Ceremony

Chapter 21

We were having leftover cherry cobbler for breakfast on Friday morning when I asked Susan about Mitchell Poitras.

"Oh, sure," she said. "I know Mitch."

"He's living in a very expensive town house on Beacon Street with Amy Gurwitz," I said.

"Poitras?" Susan said. It always irked me when she called people by their last name. One of the boys. Tough as a ten-minute egg. Wasn't my job to tell her how to talk, so I sat on the irksomeness.

"The very same," I said. "And he has a studio and lab set up for making porn films and tapes of very young girls and boys."

"Poitras?"

"Mitchell Poitras," I said. "I gather he hadn't put that down in his curriculum vitae."

"My God, are you sure?"

.`Yep." "How do you know for sure?" she said.

"I burgled his house Wednesday while he and Amy were off celebrating the harvest."

"But how did you think… yes, of course, because that's where you found Amy and she used to be a friend of April's and you had nothing else to do. Why in hell didn't you mention him to me before?"

"Until I found evidence that he worked for the Department of Education I had no reason to think you might know him," I said.

"Mitchell Poitras?" Better I thought. "But, Jesus Christ, do you realize who he is?"

"Letters say he's Executive Coordinator, comma, Student Guidance and Counseling Administration."

Susan nodded.

"It's a job that gives him access to every disturbed kid in the state-access to psychological profiles, teacher reports, principal evaluations, guidance recommendations, often police material. My good sweet Jesus," Susan said. Her mind could integrate very swiftly.

"What big teeth you have, Granny," I said.

"Yes," she said. "Like finding out your baby-sitter is a werewolf. You say he has facilities to make these things?"

"Yes. Not just a collector, a producer. A distributor."

"A collector would be bad enough," Susan said.

"Now, my dear, consenting adults in the privacy of their home…

"Not for a man doing what he does. That's bullshit if you're Poitras. But to produce… could it be the wrong man?" "Ugly fat guy," I said, "dresses like he's got a charge at Woolworth's."

Susan nodded. Her face was sharp with concern. "What are you going to do?"

"Eventually I'm going to blow the whistle on him, but first I want to see if he knows where April is."

"Eventually?"

"I didn't hire on to clean up the state," I said. "I hired on to find April. First things first."

"But-"

"No," I said. "Don't give me the well-being-of-themany-against-the-one speech. The many are an abstraction. April is not. She rode in my car. I'm going to find her first."

"One of the rules," Susan said. There was no smile when she said it.

"Sure," I said.

"How much is it for April?" she said. "How much for you?"

"Doesn't matter," I said. "It's a way to live. Anything else is confusion." Susan sat and looked into her coffee cup. "I disapprove," she said.

I nodded.

"But it's yours. There are things you disapprove of that I do anyway," she said.

I nodded again.

"So first you find April, and then you…" She made a twisting gesture with her right hand, turning the palm up and quickly down again.

"Then I air out the Student Guidance and Counseling Administration," I said.

"Yes," she said. "And in the meantime I might do some research." "See whether Poitras recruits?" I said. She nodded. "I'll bet he does," I said. She nodded again.