“But you’re convinced it couldn’t have been Andrea.” Jace didn’t bother to hide his sarcasm.
“Yes. And I’m
not
convinced the two are related.”
“So you have stuff like this happening around here all the time? Dr. Campbell?” Jace demanded of the principal when it was clear Lindsey didn’t intend to give him an answer.
“It’s Mr. Campbell,” the principal corrected, “and of course, we don’t. I don’t believe we’ve ever had a student commit suicide. Not in the twenty-three years I’ve been here. We’ve had deaths, of course. Most of them driving mishaps—”
“Then you’re lucky,” Jace said shortly. “Remarkably so.”
“I know. And since we can’t predict how the kids will respond, the county’s sending everyone they’ve got out to talk to our classes. It can become epidemic, you know.”
“Suicides?”
“Some from grief. More often because they long for or are jealous of the attention the victim’s getting,” Campbell said. “Kind of a ‘look how everyone will miss me when I’m gone’ syndrome. It seems we’re dealing with a variety of issues today, detective. Although what happened to Lindsey is both shocking and unforgivable, it isn’t going to be our top priority right now. I’m sure you understand.”
“If you think Andrea’s suicide on the heels of the attack on Ms. Sloan is coincidence, you’re ignoring the obvious.”
“Like Lindsey, I’m not convinced these things are connected. Not any of them.”
“But you admit it’s a possibility.”
“Right now, since we have no idea what precipitated Andrea’s suicide, I’ll have to. Maybe when we know more—”
“The autopsy results should be back early next week.”
Campbell’s face changed, his expression conveying his emotional reaction. Jace felt Lindsey stir in the chair beside his, bringing his attention back to her.
“Is that necessary?” she asked. “They know how she died…”
“Her mother gave permission. Given the department’s concern that this school might be connected to the arsons—”
“Don’t you mean
your
concern?”
Her copper-colored eyes were filled with bitterness, and Jace found himself regretting that. Still, he had a job to do. One he was going to do to the best of his ability. Even if Lindsey Sloan didn’t approve of the way he went about it.
What he had asked for was well within the boundaries of his investigation. He could appreciate her feelings about the autopsy, just as he’d been sympathetic to the reaction of the girl’s mother. That didn’t mean he regretted asking for it.
“You’re right. It’s my call. And my responsibility. One I take as seriously as you take yours, Ms. Sloan. Now if you’ll both excuse me,” Jace said, getting to his feet, “I’ll let you get back to dealing with the impact of Andrea Moore’s death on your school and its students. And I’ll get back to dealing with its impact on my investigation.”
“
I
hoped you’d be here,” Shannon said, as she came into the teacher’s lounge. Dropping her belongings on the table behind the couch she sat down, using the fingers of both hands to push her hair away from her face. “I went by your room to convince you to drop by if you weren’t already planning to.”
“God, I thought this day would never end.”
Lindsey had also wanted to talk about Andrea’s suicide with someone with whom she could be completely honest.
“Yeah, me, too. Any more coffee?”
Lindsey turned, picking up Shannon’s mug and filling it. She walked over to the couch, holding it out. As one of the counselors, Shannon had probably had more to deal with today than any of the rest of the staff, including her.
“I feel like I’ve taken a beating.” Shannon took the cup, cradling it between her palms as if to warm her hands.
“Was it awful?”
Shannon ignored the question, maybe considering it rhetorical. She took a swallow of coffee before she raised her eyes. “You meet with Nolan?”
Lindsey nodded. “He talked to everyone who taught her.”
“And with me. I don’t know what the cops think we can tell them. Talk about the last-to-know.”
A small silence fell as Shannon took another sip from her mug. Lindsey sat down on the opposite couch, mentally preparing to share the burden of her guilt.
“She came to see me yesterday afternoon. She said she wanted to talk about Monday’s test, but…Maybe if I’d given her the right opening, she would have told me how she was feeling.”
“And maybe if I’d been the kind of counselor who was close to the students I’m assigned, she would have told me what was so wrong she had to go home and slit her wrists. You sure you want to play the blame game with me, Linds?”
Shannon’s tone was savage, but Lindsey knew her well enough to know that was caused by a regret equal to hers.
“The tragic thing is,” Shannon went on, her voice still caustic, “there probably wasn’t all that much to whatever it was. Somebody said her thighs were too fat or something. Insult
du jour.
Let’s all go cut our wrists.”
“Don’t.”
“I know. It’s just…God, why don’t they think?”
“They do. Just not like us.”
“I know. I know,” Shannon said tiredly. “Jay Burke said it perfectly today. Their brains aren’t done. I’ve read all those studies about their control centers not being fully functional. The impulsiveness. Not realizing consequences. But doesn’t that just say it all—their brains aren’t done.”
“You ever talk to her about the depression?”
“Nope. Nor did Beth.” Beth Taylor was the tenth grade counselor, who would have dealt with Andrea during the previous school year. “I mean obviously we both talked to her about her schedule. What classes she wanted to take. I saw her this summer at registration. You know what a zoo that was.”
Beth and Shannon were both conscientious about their duties. It was just that they had so many of them now. Scheduling. State-mandated testing. And the same Mickey-Mouse, everyone-takes-a-turn crap like monitoring the halls and sponsoring clubs and chaperoning after-school activities.
“Jace said she’d been in therapy for a couple of years,” Lindsey offered. Maybe that would help with Shannon’s guilt.
“Had there been other attempts?”
“I don’t know. If Jace knew—and he’d talked to her mother—he didn’t say.”
“Maybe she didn’t mean for it to happen. Sometimes they don’t. They just want everybody to feel bad about how mean they’ve been.”
“If she wasn’t serious, wouldn’t she have had time to call 9-1-1 before…? I mean it wasn’t immediate. She must have had a few minutes when she realized what she’d done.”
“One of the kids said she was in the shower. How the hell do they know things like that when we don’t? Don’t answer that. We don’t know because nobody tells us. Sometimes I wonder why we’re even here.”
Shannon put her forehead against the rim of her mug. When she looked up again, the anger seemed to have drained away. Her eyes reflected exhaustion and despair.
“Maybe with the hot water—” she began. “Shit, I don’t know. I’m no expert. God knows I don’t want to be. I hope we never have another suicide as long as I’m here.”
“Dave said there hasn’t been one during his twenty-three years.”
“You think that’s religion? The lack of suicides. Because all of them go to church? Do they still teach it’s a sin?”
They didn’t
all
attend church, but a huge portion did. This was the heart of the Bible belt, and that still meant something in a place like Randolph, Alabama.
“I don’t know. I feel like I don’t know anything. You think having the grief counselors here helped?”
Lindsey’s gifted kids had not been impressed. The people the county had sent out, many of them elementary school personnel, had not related well to that particular segment of the school’s population. After hearing the comments her students had made, Lindsey had wondered if they had related to any of them well.
“Who knows? We keep saying that, don’t we?”
“I just keep thinking that if I’d pulled her into my room and closed the door and then sat down with her…” Lindsey’s now-familiar litany ground to a halt.
“Maybe she really did just want to talk about the test. Whatever triggered this could have happened after she left school. You can’t know. You probably won’t ever know.”
That was the problem. She would always wonder what difference it might have made if she’d given Andrea more of her time. More concern and attention. Instead, she’d been thinking about what she needed to take home and hurrying to practice.
“What are your kids saying?” Shannon asked.
“They’re as shocked as we were. I don’t think Andrea was all that close to many of them. Which in itself is kind of sad.”
“It’s all sad. So much potential lost. What’s that old saw about suicide? Permanent solution to a temporary problem.”
“Now we have to prevent any of the rest of them from thinking it’s
any
kind of solution.”
“Guidance should probably work up a list of warning signs for the faculty. Do you know when the funeral is? The most dangerous time for a copycat will be immediately following. The drama, the tears, the whole focus on her death.”
“Dave said this morning arrangements hadn’t been finalized. They’re doing an autopsy.”
“Oh, God.” Shannon again made that habitual sweep of her hair back from her face. “The thought makes me ill.”
“Jace suggested she might have had some part in the thing with the snake. He said that otherwise, her coming to talk to me seemed too much of a coincidence.”
“You buy that?”
“No. Do you?”
“I wish I could say I knew Andrea well enough to have an opinion one way or the other. Granted, she doesn’t seem the type, but…Frankly, I didn’t get that much of a psychological profile going from talking to her about whether she should sign up for chemistry or AP biology.”
“I knew her.”
Just not well enough to know about the depression or the possibility of suicide.
“At least I taught her last year. I just can’t see her being involved.”
“Maybe she came to your room not because she was involved, but because she knew something. You said Jace was convinced that, too, was done by somebody in your program. Kids talk. Maybe Andrea overheard something. She’s the type no one would notice. And that’s also a sad commentary on this place.”
The familiar squeak of the lounge door warned them their conversation was no longer private. They both turned, waiting for the intruder to clear the partial partition that created a small anteroom adjacent to the seating area.
Lindsey was surprised when Walt Harrison walked into the lounge. Although she and Shannon usually stayed later than anyone else in the afternoons, there was a crew of semi-regulars who came by for end-of-the-day coffee or to wait until the traffic had cleared. Walt wasn’t among them.
“Hey,” he said, nodding to them. “I thought I might find somebody here today.”
“Join us,” Lindsey invited, sliding over to make a place for him on the couch. “Want coffee? I can make another pot.”
“Not for me. I can’t drink it this late. So what do you know?” Walt eased down on the end of the sofa, looking from one of them to the other.
“Not much more than I did this morning,” Lindsey said. “And I’ve still heard nothing about the arrangements.”
“Burial on Tuesday, is what I heard. Pending the coroner releasing the body.”
It sounded cold and clinical. Something out of one of the TV forensics shows rather than the reality of this community.
“Well, obviously you know more than we do,” Shannon said. “The kids say anything to you about a possible reason?”
Walt looked uncomfortable, but clearly he had wanted to talk or he wouldn’t be here. After a moment’s hesitation, he answered. “They say she was pregnant.”
“Pregnant?”
Lindsey repeated in disbelief.
Even here that wasn’t an unprecedented occurrence. And normally not grounds for suicide. That might depend on Andrea’s home situation, of course, something she knew too little about.
“By whom?” Shannon asked.
Walt shrugged.
“I didn’t even know she had a boyfriend,” Lindsey offered.
“Not a necessity,” Shannon said. “Not these days.”
Dating had not yet been completely replaced by “hooking up” or whatever the current teen term for casual sex was, but despite the religious values of the region, the kids at Randolph-Lowen weren’t immune to the messages bombarding them from the national culture. It would be naïve to believe that just because they were in church on Sunday morning, they weren’t out having sex, often unprotected, on Saturday night.
“Is Tim okay?” Shannon asked.
“I don’t know. That’s why I’m here. I thought I’d wait for him to get his instrument and music together and talk about this on the way home.”
Lindsey realized that she’d forgotten about the game tonight. The customary Friday-afternoon pep rally had been cancelled, but due to the tightness of the season and the playoff structure, it would have been difficult if not impossible to cancel the game. Unless she could think about some way to get out of it, she would be expected to work in the ticket booth.
“That’s probably a good idea,” Shannon said. “Just let him ‘debrief.’ Let him tell you everything he’s thinking and feeling, Walt, no matter how hard it is to hear. That is,
if
he’ll tell you.”
“Tim’s a good kid. And we talk. I didn’t want him to hear a lot of garbage from the guys he usually rides home with.”
Wanting to be with his son after a day like this was reason enough for Walt to play chauffer, but Lindsey didn’t quite understand his last comment. “Garbage about Andrea?”
“About the suicide. Cutting. The whole nasty bundle.”
“Cutting?”
“She had a history of that. It seems a lot of the kids knew about it. You never noticed she always wore long sleeves?”
The image of Andrea standing in her doorway, fingers nervously plucking at the wrist of a long-sleeved knit top, played through Lindsey’s mind. In spite of the September heat, she’d thought nothing about the girl’s attire. The building was air-conditioned, sometimes uncomfortably so. Lindsey always kept a sweater over the back of her own chair.
“A manifestation of her depression,” Shannon said.
“I’ve read about cutting, but…I always thought that was something that would go on somewhere else. Somebody else’s kids. Pretty stupid, huh?” Walt’s smile was self-mocking.
It would probably have been comforting to believe that. Especially if you had a sixteen-year-old of your own.
“You know, you’d think parents would make us aware of stuff like that. How are we supposed to help kids if we don’t know what the hell is going on with them?”
Shannon’s complaint was valid, but there was still a stigma attached to mental illness, even depression. No teen was going to want that kind of information blazoned across his permanent record. Most parents would probably agree.
“She told me everything was more stressful this year,” Lindsey said.
“We aren’t a month into school yet,” Walt said. “How much stress could there be?”
“If what the kids are saying is true…”
“Whether there was a reason for it or not, she was obviously
feeling
a lot of pressure,” Shannon added. “She probably went home yesterday afternoon and gave in to the urge to cut. Supposedly, the act itself relieves tension. And if she
were
in therapy, then after she’d done it, she probably felt as if she’d failed. Lost control. Regressed.” Shannon shook her head. “It would have made her feel even worse about herself than she did before. Maybe at some point the thought surfaced that with just a couple of slightly deeper cuts she wouldn’t have to feel that bad ever again.”
“Surely, when she realized what was happening—” Lindsey stopped midway through the sentence. She could have no idea what the girl had been thinking. None of them could.
The only thing she would ever know for sure was that Andrea had showed up at her door the day she’d killed herself, and Lindsey had told her she didn’t have time to talk. That was something she would have to live with the rest of her life.
“Pretty much shoots my theory to hell,” Shannon said.
“I don’t know.” That phrase again. “Maybe…Maybe she’d talked to the boy and he didn’t believe her. Or didn’t offer to help. Her mom’s at work, so—”
“You know, I can’t do this anymore.” Shannon stood up abruptly. “Maybe tomorrow I can figure out what went wrong in Andrea Moore’s life, but right now…Right now, I need to go home and think about mine.” She crossed over to the sink while Lindsey and Walt sat, stunned to silence. She rinsed out her mug and put it back on the lunchroom tray upside down. “See you guys Monday morning.”
“Shannon—”
“No more. We’re just picking at the carcass here.” She gathered up her belongings from the table. “None of us has got a clue what was going on with that girl. We need to admit it.”
She started toward the door to the hall. From outside came the sound of young voices, obviously students. Shannon stopped as if she’d hit a physical barrier. “Shit.”