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Furious

by

Fashionably Stupid

Chapter Four: Caesar Who Was Only Slumming

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Secretly, this was Alex's favorite part of the investigation, the interviews, and she particularly enjoyed interviewing on her own. She left the interrogation to Bobby, though. They always cracked because of Bobby.

She walked down the emptying hallways of the school, marveling at the sheer volume of adolescents. When she and Bobby had been walking to the library, she had been in amazement that such a small school could hold so many students, plus faculty, plus staff. She watched them all hurrying towards her and was seized by the impulse to stand absolutely still and let them trample her. When she got up enough money, she wanted to fly to Pamplona and run with the bulls. In the deepest chambers of her heart, that was maybe how she wanted to die. She felt a hand on her arm.

"Are you here about Clare?"

the young man who spoke could not be described as handsome, per se, so much as distinctly average. His gray uniform didn't fit him well but his hair was too well-combed to imply nonchalance.

"Yep. Did you know her?"

"Not really. We had Calculus together. She was terrible at it. And she'd, like, freak out in the middle of class and just start crying."

Alex didn't really know what to say. She stared at the boy for a moment, opening her mouth to speak several times, but never actually saying anything. It was the boy who spoke.

"Yeah, well, I gotta go. I'm really sorry she died."

He left without another word. Alex stood still for a minute, being jostled by the students. Were they all sad that Clare was dead? Clearly there was at least one who wasn't. She continued to gently fight her way through the crowd, heading to room 153, in the history wing.

When she reached it, she rapped surely on the open door.

"Yes, please come in." Mrs. Wiley-Hart, a silver-haired woman in her mid fifties, Clare's 20th Century American History instructor, stood from her desk and flashed Alex a smile that soon faded to a knowing somberness. "You're here about Clare."

"Yes, Mrs. Wiley-Hart -"

"Please, it's Helen."

"She was your student, Helen?"

"She was. Clare was...She was a challenge."

"That's what I hear."

"Won't you have a seat, miss..."

"Detective Alexandra Eames. Alex."

"Yes, of course, detective."

Inwardly grateful for the sign of respect, Alex sat down in a desk in the front row and took out her notepad.

"I understand Clare was prone to in-class outbursts. Was she ever a problem in your class?"

"Not in mine, exactly. She could be very moody, and she never really said much. I sensed she was troubled right from the start, the way she'd come in looking like she hadn't slept for days."

Mrs. Wiley-Hart paused for a moment and wrung her hands nervously, breaking eye contact with Alex.

"There was," she continued, fiddling with the collar of her dress, "one incident."

Alex decided not to interrupt.

"We were studying the Korean Conflict, but that's not important. Clare was just staring out the window, she always sat in the back, and she must have seen something or heard something and she started, I don't know, she started whispering something. No one could figure out what she was saying, but she just kept getting louder and louder and then she just stopped. She never stopped looking out the window. I was about to call for security when she just stopped, she stopped talking. That was about all the noise I ever heard her make was that one day."

"And you never found out what she was looking at?

Mrs. Wiley-Hart's voice suddenly took on an air of shame, as though she were realizing her own modicum of culpability.

"We – my colleagues and I – we always thought Clare just saw things. Saw things that weren't there. That's all I can tell you, really."

"Thank you, Helen." Alex began to gather her things.

"I didn't know, Alex," it came out as a desperate shout. "I have never known anyone, in this school or otherwise, who could ever, ever be capable of committing such a heinous crime."

The woman took a long breath.

"I'm sorry I can't be more helpful, detective."

"It's fine, Mrs. Wiley-Hart," Alex resumed the formality. "You've been helpful enough."

She gathered up her things and left the room.

Alex walked steadily now through the still hallways of the Mount Glory School, wondering what her partner was doing. She considered him to be an excellent detective, and a good man, but he was lacking something. It certainly wasn't emotion, nor was it passion for his work, but maybe it was something mental. There had been a few times, in some rare casual moments, when he had hinted that he just wasn't like other people, he didn't think like them, but he wanted to. Alex figured that was why Bobby was perfect for his job: he could only get inside the heads of the worst of the worst, the people no one else could figure out. Alex never sold herself short, however. Bobby couldn't handle interviews, and she knew that. In truth, her people skills were superb enough without comparing them with her partner's. Bobby was great with interrogations, yes, but his tangible empathy skills were a touch sub-par. She knew he felt sympathy for the families, the boyfriends, the teachers and friends, but he related much more powerfully with the victim. More than once, Bobby had remarked on her skills, not that she needed it. She had always believed in intrinsic value, an inner pool of pride. She picked up her step with a bit of a skip, following Clare Bergen's daily routine. Her next destination was room 212, where Clare had taken Creative Writing.

Once again the door was open. Once again, Alex rapped lightly.

"Come in." The gruff voice came from a slightly older man who would have been handsome if he had been a little smaller, more compact. He was erasing the large green blackboard at the front of the room. He did not look at his visitor.

"Mr. Yurka? I'm Detective Alex Eames."

***

Goren scratched his tooth with his fingernail, though he decided not to look at what it had collected. He wiped his finger on his pants and focussed back on his work. He was amazed at what he was finding: she had been suspended twice, and given countless detentions, all for "severe disruption," "screaming," "disruption," "disruption," "disruption," it went on like that for page after page of reproach. She had never once been praised, not even for her radiantly obvious writing talent.

There were plenty of examples of that talent in her file, all in the form of confiscated papers. There were fragments of poems, half-finished letters to no one. Goren read every single one of them as deeply as he could, gathering every scrap of information, his brain clicking and cataloging, alphabetizing and filing every angstrom away, some for use on the case, but some, he guiltily admitted, for his personal use. He felt lacking sometimes, and he would often gather as much data on a victim, just to fill up whatever room he had left in him.

He noted on many pages where Clare had attempted to continue writing, even while the paper was being taken from her. There were pages that had been torn in half. Goren wondered at the sheer force of will it took on the part of these instructors to stop this young woman from performing such a silent, non-disruptive act. The sheets of paper continued to rustle under his fingers as he shuffled through them. If he could have seen himself, he would have seen that his eyes were flickering with a fire that threatened to explode, his mouth was set, though his teeth were grinding. He came across the bottom half of a sheet of paper:

I may have been a king who bled gold.

I may have been a messenger god.

I may have been those claws, those seas, this whole blue and silver space.

I may have been a breezy, gray-eyed sophist

With soft veins and

Stout blood,

With neither pride nor shame,

Sturdy arms, if unwilling,

And an angry, fighting tongue.

Goren considered Clare's eyes again, untouched and staring. In her morgue shot, he could have sworn she was still thinking, her brain still cogitating, like she would keep her promise. She would never be at rest.

Everything in the room started to go a little blurry. Goren rubbed his eyes with thumb and forefinger of his right hand and used his left hand to cover his yawn. He hadn't gotten much sleep the night before. He had laid himself down in his bed, which he had always found to be more than adequately comfortable, and he had closed his eyes, but his brain wouldn't stop racing around. Sometimes he could hear his own synapses snapping, and this only added to the distraction. He thought about Clare, and he thought about Samuel, trying to envision him, trying to envision gunning that bastard down. He had gotten to sleep eventually, at about 2:30, and it was peaceful for once, deep and dreamless. He woke in the same position he had gone to sleep in. Still, he knew it hadn't been enough.

He had just gotten settled back into reading what appeared to be a dissertation on why it's not okay to call one's superior a "shit-eating motherfucking pederast from Mars" when there was a knock on the glass. Goren looked up to see a young man, blonde, gaunt, neatly groomed, in a presumptuous stance, waiting and expecting to be let in. Goren gestured for the boy to enter.

"Are you the detective who's here about Clare?" His voice was blasé, pretentious, rich-blooded and cold. It was the voice of a boy who had never known work, never had to earn. Goren suppressed an old emotion: torn between whether he wanted to throttle the boy or just shudder in disgust. That voice. Goren felt like his hand had accidentally slipped into an unidentified cold, slightly viscous liquid.

"…My partner and I, yes."

The boy slung his backpack off his shoulders and let it drop heavily to the floor, then, much to Goren's dismay and disrelish, situated himself on the opposite side of the table.

"Yeah, I think I saw her." He eyed Goren with a smirk, "She must have been the other one in the suit."

"Can…can I help you?"

The boy let out a brief, guttural sigh: "Sam Bruyard. I was a…friend of Clare's."

"…Will you excuse me a moment?"