Defending Jacob(10)

Wendy said, “Did any of you know Ben?” She meant Ben Rifkin, the murder victim. They had not known him. Calling him by his first name was just a way of adopting him.

Toby: “No. Dylan never was friends with him. And Ben never played sports or anything.”

Susan: “He was in Max’s class a few times. I used to see him. He seemed like a good kid, I guess, but who ever knows?”

Toby: “They have lives of their own, these kids. I’m sure they have their secrets.”

Laurie: “Just like us. Just like us at their age, for that matter.”

Toby: “I was a good girl. At their age, I never gave my parents a thing to worry about.”

Laurie: “I was a good girl too.”

I said, intruding, “You weren’t that good.”

“I was until I met you. You corrupted me.”

“Did I? Well, I’m quite proud of that. I’ll have to put it on my résumé.”

But the kidding felt inappropriate so soon after the mention of the dead child’s name, and I felt crude and embarrassed before the women, whose emotional sensibilities were so much finer than mine.

There was a moment’s silence then Wendy blurted, “Oh my God, those poor, poor people. That mother! And here we are, just ‘Life goes on, back to school,’ and her little boy will never, never come back.” Wendy’s eyes became watery. The horror of it: one day, through no fault of your own—

Toby came forward to hug her friend, and Laurie and Susan rubbed Wendy’s back.

Excluded, I stood there a moment with a dumb, well-meaning expression—a tight smile, a softening around the eyes—then I excused myself to go check on the security station at the school entrance before things devolved into more weepiness. I did not quite understand the depth of Wendy’s grief for a child she did not know; I took it as yet another sign of the woman’s emotional vulnerability. Also, that Wendy had echoed my own words from the night before, “Life goes on,” seemed to align her with Laurie in a tiff that had only just been resolved. All in all, an opportune moment to take off.

I made my way to the security station that had been set up in the school foyer. It consisted of a long table where coats and backpacks were inspected by hand and an area where Newton cops, two male, two female, swept the kids with metal-detecting wands. Jake was right: the whole thing was ridiculous. There was no reason to think anyone would bring a weapon into the school or that the murderer had any connection to the school at all. The body had not even been found on school grounds. It made sense only as a show for the anxious parents.

As I arrived, the Kabuki ritual of searching each student had come to a stop. In a rising voice, a young girl negotiated with one of the cops while a second cop looked on, his wand held across his chest at port arms as if he might be called upon to club her with it. The trouble, it became clear, was her sweatshirt, which read “F-C-U-K.” The cop had deemed this message “inciteful” and thus, according to the school’s improvised security rules, forbidden. The girl explained to him that the initials stood for a brand of clothing that you could find at any mall, and even if it did suggest a “bad word” how could anyone be incited by it? and she was not giving up her sweatshirt which was very expensive and why should she let some cop throw an expensive sweatshirt in a Dumpster for no good reason? They were at an impasse.

Her adversary, the cop, had a stooped posture. His neck craned forward so that his head rode out in front of his body, giving him a vulturous look. But he straightened when he saw me approach, drawing his head back, causing the skin under his chin to fold over itself.

“Everything okay?” I asked the cop.

“Yes, sir.”

Yes, sir. I hated the military mannerisms adopted by police departments, the bogus military ranks and chain of command and all that. “At ease,” I said, intending it as a joke, but the cop looked down at his feet, abashed.

“Hi,” I said to the girl, who looked like she was in seventh or eighth grade. I did not recognize her as one of Jacob’s classmates, but she might have been.

“Hi.”

“What’s the problem here? Maybe I can help.”

“You’re Jacob Barber’s dad, aren’t you?”

“That’s right.”

“Aren’t you like a cop or something?”

“Just a DA. And who are you?”

“Sarah.”

“Sarah. Okay, Sarah. What’s the trouble?”

The girl paused, uncertain. Then another gush: “It’s just, I’m trying to tell this officer he doesn’t have to take away my sweatshirt, I’ll put it in my locker or I’ll turn it inside out, whatever. Only he doesn’t like what it says, even though no one will even see it, and there’s nothing wrong with it anyway, it’s just a word. This is all so totally—” She left off the last word: stupid.

“I don’t make the rules,” the cop explained simply.

“It doesn’t say anything! That’s, like, my whole thing! It doesn’t say what he says it says! Anyway, I already told him I’ll put it away. I told him! I told him like a million times but he won’t listen. It’s not fair.”

The girl was about to cry, which reminded me of the grown woman I had just left on the sidewalk also near tears. Jesus, there was no escaping them.