The Golem of Paris

Chapter twenty-four

Stoner Avenue Elementary School sat half a mile from the house where Marquessa and TJ had lived. Jacob flashed his badge briefly at the receptionist and introduced himself as a truancy officer on an administrative call.

She told him to head on inside while she paged the principal.

Patricia Eubanks was a black woman in her early fifties. She shut her door, fretting as she shook Jacob’s hand. “You must be new.”

He said, “I’m here about TJ White.”

She recoiled. “Pardon?”

He handed her his ID, adding that he’d meant to be discreet.

She appraised him before giving an appreciative nod.

“I’ve been asked to revisit the file,” he said. “I didn’t want to create a disturbance.”

Eubanks nodded. She sat at her desk and began opening and shutting drawers. “I haven’t thought about TJ in a long time. For a long time, I thought about nothing else.”

“Whatever you can tell me would be helpful.”

Eubanks found what she was looking for: a neon-green stress ball, which she began to squeeze rhythmically. “Unfortunately, I don’t think I can add much. I try to establish a personal connection with each one of my students, but that takes time, and I never got the chance to know TJ or his mother. They were new to the area.”

She paused. “I do remember where I was when I heard the news. That I will never forget. It was a Thursday evening, day before Christmas Eve. I was wrapping presents and my phone rang. One of our former teachers lived on their block.”

“Jorge Alvarez,” Jacob said. “I spoke to him.”

Green foam swelled from her fist. “I’d known Jorge ten years, but till that night I’d never heard him cry.”

Jacob considered Alvarez’s emotional state during the most recent interview — less extreme, but consistent with the natural ebb of grief. “Did the police ever talk to you?”

“No.”

“His teachers?”

“Nobody came to the school, Detective, except for the community relations officer. We held a meeting for parents in the gym.” Eubanks paused. “I suppose they could’ve spoken to Susan over the phone.”

“Susan...”

“Lomax. TJ’s teacher. We have two kindergarten classes. One slot, we can’t keep someone there more than a couple of years; it’s a revolving door. The other class belongs to Susan. She’s been around longer than I have. We had an emergency staff meeting the day after Christmas to figure out how we were going to talk to the students about what had happened. Susan was at the center of the discussion, because it was her kids most directly affected. In the end, we tried to use it as an opportunity to learn.”

“About death?”

“About life,” she said.

She put down the ball.

“That poor, poor little boy,” she said. “Everyone, and I mean everyone, was a wreck. We came back for spring semester, and it felt ten degrees colder.”

“If it’s all right with you, I’d like to speak with Mrs. Lomax.”

“It’s certainly all right, although you’d be better off not calling her that.”

“What should I call her?”

“Ms.,” Eubanks said. She glanced at her computer. “Recess is in seven minutes.”

She left, clutching the stress ball.

Eight minutes later, the door opened and in walked a stout woman in khaki cargo pants. Susan Lomax stood around five feet, but her entrance dramatically shifted the room’s gravity, prompting Jacob to sit up a little straighter.

She said, “I’ve been waiting ten years for you people to call me back.”

Lomax and Jacob sat facing each other.

She said, “We keep a sign-in sheet posted on the wall of the classroom. There’s a space for morning drop-off and another for pickup. It’s important for us to know who’s taking which child and when, and to have a record of it. TJ’s mother kept forgetting to sign him out. It was an ongoing problem. At the end of the week, I have to submit the attendance sheet to the principal, and in TJ’s row there would be five blank spaces, highlighted where his mother hadn’t signed.”

Realizing she was taking a dead woman to task, she toned it down a degree. “I didn’t like to pester her about it, because I knew she was a single mother, and she always looked wrung out. About halfway through the fall semester — early November — a man came to pick TJ up instead of her.”

“Can you describe him? Age, race, height, build?”

“He was white. Big, and tall, although frankly, everybody looks big and tall to me.” Lomax grimaced. “I’m not being very helpful, am I.”

“You’re doing great.”

“I feel responsible to get it right,” she said.

Her eyes grew unfocused as she walked back in time. “It’s hard to say how old he was. People age differently. He wore a hat, one of those — you know, fur, with earflaps. He was totally overdressed. That struck me. He looked like he was getting ready to land on the moon. Overcoat, scarf, gloves. Then I heard him talk and thought, ‘Well, he’s Russian, that’s why.’”

A spike of excitement. “How do you know he was Russian?”

“My mother-in-law is from Petersburg,” she said. “I recognized the accent. And TJ called him dyadya. ‘Uncle.’”

“TJ knew him.”

She nodded. “And liked him, I could see that. He said TJ’s mother was busy and had asked him to help her with pickup. But he wasn’t on the authorized list. I told him sorry, I couldn’t allow it. He started arguing with me. ‘Just for today.’ I told him to tell Ms. Duvall to come get TJ no later than six, and that she’d be responsible for the fee.”

She paused to explain: “We do an after-school program. You have to be enrolled, and TJ wasn’t. It costs eight dollars a day. Less back then, but we need every penny.”

“What happened?”

“He took out a hundred-dollar bill and waved it in my face. ‘For the fee,’ he said.”

Jacob stopped scribbling and looked at her.

“Your basic bully,” she said.

“Did you get his name?” Jacob asked. “Maybe when you checked the list?”

She looked despondent. “I’m... I don’t remember. I—”

She broke off, her eyes big and round. “Something else. I just thought of it. He was wearing a ring.”

“What kind of ring?”

“I don’t know. It wasn’t gold, that much I can... Black, I think, and huge. He’d taken off his glove, to get at his wallet, and he was waving the money in my face. I thought he might punch me. Does that help at all?”

“Absolutely,” Jacob said.

“I’d draw it for you,” she said, “except there’s really nothing to draw. It was just a big piece of metal, almost like brass knuckles. Vulgar. Black, though. Definitely black.”

Jacob said, “That’s excellent. Thank you.”

“I’m sorry I can’t remember his name.”

“It’s all right,” he said. “What happened next? After he waved the money at you.”

“I asked him to leave. He walked out and I never saw him again.” She paused. “TJ’s mother came to get him that evening. She was pretty clearly annoyed with me.’”

Disapproval had crept back into her voice.

“It’s the child’s welfare I’m concerned about, first and foremost,” Susan Lomax said. “Parents don’t always understand that. It can be very frustrating.”

Jacob asked if she had told any of this to the police.

Like a lighthouse beacon, the disapproval swung around in his direction.

“I tried,” she said. “Nobody ever called me back. Can you explain that to me?”

He said, “Wish I could.”

“At least you’re honest. How hard is it to return a call? I even went down to the station in person, but they told me I was at the wrong department, they couldn’t help me.”

She shook her head, glanced at her watch, worn with the face on the inside of her wrist. Jacob figured it for a habit born of too many job-related casualties.

“Recess is over,” she said.

She didn’t get up to leave, though. She said, “He was a sweet child.”

Jacob nodded. “So I hear.”

“Some boys come into a room and immediately go for the first thing they can destroy. It’s not malicious, it’s just the age. TJ wasn’t like that. He was thoughtful, cautious. Young for the class. He preferred to play with the girls. He liked to draw. He liked to build. A bit of a loner, but I respected him for that.”

She reached for the tissue box on the principal’s desk.

“I’ve been doing this job since I was twenty-three,” she said, wiping her eyes. “I’m forty-seven now. Except for my mother’s death, I’ve never taken more than a week off. I timed both of my pregnancies to give birth over the summer. I love what I do. But I’ll tell you something, Detective. That spring, I came close to quitting.”

“You didn’t, though,” Jacob said.

She evaluated him for sincerity. Nodded, and set the crumpled tissue down, watching it slowly expand. She started to cry again, without fanfare. “I felt I had to set an example for the children.”