The Third Brother. Andrew Welsh-Huggins

      8

      I DIDN’T LOOK MUCH WORSE THE NEXT morning than a guy whose left eye and socket have been replaced by an overripe eggplant. How I felt was another matter. I pulled myself together with a second cup of coffee before setting off for a romp in the park with Hopalong. After breakfast, a shower, and more breakfast, I got in my Honda Odyssey and headed to the northeast side of town.

      Maple Ridge High was a 1970s special: flat roof, brick exterior the color of fish sticks, a bank of recessed glass doors at an entrance guarded by poured concrete pillars that brought to mind abandoned Olympic villages. I had to wait to be buzzed in. Once I was inside, a custodian reluctantly pointed me down a gleaming hall toward the office. I could feel the resentment in his eyes like little death rays in my back as I tracked molecular-sized grains of dust onto the newly waxed floor.

      I explained to the woman sitting at a desk why I was there. She didn’t reply, but instead stared hard at me, which was a puzzle until I remembered my eye.

      “I’m not sure Ms. Paulus has time today,” she said at last. “We’re trying to wrap up the school year.”

      “Ms. Paulus?”

      “The principal?”

      “Right. It won’t take but a minute, promise. Or I can wait.” I leaned forward, folded my hands on the counter and smiled.

      She didn’t return the smile. She had a full, brown face and a streak of red in her straightened black hair that nicely matched her lipstick. Her dark eyes were the sort you could fall into if you had a thing for school secretaries who brooked very little crap. She glanced at an open office door behind her and to her right. A poster of a female swimmer doing the butterfly filled the upper half of the door.

      “I’ll have to see.” She studied her desk phone for a moment. I couldn’t tell if she was hoping it would ring or deciding whether to call 9-1-1. At last she stood with a frown and click-clacked on red summer heels back to the principal’s office. I looked around the room and caught the custodian glaring at me through the office windows. Like the secretary, he didn’t appear to feel I was conducive to the school’s educational mission. I waved. He stalked off. A moment later the secretary click-clacked back to her desk, followed by a woman with a pen in her hand and impatience on her face.

      “I’m Helene Paulus. How can I help you?”

      I got the same puzzled look at my eye. I smiled and handed her my card and told her my name and reason for my presence. She took the card and studied it like a copy machine invoice she hadn’t been expecting. When she was done she turned the card over and seemed disappointed the back was blank. I get that a lot. It always makes me think I should buy a set printed with a cartoon of a hound wearing a Sherlock Holmes hat and sucking on a churchwarden pipe, to show I’m a real investigator and all.

      She said, “But I thought . . .” She paused. She lowered her voice a notch. “I thought Abdi was overseas.”

      “Not as far as anyone knows. We think he’s here.”

      “We?”

      “The family. And the government, too, for that matter.”

      “And you’re a private investigator?”

      “Yes, ma’am,” I said, which I could tell she didn’t like since she couldn’t have been that much older than me. I pulled out my license and presented it.

      “Just a couple of questions. In hopes of finding the boy.”

      “We can talk in my office,” she said doubtfully, and gestured for me to come around the counter and follow her back. I smiled at the secretary as I passed her desk. She shot me some of the custodian’s death rays. As we entered the principal’s office I looked at the poster on the door. “Dream Bigger,” it said, beneath a photo of the swimmer taken from an underwater angle.

      “I don’t mean to be rude,” Paulus said, as she sat behind her desk. “Your eye—”

      “Cue ball,” I said, sitting down across from her. “Took a bad hop. About Abdi . . .”

      She frowned. “The FBI was already here. I’m not sure what more I can tell you. Or should.” She had short, white hair in a boyish cut and the tan of someone who’s outdoors a lot. Given the profusion of house plants in the office I was guessing gardening over triathlons, though she had a nice enough figure. She was dressed professionally, even with school out, in a sleeveless patterned blouse and white slacks. No wedding ring. Her tone was cool and guarded, as if I were an errant teacher begging to be rehired despite a file full of student grievances.

      “Whatever you’re able to answer,” I said, trying to decide where to start. My eyes strayed across her desk. Beside a pile of manila folders sat a copy of Dreamland. She followed my gaze.

      “It’s a book about the opiate epidemic,” she said, taking her time pronouncing ‘opiate.’ “There’s several chapters about Ohio.”

      “Yes. I’m reading it myself.”

      “You are?”

      “That’s right.”

      “Is it for a class, or, or something?”

      “Actually, I’m just reading it. You know, for pleasure, so to speak. It’s good, don’t you think? But quite disturbing.” I waited a moment, but she didn’t respond.

      I said, “Don’t worry. I have a friend who helps me sound out the really big words.”

      “I’m sorry. I just didn’t think—”

      I waited, watching her blush. I felt bad, but it was worth seeing. It made my embarrassment at owing Bonnie money literally pale in comparison. Plus, the color didn’t do any harm to her features.

      “I meant—”

      “Don’t worry about it. Sounds like a topic we’re both interested in. I imagine it’s a big concern in a school. Maybe we could talk about it sometime over tea and crumpets. But right now I’m here about Abdi Mohamed. I guess I’m wondering if anyone here has any idea where he might have gone. And if these accusations are a surprise in any way.”

      “Yes,” she said, recovering. “Yes, I mean they are a surprise. A huge surprise. You think you know the students, and then something like this. It’s hard not to wonder now, with his brother and all. But Abdi was a good kid. We didn’t suspect anything like this. None of his teachers did.”

      “And no idea where he is?”

      “Of course not. We would have told the authorities.”

      “His family says he was on the way to work. After school got out?”

      “That’s right. He always had a job of some kind. Very hardworking. Not like—”

      “Not like Hassan?”

      “Yes,” she admitted. “They were very different young men, despite the fact they were brothers. Hassan was a real troublemaker, to tell you the truth. We have a gang problem here, and he was headed in that direction. That’s what made his turnaround so surprising.” She paused. “And frankly, a little hard to swallow.”

      “What do you mean?”

      “He just traded one set of problems for another, in my opinion. Instead of just, I don’t know, doing the right thing in the first place.”

      “In my experience, doing the right thing is a high bar for a lot of people.”

      “Is