The trouble, Nancy thought, was that this was such a small town. In even a medium-sized town, there would have been
a good chance that most of her students would never even have heard of Chris Inglerod Barr. Now, of course, she had dozens of girls who had worked with Chris at the food bank as part of the country club's “Good Samaritan Christmas Project,” or who'd been to her house with their parents for a holiday party, or who had waited on her in Elsa-Edna's or Mullaney's. It didn't help that the gory details had been all over town in a split second, either. Just walking through the halls after third period, Nancy had heard at least six different versions of the murder scene, each more outrageous than the last. At first, Chris had just been stabbed, albeit eighty-five times. At last, Chris had been cut up into chunks and placed in a pile at Betsy Toliver's back doorâexcept they didn't call her “Betsy,” they called her “Elizabeth,” and they seemed to assume that she was being persecuted. It was a privilege of celebrity. Nobody wanted to believe you'd really done anything wrong. If it appeared you had, they made excuses for you. That was how Nancy explained O. J.
It was now quarter after eleven, and Nancy needed at least two ibuprofen, which she wasn't eligible to get for another half hour. She had found a substitute to take Peggy's classes, but she'd had to teach the first one herself. There just hadn't been time to jury-rig anything else. Nancy truly hated teaching. She had hated it from the first, and the five long years between the time she got her master's degree and the time she had been able to find a job in administration had been the longest of her life. She would rather have gone back to that summer after her senior year in high school than do those five years over again.
What she really needed to do, she thought, was to take half an hour and drive out into the country with the radio off. If she could just spend a little time without having to see or talk to people, she knew she would be able to calm down. She was not, really, upset about Chris. She was only upset about the things that were going on around Chris, about the stories, about the hysteria of people like Emma. She had half expected to have a call from the superintendent
this morning, suggesting they bring in “grief counselors” for the students who “might need them,” but no call had come from that source, even to offer condolences. She had been reduced to pacing up and down the halls, from one floor to another, from one wing to another, looking into classrooms, listening to the talk in the halls when the bell rang and classes changed.
Nancy looked around the foyer and made a note to herself to get the clubs to change the display cases. She was tired of everything she saw. She went into her office and nodded to Lisa as she passed through the outer room. She passed into her own office and went to the window at the back. The view wasn't good at the best of times, and today the rain was so hard and the sky was so black that there wasn't anything to see but water, coming down. She pulled out the chair behind her desk and sat down. There was work she had to do. She ought to do it. She didn't want to. Lisa Bentkoop came in, and Nancy looked up, relieved.
“I'm having the worst day today,” she said. “It's not that anything in particular is going wrong, it's justâ” Nancy fluttered her hands in the air.
“I think that's understandable,” Lisa said. “You're probably more upset than you realize. She was a friend of yours forever.”
“Well, yes,” Nancy said. “That's true, I guess, but since we became adults we haven't been particularly close. Oh, we saw each other. It's hard not to go on seeing the people you grew up with in a town like this. But there was a divergence, if you know what I mean. Chris was so involved with being a wife, and a wife is the last thing I ever wanted to be.”
“I know what you mean. And I hate to make your day any worse than it already is, but there are a couple of things.”
“Like what?”
“Well.” Lisa took a deep breath. “We got a heads-up from Kyle at the police station, for starters. Apparently, Hollman has been invaded. There were so many reporters
out at the Toliver place this morning, the inhabitants had to flee. Those aren't my words, they're Kyle's. âThe inhabitants had to flee.' Hundreds of them, from his descriptionâ”
“He went out there?”
“No,” Lisa said. “That detective person was out there. Gregor Demarkian.”
“I can't believe there was that much fuss over Betsy Toliver,” Nancy said. “Yes, she's sort of famous, but it's only sort of. Most people don't even watch those talking heads shows.”
“I don't think it was about Elizabeth Toliver. Kyle said Jimmy Card was here, he was here last night when they found the body. So I think it's him they're after.”
“Yes,” Nancy said.
“And Kyle said they got inundated awhile at the police station, too, with the reporters crowding into the vestibule and the waiting room, but they got that under control. He wanted us to be ready, though, because he thinksâor maybe it's Mr. Demarkian who thinksâanyway, he thinks that they might come here.”
“Who? Kyle and Mr. Demarkian?”
“No,” Lisa said. “The reporters. Or some of them, at any rate. Remember how that one came down here a couple of months ago, from the
Enquirer
? Except he didn't tell us he was from the
Enquirer
. He wanted to photograph the school.”
Nancy did remember. That was when the stories had first started appearing in the tabloids about the night Michael Houseman was murdered. She drummed her fingers on her desk. “Has anybody actually been here today?”
“If you mean reporters, not that I know about. But you know what they are. They could be waiting in the parking lot for the students to come out. They could just waltz through one of the doors. We talk about making this school secure, but we never do anything about it. And we can't lock too many doors. The fire regulationsâ”
“No,” Nancy said. “No, that's all right. I don't see that
they'd have much to get if they did come here. I can't see that it would hurt the school anyway. It isn't even the right building. This wasn't where we all were when all that stuff happened with Betsy.”
“Yes,” Lisa said. “Well, the thing is, there may be another complication.”
“What complication?”
“David Asch is here to see you.”
“Who's David Asch?”
“Diane Asch's father.”
Nancy's head snapped up. “He's here? Waiting outside someplace? He didn't call for an appointment?”
“No, he didn't call for an appointment, and I don't think that's a good sign. He looks like the kind of man who does call for appointments. He'sâwell, you'd have to see him.”
“I don't intend to see him. Go right back out there and tell him I don't have any time today. Make him make an appointment.”
Lisa hesitated. “I've tried that,” she said. “I tried it several different ways. He said he'd wait. âNobody schedules every breathing minute of the day,' is what he said.”
“Was he belligerent?”
“Oh, no. He was quite pleasant.”
Nancy drummed her fingers on the desk again. “What about Diane? Is she in school today?”
“Same as always. I saw her on her way to biology.”
“Has there been any trouble?”
“Nothing unusual.” Lisa shrugged. “I mean, I heard a couple of people call her âfart face' in the hall, but that'sâ”
“Par for the course,” Nancy finished. She stood up. If she had been one of the students this year, she would have called Diane Asch “fart face,” too. She wondered what Mr. Asch was like. Maybe he was Rick Moranis. “Send him in,” she said. “Tell him I've got exactly five minutes. It's a busy day. When I buzz, I want you back in here faster than you can think about it. And I'm going to want him out.”
“Right,” Lisa said.
She hurried out of the room, and Nancy remained standing. A moment later, Lisa returned ahead of a tall, elegant-looking man in a good tan suit. He was far too elegant, and the suit was far too good, for Hollman. Nancy held out her hand.
“Mr. Asch,” she said.
“Ms. Quayde.”
Lisa retreated out the door and closed it behind her. When she was gone, it seemed too silent. The rain outside was too loud. David Asch had an attache' case. He was smiling.
“Well,” Nancy said. “I suppose you're here to talk about the trouble Diane has been having, getting along with her classmates.”
“No,” David Asch said. “I'm not.”
“You're not?”
“There wouldn't be any point, would there? I've heard enough conversations of that kindânot about Diane, mind you, but about meâto know how they go. I complain. You tell me it's really mostly Diane's fault, we need to get her a therapist, she has a problem, and besides, there's nothing you can do to
make
people like her. That
is
the way the conversation would go, isn't it?”
Lisa was right, Nancy thought. This man was pleasant, but it was not a nice pleasantness. “If you don't want to talk about Diane,” she said, “what do you want to talk about?”
“You.”
“Excuse me?”
David Asch's smile became wider. He sat down himself, in the visitor's chair, and put his attache' case on the desk. “You,” he repeated. “Because there are things you can do about the situation with Diane, although you won't do any of them. It's true you can't make people like her, but you can stop collaborating in their bullying. Because we both know, don't we, that this kind of ostracizing behavior does not occur in isolation. It does not occur where there is not adult support.”
“I don't know what you're talking about.”
“I think you do.”
Nancy watched in fascination as David Asch snapped open the brass fixtures on the attache' case. “You're not from around here, are you?” she said. “If you were, I'd know you. You look like you come from someplace far more cosmopolitan andâ”
“I come from Armonk, New York.”
“Well,” Nancy said.
“Armonk is not what I'd call cosmopolitan,” David Asch said. “Although it certainly is a good deal more sophisticated than this area around here. We moved here so that I could teach at UP-Johnstown. I have another year to go on my contract and then I'll be gone. That will be Diane's senior year.”
“What do you teach?”
“Psychology,” David Asch said. “But I'm not a clinical psychologist. I'm a behavioral one. I deal in statistics and probabilities. I don't have much use for touchy-feely. Do you know what this is?” He took a thick wad of paper out of the attache' case and dropped it down on the middle of her desk.
“No,” Nancy said.
“It's a copy of the summary of the police report on the murder of one Michael Houseman, until last night the most famous crime to have been committed in this town. It's not hard to get hold of, by the way. It's a public record. I actually obtained it nearly six months ago, after that incident when two girls pushed Diane into the trash Dumpster out by the athletic field and then piled the door of it with heavy objects so that she couldn't get out. Do you remember that incident?”
“Yes,” Nancy said. “We didâ”
“You did nothing,” David Asch said. “My wife came in to see you at the time. You gave her a lecture on how we should send Diane to therapy to âhelp her with her problem.'”
“She does have a problem,” Nancy said. “She has several
of them. And we did try to do something about the incident with the Dumpster, we just couldn'tâ”
“Prove who had done it? Yes, of course. Except that Diane told you who had done it.”
“We can't initiate disciplinary proceedings that might end in expulsion on one student's say-so,” Nancy said. “And that's especially so in this case, because Diane has an almost paranoid obsession with the girls she accusedâ”
“
Diane
has an obsession?”
“Yes, she does. Sheâ”
“They follow her around while she tries to avoid them. That doesn't sound to me like she has an obsession. It sounds to me like they have an obsession. Just as it sounds to me like they have a problem. Not Diane.”
“I realize that as her fatherâ”
David Asch leaned forward and flipped open the report. “I bookmarked the page for you,” he said. “And I highlighted the relevant passages. Don't worry about making a mess of it. I made copies. One to leave with you. One to keep for myself. One to give to other people.”
“What other people?”
“This morning, I gave it to a reporter for the
National Enquirer
that I met in JayMar's. He wasn't keeping it to himself. We had a very nice talk, he and I. About you. And Elizabeth Toliver. And Diane. Do you know what a parallel case is?”