They waited until they could order, and they each seemed to be intent on ordering as little as possible. The menu was a horror of pretentiousness that included things like “sea bass en croute” and “crepes Madeleine,” both described in flourishes that made the restaurant critic for
Gourmet
magazine sound like Ernest Hemingway. It was, Gregor thought at one point, the Banana Republic catalogue of restaurant menus. Every offering had a story, and every story had a wry, whimsical, pixie-sophisticated tone to it, like the brightest kid without ambition in an Ivy League freshman class. He asked for something he hoped would turn out to be a steak, and Perrier, because it was obviously going to be impossible to get something as simple as a glass of ginger ale. They did have Diet Coke on the menu, but Gregor never drank Diet Coke. He couldn't imagine asking for a Cafe' Creme Virginite, which seemed to be a Kahlua and cream made without Kahlua. The other two men asked for salads, with dressing on the side, probably the safest thing, under the circumstances. If they couldn't cook it, they couldn't ruin it.
They all waited, talking about nothing, until the food was served. Gregor's lunch turned out to have something to do with steak, but only vaguely, as it was covered in grapes and a thick brown sauce that reminded him of the stuff that came with Egg Foo Yung. He ignored it in favor of the green beans, which had nothing more complicated on them than almond slivers and melted butter.
“I warned you,” Jimmy Card said.
“I'm not in the habit of eating at restaurants in central Philadelphia,” Gregor told him.
Bob Haverton picked up his attache' case, laid it on the clear end of the table, and snapped it open. He had his
initials on it in polished brass, and the brass sparkled in the light.
“I've had our people put together as complete a dossier on this case as it's possible to get,” he said. “It is, as you've pointed out, over thirty years in the past, but the records are still available, not only police records but newspaper files, the file from the Parks and Recreation Service, a couple of articles that ran in the true crime magazines. It's not as good as being there at the time, I admit, but it's something to go on. Would you like to see?”
Gregor took the thick stack of papers Haverton was handing out to him and put it down next to his plate. “I can keep these?”
“If you take the case, yes. I've got copies.”
“Have you read them?”
“We both have,” Jimmy Card said. “I've read them over and over again. I think, from what Liz told me, well, I hadn't expectedâ”
Bob Haverton cleared his throat. “Liz told him they locked her in an outhouse with some snakes. She didn't tell him that she'd had a phobic reaction and beaten herself bloody on the outhouse door, trying to get out.”
“Beat herself bloody and practically unconscious,” Jimmy said. He gestured at the papers. “It's all in there. When they found her, the skin was flailed off her arms and the sides of her hands and she just fell out onto the ground at this police officer's feet. There were still snakes in the outhouse, two or three. Sheâ”
“She really is phobic,” Bob Haverton said. “Genuinely. She can't be in the room with a picture of one, and we found school records going back to kindergarten of her panicking when there was one on the playground, having complete screaming fitsâ”
“So,” Gregor said. “All the people she knew, knew she was afraid of snakes? And one of these people locked her into an outhouse and put snakes in there with her?”
“Right,” Jimmy said. “A lot of them, according to Liz. But the thing is, with Liz and snakes, a lot could mean only
three. And she really doesn't know how many.”
“What was the point?” Gregor asked. “Were they trying to kill her? People have died of shock from phobic reactions.”
“I doubt they were actually trying to kill her,” Jimmy said. “They were all, what? Eighteen. Seventeen. And this was 1969. And it wasn't the first time.”
“It wasn't the first time they'd locked her in an outhouse with a lot of snakes?” Gregor's eyebrows raised.
“Liz,” Bob Haverton said carefully, “was not exactly popular in high school. Or in elementary school. As far as we can make out, she was one of those kids who's sort of like a target, the one all the other kids pick on. It had been going on for years. And some of the incidents were pretty damned nasty. They took all her clothes while she was showering after gym once. They told her they wanted to meet her at this place they all went toâ”
“The White Horse,” Jimmy said. “It was a bar. The kind of place you could go drinking and not get carded.”
“Right.” Bob nodded. “Anyway, they told her they wanted to meet her there and then they took off for a different place in a different town and left her stranded so that she had to walk home, in the dark, or call her parents and tell them where she was. She walked home. Jimmied her locker and took all her books. Spray-painted âbig wet turd' in red on the back of her best black sweater during an assembly and then laughed at it all dayâ”
“And this was everybody in the whole school?” Gregor asked. “Nobody told her about the spray paint?”
“A teacher did, eventually,” Jimmy said. “But you know, I've seen it happen, mostly with girls. Boys get cut a lot more slack. But some girls are justâI mean, even the teachers can't stand them, they're justâ”
“Targets,” said Bob Haverton wryly. “I've had a better education than Jimmy did. I actually went to college, instead of just hauling ass to New York City to make my fortune. You can tell by our bank accounts who made the wiser choice.”
“It was only Adelphi,” Jimmy said.
“It was Yale Law. My point, however, is that I've read
Lord of the Flies
a few times. And that's what this was, as far as I can make out.
Lord of the Flies
on a somewhat attenuated scale. Although, considering the thing with the outhouse and the snakes, it's probably just as well that she was getting out for college the following fall.”
“I think that's part of what did it,” Jimmy said. “Drew them over the edge, I mean, into doing something that could have been dangerous. Because she got into a good college and that just made them madder.”
“Back up,” Gregor said. “This was whenâthe day it happened?”
“July twenty-third, 1969,” Bob Haverton said.
“And what time of day?”
“Early evening,” Jimmy said. “A lot of them worked, you know, and when they got off work they'd go to this park where there was a lake for swimming and a lifeguard. And the park had woods around it and this set of outhousesâ”
“Set?”
“I think it said four stalls in a row,” Bob Haverton said.
“Okay,” Gregor said. “It was early evening, and people went to this park, including Ms. Toliver. Was she getting off work, too?”
“No,” Jimmy said. “Her father was this hotshot lawyer. She was taking the summer off. She used to go to the park in the daytime when pretty much everybody she knew was working, and then she'd leave as they started to drift in.”
“But this evening she stayed?” Gregor asked.
“I don't think so,” Jimmy said. “I think she was going to leave the same as always, but then things happened. One of them called her over and told her they needed her to see something, and I suppose she should have known better by then, I mean, for God's sake, it had been going on long enough, but she went to look. And that's when they pushed her into the outhouse and locked the door.”
“To be specific,” Bob Haverton said, “they nailed it shut.”
“What?” Gregor said, bolt upright. “They
nailed
it shut?”
“That's what I said.” For the first time, Haverton looked thoroughly disgusted. “I know adolescents can be evil, but this was a bunch of sociopaths, if you ask me. They gathered a bunch of snakes, granted small black snakes, perfectly harmlessâ”
“âexcept to somebody like Liz,” Jimmy said.
“Except to somebody like Liz,” Haverton agreed. “Anyway, they put them in there, and then one of them, Maris Coleman, called her over and asked her to look inside, I don't remember what the pretext wasâ”
“He can ask Liz himself when he gets to Hollman,” Jimmy said.
“âand when she looked in the rest of them rushed up from out of the bushes where they'd been hiding and pushed her in. Then they slammed the door and nailed it shut. She says she was screaming the whole time, and I believe her. I've seen her around snakes.”
Gregor considered all this. “Most of them were hiding. How many of them is most of them?
“Six,” Jimmy said. “Maris Coleman, Belinda Hart, Emma Kenyon, Nancy Quayde, Chris Inglerod, and Peggy Smith.”
“We don't actually know that all of them were there, or that all of them were involved,” Haverton said, “but that was the group of them and they were together later, when the body was found, along with a couple of other people who were not ordinarily part of their circle. Liz says she heard them laughing while they nailed up the door.”
“And Ms. Toliver was screaming all the time?” Gregor said. “Why didn't somebody else hear her?”
“There may not have been anybody to hear her,” Haverton said. “The lifeguards go off at five. They left promptly. This might have been fifteen or twenty minutes later.”
“What about the other people in the park?” Gregor said. “Surely, there were other people in the park. This boy, the one who died, Michael Housemanâ”
“He was sort of part of the same crowd,” Jimmy said. “He dated one of the girls, or something like that. I'm not exactly clear on that. And yes, later, there were a few other people in the park. When the body was found there were maybe fifteen people present, at the bank of a small river that runs through the placeâ”
“And those people should have been able to hear Elizabeth Toliver scream?” Gregor asked.
“Yes,” Jimmy said.
“And they didn't investigate what was happening? They didn't try to help her? Or did they? Did somebody go try to release her?”
“The cops released her when they came to look at the body,” Jimmy said. “They heard her screaming and they went to see what was up. It's in the police reports.”
“So you're saying that she stayed in this outhouse, screaming her head off, forâhow long?”
“At least an hour,” Bob Haverton said.
“An hour. While screaming her head off within hearing range of two dozen people. And nobody went to help her. Nobody went to see what was wrong with her. Nobody paid any attention at all.”
“I told you it was like
Lord of the Flies
,” Haverton said.
“It's more like
Ripley's Believe It or Not
. Hasn't it occurred to any of you, hasn't it occurred to her, that this makes absolutely no sense? People don't behave this way, not even in groups.
Lord of the Flies
had a hero. Put that many people into one place and at least one of them should go see what's wrong and try to do something about it. Instead, they did what? Wandered around the park? Had a campfire? What?”
“Chris Inglerod and Peggy Smith said they went swimming,” Jimmy said. “Maris Coleman saysâsaidâwhatever.”
“She told the police that she went with Belinda Hart to
the lake to sit by the water. She says now that she and Belinda took a walk by the river.”
“You've talked to her recently,” Gregor said.
“I talk to her every day,” Jimmy said. “Much as I'd prefer not to. She works for Liz.”
“Works for her?” Gregor blinked.
“She's some kind of personal assistant,” Jimmy said. “Liz hired her when she got fired a few years ago. When Maris got fired, that is. For the third time. In two years. Don't get me started. She's going down to Hollman with Liz. You'll meet her yourself, if you decide to do this for us.”
“That's what we meant about there being something else to this than finding the person who murdered Michael Houseman,” Bob Haverton said. “We're bothâJimmy and I are bothâconvinced that it's Maris Coleman who's been feeding those stories to the supermarket tabloids. In fact, we don't see who else it could be. We just need you to prove it.”
“Liz,” Jimmy Card said, angry now, “refuses to believe it.”