THE DISCOVERY
Ford watches the sheriff and his homicide niece swing flashlights around in the gloom, combing the bell tower for clues. She is ignoring her phone; her mother clearly knows something has happened and is calling incessantly. The odds of her showing up in town unannounced on this night of all nights... It begs the question, why? And the sheriff just happens to have his homicide detective niece visiting? Before the paranoia sets in, she turns her attention to the conversation playing out in front of her.
“Got something here,” Tony says.
Ford sees the lights playing on a scrap of fabric. It is caught in a splinter of wood at the corner of the cupola’s edifice. It’s hard to tell exactly what color it is, pale, though. She thinks back to the scene below.
“Camille was wearing a gray Goode sweatshirt and black yoga leggings. I didn’t notice any tears in her clothes. Is that gray?”
Tony shakes his head.
“White. Thin. Cotton, like a T-shirt or undershirt. A scarf, maybe. I’m going to get my evidence techs up here. Collect it, take it to the lab, get some fingerprints. Too early to make any guesses as to what happened, whether she jumped or someone gave her a push. But if this isn’t hers... Gotta get all our ducks in a row first.”
Ford doesn’t want to make any unsubstantiated claims, but she also doesn’t want to make the same mistakes her mother made.
“Tony, I’m not 100 percent sure, but I thought I saw a shadow up here. When I found Camille.”
His tone is sharp. “You think or you know?”
“It was dark. I looked up and saw...movement. An outline. Maybe I was seeing things. I can’t be certain.”
He examines the door with his Maglite. “It’s a sturdy lock, not broken. No scratch marks, doesn’t look like it was jimmied. Someone unlocked it.”
“That’s hard to believe. We’ve always been very careful about the keys, went to a keycard system a few years back for extra safety.”
“Who has access to the keys?”
“I have a master set to the school, obviously. I keep them in my safe. Security has the second set, which are kept in their offices. It’s attended twenty-four-seven. Impossible for one of the girls to sneak in and get a set.”
“But this is still an old-fashioned keyed lock, not one of your keycard accessible ones. We should double-check, just in case. Still have those secret societies?”
“Yes, some exist. They’re not openly sanctioned anymore, though. I keep a close eye on our girls, unlike some of my predecessors.”
“Secret societies?” Kate asks. She has appeared silently after circumnavigating the tiny platform.
“Social organizations outside the school’s normal activities. Little clubs that get together and raise spirits on campus.”
“Raise a ruckus is more like it.”
“Now, Tony, that’s not fair. It’s all in the spirit of things.”
“But why are they secret?” Kate asks.
“It’s a misnomer, really. They’re just little off-the-books clubs. Like sororities, in some ways, but girls can’t pledge. They govern their own membership. Choose their own members. It’s a long-held tradition here, and at many of our peer schools. There have been secret societies at Goode for over a century. Which is why they still exist, though we’re not as accepting of them as we once were. We see them now as more of a mentorship opportunity for our older girls.”
Kate scoffs. “Mentorship? It sounds like a great way for some popular kids to exclude some of their classmates.”
“You can’t force children to be all-inclusive, Detective. The world doesn’t work that way, and teenage girls don’t, either.”
“It should. The world would be a better place. Can any of them get up here?”
“No. There are only two sets of keys. Mine and Security’s. Both kept in safes.”
Tony chews his lip. “Where’s that boy been lately?”
Fury rises up in her. “Don’t you dare, Tony.”
“What boy?” Kate asks. She’s climbed up and is leaning out over the edge of the cupola now, her flashlight making long yellow swaths of light down the front of the building. She’s so far out it’s making Ford nervous. One tiny bump and over the edge she’d go. It’s easy to see how Camille went screaming to her death.
Tony seems to read Ford’s mind. He reaches out and grabs his niece’s jacket. “Careful there, Kate. This cupola is old. Don’t put too much pressure on the balustrade.”
Kate shuts off the flashlight and jumps back down. “She would have to climb up to get over this edge. Or be forcibly lifted. We need to talk to the girls, see if they heard anything. Talking, or a scuffle. There are rooms below this, correct? Maybe one of the girls will be able to shed some light on a time line, at least. What boy are you talking about?”
“Rumi Reynolds. Son of Rick Reynolds.”
“The one who murdered the coed?”
“The very one. Ford here hired young Rumi to be a jack-of-all-trades.”
“Come on, Tony. He isn’t involved in this. Don’t get lazy and start pointing fingers. It’s not fair to him. He is not responsible for his father’s actions.”
“Ford Westhaven, the patron saint of lost causes. Something like that warps a child, Ford. What he saw...”
“What did he see?” Kate asks.
“According to him, he saw everything.”
“The murder?”
“Yup. He even testified. The state’s star witness was the murderer’s ten-year-old son.”
“I remember that now. Hmm.”
They turn in unison to look out over the dark campus, and Ford loses her temper.
“Stop talking like I’m not standing right here. What do you mean, ‘hmm’? He didn’t do this. I know Rumi, quite well. He wouldn’t hurt a fly. That’s why he’s working here, for me, for Goode. Someone had to give him a chance at a normal life, and that was me. He’s dedicated to this school. It’s completely unfair to leap to the conclusion that he’s responsible before we even search Camille’s room for a note, a diary, something to give us her state of mind. It was dark. I don’t know what I saw. I would never have mentioned it if I thought you’d go tilting at windmills and jumping to spurious conclusions.”
Tony and Kate share a brief look, then he shrugs. “No one’s making judgments, Ford. I was just asking. Let’s go look at the girl’s room, talk to her roommate. There might be a clearer answer downstairs.”
Ford lets them go ahead of her, then locks the cupola door. Her hands are shaking, she can smell her own acrid scent, and under it, the musky notes of man. She needs to be very, very careful. They can’t find out about the affair, it could ruin her. Rumi is of age, but still. She knows it looks bad. But she will not let Rumi get railroaded into an accusation, either.
Tearful girls are gathered in the sewing circle when the three arrive on the sophomores’ floor. Ford calls out, “Man on the floor,” loudly and there are a few squeals, the sound of running feet, then she nods to Tony. “Okay, follow me. They’re roomed in 214.”
The lights are ablaze in Camille and Ash’s room. The room looks like it’s seen a struggle. A painting is on the floor by one of the desks. Pillows are askew, blankets dragging on the floor, the lower bunk’s mattress off center. There’s something pink on the sheets, not dark enough to be blood. It takes Ford a moment to realize it’s calamine lotion.
Ford recalls her own tap, looks briefly to the desk under a framed photograph of Oxford’s doors. This must be Ash’s desk and yes, there’s a small brown sandwich bag sitting near the edge. Ford knows what it contains.
Damn it. Ivy Bound is explicitly prohibited from using poison ivy on the Swallows. The ruling was made three years ago when a Swallow’s mother threatened to sue the school because her daughter touched her eye with a poison-ivy-tainted hand and it swelled shut, necessitating a trip to the emergency room.
Oh, Becca Curtis, you are in so much trouble.
Ford herself suffered the indignity, as did many of the Swallows who followed her, but the school has cracked down on hazing, majorly cracked down, and things like this are not supposed to be going on.
She can’t disappear the bag, she’s going to have to let that play itself out. But she can help distract attention.
Tony and Kate are rifling through the desks and drawers now, of both girls. Ford puts up a hand. “Hold on. You can’t go through Ash Carlisle’s things. Only Camille’s. There are privacy concerns.”
Kate stops and looks at Ford, incredulous. “You’re joking. They’re teenagers. Students. And one of them is dead.”
“There’s still an expectation of privacy. Obviously, Camille has none, not anymore, but Ash does. Please keep your search limited to Camille’s things. Perhaps we should wait for your evidence team to do this?”
“I know how to toss a room, Ford,” Tony says without missing a beat. He opens the top dresser drawer, digs his hands in deep. “What have we here?”
He draws out an almost empty pint of Stolichnaya. Ford feels a sting of fury—damn that girl—followed by a teensy little prayer heavenward—sorry, Camille, but for heaven’s sake, vodka in your socks?
Tony keeps moving, though, tossing the rest of the dresser. “Where’s the roommate? I wanna talk to her.”
“I had her isolated. This is going to be a terrible shock to her, and she’s already suffered a great deal of loss. Her parents died recently, and to have this happen so soon after their deaths will certainly affect her tremendously.”
Again, that sly glance between uncle and niece. Ford wants to scream but keeps her temper in check.
“Just give us a few here, okay, Ford?” And to his niece, “Nothing’s leaping out at me. You?” He eases himself down on his knees to look under the dresser.
Kate is holding a notebook with a floral cover, leafing through. “Other than someone’s clearly been through this room already? She writes very pretty poems. Quite a few about death.”
Ford isn’t surprised. English is Camille’s best subject.
Kate flips a few more pages. “She didn’t care for her roommate, that’s for sure.”
“Ash? I didn’t know they weren’t getting along,” Ford says.
“Not getting along is an understatement. Looks like there was some serious bullying going on. ‘She made fun of me again today. She was sitting with the other bitches and looking over her shoulder at me with that stupid smug stare. Later, she told me how I would never get into Ivy Bound. Bitch.’ Lots more in that vein. ‘She was queen of the sewing circle again tonight. It’s like I don’t even exist anymore.’”
“May I see that?” Ford asks.
Kate hands it over, and Ford glances through, flipping pages, seeing phrases that shock her:
Stupid accent, dumb cunt, out of the room late again, should report her, she’s Becca’s bitch now. Bet the two of them are fucking. How else would she get on Becca’s good side so fast? I hate her. I hate them both.
She closes the cover gently. The vitriol is surprising, she’s always seen Camille as a gentle soul. Not this roiling mass of emotion, spilling hate into her diary.
Tony is on his back now, squirming on the floor, reaching under the dresser. “Thought I saw something...yep...hold on...just about got it... What’s this?”
He drags his arm back and is holding a white bag with a green sticker on the front. It looks like it’s come from the pharmacy in Marchburg, Ford has a few herself.
He opens the bag and out fall two pill bottles. They don’t have the Marchburg Pharmacy label. He reads the label aloud.
“Cytotec. Place two pills in each cheek and let dissolve fully. What is this?”
Ford snatches it away. “Let me see that.”
Camille’s name is on the bottle, along with instructions to take the pills forty-eight hours after returning home. Ford is unfamiliar with the drug name, but Kate isn’t.
“It’s a chemical abortifacient,” Kate says. “Dean Westhaven, were you aware that Camille recently had an abortion?”