Robert B. Parker’s Fallout

Thirty-Eight

Molly and Suit sat with Jack Carlisle’s English teacher in the faculty lounge at Paradise High School, a half-hour or so after the end of the school day.

By then both Matt Loes and Scott Ford had declined their invitation to meet before baseball practice, even after Suit pointed out that if they didn’t want to talk with them now, they were going to end up talking with Chief Stone later, and nobody ever really wanted that.

“My father says that if any of you have anything to say, you can say it to him,” Scott Ford said.

“From what I hear, talking to your father would truly be a blessing,” Molly said. She’d always told Jesse and Suit she came by her sarcasm naturally.

Molly knew that she didn’t need Suit to be a part of her interview with Paul Connolly. But knowing Luther Simpson as long as she had, which meant longer than Jesse had, she understood, mostly in her heart, how much he needed to be a part of this investigation, every chance he got.

Needed to be needed, mostly.

The three of them sat in a corner of an otherwise empty lounge. Connolly had already told Suit how deeply sorry he was for his family’s loss. He had longish gray hair, gray beard to match, wore a leather vest over a plaid shirt, jeans, old-school black Converse canvas sneakers.

“My sister says that you and Jack had a great relationship,” Suit said.

Connolly smiled, and casually stroked his beard. Maybe what it was there for, Molly thought.

“Great might be a bit of a stretch,” he said. “Kids open up to teachers they like, but you always know they’re holding back more of themselves than they’re actually sharing. He was a senior, he was the star athlete of the whole school. He liked English more than any of the other jocks I teach.” He shrugged. “Basically, we were good, which was enough for me.”

Connolly kept stroking his beard, somehow managing not to look pretentious as he did. No mean feat, Molly thought.

“He was a great student,” he said. “I sometimes think he liked writing almost as much as being a ballplayer, not that he was going to share that with any of his teammates. Or classmates.”

Molly watched him. She couldn’t tell how old he was, but thought his face was younger than the gray in his hair. A nice face.

A kind face.

Would’ve had a huge crush on him when I was a senior.

Totally.

“If he could write like he could play, he must have been some writer,” Suit said. “You a baseball fan?”

Connolly grinned. “Casual, at best. But when I would catch a game, I knew enough to know that what Jack was doing out there was different from what everybody else was doing.”

“When I played sports here a hundred years ago,” Suit said, “my favorite teachers were just the ones who kept me eligible.”

Keep them talking.

Suit knew the drill as well as Molly did. Jesse had drummed it into both of them.

“That wasn’t Jack,” Connolly said. “He didn’t need my help for that, or help from anybody else who passes through this lounge, as far as I could tell. He just liked my class better because he liked writing. If there was one thing I nagged him about, it was that I wanted him to get into a good writing program when he got to Vanderbilt.”

Molly noticed a teacher, an older woman, come into the other end of the lounge, open the refrigerator, grab an apple, and leave.

“Did you notice any sort of change in Jack recently?” Molly asked. “Get the sense that something might have been bothering him?”

“What are you really asking me?” Connolly said. “If he was acting depressed, and possibly suicidal? Because I want you to know how vigilant all of us who do what I do for a living are about that subject in the modern world of teenagers.”

Suit leaned forward in his chair. “Molly didn’t mean anything by it. These are questions that need to be asked, and I’m talking as Jack’s uncle here as much as a cop.”

“I apologize if I offended you, Deputy Chief,” Connolly said to Molly. “Or sounded as if I was the one who’d been offended. That wasn’t my intent.”

“Nor was there any intent to offend on my part,” Molly said.

“The truth is, baseball season was the time of year when I spent far less time with Jack than usual,” he said. “Maybe even less time this year than in the past years, because it’s senior year. I guess the last time I saw him was a week before he died. And he just seemed like Jack to me. Maybe a little more anxious because it was coming to an end. Baseball, high school, all of it. But that was pretty normal, in my experience.”

“Nothing out of the ordinary, though,” Suit said.

Connolly shook his head. “I told him that the prospect of college had scared the hell out of me when I was his age. It’s why I gave everybody in the class one grand final senior writing project.”

“You mean like for a term paper?” Molly said.

“An autobiographical play,” he said. “One act. One in which you were the main character. Maybe the only character, speaking directly to an imaginary audience. More than anything, I wanted them to try to capture this moment in their lives theatrically.”

“Had you seen it?” Molly said.

Connolly shook his head.

“As far as I know,” he said, “no one had.”

Stroked his beard again.

“I wish I had,” Connolly said. “Maybe I would really have gotten to know him.”

In a quiet voice Suit said, “I’m starting to feel the same way.”