Dear Old Dead(57)

Julie had two history books, the textbook for the course she was taking and a book by Oswald Patterson, who was black and taught at Harvard University. Before Oswald Patterson, Julie hadn’t known there were any black people at Harvard University, except maybe to play sports. African-American, she reminded herself. These days you were supposed to call yourself African-American. She had a green canvas bookbag with the words “St. Rose’s Academy” and a logo printed in black on one side. She tucked her two history books into that and slung it over her shoulder. Then she let herself out of the room and into the hall. There was a self-locking door at the end of the corridor. It let girls off the floor but wouldn’t let anyone on. To get on, you had to ring the bell and wait for someone to answer it. That way, the girls didn’t have to lock the doors to their individual rooms all the time. Julie had a passionate ambition in her life. She wanted to live for one full year in a place where nobody ever locked their doors at all.

There was a dining room in the east building, for the children who came to day care and Afterschool (the dining room served breakfast, lunch, and snacks) and for the girls in the refuge program. It was early enough for Julie to have been able to get breakfast there. Instead, she went straight down to the first floor and out the front door. Then she went up the steps to the west building. The street around her was empty and cold. Nothing about it called to her. She remembered nights spent sleeping in abandoned buildings and sitting on steaming grates. She went to the back of the building and down the stairs. The cafeteria there was open twenty-four hours a day. At seven o’clock in the morning, it was reasonably crowded. Julie took a tray, loaded it down with sausages and hash browns and bacon and eggs and toast, and got out her resident’s card. If you had a resident’s card, you could come to the cafeteria and eat anything you wanted for free.

Augie was sitting by herself at the big round table under the steam pipes, looking through a newspaper with a scowl on her face. Julie put her tray down on Augie’s table and pulled out a chair. The newspaper was the New York Sentinel, and it was lurid. Julie caught a grainy black-and-white photograph of Rosalie van Straadt’s dead body lying on a stretcher. There was another photograph of Dr. Michael Pride in a sea of uniformed policemen. It made him look as if he had been busted, even though he hadn’t been. On the front of the paper there was a red banner over the masthead, announcing the Father’s Day contest for the millionth time. Julie had read through the contest rules once, just to see what they were like. If she’d had a father, she would have entered.

Augie put the paper down. “Good morning,” she said. “What’s wrong with you?”

That was Augie, Julie thought. Straight to the point. “I’m having one of those days. I came looking for company to talk me out of it.”

“Out of what?”

Julie looked up, toward the doors out of the cafeteria, toward the street.

“I’ll lock you in a closet, if that’s what it takes,” Augie told her. “You can’t be serious.”

“Not really. Not exactly. I’m just—nervous.”

“We’re all nervous.”

“I know. Augie, listen. You don’t think Michael did it, do you? Killed those two people?”

“Of course not.” Augie was astonished. “Julie, what are you thinking of?”

“I don’t know. I mean, they were really terrible people, weren’t they? The two people who died. I saw the last one, that woman, I used to run into her all over the center. I didn’t know her name then. She was a real—uh—”

“Bitch,” Augie said dryly.

“Right. Exactly. She was always—saying things, to people. You know. Asking Karida if it was really necessary to wear quite that much makeup on her face. Telling me once that she supposed I was going to get a free ride right through college, so why should I study, since nobody was going to care if I knew anything or not.”

“Did she really say that to you?”

“She did. In here one night. I was with Sister Kenna and Ida Greel. Is it true that Ida is that woman’s cousin?”

“Oh, yes,” Augie said. “She’s Martha van Straadt’s cousin, too. I forget how it works, whose mother and whose father and all that, but they’re all related. There’s a boy, too, Victor. He volunteered here several years ago. It was before your time.”

“Everything was before my time. Anyway, she said things to people. And her grandfather, that Charles van Straadt—he was the old man in Michael’s office that night, I mean, he was there in person and then his body was after he died. If you know what I mean.”