UnCatholic Conduct Read online

  Jil took one look at Jess’s face and saw why. She wouldn’t want to venture past Jess in that mood either. The students stood, like a herd of lost sheep in the middle of the atrium, staring at the graffiti.

  “Through the caf, guys,” Jil instructed them, shepherding a few students toward the senior cafeteria door. Relieved to have direction, they scurried down the hall, en masse.

  “Go on, get to class,” Mark Genovese barked at the few who remained behind.

  One older guy snickered while the others just raised their eyebrows.

  Mark beckoned to him, and the guy sauntered over slowly. Mark gestured to the paint and said something in a low voice.

  The guy dropped the cocky grin and nodded, then looked where Mark pointed and frowned. He then began helping some of the younger students down to the G building. Certainly, nothing like this had ever happened to them at St. Matthew’s Elementary school!

  One kid looked up at Jil, his eyes wide. She recognized him from the first day of school. “Gideon, how’s it going?”

  He smiled. “Okay, Miss. How about you?” His voice shook a little.

  “Great. Are you guys doing okay? A lot of really weird stuff has happened here since the beginning of the year. Did you go to talk to someone at Student Services?”

  His buddy elbowed him, trying to shake his head, but Gideon looked at Jil instead. “Yeah, I did. My homeroom teacher made me.”

  His buddy shot him a look.

  “Hey, I’m Ms. Kinness,” she said, extending her hand to the young student.

  “Wyatt,” he muttered, shaking back. His hand was warm, sweaty. Almost feverish.

  Jil resisted the urge to put her hand to his forehead. “You feeling okay, Wyatt?” They moved over as another group of students thundered down the stairs and threatened to topple them over.

  “Yeah,” Wyatt replied, raising his voice a little to be heard over the noise.

  “Did you guys see who did this?”

  Both boys looked down at their feet at the same moment.

  “No, Miss,” they said.

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes.” Wyatt clenched his jaw. Gideon said nothing.

  Jil knew when to let a matter drop. If they knew anything, they weren’t talking. “If you want to tell me anything, I’m in R202, okay?”

  They didn’t answer, but as Jil walked away, she caught Gideon’s eye, peeking up at her, just barely, as he tried to concentrate on his shoes. She winked.

  Jil jogged back up the stairs to the empty atrium.

  Jess looked angrily at the mess, radioing somebody on her walkie-talkie as she strode back toward the front office. Apparently, the custodians had already tried the standard paint-removing chemicals, which had done nothing but make the paint run into bloody streaks that looked even worse than before.

  “I don’t care what the hell you do, but get rid of it. Paint over it,” she barked. “I’m not having my school defaced under my nose.”

  Swearing, Jil noted mentally. She wondered if that would be satisfactory for her chart. Maybe she wouldn’t have to probe deeper into Jess’s life, where she knew a nest of secrets buzzed. She’d been meaning to get to the courthouse to see if any divorce records existed for Jess and Mitchell, but somehow, something always got in the way.

  With the mid-term report due in a few weeks, though, she couldn’t put it off forever.

  During morning prayers, Ms. Reitman, the female chaplain, made reference to “respecting our school and our property—giving us valuable creative outlets for our anger and helping us express ourselves in constructive, nonviolent ways.” This was followed swiftly by more signs of the cross and reverent bowing, and then prayers were over. Thank God.

  The students, of course, had all heard about the tagging by now. Most of them had crept into the atrium to see the damage firsthand. The custodians had managed to cover it with three coats of primer, but the bloody streaks still came through. All of the first period prep teachers were assigned to extra duty, so Jil sat for an hour in the atrium, literally watching paint dry.

  While she sat there, three senior boys loped down from the front office, intending to use the student entrance, probably to go outside and smoke.

  “West door, guys,” Jil said, pointing to the side entrance—the only door students had been allowed to use.

  The seniors looked at her strangely, then looked at the wall. One student—a tall, athletic kid with a shock of dark hair and an attitude to match—ignored her and headed for the main entrance. She recognized him—the same kid Mark Genovese had been frowning at in the atrium after the tagging. He seemed to be on the student government, so she was surprised when he swaggered right to the door.

  “Stop right there,” Jil ordered.

  The kid froze.

  “West door,” she said again and pointed, following them with her eyes as they went through the alcove with the snack machines and out the door to the parking lot.

  From around the opposite corner, she felt eyes watching her. She turned around slowly, to see Bex—who hadn’t reported to her class for five straight days. She beckoned to her, and Bex approached slowly, shoulders slumped.

  “What’s up?” Jil took note of Bex’s pale face. She’d lost weight. “You’ve been away?”

  “Sick.”

  Jil knew enough to be able to tell when someone was lying, but for the second time this morning, she let it go. Something was obviously wrong with this girl.

  Bex put her hands in the pockets of her boys’ jeans.

  Her rocker belt showed a visible wear line that showed it had been cinched in another two holes.

  “Feeling better?”

  Bex shrugged. “Not really. Thinking of being away again tomorrow.”

  “Yeah? Planning to come to class today?”

  Bex shrugged again. “Guess so.” Her hand shook as she took it out of her pocket to brush a stray strand of short hair from her forehead.

  “I can give you what you’ve missed for the past week. Maybe you could go to the doctor or something this afternoon.”

  Bex scuffed her foot against the floor. “Can’t.”

  “Oh no?”

  “Na. Gotta go to work. ’Sides. It’s not that kind of sick.”

  “I see. Maybe it’s the kind of sick that only gets better if you talk it over?”

  Bex didn’t say anything.

  “Like, with me, over coffee sometime?”

  Again, a long silence. “We’ll see,” said Bex, finally, and she ambled away.

  Jil watched her go, a frown knitting her eyebrows. Something strange was brewing at this school. Something very strange. She was going to get to the bottom of it—the out-of-wedlock children and the teachers living in sin would just have to wait.

  Later that morning, Mark Genovese paged her to his office. The gold “Vice-Principal” plaque was bolted to the door at a perfect 180-degree angle.

  “Ms. Kinness.” He gripped her hand in an iron clasp. Up close, he was even larger than he appeared in the hallway. He towered over her by at least ten inches, and when he sat down, he had to fold himself into the chair to fit behind his standard-sized desk.

  Jil slipped into a chair opposite him while he shuffled through some paperwork. She noticed the degrees and awards on his walls—some framed photographs of a dog, a family Christmas portrait from twenty years ago, and one of a group of boys in camping gear.

  “Those your sons?” she asked.

  He looked up. “No, that’s me. Outdoor education trip as a twelfth grade student.” He picked it up off the desk and handed it to her. “Recognize that kid there?”

  Jil looked hard. Bushy eyebrows, beefy arms. “That can’t be…”

  “Buck Weekly.” Mark chuckled. “Pain in the ass even when we were in high school. That’s his twin brother, Charleston.”

  Jil examined it more closely. “They’re not identical.”

  “No. Though they do look a lot alike, don’t they?”

  “Yeah. Bu
t Charleston’s cuter.”

  Genovese chuckled. “He was,” he agreed.

  “Was?”

  Mark’s face closed. “He died in a car crash about ten years after this picture was taken. I like to keep this picture to remember our merrye bande.”

  “So you went here as a student as well?”

  “Grew up in these halls, did a student teaching position here, and then got hired as a teacher.”

  Jil heard echoes of her previous conversation with Buck.

  “A few of your students won’t be moving on, though,” Mark said, abruptly changing the subject, “if they don’t pull up their socks.”

  She frowned.

  “It’s my job to weed out the seniors who are struggling before they crash and burn.”

  “A lot of my students are struggling, but most of them are passing.”

  “Well, that’s a treat,” Mark said sarcastically. “At one time, failure was rare. Now, a C is considered a decent grade. Can you get me a list of everyone with a sixty-five percent or below?”

  “Sure.”

  “Final year. This is the biggie.”

  “Well, if they want to go to college, it is.”

  Mark snorted. “They’ll be working at the fast food chains unless they wake up.”

  “What do you do with them?”

  “Enroll them in a computer skills class.” A grin formed on Mark’s face as he steepled his fingers. “Literacy and technology training all in one. Saturday mornings nine to noon if you ever care to join us.”

  “You teach social media in those lessons?”

  He looked up over his screen. “Smart teachers don’t use social media at all.”

  She already knew his views. He’d passed the first round of her investigations: married for thirty years, with two sons, regular church attendance, and no social media accounts.

  He turned to his computer, and Jil felt the dismissal.

  “See you around,” she said.

  He smiled without looking up and she let herself out.

  Chapter Seven

  Next day, while Jil sat in the empty atrium—most of the students having gotten the message to stay in the library or caf—one of the custodians approached.

  “Hey, Bean,” he said easily. He was short with a head shaved bald, but had deep blue eyes, almost navy in color, and his muscled arms stood out, well-defined beneath his short-sleeved shirt, a tan line where a wedding band should have been, and tattoos around his wrists.

  She turned around, surprised at hearing her childhood nickname. For a moment, she didn’t recognize her high school chum Brian, but he grinned easily and she remembered what he’d looked like fifteen years ago—with hair.

  “Hey, yourself.”

  “Always knew you’d be a success,” he said. “Never thought you’d go in for teaching, though.”

  And this is why PIs were not supposed to go undercover in their own districts.

  She smiled disarmingly, her mind racing. She liked Brian, but she couldn’t afford to blow her cover. Lie. “Thanks,” she replied.

  “So how’d you end up here? What are you teaching?”

  “Religion,” she answered, smirking a little.

  “You’re kidding.”

  “No. Really am.”

  “Never would have believed it.” He shook his head. “The Jillienne Kidd I knew would have bucked that system all the way to the gate.”

  She looked around quickly to see if anyone had overheard him, and dropped her voice to a whisper. “Actually…”

  He leaned in. “Yeah?”

  “I hope you can keep my little secret?”

  He frowned. “Sure. What is it?”

  “Well, I changed my name.”

  “Your last name?”

  “My whole name. I go by Julia Kinness now.”

  “You married?”

  She smiled. “Not exactly. I wanted a fresh start—you know—after I got out of the system.”

  Brian gave a low whistle. “That’s right. I forgot you were in those foster homes.”

  She bit her lip. Always dangerous to let too many emotions through. “Anyway…”

  “Yeah, of course. I get it. So Julia Kinness you said?”

  “Yeah.”

  “No more Jilly-Bean?”

  She laughed. “Sorry.”

  “Hey, whatever. I can adapt—Jules.” He grinned, and she cuffed him lightly on the shoulder.

  “So this tagging is pretty brutal, eh?”

  He leaned beside her on the railing, looking up at the graffiti.

  “We’ve tried everything,” he sighed, frustrated. “Turpentine, paint thinner. Nuthin’ works.”

  “You going to have to paint it over then?”

  “Yeah, but that means we’ll have to paint the whole wall. Maybe the whole atrium. That paint’s old, man.”

  “Can’t get a match?”

  “For this?” He laughed and gestured to the hideous seafoam walls.

  Jil laughed back. “I suggest chartreuse for the next coat.”

  “Yeah, I’m going with white. Plain old white. That’s all they deserve if they’re going to mess the place up like this. Besides, I think that’s the only paint we’ve got that’s thick enough to cover it.”

  “Who would have picked this color?”

  “All part of the grand remodeling,” Brian said, holding his nose in the air. “After that incident with the two dead kids, the whole school got a facelift. New paint, new gym, new everything. Turning over a new leaf. Forty years ago!”

  “Well, this leaf is one ugly green. Who do you think did it?”

  Brian shook his head. “Just some punks.”

  “Do you know who they are?”

  Brian shook his head again. “Don’t like to say nuthin’. Them wall’s got ears. But I’d bet money it was those damn residence kids.”

  “Residence kids?”

  “Yeah. The kids who live on campus. Those foster kids they try to turn into model students.”

  “Are they all foster kids, living here?”

  “Mostly. They call them ‘at risk,’ but what they really mean is ‘pain in the ass.’”

  Jil considered that for a moment. Jess had said about fifty kids lived in the residence buildings. They would have easy access to the school and could have snuck in over the weekend to tag the atrium.

  “Hey, can I ask you something?”

  Brian’s eyes smiled just as brightly as his teeth did. “Sure.”

  “Who unlocks the school in the morning?”

  “That’d be Marcel.”

  “Your boss?”

  “Ha! He’d like to think so. Jess is my boss, but Marcel’s the head custodian. Why you asking?”

  “Well, you know about the girl who died, obviously.”

  “Yeah. Of course.”

  “I just wondered why, if a custodian was here at six a.m., he never noticed Alyssa’s body.”

  Brian nodded slowly. “Doors don’t open til seven. Marcel woulda used our own entrance off the back parking lot to come in at six. But you’re right. He shoulda found her before the students did. Unless he was busy.”

  The way he said busy made Jil narrow her eyes. Doing something he shouldn’t have been doing?

  Jil saw the tall, dark-haired custodian approaching. He was thin and lank, with an insincere smile in his weathered face. Jil recognized the guy she’d almost tripped over while he tended the indoor flower beds.

  “Marcel,” Brian sighed under his breath. “Guess I’d better shove off.” He eyed Marcel warily, then moved quickly in the opposite direction, nodding and smiling to everyone as he passed.

  Jil felt eyes on her and turned her head slowly in the other direction, just in time to see Buck Weekly look away.

  *

  When the bell rang for period two, Jil was already waiting outside her classroom. The other teacher cleared out quickly, which gave her enough time to slip to the back of the room and take up a spot behind a display, partly concealed in t
he far corner. She felt like she’d been walking through a minefield of secrets. This wasn’t what she thought teaching would be like. Instead of preparing for a lecture, she was setting herself up to spy on students as they came in.

  Bex entered first, trailed closely by Theo—who towered over her. He gripped her tightly by the arm, leading her to her desk, which he shoved her into. She pulled away, shooting him a fierce look.

  “You’d better watch it,” he whispered, tightening his hold. “Or you know what happens next.”

  “Fuck you,” she spat.

  Jil emerged from the corner, carting a globe that she didn’t really need.

  “Good morning,” she said coolly and squeezed between them on her way to her desk. They both looked up, surprised. Her movements forced Theo back several paces, and Jil held her position. “Put this on the desk for me, please, Bex,” she said.

  Bex scooted to her feet, snatching the globe from Jil, without meeting her gaze.

  Jil held Theo’s eyes for a long moment. He looked away and backed toward his desk. Bex loitered by Jil’s desk, as far away from her own seat as possible.

  More students began arriving, and they stormed in boisterously.

  “I need you to switch seats with Jordan,” Jil said, under the cover of student chatter.

  Bex didn’t reply. She just ducked into the seat right in front of Jil’s desk and flipped open her textbook.

  Jordan looked at her in confusion as he came in, almost late. He was about to tell her off when Jil held up a finger and pointed to Bex’s vacant desk. Shrugging, Jordan ducked into his new seat.

  Theo’s eyes shot daggers at Jil, which she pointedly ignored. She wanted to put as much space between him and Bex as possible.

  “That was sick yesterday, Miss,” Kyle said as he dropped his book bag on the floor and slumped into his desk. “An eye for an eye, yo. In blood!”

  “It wasn’t blood! It was just paint,” Jordan said scornfully.

  “Looked like blood to me,” Kyle crowed.

  “Does the Bible actually mean an eye for an eye, Miss?” Joey stared incredulously at her classmate. “I mean, isn’t that kind of stupid? The Bible is supposed to teach love!” She stuck her tongue out at Kyle, who shot forward in his seat. Joey ducked.