“Tell Jenny Berrien to go fuck herself.”
Chapter 63
Berrien was waiting for me in the parking lot when I emerged from the main building.
“Well?”
“You’re right,” I said.“He doesn’t like you.He asked me to pass on a message, but I don’t have a nickel for the swear jar.”
“That fucking prick,” said Berrien, who obviously had a dime.“Did he reveal anything useful, apart from a fondness for expletives?”
Call me cold, but I wasn’t about to tell Berrien anything more than I had to.On the other hand, I was curious to see any paperwork she might have gathered concerning Teal and Spero.I was sure she had such material, quietly copied and filedaway.
“He claimed it’s common knowledge in the department that he volunteers at Spero,” I said.“Is that true?”
“I guess so.I mean, Teal doesn’t advertise it by wearing a Spero baseball cap, but if anyone asks, he’s up-front.No conflict of interest exists because the department is no longer funding the school.”
“Did it strike anyone as odd?”
“In what sense?”
“Teal admitted to being part of the snatch squads that forcibly remove teenagers from their homes.It’s not an activity most of us would sign up for.”
Berrien’s scowl deepened.
“I didn’t know that about him,” said Berrien.“It doesn’t make me feel any warmer toward him—and they call them ‘transport teams,’ but ‘snatch squads’ sounds more appropriate.”
The air was growing appreciably colder as the sky darkened further.Now I wished I’d worn a warmer jacket.
“If you’re right,” I said, “and Teal was skimming from the department, how much money might be involved?”
“That’s hard to gauge,” said Berrien.“Conservatively, a mid-five-figure sum, but it could be higher.However, for Teal to have engaged in fraud, someone at Spero would have been required to collude.We knew how much money was going to Spero, and the authorities there knew how much they were meant to receive, so no funds could be siphoned off before they reached the school.But we couldn’t keep close tabs on how the money was spent when it got there, or if it was spent at all.We saw financial plans, and were provided with details of disbursement, but Teal was the only means of guaranteeing their accuracy.”
Until 2011, Berrien explained, the Maine Department of Education had insisted on annual audits of private academies receiving public funding.That requirement was then repealed for a decade or more, covering the period during which Spero was in receipt of funds.Now private schools needed only to give details of total expenditure, and in the case of nonprofits, like Spero when it first opened, no distinction existed between public and private funding, which made it even harder to track spending.
“If I’m right,” she said, “and Teal was taking a cut, it was with the knowledge of someone at Spero.”
“And by ‘someone,’” I said, “you mean Santopietro.”
“Even if Santopietro wasn’t directly involved, he’d have known about it when the figures didn’t add up.But why would Santopietro stay quiet unless he was one of the beneficiaries?”
And why stop claiming departmental funding if he and Teal had a good thing going?If Berrien was correct, the skim was modest, especially given the latest overall statewide audit, which revealed systemic mismanagement and a lack of oversight amounting to billions of dollars across multiple departments.As long as Santopietro and Teal didn’t get too greedy, they could probably have garnished their respective salaries for years tocome.
“How much do you think Santopietro is making from the school?”I asked.
“He keeps numbers low,” said Berrien, “but he’s probably averaging four or five thousand a month for the handful of longer-term students, and more for those whose parents are hoping a short, sharp shock will cure them.I don’t think he’s ever accepted more than twenty kids, so a hundred thousand a month would be my rough estimate.”
That was a lot of money.A parent could send their child to a good university for less than an academic year at Spero might cost.
“So your department effectively subsidized him while he found his feet?”
“It did, but back then Santopietro’s model emphasized education over correction.I’m not sure that holds true any longer.I judge the quality of these places by the number of counselors and therapists they retain, and Spero isn’t big on counseling or therapy.”
Teal had stayed in contact with the school even after it cut ties with the department.Setting aside altruistic motives, because Teal didn’t come across as the type, it meant he had to be getting something else out of the deal.It might have been that Teal really did enjoy terrorizing kids, or watching them being terrorized by others, which brought me back to Scott Theriault, who had hated Spero enough to try to escape multiple times.Was Teal lying about not knowing him?It would be hard to prove, and more so after our recent conversation, since there was a good chance Teal was already sharing with Santopietro all that had transpired.If they were concocting a story between them, now was the time to get it straight.
I hit the unlock button on my key fob and my headlights lit up.
“If you want to share any paperwork that sheds light on your suspicions, I’ll take a look at it,” I told Berrien, “but only to satisfy my curiosity.Teal could be piling the department’s furniture into a box truck on weekends and it wouldn’t cost me a minute’s sleep.His office chair looked so much nicer than mine, I might even be tempted to make him an offer.”
