Authors: Stephen Dobyns
Hawthorne listened but could hear nothing. He flicked on his flashlight and shined it down the corridor. The space through which he had passed seemed unfamiliar; the boxes and piled chairs took on new shapes. Again he heard a rustling. He pointed his light in the direction of the noise. Then a door slammed, but seemingly far away. Hawthorne’s heart was beating fast and he stood still, trying to calm himself. He wished he were braver, less of an academic. Dust motes floated in the beam of his light.
Slowly, Hawthorne began to make his way back toward the stairs, swinging his light from side to side. Several times he turned around to make sure there was nothing behind him. After he had gone twenty feet, the beam of his light picked up the shape of something ahead. Hawthorne paused. He wished he had a weapon. From a pile stacked against the sloping roof, he took a hockey stick, then he almost discarded it because it made him feel silly. But he held on to it. As he walked forward, the shape ahead of him took on substance and after he had gone another few yards he realized that somebody was standing in the passageway—a wavering shape in the uncertain beam of his light. Hawthorne was afraid that his legs might give way beneath him. He stood still, again trying to calm his breathing. Then he shifted the hockey stick to his right hand and continued forward. Getting closer, Hawthorne realized it was a man and in another moment he saw it was Ambrose Stark. The former headmaster was grinning at him with a bright red grin that disfigured the bottom half of his face. It was the same image Hawthorne had seen staring down at him from the window at Adams Hall.
Hawthorne forced himself to take another step forward, then another. The light jittered across the figure and Hawthorne saw that his hand was trembling. Then Ambrose Stark moved. Hawthorne crouched down, keeping his light focused on the dead headmaster, not daring to look away. He tried to force himself to relax. Stark was about twenty feet ahead of him. Hawthorne made himself stand up, breathe deeply, and then move forward. The next time Ambrose Stark moved, Hawthorne realized the image was swaying. Closer, he saw that it was a painting hanging from the rafters. He wanted to laugh at himself but the image was too awful. The gaping red grin was horrific: a red slash across the face. What frightened him now was the knowledge that the picture hadn’t been there when he had made his way through the attic twenty minutes earlier. Someone had hung it up after he had passed.
As Hawthorne drew nearer, he could see that the portrait was attached to a cord stretched between the rafters. It was a full-length picture showing Stark standing by a desk with his right hand resting on a book. He wore a dark suit and behind him was dark red drapery. His face was so distorted by the red grin that even his eyes took on a demonic appearance. He looked as if he were about to burst into mad laughter. Hawthorne stopped about five feet away. Clearly, it was the same picture that had been in Evings’s office. Moving forward, Hawthorne reached out and took hold of the edge of the canvas. Then he yanked it down so the portrait fell to the floor. He felt relieved, even moderately brave. He was certain that Ambrose Stark would frighten him no more.
—
Detective Leo Flynn was disgusted. It was a rainy Monday morning in Boston with wet snow forecast, and the skyline had disappeared into the murk. Sirens were blaring, cars were honking, and on the other side of the office one of his colleagues was calling a young black kid a “scumbag.” Shouting it over and over: Scumbag, scumbag. It was Pearl Harbor Day and Leo Flynn remembered when there used to be parades. He liked parades. And he liked fireworks. He’d been known to travel a hundred miles for a good fireworks display, and on the Fourth of July he was always out in the harbor in his pal Loomis’s boat, getting as close as they could so the rockets shot up right above them; sometimes the sticks would come whickering down onto the deck and once they’d had a flaming piece of paper. If Flynn had had more sense as a kid, he would have gone into fireworks design instead of being a cop. Explosions for the heck of it. You had to be an artist to be a first-rate fireworks designer; you had to have pizzazz.
Right now Flynn was in the doghouse. The homicide captain had chewed his ear off for wasting so much time in New Hampshire. Why’d he have to go himself? Coughlin wanted to know. Hadn’t Flynn heard of the telephone? Or e-mail? Or departmental reciprocity? Boston was always doing favors for those podunk New Hampshire departments. It was time for them to give something back. Flynn was needed in Boston. He had other cases and court dates coming up. What the hell was he thinking of?
Leo Flynn had told Coughlin everything he could about Francis LaBrecque. He had even told him some of LaBrecque’s jokes, knowing full well that Coughlin hated jokes unless he was the person telling them. And he told Coughlin he had been looking for LaBrecque’s cousin, the cook, Larry Gaudette, but Coughlin had only said, “Can’t you write it all down? You fuckin’ lazy all of a sudden? Give it to me on paper.” Coughlin was in his late forties, fifteen years younger than Flynn, and they weren’t close. Coughlin didn’t know squat about Pearl Harbor Day, for instance.
So Flynn had been writing it down and the information would be sent all over New England. Much had been sent already. The computers would get cracking and a lot of departments would communicate with one another electronically. For Flynn it was obvious that the time was coming when you’d never have to leave the office. Everything would be done electronically and when all the information was in place a couple of patrolmen would be sent out to nab the guy. And someday—Leo Flynn had no doubt about it—they’d be sending out robots. But by then he would be retired and living in Florida, or maybe pushing up daisies, worm food after a life of cheap cigars.
Of course, his wife was glad he was back. She’d suspected he had only been fooling around: smoking too much and talking to other old farts like himself. And the rest of his homicide team thought he’d been fooling around as well. In vain did Flynn try to convince them that LaBrecque was the man they were looking for and that they had to find him fast, because who knew how many people he’d killed. LaBrecque could have left corpses all over New England. But Coughlin still saw no reason for Flynn to drive up to New Hampshire. Once the information was sent out electronically, it would only be a matter of time before LaBrecque was picked up. Flynn didn’t doubt that. He just wondered how many more people LaBrecque would stick in the neck before it happened.
And because Coughlin was unhappy with him, he had given Flynn a case concerning a Puerto Rican junkie who had been arrested after feeding slices of his aunt into the garbage disposal.
The junkie had been caught because he’d been using the garbage disposal for three hours straight between 2 a.m. and 5 a.m. and it had overheated and started smoking. A neighbor had called the Fire Department. And now Flynn could hardly talk to the junkie without the Department of Social Services, and the public defender’s office, and soon probably even the Puerto Rican Defense League breathing down his neck. It seemed that because the junkie had an IQ of 75, he shouldn’t have to go to prison. But that wasn’t for Flynn to decide. He wasn’t supposed to have opinions. He had his paperwork and court dates and miles of red tape and every bit of it was taking him farther away from New Hampshire, where Francis LaBrecque was probably icing some poor sucker at that very moment. At least that was how Leo Flynn saw it.
—
Shortly after breakfast on Monday, Fritz Skander showed up in Hawthorne’s office saying he had to do something about Frank LeBrun, that the man was unstable and might easily poison the entire school. Hawthorne didn’t usually attend breakfast and preferred to make coffee and eat something in his own quarters. That morning LeBrun had lost his temper and thrown four pots at the two students assigned to help him.
“You seem to be a special friend of his,” said Skander with a worried smile. “You should march in there and set him straight.” Skander stood in the doorway of Hawthorne’s office, his rectangular shape making him seem doorlike as well.
Hawthorne couldn’t imagine marching anywhere. “Was anyone hurt?”
“They were scared, frightened—isn’t that enough? After all, they’re just children.”
As he made his way to the kitchen, Hawthorne assumed there was more to the altercation than what Skander had described, but it wouldn’t do to have LeBrun throwing pots. He wondered why Skander hadn’t spoken to LeBrun himself, and once again Hawthorne saw that he couldn’t take anyone’s actions at face value. There always appeared to be something lying underneath.
When Hawthorne got to the kitchen, LeBrun was alone. There were stacks of dirty dishes from breakfast and no sign of the women employed to wash them. The floor was strewn with pots and broken plates. LeBrun was sitting on a tall stool in the middle of the kitchen with his arms folded and his legs stuck out in front of him, smoking a cigarette, although smoking wasn’t allowed in school buildings. It was a gray morning and the lights were on.
“Now I suppose you’re going to yell at me, too,” he said angrily.
“That wasn’t my intention,” said Hawthorne looking around and walking slowly across the kitchen. “You want a hand cleaning this up?” He stepped over a pile of scrambled eggs.
“I’m not fuckin’ cleaning anything.” LeBrun didn’t look at Hawthorne but stared straight ahead at the wall where there were several refrigerators. His white coat was unbuttoned and underneath he wore a red shirt. His thick dark hair was uncombed and spiky. As he sat, he jiggled his knees so his black boots seemed to dance on the tiles.
“What’s bothering you?”
“Those fuckin’ kids won’t do as I say. I told this kid to take the eggs off the stove and he wasn’t paying attention so they burned. Then the other one burned the toast.”
Hawthorne drew up another stool next to LeBrun and sat down. “They’re kids.”
“Hey, if I’d done that at their age I’d of had the shit kicked out of me.”
“What happened to the dishwashers?”
“They were fucking staring at me and so I said, ‘What the fuck are you staring at, you old bags?’ You should of seen them scatter.”
Hawthorne grinned suddenly. “I guess you made a clean sweep, didn’t you?”
LeBrun grinned as well. “Damn straight.”
“Skander’s afraid that you’ll poison the school.”
LeBrun stood up and kicked a pot, which went skittering across the kitchen. “Fat chance. I’m not going to poison anybody unless I get paid for it.” Then he grinned again.
Hawthorne climbed off the stool and picked up a couple of pots. “These hang from those hooks over there?”
“Yeah, those ones by the sink.” LeBrun dropped his cigarette and ground it out with his heel.
Hawthorne hung the pots from the hooks, then went back and got several more. LeBrun watched him. When he had finished hanging up the pots, Hawthorne took a broom and began sweeping the broken dishes into a pile in the middle of the floor. They made a rattling noise as he pushed them ahead of the broom.
“Hey, you’re not supposed to do that.”
“Somebody’s got to.”
“But you’re the boss.”
Hawthorne kept sweeping. “So what?”
LeBrun got a broom as well. “You’re just trying to make me feel bad.”
Hawthorne walked over to LeBrun. “No, I’m not. We got about one hundred and twenty people who are going to want lunch in a couple of hours, so I’d better get started.”
“You can’t cook.”
“I can make sandwiches.”
“Not good sandwiches. Not with all the stuff on them like I do.”
Hawthorne shrugged and leaned on his broom.
“Okay, okay,” said LeBrun, “I’ll make lunch.”
“Tell me what you need and I’ll get it for you.”
LeBrun kicked at another pot, which landed against the stove with a bang. “I don’t need your fuckin’ help.” He let the broom drop to the floor and lit another cigarette.
“Is something bothering you?”
“The cops have been in here half a dozen times. I just tell them to get the fuck out, that I’m busy. Nah, that’s not right, I talked to them. I just don’t like it, that’s all. I don’t like them nagging me about Larry and when did I see this person last and that person last.”
“I’m sorry about that,” said Hawthorne.
“It’s not your fuckin’ fault. Why does Skander think I’ll poison the school?”
“I guess he’s nervous.”
LeBrun began sweeping the broken crockery. “What a jerk. He thinks he’s got it all figured out. He doesn’t know shit. Like, he’s making a big mistake. Look, you go tell those old bags they can come back and wash the dishes anytime they want, and you can get those kids as well. I won’t say a word to them. But don’t expect me to apologize.”
“That’s okay,” said Hawthorne, “I can apologize. You want me to hire some more people?”
“Nah, it’s just till the end of the week. Saturday I’m outta here one way or the other.”
Hawthorne found the two dishwashers in the small lounge used by the housekeepers. They were shapeless women in their sixties who wore light blue dresses and white aprons. They said they didn’t want to work with LeBrun anymore. Hawthorne said that LeBrun had promised to behave and that, anyway, it would only be until the students left. He offered them each a bonus of two hundred dollars. Grudgingly, they returned to the kitchen.
As for the students who had been helping out, one of them absolutely refused to go back. The whole school was scaring him half to death. He was leaving for his parents’ house in Framingham either Tuesday or the next day and he wasn’t sure if he’d be coming back in January. He’d have to think about it. It depended on whether they found out who had killed Scott. The boy was a tenth grader named Harvey Bengston. He wore thick glasses that made his soft brown eyes seem huge.
The other boy, Eddy Powers, didn’t mind going back to the kitchen as long as LeBrun behaved and Hawthorne got somebody to replace Bengston. Maybe two people. Powers was an eleventh grader, a tall, skinny basketball player with a stoop.
“LeBrun’s okay as long as you don’t talk to him and make sure you laugh at his jokes.”