“What the fuck are you doing here?” Conrad stormed over to me. “That call to me yesterday, that was a fucking setup, wasn’t it?”
The watch commander’s arrival at a crime scene makes the rank and file nervous: they know it’s a high-profile case and they can’t afford a mistake. The commander’s arrival spitting nails makes everyone from first responder to senior detective fade as far into the scenery as possible.
“You remember Marcena Love, don’t you, Lieutenant?” I said formally. “Her employer is holding an essay competition on kids affected by gun violence; Keisha Dunne wrote about the murder of her uncle, Tyrone Elgar. Ms. Love asked me to be part of a conversation about the essay with her mother and with Ms. Milcek, since something in it troubled Ms. Milcek. I called you yesterday as a routine fact-check; I wanted to make sure the CPD thought Mr. Elgar had been murdered.”
“My brother was most certainly murdered,” Jasmine Dunne snapped. “Are you trying to say he wasn’t?”
“We’re fact-checking all the essays,” Marcena said soothingly. “A whiff of ‘fake news’ will destroy the credibility of this important program.”
Jasmine was starting to say she wanted to go with Marcena when she checked facts at white suburban schools, but she was cut short by a man with a deep voice loudly demanding to know if “it was true.”
“Someone told me Hana is dead. What happened to her? We had lunch together a few hours ago. I thought she seemed perfectly healthy.”
If Marcena wanted mediagenic, she didn’t need to look farther than the new arrival, a tall, square-jawed white man with a shock of dark hair. Like most contemporary teachers he wore jeans, but he also had on a blazer over an open-necked shirt. If the principal hadn’t already been in the room—an African-American woman in her fifties—I would have pegged this man for the job. He had that authoritative energy that men in power, or aspiring to power, project like a force field.
“It is true, Dex,” the principal said, “and the police are here, wanting us not to contaminate their crime scene, so please don’t come farther into the room.”
Dex ignored her. “Marcena. If I’d known you were in the building I’d have come at once. What’s going on?”
I stared as he hurried to Marcena’s side.
“This is Dexter Vamor,” she said quickly. “He was one of my—our—The Edge’s local judges. We only met in person yesterday.”
Vamor held a hand out to me. “Chair of the English and Journalism Department here at Mirabal, for my sins. Are you with The Edge, as well?”
“I’m a detective,” I said.
“Private,” Conrad snapped. “She’s not with the police, she’s not going to ask any questions, and she’s not going to touch evidence to prove that she’s sharper than we are.”
I prudently didn’t say anything.
The next hour was a jumble of questions about who had seen what, and who was doing what in the lounge. All of us, from Keisha and Jasmine to me, and not excluding the principal or Marcena, were tested for gunshot residue and searched for weapons.
Conrad talked to the principal and Vamor about students or colleagues who might have been angry with Hana, but both were adamant that she didn’t have that kind of history.
Vamor added, “Of course, there’s always a student who thinks their work is undervalued, but frankly, our kids aren’t looking for that extra decimal on their GPA to get them into Harvard. As for her colleagues, sure, some people liked her more than others, but she’s been here twenty years without making enemies among the teachers. This must have been a random shooting. Maybe she interrupted someone selling or using.”
“Dex,” the principal said. “We’re not in the business of pointing the cops at our students or our faculty and staff. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t start speculating without any facts to back up your statements.”
Vamor gave her a mock salute. From the expression on the principal’s face, she wished it was his body on the book cart, but she only turned to Conrad to say that Hana worked hard with students who wanted to excel, but didn’t neglect anyone in her classes.
“If she had discipline problems, she usually sorted them out herself.”
When Conrad finally decided to dismiss us, I said diffidently, “If the lieutenant would permit me one question first?”
Rawlings looked at me sourly. “Meekness isn’t your best act, Warshawski. Ask away.”
“Mr. Vamor, I’m here because Ms. Milcek apparently had questions about Keisha Dunne’s essay. Since you were one of the judges, you probably have a sense of what she wanted to know.”
“What questions?” Jasmine Dunne demanded, hands on hips. “I am tired of you insinuating—”
“Please, Ms. Dunne,” Marcena said. “Keisha’s work is brilliant. But I still needed to speak to Ms. Milcek. Did she know your daughter?”
“Of course not. Keisha doesn’t go to Mirabal. Milcek might have been my niece’s teacher.” Jasmine looked a question at her daughter, who nodded and muttered that “Fannie Lou adored Ms. Milcek.”
“Fannie Lou surely wouldn’t bad-mouth you to her English teacher,” Jasmine said to Keisha.
“No, mama,” Keisha muttered, staring at her feet.
Vamor meanwhile was upset that Marcena had talked to Hana without telling him.
“Milcek—Ms. Milcek—found what hotel I was in and called me there,” Marcena said. “She didn’t want to talk on the phone. Vic’s question is a good one: Did she share her concerns with you?”
Vamor shook his head. “As I said, I saw her at lunch today. We talked about the competition—like a lot of teachers, she had kids whose lives were hit by gun violence and she’d encouraged them to enter—and she knew I was a judge, so she wondered when she could find out about her students. I told her that was up to the people in London, and I couldn’t release names until Marcena told us they were ready to go public.”
“But you’d already spoken to Keisha and her mother,” I said to Marcena.
“Of course,” she said. “Under oath of secrecy, since no winners can be announced until we’re dead sure of our finalists.”
“How did you come to pick Vamor as a judge?” Conrad asked. “A Rust Belt school isn’t exactly on international radar.”
“But Dex is,” Marcena said. “He writes a regular column for one of the best journalism school blogs and he’s on the faculty for a summer journalism program that works with teens. We knew about him even before we were sure we were going forward with the contest.”
The principal raised her brows. “Dex, that’s news to me. I’m surprised it’s not in your CV.”
He looked a little embarrassed. “Doing it on my own time, Albertine.”
“Usually we know when you’re up to something high-profile. But if there are questions about an essay submitted by one of my students—”
“She doesn’t go to school here, Albertine,” Vamor interrupted. “She’s at South Side Prep in Chatham.”
“The essay dealt with the murder of one of your students’ fathers,” I said. “Fannie Lou Elgar.”
“But Fannie didn’t write the essay,” Vamor said sharply.
“Fannie Lou, Dexter,” the principal said. “Her father named her for Fannie Lou Hamer. If her cousin’s work deals with Tyrone Elgar’s death, I’d like to read it; it might give me insight into Fannie Lou. She’s one of our most gifted students, but painfully shy inside her shell.”
“The essays are not being made public yet,” Marcena said. “And they’re the property of The Edge.”
“It’s mine,” Keisha said. “I wrote it.”
Marcena smiled at her. “The contest rules state that The Edge owns all the submissions, I’m afraid. Even the ones that don’t win awards we may want to use in some other way.”
“But you could print it out for us to take a look at,” I said.
“So you can start questioning it and tearing it apart?” Jasmine said. “I don’t think so.”
“In that case, I’ll get the state’s attorney to give me a warrant,” Conrad said. “Gun deaths on the South Side are usually about gangs, and if the lady had been shot on her way out of the building I might believe it was an initiation murder. As it is, I’m open to all ideas. Which means all of you can wait here until the state’s attorney gives me a warrant for the essay.”