The teakettle’s whistle beckoned her to the stove. “Now David and I work on it the old-fashioned way. He’s encouraged to speak, even rewarded for it, but there is absolutely no pressure. If he feels threatened, he withdraws and his therapy is set back.” She looked at Rouge over one shoulder, smiling sweetly as she poured scalding water into the tea mugs. “So, if you have something like that in mind, my dear—I won’t allow it.”
The implied threat hovered between them, though her voice was eminently civil. Even now as an adult, he knew better than to get on the bad side of a housemother. He reverted to the childhood practice of enlisting her in his cause. “So, how do I get him to open up with me?”
“Don’t worry, Rouge. I’ll be encouraging that. I know how much he wants to talk to you. I drove him to the police station this morning. I gathered your meeting with him was unsuccessful.”
They spent the next few minutes basking in the peace of the cottage, dunking their tea bags in companionable silence. Even before he smelled the aroma from the mug, he knew it would be peppermint heavily laced with honey.
“David is making good progress,” Mrs. Hofstra confided. “He makes more eye contact now, and he talks to most of the boys who board with me. But he won’t speak to any of his teachers, and he never talks in class. On the bright side, he seems highly motivated to talk to you, dear.” And this pleased her. “It’s going to take some time and patience is all.”
“I don’t have time, Mrs. Hofstra. Do you know any shortcuts?”
She leaned forward, and with only a trace of suspicion, she studied his face, perhaps looking for deviations from the child she had known. “There is a way.” And now she smiled. So she must have found him unchanged—still her own Rouge.
“It’s a matter of trust, my dear. You have to imagine what it’s like to be David, and then create a comfort zone for him. Listen carefully.” Her wrinkled hand lay over his, warm but featherlight and dry as a covering of paper. “If you take a more direct approach, he’ll retreat so far inside himself, you’ll never reach him again—you’ll get nothing.”
Rouge was not surprised that St. Ursula’s director remembered him so well. Twins tended to linger in the mind, particularly when one of them was found murdered.
“How have you been, Rouge?”
So it was to be “Rouge,” not “officer” nor any other grown-up title. And of course, he would address the elder man as
Mister
or
sir
; some things never changed.
Eliot Caruthers was the same inscrutable Santa Claus in a three-piece suit. And like the doctor’s mythic double, one would say his bearded face was timeless rather than old. The hair had gone from gray to snow white, but it was still a basic bird’s nest of lost pencils sticking out at dangerous angles. Now Mr. Caruthers recalled where he had left one of them, and he plucked it out from behind his ear to tap it on the desk as a prompt for Rouge. School was still in session between them. The director had asked a test question, and he was waiting on a response.
How have I been?
Well, he had been treading water for most of his life—life after Susan—and he was very tired. “Oh, I’ve been just fine, Mr. Caruthers. And you?” He looked at his watch, hoping this would convey that a policeman’s time was slightly more important. And now he came straight to the business at hand. “What can you tell me about Gwen Hubble?”
“Only what’s in her file.” Mr. Caruthers’ attitude said he took no offense at Rouge’s brusque manner. In fact, he took no notice of it at all.
“So Gwen wasn’t a standout in any way?”
The director opened the bulky manila folder on his desk blotter and looked down on the glossy color photograph clipped to the paperwork. “She’s certainly one of the prettiest children I’ve ever seen. Sometimes I think beauty is a sufficient gift. An intellect in a beautiful child seems almost ostentatious, don’t you think?”
Rouge sensed the invitation to another level of dialogue. He elected to ignore it. “Other than that pretty face, you’re saying Gwen Hubble is ordinary?”
“We don’t have ordinary students here.” The director betrayed only the lightest sign of impatience with this former pupil. “Don’t you remember your own entrance exam?”
“You just don’t feel like cooperating?”
Now the director smiled. “Under certain conditions, I have every intention of exchanging confidences with you.”
So nothing said is to leave this room.
Rouge continued to stare at the man in silence.
Mr. Caruthers broadened his smile in approval of this gambit. “I can also put valuable resources at your disposal.”
Okay, I’ll play.
“Is there something I can do for you, sir?”
The old man inclined his head, almost imperceptibly, and a deal had been struck. “I have a present for you—one of our teachers.” He opened his desk drawer and pulled out another folder. “Though he’s probably not the man you’re looking for. This one only likes little boys. However, I want you to take him with you when our discussion is over. You only have to parade him past a few reporters. And if you can manage it, drop a few unfortunate slips to the press—mention NAMBLA a few times. You’re familiar with the initials?”
“Grown-ups who want to date little boys.”
“Close enough.”
“You have proof?”
“No, my boy. If I had proof, I wouldn’t need you. I’ve done a thorough background check and come up with nothing but glowing references. That’s not unusual—one school passing the problem along to another. If they can’t prove a charge of pedophilia, they want to avoid the lawsuit. And so does St. Ursula’s.”
He pushed a résumé across the desk. A photograph was clipped to the sheets, a portrait of a pasty white, slack-faced man. “But this school doesn’t intend to pass Gerald Beckerman along. Of course I’d like to have him put away. But if you can’t pull that off, I’ll settle for a public crucifixion.”
“Wouldn’t it be easier to fire him?”
“But not nearly as satisfying. And Beckerman has a powerful protector on the board of trustees. I believe that protection will be withdrawn after the press has a turn at the little pervert.”
Rouge scanned the top lines of the résumé.
“You will note,” said Mr. Caruthers, “that he’s thirty-eight years old. A predatory interest in children doesn’t start so late in life.”
“And you figure, somewhere there must be a history on him.”
“I know you’ll find it, Rouge. Then you’ll be sure to tell Beckerman’s attorney that you uncovered the pedophilia in the course of your kidnap investigation.”
So the director didn’t buy the story of runaways, either. “Sir, how did you find out about this man?”
Caruthers hesitated, perhaps wondering how far to trust this former student. Tentatively, he said, “I wouldn’t like the school to be sued for reading his private mail. However, I will admit to reading his E-mail. The software to eavesdrop came with our computer network. Things have changed a bit since you were with us, Rouge. Every student has a personal computer, even the five-year-olds, so we monitor the children’s chat rooms on the internet. An interesting thing about computer communication—people tend to write the way they talk. Formal structure falls away. It’s not like writing a letter when they’re typing dialogue in real time. There was a pedophile in one of those chat rooms. He wrote the way Gerald Beckerman talked. You could say I recognized his voice, and it made my flesh crawl.”
“If you can’t find any history on him, what makes you think I can?”
“I know you can, Rouge. I know more about you than your mother does.” With a casual hand gesture, he waved these ominous words aside. “Now, what can I do for
you?
You have only to ask.”
Rouge faced the casement window near his chair. Beyond the glass pane, a small moving figure captured his attention. David was walking down the sloping grass and heading toward the lake. “I understand David Shore has a scholarship.”
Mr. Caruthers nodded. “I’ve heard the rumors in town. They think all the scholarship children were sold to us for science experiments. And of course, that’s true.”
Rouge smiled, though it wasn’t always easy to tell when Mr. Caruthers was joking. He kept his eyes on the window, following David’s progress toward the boathouse. The foot of the wharf and all but the roof and the far edge of the building were hidden by a stand of evergreen trees. David disappeared behind this cover.
The director continued, “Sadie Green is also a scholarship child, but she’s an exception. Her parents are rather attached to her, so it never occurred to us to make a cash offer.”
Rouge’s smile was edging off. David had reappeared on the wharf beyond the point where it was obscured by trees, and he was slowly walking toward the end of the planks extending far into the lake. The boy stopped and turned to look back at the boathouse.
“Most of our scholarship children are harvested from foster homes. The absentee parents are tracked down and paid off. Our attorneys nail down absolute custody for—”
“Stop,” said Rouge. Now Mr. Caruthers had his complete attention again. “Back up. You really do this? You
buy
the scholarship kids?”
“Oh, yes. Though, technically, the housemothers are the legal guardians. We can’t have the biological parents coming back and messing up the child’s future with poverty.”
And what about the children? Did Mr. Caruthers think they didn’t miss their parents, that—
“This is hardly a cold, impersonal orphanage, Rouge,” said the mind-reading director. “Each of the housemothers has one scholarship child in her care all year round. A very stable environment.”
Rouge turned back to the window. David was gone again. The end of the wharf was deserted. Now the boy reemerged on the other side of the dense clot of pines, all but standing at attention and staring at the boathouse. Then he turned abruptly to look back toward the school. David was too far away for Rouge to guess the focus point of the boy’s eyes, but there was an unsettling feeling of communion.
Without turning away from the window, Rouge said, “David’s high in the genius range, right? Are you planning to make him into a little scientist, sir?”
“We don’t do that, Rouge. We never interfere with the child’s ambition. It wasn’t done to you or Susan, was it? No, of course not. That would be counter to our interests. We’re in the prediction business.” Mr. Caruthers swiveled his chair around to look out the window, and together they watched the child walk back up the hill toward the school.
Rouge pulled out his notebook and pen. “What do you predict for David?”
“I’d say he has a future in baseball. That’s based on his passion and physical aptitude. We never made that prediction for you, Rouge. Even though your case was marred by the loss of wealth, I believe our original prophecy will play out.”
Mr. Caruthers moved his chair around to face his visitor, and there was a vague disappointment in the man’s eyes, perhaps because Rouge seemed not to care about this portent of his own future. The director went on in a drier recital. “Later in life, David will be drawn to a second career in physics. That’s based on his intellectual gifts.”
Now the boy was standing on the grass under the window. Rouge looked past the child to the lake and wondered what that little scene had been about. David was also staring at the lake and nodding his head.
Something was going on here. David turned his small face up to the window. Their eyes met, and Rouge was hardly paying attention to the school’s director anymore.
What am I missing, David?
“The personality profiles tell us much more interesting things,” said Mr. Caruthers. “And very early on. You and your sister for instance. By the time you and Susan were eight, we knew you were both destined for formidable careers in law.”
David walked away in the direction of the cottage. Rouge looked down at his notebook and made a crude map of the wharf and the boathouse.
Mr. Caruthers droned on, “Your own profile was matched with distinguished graduates over the past hundred years. But you were unique for the way you processed information. We always had a keen interest in your future.”
“And my father’s money.” Rouge made a note on the stand of pine trees between the window and the boathouse.
“The high tuition favors the student with money to exploit his full potential. Without that backing, the child might not reach the projected goal, and that would ruin our statistics.”
“Like I did?”
“Did you, Rouge? It was regrettable that you had to leave Princeton, but understandable with your father’s death, all the family debts—and your mother’s
health
problems. Now that year in baseball was a fascinating quirk. But I found it more interesting that you became a policeman. And now with your recent promotion to BCI investigator, you seem to have found your calling. You were quite literally born to do this work.”
Rouge shifted in his chair. He was feeling naked and not liking it at all. Though the director persisted in his Santa Claus persona, the doppelganger seemed darker now.
“Surprised, Rouge? Did you think we’d lost interest in you? Oh, no. We’re always collecting data.”
“I need to know more about the girls.” He turned to a new page in his notebook. “Could they outsmart the average adult?”
“Don’t count on it. Gwen Hubble has the higher IQ—close to yours. However, she’s very literal—no good at subterfuge.” He sorted through the papers in her file. “Based on extensive psychological profiles, I predict that she will physically and emotionally shut down in any fearful situation. I’d say her prospects of finding her own way home are rather bleak.”
“And Sadie Green?”
“Completely different story. Sadie once managed to outwit the school nurse
and
the village police. She faked her own death with an arrow.”
“That was her?” Rouge remembered the day, only three weeks ago: Two of the village cops had come back to the station at the end of their shift; one was laughing, and the other man’s face was red with humiliation. Chief Croft still tormented the poor rookie who had called for the county meat wagon. The town’s youngest officer, Billy Poor, had never suspected that the arrow in the child’s chest might be a prop decorated with fake blood—not until the little girl jumped up and ran away laughing. Patrolman Poor had sworn that the child’s eyes never blinked, and this had been his criterion for a corpse.