School Days (6 page)

“M
AY WE LEAVE YOU
,”
Dot said. “We don't really like to come in here.”

“Sure,” I said. “I'll just sort of look around and think a little.”

“Ronny and I will be downstairs,” she said, and went.

I sat on the edge of the kid's bed. The room was blue and as soulless as the living room. The walls were darker blue, the ceiling a lighter shade. The bed was perfectly made with a brand-new blue quilt, with matching designer pillows stacked against the headboard. There was a bureau against the far wall, and a closet. A television sat on top of the bureau. There were
no pictures on the walls. I opened the drawer in the bedside table. It was empty and clean. The drapes on the big window beside the bed were a darker blue than the walls. I looked under the bed. Nothing. Not even dust. I felt around under the mattress. Nothing. I stood and went to the closet. It was empty. I opened the bureau drawers. They were empty and lined with clean white paper. I went back and sat down on the kid's bed again.

As soon as he was gone they had cleaned out his room. It was as if they had emptied the room of him. Tried to render it pre-Jared, as if they could return life to the time when they had moved here and it was mostly possibility. There was no vestige of him. There had been no pictures in the living room. None of the cheap garish cardboard-framed school photographs that every parent had of every kid. No team photographs. No musical instruments. No CDs. It was as if he'd never existed, as if he'd never lain on this bed in the darkness and thought about sex or eternity or the American League. As if there had been no imaginary passions, no fantasized moments of derring-do, no terrifying moments of imagination when life's limitations nearly overwhelmed him. No graphic sexual conquests of women older than himself.

The room was empty and neutral and impenetrable. The only story it told me was that it had no story to tell. I got up and very carefully smoothed out the quilt where I had sat. I looked out the window. From here, I could see my parked car. I couldn't see clearly from here, but Pearl might have been sitting in the driver's seat. It was darker now than it had been,
and rain began to spat disinterestedly against the window. I wondered if Jared had had a dog. I looked at the neat, color-coordinated, blank room upstairs in the neat, color-coordinated, blank house.

No. He didn't have a dog.

I
WAS WALKING ACROSS
the parking lot with Alex Taglio, toward the main entrance of the Bethel County Jail.

“What good does it do my guy to talk with you?” Taglio said.

“What harm?” I said.

“Say somehow, crazy as it is, you convince people that Clark isn't guilty,” Taglio said. “My guy already rolled on him. Where would that leave us?”

“Maybe if he's innocent, he shouldn't be rolled on,” I said.

“He is not innocent,” Taglio said. “I said what if you
convince
people.”

“If he's guilty, I don't want to get him off,” I said.

“Oh, fuck,” Taglio said, “I don't know what I'm arguing about. Rita already talked me into it.”

“Sexual favors?” I said.

“I wish,” Taglio said. “You ever?”

I shook my head.

“Married?”

“Sort of,” I said.

“Sort of?”

“You?” I said.

“Mary Lou Monaghan,” he said. “Five kids. She caught me fooling around, she'd cut off my wanker.”

We went into the jail.

They got us seated, as far as I could tell, in the same interview room where I'd talked with Jared. When the guards brought Wendell in, they put him in the same chair. Might have been the same guards.

“First of all, Wendell,” Taglio said, “Mr. Spenser's got no legal authority here. You don't have to talk with him if you don't want to.”

“Like I got something else to do?” Wendell said.

He was a big, robust kid with pink cheeks and thick lips and smallish eyes. He had a white-blond crew cut. And he seemed to swagger even sitting down.

“He asks you something you don't like, you don't have to answer,” Taglio says. “He asks you something and I tell you not to answer, you don't answer. Unnerstand.”

“Sure, you bet, Alex. I do just what you say and every-thing'll be really fucking swell,” the kid said.

Taglio sat back and let his face go neutral.

“I want to talk with you about Jared Clark,” I said.

“No shit,” Wendell said.

“Which one of you got the guns?” I said.

“Man, I told everybody already. I don't know where the guns came from. They were just there, man, when we decided we needed them.”

“Why'd you need them?”

“To shoot up the fucking school, man. Whaddya think?”

“Whose idea was that?” I said.

“I told everybody this shit before,” Wendell said. “Ten times. The cops, the lawyers, the jerkoff fucking shrinks. My old lady. Ten times. We wanted to do it. We did it. Here we are. End of story.”

I nodded. Fun.

“What do you think of Jared?” I said.

“Huh?”

“Jared,” I said. “What do you think of him.”

“He bailed on me, man. He put his little sissy tail between his legs and snuck out, left me to deal with the cops.”

“And it wasn't supposed to be that way?”

“Hell, no.”

“How was it supposed to be?” I said.

“Stand-up, man. Two stand-up guys in there giving the cops the finger when they finally came in.”

“But Jared got scared?”

“Looks like it,” Wendell said.

“That why you rolled on him?” I said.

“Rolled?”

“You ratted him out to the cops.”

“The fuck wasn't going to leave me with the bag.”

“Plus, you got a deal,” I said.

“That is between us and the District Attorney,” Taglio said. “There's no reason for you to discuss that, Wendell.”

“Whatever,” Wendell said.

“So how do we know you didn't just make it up that Jared was there?” I said.

“ 'Cause the fucker confessed, man. Would that be some kind of fucking clue.”

“Good point,” I said. “Must be a drag after being close with a guy all this time, he bails on you the minute things get rough.”

Wendell shrugged.

“We wasn't so close.”

“You enter into a plot to kill seven people with a guy you weren't close to.”

“Sure, it was like, you know, business partners,” Wendell said and laughed. “Wasn't like we was gonna get married or something.”

“But you must have had reason to think you could trust him.”

Wendell shrugged.

“But you couldn't,” I said.

Wendell shrugged again.

“Make you mad?”

“Fuck him, man. I got it done without him.”

“Got what done?” I said.

“I took care of business,” he said.

“You shot those people without him?”

Taglio put a hand on Wendell's arm. Wendell looked at him. Taglio shook his head.

“I'm not talking about that,” Wendell said.

“You know who shot whom?” I said.

Wendell shook his head.

“Did you shoot more or did Jared?”

Wendell shook his head.

“There were fifteen people shot,” I said. “One of you must have shot more than the other unless both of you shot at least one of the same people.”

Wendell shrugged.

“Maybe you both shot them all,” I said.

“Fuck you,” Wendell said. “I ain't talking to you no more.”

“Everybody says that to me,” I said. “Sooner or later.”

W
ENDELL
G
RANT
'
S MOTHER
'
S
name was Wilma. She ran a little health-food store near the center of town, with four tables outside, where you could sit and consume sassafras tea and bean sprouts on whole-grain bread. She was a pale woman with big, dark eyes and dark, straight, shoulder-length hair, which was beginning to show some gray. The day I went to see her, she was wearing an ankle-length gray dress with blue flowers, and leather sandals. There was no sign of makeup.

It was three o'clock in the afternoon. The store was empty of customers, and Wilma Grant sat with me at one of the
small tables on the sidewalk outside the store. She drank some tea. I didn't.

“He just never . . .” she said.

I nodded.

“He never was what I wanted him to be,” she said.

Her nails were square and clean, and devoid of polish. Her hands looked as if she washed them often.

“And Wendell's father?” I said.

She shook her head.

“No father?” I said.

“Except in a biological sense,” she said. “I'm a single mother. His father is an anonymous sperm donor.”

“And you've never been married?”

“No.”

“Are you a lesbian?” I said.

“Not being married doesn't mean you are homosexual,” she said.

“I know,” I said.

“Are you married?”

“No.”

She smiled slightly and nodded.

“I have had men in my life,” she said. “But I never wished to marry them.”

“But you wanted a family.”

“I wanted,” she said, “someone to share my life. I wanted to teach him and show him and talk with him and be with him. . . .” She stared down the long, still, tree-canopied, almost-empty street. “I wanted someone that belonged to me.”

“Hard alone,” I said.

“You have no idea,” she said.

“Maybe I do.”

“He was nothing like that. It almost seems as if from the time he was born, he was angry and defiant and just exactly what I didn't want him to be.”

“Tell me about him,” I said.

She started to cry. I waited. After a while, she stopped.

“What was he like?” I said.

“He was a bully,” she said. “My son, a bully. And he played football in school.”

“Not a good thing?” I said.

“God, no. I think it's a brutal and dehumanizing game. All these loutish young men trying to hurt each other on the field, while the girls jump around and cheer and show their legs. It is frightful.”

“What position did he play?” I said, just to be saying something.

“I don't know. I don't know anything about football.”

“Did you ever see him play?”

“No.”

“How was he academically.”

She shook her head.

“He had no interest in the life of the mind,” she said.

“Who taught him to shoot?” I said.

“Shoot?”

I nodded.

“I don't know,” she said. “Certainly there have never been guns in my house.”

“A woman living alone?” I said. “Not even for protection?”

“I would rather be killed,” she said, “than take a life.”

“No boyfriends, or uncles, or anyone that might have taught him?”

“No.”

I nodded. We were quiet. A fat yellow cat came around the corner of the store and jumped up onto the table. Wilma picked him up and put him in her lap, where he curled into a fat yellow ball and went to sleep.

“Where might he have gotten the guns?”

“I don't know,” Wilma said. “I know nothing of guns.”

“Maybe the other kid got them,” I said.

“Jared Clark?”

I nodded.

“I don't know. I barely know him.”

“He was pals with your son, wasn't he?”

“I don't know.”

“How did you come to get Alex Taglio for a lawyer?” I said.

“My father.”

“Your father recommended him?”

“Yes.”

“And your father's name is Grant?”

“Yes,” she said. “Hollis Grant.”

“He lives in town?”

“Yes.”

“How's he know Taglio?”

“I don't know,” Wilma said. “I suppose he asked one of his attorneys.”

“He has attorneys?” I said.

“My father is a very successful man,” she said. “Grant Development Corporation.”

“In town?” I said.

“He lives here. His business is next town over.”

“Is he close to his grandson?”

“Mr. Spenser, please don't put me through this anymore. No one is close to Wendell. He carries my name. But he is so unlike me I tremble to think what a terrible person my donor must have been.”

“You accept that he did it,” I said.

“Yes. My father and I have employed Mr. Taglio to see that his rights are protected. But he has committed an unspeakable crime, and he should go to jail and stay there.”

“So you don't wish him to get off?” I said.

“No. We can only try to help him spend his time in a less unpleasant prison.”

“Like the easiest room in hell,” I said.

She didn't say anything. She stroked the cat, and stared down the empty street, and shook her head a number of times.