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"How well did you know her?"
"Not very well. I knew who she was, but I don't think I ever had a class with her." He reached for a set of plaster-of-Paris impressions that sat on his desk, upper plate positioned above the lower in a jutting overbite. He cleared his throat. "What sort of information are you looking for?"
"Whatever you can tell me. Bailey Fowler's father hired me to see if I could come up with some new evidence. I thought I'd start with Jean and work forward from there."
"Why come to me?"
I told him about my conversation with Daisy and her suggestion that he might be of help. His ma
"Were you in that group of kids who found her, by any chance?"
"No, no. I'm a Catholic. That was the youth group from the Baptist church."
"The one in Floral Beach?"
He nodded and I made a mental note, thinking of Reverend Haws. "I've heard she was a bit free with her favors," I said.
"That's the reputation she had. Some of my patients are young girls her age. Fourteen, fifteen.
They just seem so immature. I can't imagine them sexually active and yet I'm sure some of them are."
"I've seen pictures of Jean. She was a beautiful girl."
"Not in any way that served her. She wasn't like the rest of us. Too old in some ways, i
I shook my head. "Anybody in particular?"
"What?"
"I'm wondering if she was involved with anyone you knew."
He gave me a bland look. "Not that I recall."
I could feel the arrow on my bullshit meter swing up into the red. "What about you?"
A baffled laugh. "Me?"
"Yeah, I was wondering if you got involved with her." I could see the color come and go in his face, so I ad-libbed a line. "Actually, someone told me you dated her. I can't remember now who mentioned it, but someone who knew you both."
He shrugged. "I might have. Just briefly. I never dated her steadily or anything like that."
"But you were intimate."
"With Jean?"
"Dr. Poletti, spare me the wordplay and tell me about your relationship. We're talking about things that happened seventeen years ago."
He was silent for a moment, toying with the plaster jaw, which seemed to have something on it he had to pick off. "I wouldn't want this to go any further, whatever we discuss."
"Strictly confidential."
He shifted in his chair. "I guess I've always regretted my association with her. Such as it was. I'm ashamed of it now because I knew better. I'm not sure she did."
"We all do things we regret," I said. "It's part of growing up. What difference does it make after all this time?"
"I know. You're right. I don't know why it's so hard to talk about."
"Take your time."
"I did date her. For a month. Less than that. I can't say my intentions were honorable. I was seventeen. You know how guys are at that age. Once word got out that Jea
"Go on."
"Some of 'em didn't even bother going through the motions. Just picked her up and took her out to the beach. They didn't even take her out on a date."
"But you did."
He lowered his gaze. "I took her out a few times. I felt guilty even doing that. She was kind of pathetic… and scary at the same time. She was bright enough, but she wanted desperately to believe someone cared. It made you feel sheepish, so you'd get together with the guys afterward and bad-mouth her."
"For what you'd done," I supplied.
"Right. I still can't think about her without feeling kind of sick. What's strange is I can still remember things she did." He paused for a moment, eyebrows going up. He shook his head once, blowing out a puff of air. "She was really outrageous… insatiable's the word… but what drove her wasn't sex. It was… I don't know, self-loathing or a need to dominate. We were at her mercy because we wanted her so much. I guess our revenge was never really giving her what she wanted, which was old-fashioned respect."
"And what was hers?"
"Revenge? I don't know. Creating that heat. Reminding us that she was the only source, that we could never have enough of her or anything even halfway like her for life. She needed approval, some guy to be nice. All we ever did was snicker about her behind her back, which she must have known."
"Did she get hung up on you?"
"I suppose. Not for long, I don't think."
"It would help if you could tell me who else might have been involved with her."
He shook his head. "I can't. You're not going to get me to blow the whistle on anybody else. I still hang out with some of those guys."
"How about if I read you some names off a list?"
"I can't do that. Honestly. I don't mind owning up to my own part in it, but I can't implicate anybody else. It's an odd bond and something we don't talk about, but I'll tell you this-her name gets mentioned, we don't say a word, but we're all thinking the same damn thing."
"What about guys who weren't friends of yours?"
"Meaning what?"
"At the time of the murder, she was apparently having an affair and got herself knocked up."
"Don't know." *
"Make a guess. There must have been rumors."
"Not that I heard."
"Can you ask around? Somebody must know."
"Hey, I'd like to help, but I've probably already said more than I should."
"What about some of the girls in your class? Someone must have been clued in back then."
He cleared his throat again. "Well. Barb might know. I could ask her, I guess."
"Barbara who?"
"My wife. We were in the same class."
I glanced at the photograph on his desk, recognizing her belatedly. "The prom queen?"
"How'd you know about that?"
"I saw some pictures of her in the yearbook. Would you ask her if she could help?"
"I doubt if she knows anything, but I could mention it."
"That'd be great. Have her give me a call. If she doesn't know anything about it, she might suggest someone who would."
"I wouldn't want anything said about…"
"I understand," I said.
I gave him my card with a little note on the back, with my telephone number at the Ocean Street. I left his office feeling faintly optimistic and more than a little disturbed. There was something about the idea of grown men haunted by the sexuality of a seventeen-year-old girl that seemed riveting-both pitiable and perverse. Somehow the glimpse he'd given me of the past made me feel like a voyeur.