“Okay, so I won’t ask them that.Actually, I was going to ask them whether Scott might secretly have been seeing a girl, someone from Bingham.”
Santopietro went very still.
“Which girl might you be referring to?”
“Mallory Norton,” I said.
“You really are intent on stirring up trouble for its own sake, aren’t you?Scott Theriault wasn’t seeing any girl.How couldhe?He wasn’t even allowed into town for the bulk of his time here because of all the rules he broke.”
“She could have traveled up here to meet him.He didn’t have to cycle to Bingham or hitch a ride down.”
“But she didn’t.”
“How do you know?Teenagers are cunning, and you and your staff have to sleep sometime.”
“This is speculation,” said Santopietro.“You have no proof.”
“If there’s proof, I’ll find it,” I said.“It’s what I do, and I’m very good at it.Anyway, I’m starting to like it up here.The fresh air agrees with me.”
I rubbed my hand along the wood frame of the toolshed, my fingertips following the grain.
“Who else volunteers to snatch children for you, Mr Santopietro?”
“It’s time you were going,” he said.“I have work to do.”
I didn’t move.
“You establish a school way up on a remote plantation, where even the law is nebulous,” I said.“Anyone might think you didn’t want to be noticed.You want to expand your operation, yet you elected to cease drawing state funding.Declining it gave you independence, but it also meant you could go about your ‘mission’ without having to worry about supervision by the department.Again, there you go, hiding your light under a bushel.But at the same time, the original department supervisor, Roger Teal, chooses to volunteer his services out of the goodness of his heart.”
“I don’t care for your tone,” said Santopietro.
“And I don’t care for your school.”
Santopietro took out his phone.
“If you don’t leave in the next sixty seconds,” he said, “I’ll call nine-one-one to inform them that we have a trespasser on the property and I’m anxious for the safety of my students and staff.I’ll tell them that, due to the intruder’s profession, I have reason to believe he might have brought a firearm onto the campus in breach of the law.I’ll advise them that I have locked down the students in light of the threat posed by this man.”
As it happened, I’d left my gun in the car and parked outside precisely because I’d be entering a school, but an arriving state trooper or county deputy wouldn’t know that.At best, I’d end up doing a lot of explaining; at worst, I could get shot.Somewhere in the middle lay the prospect of enjoying the comforts of a cell in Madison or Skowhegan.I raised my hands in acquiescence and walked away.Santopietro stayed with me as far as the main building, where he remained with his cell phone at the ready.Over by the cabins, Renders leaned against the frame of an open door, his arms folded against his chest.
My grandfather—who, like the best of older people, was really a younger person in disguise—taught me a skill he said would prove useful in later life, regardless of the path I chose.Here’s how you start: You walk into a new room and take time to notice five qualities about it.After a week, or two weeks, you make it six, then seven.Soon, it’s second nature to you.On one level, it’s a useful way of grounding yourself in the moment, because we live in a world predicated on distraction.But if your job is also dependent on spotting what’s missing, or what doesn’t belong, the ability to take in with one glance a room, a house, a property, or a person, becomes essential.With practice, the dissonances you pick up may no longer even be physical because you’ve adapted to wrongness in all its forms.
I hadn’t learned much from my visit to the Spero, but I’d learned enough: The school couldn’t have been further out of plumb if it stood on one side, and that went double for Santopietro and Renders.
Here were subtle men.
Chapter 93
Ipicked up two coffees and a bag of donuts at Jimmy’s on my way back to the Motor Inn.Sabine Drew’s car was parked in the lot when I pulled in.She knocked on my door a couple of minutes later.I handed her a coffee and gave her a choice of donuts.I sat on the bed, my back against the headboard, while Sabine took the room’s only chair.
“How did your visit to Spero go?”she asked.
“I poked a stick through the bars,” I said.
“Why?”
“Because it’s what I’m being paid to do.”
“I thought you were being paid to investigate Scott Theriault’s death.”
