Day 22

When they arrived at the dance, which was held in the girls' gymnasium (as most of the school dances were, since it smelled nicer than the boys' gym), they had their picture taken again, this time by the professional photographer hired for the event, standing in front of a beautifully painted graveyard backdrop; they got to pose twice, once in a formal date pose and once in costume-character, with their swords drawn and pointed at the camera.

The gym was elaborately decorated with streamers of shredded gauze, cotton-wool cobwebs in the corners, glittering bats and phosphorescent ghosts hanging from the ceiling, and Styrofoam gravestones and gargoyles peeping out of the dry-ice fog that obscured the floor. The lights were covered with green and purple gels, casting creepy shadows all around, and the mirror-ball that hung from the central scoreboard over the area cleared for dancing had been meticulously applied with tiny decals so it looked like glowing bats were flying around in swirling circles.

Danny and Jeremy greeted friends as they made their way through the crowded gym, and were eventually engulfed in the new clique that had gathered around Danny over the last three weeks, referred to by the other students (in tones of greatest respect) as The Gays.

Danny's outing at the hands of Claude Bettancourt, and Jeremy coming out in Danny's wake, had an unexpected after-effect: eight more boys and five girls came out in the following week, some in couples and some as singles. And though Danny had always been as socially promiscuous as he'd recently been sexually promiscuous, preferring a free-range approach to socialization instead of belonging to a single clique, he became an irresistible magnet for these newly out-and-proud kids -- they clustered around him like apostles, looking to him for inspiration and leadership.

He felt socially limited by this clique, but he accepted his responsibility to it with good grace, giving his lunch hour over to it and setting precedents and policies with his behavior. There was some talk about starting an official Gay/Straight Alliance club, but so far nobody had experienced homophobia or bigotry since coming out, rendering a club meant to combat homophobia and bigotry rather redundant. There may have been homophobes and bigots at Vandervere High, but with Danny Vandervere as the figurehead of the group, they must deem it wise to keep such beliefs to themselves.

The Great Coming Out hadn't drawn everyone into the open: the Jocks, to a man, had elected to remain closeted. It was fine for Danny Vandervere, Henry told him, to be out and proud since the Trust would pay for the college of his choice and he didn't need scholarships; and it was almost expected for drama students and music students and liberal arts students to be gay; being an out gay athlete could be a very expensive endeavor, considering the homophobic attitudes of many college coaches and recruiters.

Two other boys that Danny knew about from experience had also remained closeted, afraid that their fundamentalist Christian parents would find out. But Danny had instituted a strict No Outing policy on his new clique, explaining to them that coming out was a very important personal-growth experience, and to take that out of the individual's hands was vicious and hypocritical.

Claude Bettancourt was the only one who did not benefit from this new regime: he was persona non grata at lunch, in class, even at home (the Bettancourts were seriously considering sending him back to his mother or parking him on another relative); the salacious gossip he was so ready to divulge to all and sundry died on his lips, eliciting absolutely no interest from the other students. He had taken to cutting school, only showing up once or twice a week, and apparently stoned or drunk when he came. Danny had expressly forbidden anyone from actively persecuting him, but the silence with which he was greeted everywhere he went seemed just as cruel.

But Danny wasn't worried about Claude, he was having too much fun being public with Jeremy and their romance. He had even given up fucking around, partly because the secrecy that made it easy was gone, but mostly because he wanted to be celibate (though only in the coital sense, he still masturbated frequently) for Jeremy's sake: if and when Jeremy was ever ready to take that step, Danny wanted it to be special for himself as well as Jeremy.

Danny and Jeremy had a wonderful time at the party, dancing until they couldn't breathe and then taking rests on the bleachers with The Gays; and when the slow dances came on, he almost wept from the joy of slow-dancing with someone for whom he cared deeply and to whom he was physically attracted, in front of everyone, completely out in the open.

The party started winding down at eleven, the teachers and parents who attended as chaperons encouraging people to get home before midnight -- and if they didn't want to go home yet, encouraging them to stay and help clean up (which guaranteed almost all of the students would be gone by 11:30 at the latest).

Happy, sweaty, and giggling, Danny and Jeremy made their way out of the dance and headed toward Danny's car at a quarter after eleven, hoping to allow themselves some private time before Jeremy had to be home at twelve. But as they approached the car, they saw something laying on the ground in front of it, apparently a pile of dark clothing.

"What the hell?" Danny wondered, thinking someone was playing a practical joke by leaving a fake corpse in his path, and so walked up to the thing expecting something funny, or attempting to be funny; he turned on the tiny LED flashlight on his keyring and pointed the wide beam of blue light at the pile.

"Oh, shit!" Jeremy screamed when they saw what it was.

Claude Bettancourt lay on his side, his pale green eyes open in an expression of surprise, his face paste-white; there were two neat diagonal slashes on his neck, one on each side like bloody gills, severing both the carotid and the jugular. He was dressed in a black monk's robe, and a grotesque red leather mask was perched in his fair hair; Danny recognized the costume, Claude had apparently been at the party all night without anyone knowing it was him. There was a large metal box-cutter laying in his open right hand, completely coated with blood.

"Oh, my God," Danny whispered.

"Did he do that to himself?" Jeremy wondered, trying to encapsulate the horror of a dead body with logic.

"It looks like he might have," Danny was dizzy and felt like throwing up; the smell of blood was strong and nauseating, there was a huge pool of it all around Claude's body, and great splashes on the grill and headlights of Danny's SUV. He had apparently died right there, and not very long ago; reaching out hesitantly to touch the body, selecting a dry space on the clothed arm, he discovered it was still fairly warm.

"What do we do?" Jeremy wondered, completely baffled by the novelty of the situation.

"I'll call 911," Danny responded, fishing his cellphone (which he now kept on his person at all times) from his hip-purse, fully knowledgeable of the procedure since his experience with Mr. Janacek, "and then we'd better get back into the dance and let the principal know what happened, and make sure to keep everyone out of the parking lot. The police will want a clean scene."

*****

Danny sat by himself in a guidance counselor's office, weeping quietly into a paper tissue, waiting to be interviewed by a police officer. He felt incredibly sorry for Claude: he hadn't liked the boy, didn't think anybody could really like someone so chronically unhappy and unpleasant; but for his young life to be cut short like that, to take away all his potential to grow up and improve, was just horribly sad.

And he felt guilty, wondering if Claude had committed suicide because of the ostracism that he'd attempted to inflict on Danny but ended up reaping for himself, wondering if there had been anything he might have done to make the boy's burden easier... wondering if, had he shown Claude some kindness, the boy might still be alive.

"It makes me very nervous," Officer Pete Kelly walked into the room and seated himself behind the desk across from Danny, "when a person finds two dead bodies on two separate occasions within the same month."

"I don't feel nervous so much as persecuted by Fate," Danny replied, drying his eyes and pulling himself together.

"Perhaps Fate is getting back at you for being beautiful, intelligent, and rich at the same time."

"Don't forget 'hung,'" Danny looked at him sourly.

"More information than I needed," the officer laughed and opened his notebook, "So how did you know this victim?"

"I went to school with him, to start," Danny said with a sigh, "And he was the cousin of my friend Sandra, whom I used to date last year."

"He outed you to the whole school three weeks ago?"

"You work fast," Danny was impressed, "Yes, he did. I think he meant to revenge himself on me for turning down his offer of sex. But it sort of backfired on him."

"Being outed is just the sort of thing that makes people angry enough to kill," Officer Kelly suggested.

"I was angry at first," Danny admitted, "But after a while I just felt sorry for him. He didn't really have any friends, I think he was trying to impress people by taking on someone essentially untouchable, David-and-Goliath style; but he ended up with everyone hating and ignoring him. It must have been hard for him, small towns aren't the best places to make social gaffes of that degree."

"You didn't want him dead, though?" the policeman persisted.

"No, not at all," Danny frowned at the man, "And I was at the dance in full view of three hundred people. I have one immediate witness for my actions between the time I left the dance and the time we found the body, and several distant witnesses. Ironclad alibi, I call it."

"Even ironclad alibis sink sometimes," Officer Kelly reminded him.

"Like the USS Monitor," Danny nodded.

"What's the USS Monitor?"

"A famous Civil War battleship. It was the type called an 'ironclad.' It sank in a storm on New Year's Eve, 1862."

"You're too smart for your own good, Danny Vandervere," the policeman looked up at him sharply, "But you're not really a suspect. Whoever killed Claude would have been covered in blood, and you don't have a drop on you. I doubt very seriously if you have a duplicate to a costume like that."

"Is it possible he killed himself?" Danny wanted to know.

"Possible, but not probable. To make two deep incisions, with no hesitation marks, one on each side, would require a strength of purpose I don't think that boy had. But it is possible that he did it himself. Forensics will have to decide."

"Poor kid," Danny pinched the bridge of his nose between his eyes, willing the tears to stay back.

"I expect plenty of other people might be angry enough to kill him? As you said, he made himself very unpopular with that little outing stunt. He named three other boys besides you, and threatened to name others? Would someone kill him to shut him up?"

"Possibly," Danny thought that over for a moment, "There are some people who still wish to keep their sexuality a secret. But I would think they'd have done it a lot sooner. Claude could have broadcast his knowledge from here to China in the last three weeks."

"Can you give me some names? Of the people who might have felt threatened?"

"I'd really rather not," Danny said apologetically.

"If I insist?" the officer suggested.

"If you insist with formal questioning, at the police station with a lawyer present, then perhaps," Danny considered the man carefully.

"Which you know perfectly well I wouldn't do, since the lawyer will probably be your father, my boss, the Mayor," Officer Kelly narrowed his eyes suspiciously.

"Well, I can't help that," Danny shrugged, "It's up to you if you think it's worth the trouble. But I'm not kissing and telling if I can avoid it."

"We're not talking about 'kiss and tell,' Danny, we're talking about investigating a possible murder. If you know of a boy who had a motive for killing Claude to keep his sexuality a secret, and you don't tell me who it is, you're obstructing justice."

"Well, if you put it that way," Danny relented, "But I really need your assurance that you won't tell them you know unless absolutely necessary. I mean, I promised them, and I don't break promises lightly."

"You give me a list of names, written on a piece of paper; I will see if they have alibis; and if they don't, I will ask them some very discreet questions. I won't mention your name, and I won't make it look like I'm singling them out. How's that?"

"That sounds fair," Danny reached for the notepad by the counselor's phone and took a pen from the cup on the desk. He wrote down the names of all the boys at school he'd had sex with but who hadn't come out yet, "Though you realize that Claude might have made any number of enemies outside of the school. Am I going to have to snitch on every closeted man I know in town?"

"Let's start with these... eight boys, criminy! I didn't have eight conquests to my name until I was twenty-two... and then we'll see what comes up. I don't want you to feel like a snitch."

"So, you think I'm beautiful?" Danny went back to the beginning of the conversation to clarify a point that had snagged at the back of his mind.

"Merely an aesthetic judgement, not a come-on," Officer Kelly smiled knowingly at the boy, having figured out that his insatiable need for love would make him easy to manipulate if a necessity ever arose, "I'm straight."

"You'd be surprised, Officer," Danny laughed at him, "how many of the men I've fucked have said that to me."

"And speaking of which," the officer closed his notebook and looked at Danny with a weary but very intent face, "What do you think of the possibility that this is another murder that has been offered very specifically to you, either as a warning or, as seems more likely, a gift?"

"I don't know," Danny said tensely, "Claude was a declared enemy, killing him for my benefit makes more sense than poor Mr. Janacek, whom I liked very much. But I can't imagine why someone would do that for me."

"If someone is obsessed with you, and mentally unbalanced, it would be quite possible. That this is the second body that was placed directly in your path is very suggestive. I mean, there were a hundred cars in the lot, it seems unlikely that the killing would happen right in front of yours, not just nearby but immediately in your way, if you weren't the intended audience."

"Well, yes, but it seems so random. Mr. Janacek and Claude had nothing in common, my relationships with each of them were entirely different. And the modus operandi was different in both cases. I thought killers stuck to a preferred method; how often does a strangler suddenly become a slasher?"

"Not very often," Officer Kelly agreed, "but if this is a new hobby, the killer might not have settled on a preferred method yet."

"Do you think more people will be killed?" Danny was horrified by the suggestion.

"If it's the same killer, yes I do. Nobody stops at two unless they're stopped by someone or something."

"So far it's been a friend and an enemy. Who would be next?"

"I don't know, Danny," the officer stood up and laid his hand on the boy's shoulder, "But keep your eyes open, OK? I don't mean to frighten you, but it might be you next."
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