Victim Six Read Free Page A

teachers standoffish and jealous.
    Kendall walked the familiar corridor to Classroom 18 and turned the knob, her heart beating a little faster as she went inside. Lori Bertram’s classroom was a riot of construction-paper cutouts and the smells of all things that seven-year-olds live for: Paste. Sour green-apple candy. Guinea pigs. Lori Bertram had been teaching at South Colby for the past six years, but she still carried the enthusiasm of a first-year teacher. Ms. Bertram was a brunette with pointed features and a splatter of freckles over the bridge of her nose. A charm bracelet with all fifty states, something she used as a teaching tool, jangled whenever she moved her arm.
    “Good afternoon, Ms. Stark,” she said, motioning toward one of those impossibly small chairs. Green eyes sparkled through wireless frames.
    Kendall Stark was there about her son Cody, an autistic boy who was easy to love but a challenge nonetheless. He was blond-haired and blue-eyed, like his mother. His head was like a small pumpkin, so round and perfect. In photographs, he was the ideal. A cherub. The Gerber baby. The image of the child that young women always dreamed would find their way into a perfectly appointed nursery. He was almost one when the doctors first diagnosed the possibility of “delayed development.” If only. At two, the autism was confirmed. The diagnosis, at first, was a torpedo speeding toward every dream Kendall had for her son. It would never change her love, of course, but in her darkest hours she knew that her son was born to suffer in some way. It broke her heart.
    To outsiders, at least, it appeared to take longer for Steven Stark to come to terms with the idea that their son was “different from the others.” An advertising salesman for a hunting and fishing magazine out of Seattle, Steven used to be the kind of man who was all biceps and bravado. Snowboarding. Bungee jumping. Driving fast cars. He was drawn to whatever gave him a challenge, a rush. He had assumed that when he became a father, he’d be able to relive the excitement of the things that didn’t seem to be in the dignified realm of adulthood. He loved his son too. But the cruelty of autism was a chasm between father and son. Steven’s love, it seemed, was seldom returned. There would be no playing catch. No baseball games. No deer hunting.
    “This may not be the son you’ve dreamed of,” Kendall said on the way home from one of their first consultations with an autism specialist. “But in time you’ll see. He will be the boy of your dreams.”
    Steven put on his game face. “I’m sure you’re right, babe.”
    “God gave us a special son because we’re the right parents for him.”
    “I know,” he said, his tone more rueful than he’d wanted.
    Later, when she played back the conversation, she wondered who had said what.
     
    Kendall Stark knew no speeches could change what Lori Bertram was about to tell her. She knew that the second-grade teacher cared for her little boy. She’d said so many, many times. She’d arranged for special testing, more hours from the support staff than were required to help him stay in the same class as the kids he’d known since preschool.
    “Kendall,” the teacher she said, lowering her glasses to view a printout, “I’m sorry to report that things aren’t working out for Cody here at South Colby as we’d all hoped.”
    The words were not a surprise. Ms. Bertram had sent several missives home, as had the special education teacher, Ms. Dawson. All seemed to agree that Cody was not a candidate for mainstreaming.
    “Cody’s needs and challenges are too great for a standard classroom,” she said.
    As a detective, Kendall knew the kinds of questions to ask in order to get the kind of result she wanted. But not now. She was powerless.
    “I can get him more help,” Kendall said. “Another specialist.”
    The teacher looked away. The moment was awkward. “Look, you already have. You have done an