Until now she’d battled the hysteria by rejecting the facts, telling herself that it had to be some kind of mistake, that Amy couldn’t possibly be dead.
Throughout the long ride to the airport, inching along through the morning rush-hour traffic along the San Diego Freeway, she had clung to that single thought.
It’s a mistake. It’s not Amy at all. It’s someone else, another little girl with red hair.
On the plane to Monterey she had sat silently next to Frank, her hand clutching his, silencing him every time he spoke with a tightening of her fingers, until she could feel her nails digging into his flesh.
A shark attack.
Frank had told her what they had found on the beach, for immediately after talking to Hildie Kramer, he had called the Barrington Police Department, insisting on whatever details they might have.
Mutilated.
The body that had washed up had been mutilated almost beyond recognition. They didn’t know yet exactly how Amy had died.
“Ask them if they could be wrong!” Margaret had insisted as she hung close to Frank while he talked to the police, picking up the barest facts from his responses to whatever the man on the other end was saying. “Ask them if it’s possible there’s a mistake!”
They had reluctantly agreed that there was perhaps the slimmest possibility that the body wasn’t Amy’s. It was to that possibility that Margaret had clung, refusing to accept that her daughter — the only child she had, the only child she ever could have, since the cancer last year — was gone.
Now Hildie Kramer had destroyed that last, thin hope, telling her that there was no longer any doubt that the little girl who had been delivered up by the sea that morning was Amy. And yet the hysteria she had been battling for almost four hours was still at bay as a strange numbness began to spread through Margaret’s body, beginning somewhere in the pit of her stomach and spreading outward until a bloodless chill seemed to invade even her fingertips. “How?” she breathed. “How did it happen?”
Hildie Kramer shifted in her chair, carefully arranging her matronly features into the expression she habitually wore for sessions like this, when she had to project the feeling that the loss of the child was almost as devastating to her as it was to the child’s parents. “She was upset yesterday,” she began, knowing she was going to have to tell the Carlsons what had happened, but choosing her words carefully to put it in the best possible light Slowly, she related the experiment in which Amy had participated, stressing that Amy’s part in it had been purely voluntary. “I’m sorry to have to tell you that she burst into tears at the end of it. Apparently she thought she’d somehow failed, although the experiment wasn’t a test at all. It was simply an exercise in determining the manner in which people make decisions. At any rate, I talked with her for quite a while, and got her calmed down. But apparently she went off by herself after our talk. I’m afraid we lost track of her then.”
Frank Carlson turned away from the window, his eyes fixing on Hildie. “Lost track?” he echoed. “I’m sorry, but I think you’d better tell me exactly what that means.”
Hildie took a deep breath. “It means we couldn’t find her. She left the campus and simply disappeared. We had security guards searching for her all night, and several people on our staff were looking, too. Even one of the students was involved.”
Margaret Carlson’s eyes widened in disbelief. “You mean Amy was missing last night?” she demanded. “And you didn’t call us?”
Hildie shrugged helplessly. “I should have, though I’m not sure what it would have accomplished. The police were notified, but frankly, with the way things are now, it’s impossible to get any positive action from them unless a child has been missing for twenty-four hours, or there is immediate evidence of some sort of — well, foul play, if you will.”
“So you did nothing,” Frank Carlson said, his voice heavy. “You sat by while my daughter died.”
“We did everything we could, Mr. Carlson,” Hildie said, allowing a note of authority to creep into her voice as she tried to regain control of the conversation. “If it had been up to me—”
“But what happened?” Margaret broke in. “I still don’t know how she got into the water.”
Hildie’s tongue ran nervously over her lower lip. “The police are still investigating the matter, but it appears that one of our teachers — Steven Conners — must have found Amy, late last night or early this morning.”
Margaret Carlson gasped. “He found her?” she breathed. “But if he found her—” She fell silent, suddenly confused. “Where is he? Why didn’t he—”
“I’m afraid what I have to tell you is very difficult,” Hildie broke in. “We believe that Steven Conners is dead, too.”
Frank Carlson’s eyes bored into Hildie. “Dead? What are you talking about? The police didn’t say anything about—”
“They haven’t found his body yet, but it appears that he and Amy were both in his car. Somehow, it went through a guard chain, over the precipice and into the ocean.” She related her carefully constructed story slowly, saying as little as she could, but implying everything she neglected to say. When she was finished, Frank and Margaret Carlson sat stunned, staring at her.
“What you’re saying is that this teacher may have molested our daughter,” Frank Carlson finally said.
The muscles in Hildie’s face tensed. “We’re still not exactly sure what happened,” she began. “But yes, I’m afraid that possibility can’t be ruled out.”
Margaret Carlson slumped in her chair, the full impact of her daughter’s death finally hitting her. She buried her face in her hands as a sob wrenched her body. “No,” she moaned. “Not Amy. Not my little Amy—”
Her words were abruptly cut off as her husband’s hands clasped her shoulders, steadying her, stilling the protest in her throat. “If what you’re telling me is true, Mrs. Kramer, you might as well close this school today. Because believe me, if you don’t, I’ll do it myself by next week!”
Hildie rose and stepped around to the front of her desk. “Mr. Carlson, I know how you feel, but until we know exactly what happened—”
“I think you’ve told us what happened,” Frank Carlson said, his voice rough with anger. As Hildie remained frozen in place in front of her desk, Frank drew his wife to her feet, easily supporting her with one arm. “Come on, Margaret. Let’s go find someplace to stay while we decide what to do about this.”
Hildie took a step forward, her hand extended as if to touch Frank Carlson, but he brushed past her. “We can make all the arrangements for you, Mr. Carlson,” she began, but Carlson, already at the office door, shook his head.
“We’ll make whatever arrangements are necessary,” he growled. “I think you people have done more than enough already.”
Then he was gone, and Hildie was alone in her office.
None of it had gone as it should have.
Both of the Carlsons, Frank as well as Margaret, should have been so shattered by the news of what had happened that they couldn’t even think straight. They should have been nearly paralyzed by the shock, as indeed Margaret was.
But Frank had gotten angry.
She thought quickly, trying to decide what she should do next.
Then she knew there was nothing she had to do, for despite his words, there was little Frank Carlson could do.
In the end, it would be Steve Conners who would be blamed for Amy Carlson’s death, not the Academy. Which, she decided, made things simpler for her than her original plan would have.