managed to put off talking to Corey Sylvester for nearly two hours.
Finally he had to admit that he had nobody left to interview. He had talked to the janitor and the assistant principal, to several of the faculty members and the custodial staff. He had interviewed the residents of the three houses across the street from the school to see if any of them had heard or seen anything in the night, and he had Lou notifying local merchants and banks to give him a buzz if anybody brought in an unusual number of quarters.
He had half a mind to wrap up the initial canvas right now and forget about Corey Sylvester. It stuck in his craw that he had to treat the kid like a suspect just because Chuck Hendricks had decided to peg him as that year’s scapegoat.
Jesse knew how it felt to be the kid everybody looked to when trouble broke out. He knew what it was like to be blamed any time anything came missing, to be sent to the principal’s office for something he didn’t have a thing to do with, to know that most people figured you would never amount to much.
He knew the deep sense of injustice a ten-year-old can experience at being unjustly accused.
He loved his older brother, but he had to admit he’d been a tough act to follow in school. Matt had been every teacher’s dream. The best athlete, the best student. Trustworthy, loyal and all the rest of the Boy Scout mumbo jumbo.
Jesse, on the other hand, had struggled in school. He’d been a whiz at math, but words on a page just never seemed to fit together right for him. Reading and spelling had always been torture, right on into high school. In his frustration, maybe he’d developed a bad attitude about school, but that didn’t mean he’d been a bad kid.
After a while, he’d got so tired of trying and failing to measure up to Matt’s example that it had seemed easier to just give up and sink to everybody’s expectations.
While his parents had still been alive, he had managed to stay out of serious trouble just because he knew how his mom’s face would crumple and his dad would look at him with that terrible look of disappointment. After they’d died, everything had changed and he’d become all Chuck predicted for him.
He hated having to feed the principal’s stereotypes about Corey Sylvester by interviewing the kid, especially when he was trying to find out what was going on with him. But Hendricks had said he’d seen the kid by the coin jar. What kind of a cop would he be if he ignored a possible lead, just because the source of that lead was a bitter, humorless man who had no business working with children?
He had a duty to follow up, and he had worked hard the past three years to prove he was the kind of police chief who tried his best to meet his obligations.
At least he could make the interrogation as subtle as possible. And on the upside, pulling Corey out of class would give him a chance to see Sarah McKenzie again.
While he had been busy chasing down nonexistent leads to the theft, the students had descended on Salt River Elementary. Up and down the hallway he could hear the low murmur of voices in classrooms, the squeak of chalk on chalkboards, the rustling of paper.
As he passed each doorway on the way to Sarah’s room, he could see teachers lecturing in the front of their classes and students bent over their work.
Walking the hallways brought memories, thick and fast, of his own school years. This was a different school than the one he’d attended. The board of education had bonded for a new building ten years earlier and demolished the crumbling old brick two-story structure to build this modern new school, with its brown brick and carpeted walls.
It might be a different building, but it smelled just as he remembered from his own school years, a jumbled mix of wet paper and paste and chalk, all mingling with the yeasty scent of baking rolls that floated out from the cafeteria.
Ms. McKenzie’s classroom was the last one on the right. He smiled at the whimsical welcome sign over her door, featuring a bird knocking at the door of an elaborate birdhouse.
He could hear her musical voice from inside and he paused for a moment to listen. She was talking in that soft, sexy voice about fractions. Despite the benign subject matter, her voice somehow managed to twine through his insides like some voracious vine.
How could he get so turned on by a shy schoolteacher talking about fractions, in a building full of kids?
He watched her through the little square window set into her door, trying to figure out her appeal. She was soft and pretty in a pale blue short-sleeve sweater set and a floral skirt. Her sun-streaked hair was held back on the side by some kind of clip thing, but it fell long and luxurious to the center of her back, just inviting a man to bury his hands in it.
And that mouth. Full and lush and soft enough to make even a priest have to spend a few extra minutes in confession.
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