"Detectives." The principal, Noah Lawson pushed himself inbetween the two large bodies of Logan and Goren. Noah grabbed a hold of me, pulling me out of the cold courtyard and back into the hallway. "I believe I requested that you not interview Ms. Royer without proper representation from the school." I watched Logan shrug, and look almost innocent.
"We must've misunderstood your instructions." Logan offered. I could tell it was a bald-faced lie.
"Lynne. Where are your shoes?" Noah asked me, the observation seemed almost humorously inconsequential, effectively taking the edge of my diatribe. I looked down at my feet, doing my best to suppress the nausea rising up in my throat from the adrenaline rapidly abating from my system.
"Principal Lawson." Detective Goren started speaking. He was moving his hands around, completely distracting me from the next thing he said. My legs felt weak, as if they could no longer hold my weight. I wanted to say something. I wanted to know how this could happen. I wanted to know what went wrong, where I went wrong. I had followed every rule. I had reported the abuse. I had talked to the correct people. They had given me the appropriate assurances. I had believed them. I tried to listen to the conversation between Detective Goren and Principal Lawson. I could see their lips moving, but I could not make out what they were saying. I closed my eyes and licked my dry lips. The hallway felt like it was flipping upside down around me. The last thing I felt was the hard smack of the floor against the side of my face.
"Mrs. Royer." The next time I saw Detectives Logan and Goren it was the following day. I was walking down the block and they were sitting on the stoop to my building. Well, Logan was sitting on the stoop, Goren was leaning against a low brick wall. I slowed my pace, not wanting to come upon them any sooner than I had to. In the five minutes leading up to running into them, I had not thought about what had happened to Lucas Yoder. Now, everything was flooding my insides again, the guilt, the anger, the grief.
"Lynne." I felt inexplicably exasperated. "If you cannot get anything else right, like maybe conducting an investigation while Lucas was still alive, at least you can get my name right. My name, it's Lynne." They both looked at me, blinking. Actually, Goren was looming, awkwardly shifting his weight from side to side. But Logan, he was definitely blinking with a bit of surprise. "What is it that you need from me Detectives?" I asked, fixing a rather saccharine smile on my face.
"What is that, um, Louisiana? Maybe the coast?" Goren asked. I shifted my eyes in his direction, now it was my turn to blink. Was he actually commenting on my accent?
"Do I sound stupid to you?" I asked, my voice honeyed with the south. New Yorkers - as soon as they heard a southern inflection, they assumed you were dumb as a stump.
"No, um, you just, uh, well you, uh… I like the sound, the sound of you, that slight drawl you have, kind of comes through when you're upset, maybe." Goren offered. Wow, I thought to myself, he really was quite odd. I looked at Logan, who was also looking at Goren like he was odd.
"What can I do for you detectives?" I repeated, keeping my eyes fixed on Logan. Part of me wondered if they were playing me - Goren setting me off balance with his odd remark, Logan subtly empathizing with me.
"We were hoping to talk with you a bit about Lucas Yoder." Logan remained sitting. I stood over him, looking down at him, into his pale irises.
"Ok…" I took a breath, trying to settle my frayed nerves. I thought about inviting them inside, offering them something to drink. For years, my mother had entrenched in me the necessity to extend these simple niceties. But, I was not feeling particularly nice. I reached up and touched my cheekbone, which was incredibly sore from cracking against the floor at school the previous afternoon as I had fainted dead away in front of them both.
"Are you feeling better today?" Goren asked. I rounded on him, he was so easy to get mad at, the way he moved, the way he talked, set me off.
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" I asked him, my mouth slightly open, amazed at his obtuse remark. "What do I have to feel better about?" I stared at him, and much to my chagrin, I could feel tears burbling up inside of me. I felt awful. I felt as if I had played things differently, Lucas might still be alive.
"You fainted." Goren stated, turning things around, making me feel stupid. He had noticed me touching my cheek, hell he probably had even noticed me wince slightly. He wasn't asking me if I felt better about my role in what happened to Lucas Yoder, he was literally asking me if I felt better, perhaps wondering if I was going to collapse again if they started pressing me with questions.
"I'm not going to faint." I looked into Goren's brown gaze. I could feel him studying me, looking inside of me, making decisions about me. So, I looked away. "At least, I don't feel faint right now." I mumbled.
"We're trying to get some information straight." Logan offered, he was now standing, pad of paper and pen in hand. Left-right, left-right, left-right, again the way he was flipping the pen held my eyes.
"Ok." I replied. "Ask me your questions." I tore my gaze away from the pen and looked into Logan's eyes.
"You met with Principal Lawson on Friday afternoon." Logan stated, and looked at me expectantly. He had not exactly asked me a question. I thought about pressing him on that point, but I refrained.
"Yes. I'd say maybe about 20 minutes after changing Lucas's shirt, I turned the class over to my teaching assistant. I went directly to Noah's office. I described what I saw and Noah immediately contacted the school nurse and the school psychologist. They asked that I bring Lucas to the nurse's office. So, I returned to my classroom, and brought Lucas to the Jackie's office. Jackie was there, waiting for Maria, our school psychologist to arrive. I left Lucas with them. He was with them for about an hour, at which time Maria brought him back to class. There were only about 30 minutes left in the school day, so he finished the day with me. Maria returned to pick him up at the end of the day, so he did not leave with the other kids and go home as usual." I breathed in deeply through my nose, feeling the air mixing with my thoughts. "After school, I went by Maria's office. I was thinking maybe I would find Lucas there, with her. But he wasn't there. Maria assured me that they were in the process of opening an investigation with the appropriate authorities. I asked about Lucas, I asked about where he was. Maria said she would be able to share more on Monday." I was looking at Detective Logan the entire time, waiting for him to look at me. He was jotting down information onto his pad of paper. When he looked up at me, I could feel my self start to shake. Something in his expression, something sympathetic, made my insides crumble. As if this case was killing him as well. "I did, you know, I did what I was supposed to do…" My words felt so incredibly lame.
"We see in September you filed a letter with Principal Lawson about your interaction with Mrs. Patricia Yoder at a parent-teacher conference." Logan replied. I could hear a slight hitch in his tone, as if he was having a difficult time sticking to the business of his questions.
"You see that?" I asked, surprised that they had information about that letter.
At the parent-teacher conference, Mrs. Yoder had clearly been intoxicated. I wasn't actually certain if she was straight-on drunk, or somehow altered by some medication or narcotic. I had drafted a memo, of sorts, documenting my concerns that Mrs. Yoder had shown up at school for a formal meeting in such a condition. I had shared it with Noah. When Noah had debriefed me about my observations, he had made it clear that I needed to be absolutely certain in terms of my allegations. Patricia Yoder was a congress person's daughter, and her family was a generous benefactor to the school, and as such, she received a certain VIP treatment. I was extremely peeved at Noah's implication that I should overlook Mrs. Yoder's clearly altered state, so I had copied both Jackie and Maria on the letter. I assumed that either Jackie or Maria had filed the letter and shared it with Detectives Logan and Goren.
"Is this connected somehow?" I whispered the words, closing my eyes. An alcoholic mother, or maybe a drug addicted mother. An abused little boy. I felt sick, slightly off balance again. Detective Goren reached out and held me by my shoulder, moving me toward the low brick wall. I placed my palms flat down against the brick, waiting for the nausea to subside.
"Have you had any other occasion to interact with Mrs. Patricia Yoder?" Logan asked. I was shaking my head no. "Have you had occasion to interact with Mr. Kevin Yoder?" Logan asked, referring to Lucas's father. I kept shaking my head no. "I don't think we have any other questions for you at this time." I changed the direction of my nodding to the yes direction, to indicate that I understood what he was saying. On the surface, Logan and Goren seemed like pure business. But in that moment, their body language conveyed something different. I could feel Goren breathing, deep and uneven. He was running his hand against the back of his neck, his angst practically palpable. I glanced at Logan, and could see his frustrations etched in his pale green eyes. They both had a personal stake in this investigation.
Before I continued inside, I watched them walk down the street, get into their car, and pull away from the curb. After they left, I noticed a brown leather zippered portfolio resting a few feet away from my hands on the low brick wall. Goren's portfolio. I wondered if Goren had left this belonging behind on purpose, an excuse of sorts to poke and prod at me some more.
TBC