ALFIE PHONED ME at seven o’clock Monday morning. “You still wanna buy it?”
“Yes, I do. My bank is Oldham-Hudson on Main Street. I’ll be there at nine o’clock, and you can meet me in the parking lot at five after nine.”
“Okay.”
As I was leaving the bank, he drove up and parked next to my car. From the street no one would have been able to see what was taking place.
He opened the window. “Let’s have the money.”
I handed it to him.
After he had counted it, he said, “Okay, here’s the diagram.”
I examined it carefully. In the daylight it seemed even more chilling when I considered that it had been commissioned by the seventeen-year-old grandson of the potential victim. I knew that I would pay anything Alfie asked to have his permission to put it on my Website.
“Alfie, you know that the statute of limitations has expired. If the cops knew about this, you wouldn’t get into any trouble. But if I show it on the Website and write about what you told me, it might make the difference between Mrs. Westerfield leaving her money to charities or to Rob.”
I was standing outside the van. He was sitting in it, his hand on the wheel. He looked like what he had become: a hardworking guy who never had much of a break.
“Listen, I’d rather take my chances on Westerfield coming after me than think of him rolling in big bucks. Go for it.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure. It kind of makes it up to Skip.”
* * *
AFTER THE EXPERIENCE of driving to Boston and getting caught in heavy traffic, I allowed plenty of travel time for the drive to Maine when I rescheduled my appointment with Jane Bostrom, director of admissions at Carrington Academy.
That was why I was in Rockport long enough to stop for a grilled cheese sandwich and Coke at a coffee shop a mile from the school. I now felt prepared to take her on.
When I was escorted into her office, her greeting to me was cordial but reserved, and I was certain that she was going to be less than cooperative in releasing information to me. She was at her desk and offered me the seat facing it. Like many executives she had a visiting area with a couch and several chairs, but I was not invited to join her there.
She was younger than I had expected, about thirty-five, with dark hair and large gray eyes that seemed to be somewhat wary. From our brief conversation on the phone it was evident that she was proud of her school and was not about to have an investigative reporter trash it because of one student.
“Dr. Bostrom,” I said, “let me put my cards on the table. Rob Westerfield spent his junior and senior years in Carrington. He was kicked out of his former prep school because he viciously assaulted another student. He was fourteen years old when that incident occurred.
“At seventeen he planned the murder of his grandmother. She was shot three times, and it is a miracle that she survived. At nineteen he bludgeoned my sister to death. I am at present tracking down the probability that there is at least one more person whose life he has taken.”
I watched as her expression became dismayed and distressed. She took a long moment before she spoke. “Ms. Cavanaugh, that information about Rob Westerfield is horrifying, but please understand something. I have his file in front of me, and there is absolutely nothing in it that indicates a serious behavior problem while he was here.”
“I find it hard to believe that with the violent history I’ve been uncovering, he was able to spend two years without a major infraction on his record. May I ask how long you have been employed at Carrington, Dr. Bostrom?”
“Five years.”
“Then of course the only thing you have to go by is a record that may have been tidied up.”
“I am going by the record in front of me.”
“May I ask if the Westerfields have made any significant contributions to Carrington Academy?”
“At the time Rob was a student, they helped to renovate and refurbish the athletic center.”
“I see.”
“I don’t know what you see, Ms. Cavanaugh. Please try to understand that many of our students have had an emotionally rough time and need guidance and compassion. Sometimes they’ve been pawns in nasty divorces. Sometimes one or the other parent simply walked out of their lives. You’d be amazed at what that can do to a child’s sense of worth.”
Oh, no, I wouldn’t be amazed at all, I thought. In fact, I understand perfectly.
“Some of our students are young people who can’t seem to get along with their peer group or with adults or both.”
“That would seem to have been Rob Westerfield’s problem,” I said. “But unfortunately for the rest of us, his family has always tried to either cover up for him or buy him out of trouble.”
“Please understand that we run a tight ship here. We believe that an important step in healing an emotional problem is helping to build a sense of self-worth. Our students are expected to keep up their marks, take part in sports and other activities, and volunteer for the community programs that our school sponsors.”
“And Rob Westerfield achieved all these goals willingly and joyfully?”
I could have bitten my tongue. Jane Bostrom had given me the courtesy of an interview, and she was answering my questions. However, it was clear that if there had been any big problems at this school with Rob Westerfield, they had not been put on his record.
“Rob Westerfield apparently achieved those goals to our school’s satisfaction,” she said stiffly.
“Do you have a list of the student body while he was enrolled here?”
“Of course.”
“May I see it?”
“For what purpose?”
“Dr. Bostrom, when he was high on drugs in prison, Rob Westerfield made a statement to another convict. He said, ‘I beat Phil to death, and it felt good.’ Since he assaulted a fellow student at his previous prep school, it is not unlikely that while he was here, he had an encounter with a student named Phil or Philip.”
Her eyes darkened and became progressively more concerned as she absorbed the implications of what I was saying. Then she stood up.
“Ms. Cavanaugh, Dr. Douglas Dittrick has been with Carrington for forty years. I’m going to invite him to join us. I’ll also send for the student roster for those years. I think we’d better go into the conference room. It will be easier to spread out the lists on the table there and go through them carefully.”
* * *
DR. DITTRICK SENT WORD that he was in the middle of a lecture and would join us in fifteen minutes. “He’s a great teacher,” Jane Bostrom told me as we opened the rosters. “I think if the roof was falling down, he wouldn’t budge until he finished his lecture.”
She seemed more comfortable with me by then, and certainly willing to help. “We want to watch for ‘Philip’ as the middle name as well as the first,” she warned. “We have many students who are known by their middle names when they’ve been named after fathers and grandfathers.”
The student body totalled about six hundred during Rob Westerfield’s time at Carrington. I quickly realized that Philip was not a common name. The usuals, James and John and Mark and Michael, showed up regularly on the lists.
And a host of others: William, Hugo, Charles, Richard, Henry, Walter, Howard, Lee, Peter, George, Paul, Lester, Ezekiel, Francis, Donald, Alexander . . .
And then a Philip.
“Here’s one, I said. “He was a freshman when Westerfield was a sophomore.”
Jane Bostrom got up and looked over my shoulder. “He’s on our board of trustees,” she said.
I kept looking.
Professor Dittrick joined us, still wearing his academic gown. “What’s so important, Jane?” he asked.
She explained and introduced me. Dittrick was about seventy, of medium build with a scholarly face and a firm handshake.
“I remember Westerfield, of course. He’d only been graduated two years before he killed that girl.”
“She was Ms. Cavanaugh’s sister,” Dr. Bostrom interjected quickly.
“I’m very sorry, Ms. Cavanaugh. That was a terrible tragedy. And now you’re looking to see if someone named Phil who was here around his time became a homicide victim.”
“Yes. I do realize it may seem farfetched, but it’s an avenue I have to explore.”
“Of course.” He turned to Dr. Bostrom. “Jane, why don’t you see if Corinne is free and ask her to come over. She wasn’t the director of the theater twenty-five years ago, but she was on staff then. Ask her to bring playbills from those performances Westerfield was in. I seem to remember that there was something funny about the way he was listed in the program.”
Corinne Barsky arrived twenty minutes later. A vivacious, slender woman of about sixty with dark snapping eyes and a rich, warm voice, she was carrying the playbills that had been requested.
By then we had isolated two former students with the first name Philip and one with Philip as a middle name.
The first one we’d found, as Dr. Bostrom had told me, was a current trustee of the school. Dr. Dittrick remembered that the student with the middle name Philip had attended his twentieth class reunion two years ago.
That left only one to check. Dr. Bostrom’s secretary ran his name through the computer. He lived in Portland, Oregon, and made annual contributions to the alumni fund. The latest was last June.
“I’m afraid I’ve wasted a lot of your time,” I apologized. “If I can have a quick look at the playbills, I’ll be on my way.”
In each of them Rob Westerfield played the male lead. “I remember him,” Corinne Barsky told me. “He was genuinely good. Very full of himself, very arrogant toward the other students, but a good actor.”
“Then you had no problems with him?” I asked.
“Oh, I remember him having a row with the director. He wanted to use what he called his stage name instead of his own name in the show. The director refused.”
“What was his stage name?”
“Give me a minute, I’ll try to remember.”
“Corinne, wasn’t there some kind of flap about Rob Westerfield and a wig?” Dr. Dittrick asked. “I’m sure I remember something about that.”
“He wanted to wear a wig he used in a performance at his previous school. The director wouldn’t allow that, either. During the play Rob would come out of the dressing room wearing his own wig and only switched to the appropriate one at the last second. I understand that he wore his wig around campus as well. He got detention any number of times because of it, but he kept on doing it.”
Dr. Bostrom looked at me. “That wasn’t in his file,” she said.
“Of course his file was sanitized,” Dr. Dittrick said impatiently. “How else do you think the athletic center got a total renovation at that time? All it took was President Egan’s suggestion to Westerfield’s father that Rob might be happier in school elsewhere.”
Dr. Bostrom looked at me, alarmed. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to print that,” I told her.
I looked around for my shoulder bag and fished out my cell phone. “I’m going to get out of your way,” I promised them, “but there’s one call I’d like to make before I leave. I’ve been in contact with Christopher Cassidy who was a student at Arbinger with Westerfield. In fact, he’s the one Rob beat up in his sophomore year. Mr. Cassidy told me that Rob sometimes used the name of a character he played on stage. He was going to try to find out what it was.”
I looked up the number and dialed it.
“Cassidy Investment Firm,” the operator said briskly.
I was in luck. Christopher Cassidy was back from his trip, and I was put through to him immediately. “I checked around,” he said, sounding triumphant. “I have the name Westerfield used, and it is from one of the plays he was in.”
“I remember the name,” Corinne Barsky was saying, excitement in her voice.
Cassidy was in Boston. Barsky was a few feet away from me in Maine. But they said it together.
“It’s Jim Wilding.”
Jim, I thought! Rob had drawn the diagram himself.
“Ellie, I have to take another call.” Cassidy apologized.
“Go ahead. That’s all I needed to know.”
“What you wrote about me for the Website is great. Put it on. I’ll back you one thousand percent.”
He clicked off.
Corinne Barsky had opened one of the playbills. “You may be interested in this, Ms. Cavanaugh,” she said. “The director used to have every member of the cast sign a playbill next to where they are listed in the cast.”
She held it up and pointed. With defiant emphasis Rob Westerfield had signed not his own name but “Jim Wilding” instead.
I stared at it for a long minute. “I need a copy of this,” I said. “And please take very good care of the original. In fact, I wish you’d lock it in a safe.”
* * *
TWENTY MINUTES LATER I was sitting in my car, comparing the signature on the diagram with the one on the playbill.
I’m no handwriting expert, but when I compared the way the name “Jim” was signed on both documents, the signatures seemed identical.
I began the long drive back to Oldham, exulting in the prospect of exhibiting them on the Internet side by side.
Mrs. Dorothy Westerfield would have to face the truth. Her grandson had planned her death.
I must confess I thoroughly enjoyed the benevolent feeling that I was about to make a number of charities, medical facilities, libraries, and universities very, very happy.