11

Piper rose early in the morning, her waking thoughts heavy with the fact that the killer was still out there and knew that Sophie had survived. It cast a shadow over her morning, and she had to force herself to put it out of her mind.

She wanted to try to catch the teachers and administrators before school began so she wouldn’t have to ask them to come out of class or wait around until class ended so they could talk. People were more receptive in interviews when it was set at a convenient time for them.

Palmwood High School was in the heart of the neon-lit landscape. The school was small and the parking lot packed. Piper had to find street parking.

The interior of the high school had white floors, and trophy cases were lined along each side. Sophie’s parents had both gone to high school here, and Piper wondered if there were any photos of them in the display cases.

There was still time before classes started, but some students were already there. Huddled against the walls with earbuds in, preparing for the day of reckoning that was about to begin.

She remembered her own high school experience, and it left an unpleasant taste in her mouth.

She took two wrong turns and then found the teacher’s lounge where Sophie’s homeroom teacher had agreed to meet her. A man in a collared shirt and slacks sat at a table in the small room. He was older than Piper, but not by much.

“Mr. Tate? I’m Piper Danes. I’m from the guardian ad litem’s office.”

“Right. Thanks for meeting me before class.”

“It’s not a problem. May I sit?”

“Of course.”

She sat across from him at the small round table with four chairs. A fridge was pushed against the wall, and what looked like a bar, complete with stools, had two coffee makers behind it and small bins of snacks like peanuts and pretzels.

“How is Sophie?” he said.

“She’s as good as can be expected.”

He shook his head. “It’s sickening. She’s such a vibrant girl. I doubt she’ll ever be the same after this. Do they know who did it?”

“No.”

He nodded and looked down to his coffee. “Tell her I’m thinking about her, will you?”

She gave a half smile and said, “I will.”

“So,” he said with an inhale, “what did you want to know?”

“I’m trying to get a sense of Sophie and everyone in her life. Did you know her well?”

“Somewhat. I had her in several classes, but she wasn’t the type to go out of her way to talk to anybody.”

“What do you mean?”

“She was painfully shy. When I’d call on her for something, her face would turn bright red.”

“How did she seem to you in the few weeks preceding her family’s murder? Did she seem distracted at all? Maybe hostile, or the opposite, withdrawn?”

He shook his head. “No. She was great. Always was. Quiet and did her work.”

“Who did she spend her time with at school?”

“You can’t just ask her?”

“Yes, well, sometimes children don’t give you full answers, as I’m sure you know.”

“Oh, yeah, I know. Talk to Chloe Ard. I think she’s Sophie’s best friend. She can give you more info about her than I can.”

Piper wrote the name down in a small pocket-size notebook with a blue pen. “Um, I’ve looked at Sophie’s records and didn’t see any behavioral issues that needed to be addressed.”

“No, when I say she’s great, I mean it. She does her work and keeps her head down. Texts a little too much in class, but what teenager doesn’t?”

“Did you ever get to see Sophie under stress? Perhaps she was failing or something along those lines and you spoke to her about her grades?”

“Yeah, there was one class she struggled with last year and I talked to her about it.”

“How did she respond to that stress?”

He shrugged. “Fine. She cut out some activities and focused more on the work and pulled her grades up. I’m telling you, if you’re looking for some troubled kid, it just isn’t there.”

“No, what I’m looking for is to maximize her well-being given the circumstances. Speaking of which, when she is ready to come back to school, do you have adequate academic and emotional support for someone in her situation?”

“It’s a small school with an even smaller budget thanks to the county, but yes, I will personally make sure she has counseling and that a counselor will be monitoring her.”

“Thank you.”

He nodded. “I’ve never dealt with a guardian before. I thought this would be more like a deposition or something.”

“No sir, I’m just trying to get a sense of who she is and how best to help her.”

“Well, in that case I’ll do whatever I can. You need anything from the school, reach out to me and I’ll get it done.”

She gave him a pleasant grin, though something had gone off in her. A little pinprick in her gut that what he had just said somehow wasn’t what he had meant. “You cared for her?”

“Yeah, I guess. She was a great student. Some of these kids wouldn’t cross the street to spit on me if I were on fire, and some of them are these sweet souls you don’t want to get hurt. She was one of the sweet ones.”

“Did you know her family at all?”

“I didn’t know Sullivan. I would’ve had a class with him next year. I knew Emily and Paul. We went to school here together.”

“Really? You didn’t mention that on the phone.”

“You didn’t ask.” He sipped his coffee. “We went to a couple dances and I asked Emily out, but she wasn’t into me. She always liked Paul. He was kinda the wild one. When she met him, I was happy for her, but I really didn’t think they should be together. I knew it wouldn’t end in a happily ever after.”

“What do you mean by Paul being a wild one?”

“Just sneaking in liquor to the school, smoking joints in the bathroom, drag racing, stuff that today kids do all the time but back then didn’t happen much.”

“Did you stay in touch after graduation?”

He shook his head. “She ended up getting some administrative job for the government, and Paul went to college up north. We didn’t talk after that.”

“Do you know much about what happened between Paul and Emily?”

“Just gossip. I do know Paul didn’t take anything when he left. Just woke up one morning and ran off.”

“Do you know why?”

“Why does anyone do anything?”

“Can you share anything about her parents that might not be in the case file?” she asked.

He took a moment, fingers tightening around his mug. “Emily was an addict, struggled with Oxy her whole life.” His voice trailed off as he shook his head. “Makes me think ... maybe someone she got pills from ... I just don’t know.”

Piper felt a wave of sadness wash over her. The scars of her own mother’s addiction had deeply etched into her being, its tangled roots embedded in her psyche. She had watched addiction consume her mother, coloring every subsequent experience of her she ever had. She wondered if Sophie had endured a similar pain.

“Did she ever mention that she was worried about Sophie at all?” Piper said.

“For what?”

“I don’t know, it’s why I asked,” she said with a pleasant smile.

“I don’t know. Like I said, we didn’t talk anymore.”

He finished his coffee and then stood up. “I have class in a minute. Maybe we can finish this later?”

“That’s actually all I had for now. Um, would anybody mind if I wander around the school a bit?”

“Not at all. Grab a visitor pass from the front desk.”

“Thank you for your time, Mr. Tate.”

“Call me Bryce. And let me know if you need anything else.”

Piper left and wandered the corridors, her mind awash with childhood memories she had briefly suppressed during the interview. Now, they surged back, unstoppable. Her grandmother’s words echoed in her thoughts, teaching her not to shun these memories, but to acknowledge them, to name them, and to move forward.

Her experience had showed her that often, beneath the surface of violence lay the core issue of drugs. Violence was a by-product. She knew she had to discuss with Lazarus tracking down Emily Grace’s dealers. It was entirely possible this was retribution, a deal gone bad, or who knew what else.

Classes were getting ready to start, and students were piling in through the doors of the school. The metal detectors would occasionally go off, and the school officer would have to search a backpack or bag. How different, she thought, these kids’ high school experience was from her generation’s.

She stopped at the front office for a hall pass and asked in which classroom she could find Chloe Ard. The receptionist looked it up for her and said it was customary for the school officer to be at any interviews with students that didn’t involve their parents.

“He’ll be done in a minute,” she said. “You can just have a seat.”

“Thank you.”

The school officer, a large Polynesian man with beautiful tattoos on his forearms, came in a few minutes later and said, “You page me, Nancy?”

“Would you mind taking her to see a student in Ms. Yen’s room? Chloe Ard? She’s Sophie Grace’s lawyer.”

“Sure.”

Piper rose, and the officer shook hands and smiled. He opened the door for her as they went out into the hall.

“Thank you.”

“No problem. So you’re a lawyer, huh?”

“I am.”

“This all you do? Work with kids?”

“It is. You?”

“Yeah,” he said as the final students who were lingering in the halls ran to class. “Some officers, they don’t like it. I like it. The kids are funner than adults.”

They came to a classroom not far from the front office and he poked his head in and waved to a young girl in the front. She had a blond streak in her brunette hair and wore a jean skirt with a white blouse.

“How you doin’, Chloe?” the officer said.

“I’m okay.”

“This is a lawyer helping Sophie. She wanted to talk to you.” He motioned with his head toward a small alcove with vending machines. “I’ll be over there if you need me.”

“Thank you.”

Piper took a few paces away from the classroom, and Chloe followed her. She had a look Piper had seen dozens of times: when an authority figure—or at least who the children thought was an authority figure—came to speak to a child, the child always thought they were somehow in trouble.

“Chloe, my name’s Piper, and I’m Sophie’s appointed legal guardian. I’m trying to understand what she needs so I can help her. I was told you were her best friend?”

“Yeah. Is she okay? She doesn’t answer my texts.”

“I would maybe give her some time.”

She folded her arms as she strolled next to Piper. “I miss her.”

Piper kept her gaze down to the floor. The school had quieted now.

“When it’s time, she’s going to need you, Chloe. She doesn’t have anyone else left.”

The teen nodded but didn’t look at her.

“So Sophie hasn’t talked to you since it happened?”

She shook her head. “No. We held like an assembly to talk about what happened. I texted her right after and told her I loved her and she never texted back.”

“Do you two hang out in a group or just the two of you?”

“Just us. Sophie doesn’t like the other girls here.”

Just as she said that, they passed a classroom where a group of girls were standing at the front hanging out because the teacher wasn’t there. They could’ve been clones of each other, dressing and acting exactly like everyone around them. She knew the type and could understand Sophie better by the fact that she wanted nothing to do with them.

“Have you talked to Jason? He was her date.”

“Not yet. Why?”

“He’s homeschooled, so he doesn’t go here. I don’t really know him.”

“How did Sophie meet him?”

“I think they took some class together or something. Her mom was always putting Sophie into those art classes after school.”

They had circled the hall and kept walking.

“How long have you known Sophie?”

“All her life. We went to elementary school together.”

One of the main risks Piper had seen in a situation like Sophie’s was of self-harm and suicide. It was always on the forefront of her mind whenever dealing with children that had been through massive trauma.

“Has she ever hurt herself that you know of? Maybe cutting or burning herself?”

“She wasn’t like that. I know a lotta girls that cut, but she wasn’t like that.”

Piper asked a few more questions and then left the school. She sat in her car and was about to call an investigator at her office but stopped and instead took out the card Lazarus had given her. She called him, and he didn’t answer. She didn’t leave a message, but a second later he called back.

“Hey,” she said. “Did you talk to Sophie’s date for that night? Jason Graff?”

“Yeah, not much there.”

“What do you mean?”

“He dropped her off in a car with four other people inside. It’s not him.”

“That wasn’t what I was asking.”

“What were you askin’ then?”

“I want to know how to help her, and the only way to do that is to talk to everybody that knows her. I need to be kept apprised when you interview people in her life.”

“Well, we gotta go do somethin’, so come down and meet me at the Dungeon in an hour and I’ll keep you apprised .”

“Do what?”

“We’re goin’ to church.”