I nodded and he continued.

“I think something is going on here, at the school.”

“What makes you think that?”

“I don’t really know. Little things, a change in attitude, a child who suddenly doesn’t smile anymore.”

“Have you considered going to the police?”

“I haven’t got anything a cop would listen to. Just an uneasy feeling.”

Again I nodded. Warren was probably right. Intuition, male or female, wasn’t something cops put much stock in.

He continued, “So, basically, what I want is to hire you, have you nose around a bit and see if you can find anything.”

“What do you think I might find that you can’t?”

“What do you mean?”

“You know your teachers, your students. I’m a strange face. How many questions can I ask?”

Warren slowly nodded, then gave me a rueful smile. “Maybe I have a television view of private detectives. I guess reality’s a bit less clear-cut.”

“Just a bit,” I answered his smile. “Maybe you should get a teacher you trust, have her or him help you. It’s hard for an outsider to come in and ask questions, particularly the kind of questions I would have to ask.”

I knew I couldn’t take the job. I had so many layers wrapped around myself that I couldn’t trust unveiling a piece here, a sliver there. A dead student of yours has her picture in a porno magazine.How could I reveal that to him? Did I tell him I was working for Joey? Could I risk my cover with O’Connor? Investigating the school might turn up something or it might not. Despite both Cissy and Judy Douglas, there was no guarantee that this school had anything to do with them. Nor was there any guarantee that they were even linked. Too many children were sexually molested by too many people for me to risk making those kinds of assumptions.

At the same time I knew I would have to put him off, I was touched by Warren’s concern. I wanted him to keep looking at his school and the children who came here.

“Yeah, that might be an idea,” he slowly replied. “It’s…just, well, I’ve seen this before.”

I gave him a questioning look.

“I used to be an assistant principal at a school in Camden, New Jersey. There was this ring, a ring of men who sold children.”

“How did you know?”

“The cops eventually busted them. Got most, but not all of the bastards. But I remember the feeling at the school, the atmosphere, as if the air was full of…” He groped for the words.

“Of secrets. Guilty secrets,” I supplied.

“Yes, that’s it exactly. It wasn’t a thing, or a fact, or an incident, just a feeling. I’m starting to get the same feeling now, and I don’t like it.”

“What do you think’s happening here? Another conspiracy of child abusers?”

“I guess that’s my gut feeling, yeah.”

“Do you think Cissy’s caught in their web?” I asked.

“It’s a possibility. What do you think?”

“What about the usual places?”

“Which usual places?”

“A father, brother…cousin, uncle. Not rings and evil plots.”

“But those evil rings do exist. I’ve seen one.”

“They do,” I answered. “But don’t ignore the common places. That’s where most of the damage is done.”

“You’ve been there, haven’t you?” Warren unexpectedly asked me.

I looked away from him, the question touching emotions that had surfaced only minutes ago in the hallway. I didn’t want them reaching me.

“It’s okay. I know, I’ve been there, too,” he said gently.

“You?” I asked, again able to look at him.

“It’s not something I talk about, at least not very much. But, yes, white, middle-class, American boy, it happened to me.”

“I’m sorry.” It seemed the only reply to make.

He shrugged. “I survived. I guess it taught me it really can happen to anyone.”

I wanted to ask him, Does it still make trust a pitted and treacherous path? Does every act of kindness make you wonder what someone wants from you?But all I said was, “Yes, it happened to me, too.”

“I’m sorry.”

And like he had, I shrugged.

“It was my uncle,” Warren said, answering a question I would not dare to ask. “I was around eight or nine. He was the Boy Scout type, camping and all that stuff. My parents liked him because he would take us kids away for a weekend. Four boys. I was the youngest. So it happened that my three older brothers got one tent and Uncle Bert and I got the smaller pup tent. One morning I woke up and he had an erection. I was curious, so I looked. He caught me looking. I confronted him about it several years ago, and he claimed that, because I looked at his penis, it meant I wanted to do it. I tried to tell him that it was just a young boy’s curiosity, but he couldn’t hear it. Nothing I could say would make him see it wasn’t like that.” Warren shook his head at the memory.

“Did you really think he’d admit, ‘Yeah, you’re right, I took you to the woods, put you in my tent, and, the first chance I got, took advantage of you’?”

Warren let out a small laugh. “I guess I did expect something like that. He was wrong, so wrong, and I thought, of course, it’s obvious, anyone can see that.”

“Were you sorry you confronted him with it?”

“No, not at all. It made me see what kind of a person he really is. What a sad life you have when you live within a lie. When I think of him now, I just feel sorry for him.”

“I’m glad you’ve gotten to that point.”

“You haven’t?”

“Not yet,” I answered quickly. “I’m working on it. It was a cousin…I lived with his family at the time.” But that was all I could say.

“How old where you?” he asked gently.

“Uh…around ten, I guess.”

“How long did it go on?”