her car staring blankly through the windshield, mulling over everything Detective Smith had said. She tried to concentrate on the problem that had prompted her to call him in the first place, but all she could think about was him quoting that poem.

She pulled out her phone and searched the Internet for the preface to Sara Teasdale’s Love Songs. She skimmed the first stanza, the one he’d quoted in the dimness of the half-built set. Then she read on. The second stanza—the one he’d claimed as his favorite—ran in like vein, finely-crafted and touchingly poignant:

But all remembered beauty is no more

Than a vague prelude to the thought of you

You are the rarest soul I ever knew,

Lover of beauty, knightliest and best;

My thoughts seek you as waves that seek the shore,

And when I think of you, I am at rest.

~*~

That night, just before Rachel dropped off to sleep, a text came through from Detective Smith. He said he’d put together some helpful information and planned to drop it by the school the next day.

Rachel switched her phone to silent and clicked off the light, shrugging up the covers and letting out her breath on a long sigh. After thanking God for sending help, she prayed for more direct aid.

Help me notice things—show me anything I should have seen already but haven’t noticed because I wasn’t paying attention. And if that doesn’t work, at least put me in the right place at the right time, and make it obvious enough that even someone like me can’t miss it.