Page 72 of A River Red With Blood
“Like what?”
“Intruders, maybe?”Elgot suggested.“Local kids with too much time on their hands?”
“Is that what Kaspar said?Did he tell you it was boys who had scared him?”
Elgot decided to tell the truth, if not the whole truth.
“He did.”
The shadow, Elgot saw, had now settled on Renders.The man was unnerved.
“I accept that the rest of the students might have been in the hall when Kaspar was discovered,” said Santopietro, “but we don’t know how long he spent in hiding before then.It’s possible that some of the others were picking on him before movie time was called.”
Elgot didn’t bother arguing.He didn’t believe it, and from the look on his face, he didn’t think Renders believed it either.
“I’d better be getting back,” said Elgot.
“I’ll make a general address to the school in the morning,” said Santopietro.“We can’t have any escalation, not after all that’s happened.”
Elgot nodded.Renders seemed about to follow him when Santopietro held him back.
“A minute, Mr Renders.”
Renders returned to the office with Santopietro, closing the door behind him.
“Could this be Levesque acting up again?”
Renders replied that he didn’t think so.Since the incident in the ablution block, the staff had been keeping tabs on Leonard Levesque, Renders more than most.
“And what Elgot said about intruders?”Santopietro persisted.“I saw your face.Is there something you haven’t told me?”
Renders shifted uneasily.
“A few nights ago,” he said, “I thought I heard noises outside my room, in the yard.It sounded like voices whispering—boys’ voices—but when I went outside, there was no one.”
He didn’t mention the separate occurrence, on the night Anthony Marshall was attacked, when he’d watched from besidehis bed as someone tried to open his locked door, someone who had managed to evade a motion-activated light so sensitive that a big moth could set it off.Nor did he speak of a darkness that was too dark, and a conviction that whatever waited in it wanted Renders’s curiosity to get the better of him, wanted him to come closer, close enough for it to be able to take hold of him and draw him to itself.
“What time was this?”
“It was after one,” said Renders.“I remember looking at the clock.”
Santopietro was dubious.
“We haven’t experienced that kind of intrusion in a while, not since the Shackfords moved away.”
The Shackfords had been what passed for bad news in The Plains, their property resembling a junkyard, the extended family scattered over two or three decaying cabins and subsisting on welfare and minor criminality.Some of the younger Shackfords had taken to taunting Spero’s students, even dealing out a cursory beating when they caught any of them outnumbered, or better still, alone.Then, six months earlier, someone had burned the Shackfords out, the fire spreading so fast, thanks to a northerly wind, that it was a miracle no one died.The Shackfords weren’t short of enemies and had no friends at all, so few tears were shed outside the immediate clan, and its members subsequently scattered.An investigation by the Somerset County Sheriff’s Office and the Maine State Fire Marshal concluded that gasoline was the accelerant, but no obvious suspects presented themselves; in fact, there were so many potential candidates that it was less time-consuming to identify the innocent.Santopietro assisted with the sheriff’s inquiries as best he could, and attested to the noninvolvement of the students under his care.He decided not to bring up the beating Leonard Levesque had taken from Emile Shackford and two of his cousins a week or so before the fire.After all, boys would be boys.
“I might have been mistaken about the voices,” said Renders.“I’d had a long day.”
But he didn’t think he was.
“And Kaspar Filipowski?”
“He might have been mistaken too.”
“He does have a nervous disposition,” said Santopietro.“The kindest thing we can do is strengthen him.In the meantime, talk to Levesque, see if he can shed any light on the situation.”
Renders examined his fingernails.
