My father had claimed I was in a slump and the All Saints case would break me out of it. And yet…
I sat in my office, ankles crossed, fingers laced. Staring at the inbox on my computer screen. I had a few emails from clients and a couple phone calls to return. Nothing important, though. Nothing of consequence or stimulating. Nothing that constituted even a week of work.
Sure felt like I was still in a slump.
Even if something urgent beckoned, I knew I wouldn’t focus on it. I couldn’t shake Jeremy and Louis, even though I was no longer in the employ of All Saints.
At least not officially.
As I read the mundane emails again, I peered through them and saw the bruised face of Jeremy Cameron and the missing face of Alec Ward. Part of me knew that I’d taken this too personally. That very little evidence existed to suggest Louis had anything to do with Alec, that being a sexual predator didn’t necessarily mean Louis had the capacity to abduct and murder a teenager. That I was using the disappearance of Alec as fuel and as an excuse to destroy the priest because I was angry at him.
But what was an intrepid and handsome inspector to do? Give up? Surrender Jeremy and Alec to the winds of fortune on the fear I was overstepping my professional boundaries? No chance. I had a reputation of being obtuse to uphold.
Unconsciously I consigned myself to the slump a few more days. Because busting Louis would solve a lot of problems.
I’d left messages for Dr. Wesley Stevenson, none of them returned. He was the dean of Ashdown Forest, the boarding school attended by Louis Lindsey in his youth. Bonus points for Dr. Stevenson—he had attended Ashdown as a child at the same time as Louis. They knew each other.
I grabbed my jacket and headed north on Interstate 81.
The trip took two hours from Roanoke. Ashdown Forest was north of Charlottesville, tucked away in the gentle green hills of central Virginia. Only forty-five minutes from civilization, yet the campus felt a world unto itself. Like driving into the clean air of aristocracy. The trees were noble and ancient, the columns white and stately, the buildings brick, and the breeze smelled of old money. A few boys played catch on a central lawn.
I parked at the administration offices and went inside.
Dr. Wesley Stevenson himself received me in the deserted main office. He was mostly bald with tufts of gray above his ears. Reading glasses perched on the Roman nose. He wore a tweed vest with notched lapels, and the sleeves of the shirt beneath were rolled up. He had the eyes of someone who’d read more books than me, which I resented.
“Mackenzie August,” I said, shaking his hand. “I was in the area and you haven’t returned my calls.”
His smile didn’t falter. “Haven’t I? Doesn’t sound like me. One doesn’t get to sit in my dusty chair by not returning phone calls. My apologies. Please come to my office.”
I did. And I swooned. So many built-in wooden shelves, so many leather-bound books. The top pane of the window adjacent to his reading chair was lowered, and next to the chair was a small table with an ashtray and pipe.
“How can I be of assistance, Mr. August?” He sat at his desk and I sat across from it. The chair was ancient but comfortable and I wondered if Edgar Allen Poe had once planted his butt here.
“I have questions about Louis Lindsey, a mutual acquaintance.”
His face, I thought, darkened a shade. “Do you? Old Louis. That’s a name I’ve been hearing more and more.”
“You two attended school together,” I said.
“I arrived as a sixth year, and he was in seventh. We stayed friends through college and a while after. When you called, did you mention Louis?”
“I did.”
“That could explain it. My receptionist is a Dr. Lindsey devotee. She listens to his sermons online and gives me the rundown. She’s twenty years older than me, if you can imagine, and has arrogated herself the privilege of passing on only those calls she deems worthy. We’re lucky she’s not here today; most students and staff are home on holiday. We can speak freely and not trigger her wrath. I’m afraid I’ve forgotten Louis’s whereabouts. Where is he these days?”
“Louis lives in Roanoke now. And he’s causing mischief.”
He pursed his lips and nodded. “I’m grieved to hear it.”
“Some of it serious. Some of it very serious. As the dean of Ashdown, there are things you cannot divulge. But I’m hoping that, as a childhood friend of Louis’s, there are things you can.”
“Such as?”
“I won’t know until I hear it. Potentially nothing.”
“You’re a detective,” he said.
“I am.”
“And you’re on the hunt for a clue.”
“At this point, more like trying to understand motivation.”
He stared through me at the great yawning beyond, the locked cosmos of his childhood and all the years since. After a moment he stood and went to his office door. Softly closed it and stood at the adjacent window looking out.
“What kind of mischief?” he said.
“Would you care to guess?”
“I’ve already guessed. But I won’t utter it.”
“Sexual harassment,” I said.
He grunted. Took a deep breath and let it out against the glass. Clasped his hands behind his back, and looked ten years older.
I had struck a nerve.
“Do you see the box, Mr. August, behind my chair marked ‘Birthday’?”
“I do.”
“Inside the box are birthday cards from parents. Sent to students who specifically requested they not be delivered. So I keep them. Do you know why the students don’t want to receive their own birthday cards?”
“I have a guess but won’t utter it.”
“Because if it’s discovered that today is your birthday, the older boys give you an ice bath. It’s a longstanding tradition. I banished it, just like the dean before me, but the ritual endures. An innocuous birthday celebration. But painful none the less. Most boys wish to avoid it, especially the younger ones, the more easily traumatized.”
“Not entirely innocuous, it appears.”
“I misspoke. Seemingly innocuous. As the recipient of an ice bath hazing myself, I vouch they are unpleasant.”
“You still remember it, forty years later,” I said.
“That memory is the primary catalyst for my acceptance to the position of dean. That and other memories like it. Many of them far more sinister, I’m afraid.”
“You took the position to prevent little kids like you from being hurt.”
“Not exactly.” He swiveled at the waist far enough to look at me. “I want to prevent little kids like me from growing into bigger kids like I became. Not long after mine, I was the one preparing the ice bath. And relishing the pain I caused.”
“Ah.”
“The child held under the icy water is innocent. The bigger child above is not. But in some ways, both are equally helpless. Too many adults today attend counseling as boarding school survivors. And I believe it’s often the pain they inflicted which leaves the more indelible scar.”
“Classic PTSD. A disgust of self.”
“Very good, Mr. August. Boarding schools such as Ashdown Forest have strong track records of producing excellent adults and citizens. But what you won’t hear is that we also manufacture terrible husbands and fathers, if you’ll allow the distinction. There’s too much relational rage. Too much PTSD, as you say.”
“You want to remedy this.”
“I do.”
“How goes it?”
“It’s an uphill battle. Impossible to achieve total victory. Recently I became aware of a form of punishment the students administer. If a boy gets out of line, a ‘firing squad’ walks by his dorm room and hurls cans of soda inside. The sodas erupt against the wall and soak everything in Sprite. And if the boy gets hit by a fastball? Even better for him to learn his lesson. I know of no way to entirely eradicate this type of mechanism,” he said.
“And Louis? How does he fit into this?”
He returned from the window and sat in the chair. Crossed his legs and played with the hem of his pants.
“Louis was brilliant. More intelligent than the rest of us. It caused him all sorts of problems. He eventually realized he had to quit showboating but by then it was too late. He was a marked boy.”
“He was disciplined,” I said. “By the students.”
“For varieties of reasons. He was spoiled, a brat. Most boys who attend Ashdown are, but…he was beyond the pale. He didn’t have the good sense to adapt.”
“Was he violent? Did he hurt others?”
“No. And that might’ve contributed to Louis’s torment. He didn’t have the backbone to fight or defend himself.”
“Was he gay?”
“So you know about that. Yes he was gay. Though not openly. When we went into town for girls, he came too. But I could tell he was bored. Unsatisfied.”
“He still is,” I said. “Part of the problem.”
“I attended his wedding. With mixed emotions. That poor bride; though I got the impression she knew. It was a marriage of power and influence, not love. He was a rocket ship gaining speed, clearly destined for the stars. It’s easier now to be gay than it was back then. I wonder how things would’ve been different if we’d been more…tolerant isn’t the word I would pick. Kind. If we’d been more kind.”
“That wouldn’t have made him straight.”
“No no. That’s not what I mean. He didn’t want to be straight, he once told me, but he had to hide his sexuality. A man who can be himself is healthier than a man in disguise.”
“As soon as I mentioned his name, Dr. Stevenson, you reacted as though you knew what was coming. You were already sad, though I hadn’t explained myself.”
He steepled his fingers and bumped them against his lips. Nodded. “This isn’t the first mischief he’s caused. The previous occurrence that I’m aware of…I was consulted, yet I was reticent with information. I regret it, because I didn’t help. And clearly help is needed.”
“Does the previous occurrence have to do with his career change? From hospitals to churches?”
“The sudden lurch into the ministry? Yes. Although I believe that entire incident, including the mischief, brought genuine change. I think Louis, in his late thirties, truly wanted to better himself, to cease the infidelities, to grow, to obey the prompting of a higher power. And he did change, to my knowledge. He did live up to the lofty standards set by his profession for many years. But then…”
“But then came fame and fortune and influence, and the commiserate blank check?”
“Too much power is bad for anyone. It corrupts, as the saying goes. And it’s especially bad for men like Louis. Not because he’s gay, but because he was obsessed with himself. Much better for him to remain humble and obscure, I think.”
“The power was a wine in his blood.”
“Are you quoting something?” asked Stevenson.
“Yes. But botching it.”
“Now he’s a man of importance in the church, abusing his position, isn’t he. Like so many others before him. These influential megalomaniacs, the shooting stars, they don’t turn evil overnight. It’s a slow accumulation of minor deviations. And soon enough… Men like Louis truly believe the targets of his infatuation want to be pursued. He believes he deserves them and they enjoy it. By that point, disaster is unavoidable.”
“You’re around this a lot,” I said.
“I shepherd many children of disaster. I think, despite my best efforts, boarding schools will continue to foster intimacy issues.”
“One reason I left the police force is my disillusionment with institutions. Not much has changed my mind since,” I said.
“Poor Louis.” His voice caught and he looked down at his hands, clasped in his lap. “Kids are scared at move-in day. Understandably so—they’re staring at months without parents. I still remember Louis’s face as a child. Neither his mother nor father accompanied him to drop off; it was his nanny. Worst day of his life, perhaps, and he was sent off with a caretaker. He didn’t graduate from here, did you know that? Finished his final semester at home. Couldn’t endure the abuse, because during his senior year his secret got out, and the boys were brutal. They soaked his pillow with urine for weeks.”
“Seems unhygienic."
“His final day here, four boys held him down. Each gripped one of Louis’s appendages. Luckily a professor arrived just as the fifth boy prepared to sodomize him with the handle of a toilet plunger,” he said.
Mackenzie August, caught off guard.
A tear rolled down Dr. Stevenson’s cheek.
“We weren’t even disciplined. Boys being boys, you know. I apologized to Louis several times for that. Each time he told me to forget it, all was forgiven. But I’ve always wondered about the permanent damage I caused. From which we can never fully heal.”