“Always so damn cute,” she muttered, but her heart wasn’t really into pushing back at me. Then her shoulders relaxed a little under her dark, uniform jacket, and she softened her tone as I knew she would whenever I brought up her daughter, Shawna, who was six.
“Last spelling test, 100 percent,” Alice bragged. “She purely loves school.” She glanced at me under her fringe of dark hair. “Must be you rubbing off on her.” She paused and then went on more seriously, “And Jim is good too, I mean, now that he’s driving that truck and out of the house. Hard to have him gone so much, though.” Then she stopped, I assumed not wanting to share too much. But I thought she knew I understood.
Her husband, Jim, had been a firefighter in their south suburban town, but budget cuts had eliminated his job, and he’d been out of work for almost eighteen months. Then he’d gotten a truck driving license and, it seemed, a good job. But I bet it was hard on them, his being on the road. I knew Alice had family around to help with Shawna, as her hours were no picnic either. As a widow now for six years, I knew well what it was like to have to do solo parenting. And Alice knew that I knew.
“Sounds like it’s tough,” I replied neutrally. “But hey, 100 percent on the spelling is great. The boys do okay in spelling, but they complain that it is so dumb now that there’s spellcheck.” Yes, at seven they knew spellcheck on the computer.
Alice hmphed, opened her notebook, and clicked her pen. She was done with chit-chat.
I took her cue and just summarized what Jordan had said when he’d come to my office about John Vandenberg. Then I went on to Jane’s call with the information from Rev. Dunn about white supremacist wannabe’s using the chat rooms of violent video games to recruit and also to communicate. Perhaps they had used a chat room to plan the hanging of the noose. Jordan had implied John Vandenberg had acted alone, angry at the hiring of a Muslim professor in Philosophy and Religion and then at the title of his planned lecture.
“I don’t know, though, Alice, if that’s right, either that John Vandenberg hung the noose, or if he did, that he did it alone. There’s some white guy students here who even tried to get Richard Spencer to come speak. It could be a larger group,” I finished.
“Who’s he?” Alice said, pausing in her writing and looking up quizzically.
“You know, that neo-Nazi, rich idiot who’s always quoting Germans and saying ‘Heil Trump’ and so forth?”
Alice looked blank for a minute.
“White guy?”
“Yeah. Sort of a professional white guy, really, with rich parents so he doesn’t actually have to do anything to support himself. He keeps claiming ‘America belongs to the white man,’ and tries to get on to college campuses and talk about stuff like that under the banner of ‘free speech.’”
“And you think I pay attention to mess like that? Give a little shit like that any space in my brain? Do you think I’d let that filth come near me and mine?” Alice sat up straight and glared at me, her whole body rigid with anger.
“No. Of course not,” I said. “I’m just saying we need to know who the enemy is.”
Oh, hell. As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I realized I’d made a huge mistake. Alice’s face went from anger to blank like someone had pulled the blinds closed. And someone had. Me.
“You think I don’t know who the enemy is?” she ground out between clenched teeth, her lips barely moving. “You think I haven’t known that all my life, had it shoved in my face every day, on the street, on a bus, in school, in this damn job for this ‘oh we’re so liberal, white people we don’t see you’ school? Do you?”
“Yes, you do know that. I shouldn’t have said what I did. It was stupid and blind. I’m sorry.”
She looked away, taking deep breaths.
I just waited.
“Try to think before you open your damn mouth, okay?” she said, still not looking at me.
“Yeah. Okay.” I wanted to say “sorry” and “I feel awful for what I just said,” and a bunch of other white, guilt-type phrases, but I figured the least I could do was shut up and not make it worse.
Alice opened the zip on her jacket and took out a little metal case that I knew held her cigarettes and lighter. She tapped the tip of a cigarette on the stone-topped table, put it between her lips, and lit it. She took a big drag, inhaling like this was her first gasp of air after having been choked. Then she took another short pull. She glared up at me, daring me to say anything.
I continued shutting up.
“They use these video games to plan stuff?” Alice said, puffing again while looking down at her notebook.
She was all business.
“That’s what Jane told me Rev. Dunn had said,” I replied evenly. “Yeah, in short, they go online, play the game, and then use the chat room to communicate. And they all use screen names, weird ones, Jane reported, though God knows what they consider weird. We can’t just look at the chat rooms of these games and see that it’s students.”
I paused, thinking. Alice took another drag.
“But we might be able to tell from what they’re saying to each other. I mean if they sound like they’re talking about our campus.”
She paused, looking at her notebook.
“So what’s the name of the student who ratted out the other student?”
“Jordan Jameson is the guy who came to see me, and John Vandenberg is the name of the student Jordan said was all upset about Dr. Abubakar’s lecture and so forth.”
Alice wrote that down. Then she took another deep drag, got up without comment, and took the half-smoked cigarette to the outdoor container. She ground it out, pushed it in, and came back.
She sat, drumming her fingers on the hard surface of the table. I wondered where she had gone in her mind. I realized I had no clue. I had my own ideas, but knew continuing to shut up was best, at least right now.
“Mel,” she said, looking up at me.
“Mel?” She was referring to her colleague and often partner, Mel Billman. Mel had been on the quad when Alice had cut down the noose, I recalled. He was a tall, mixed-race guy who rarely said anything, but when he did it was best to pay close attention.
“Mel’s a gamer, is that what you mean?” I asked.
“Yeah. Think so.” She tapped her pen on her teeth. “Last year, maybe it was, he went to some convention here in Chicago, think it was about these game things. Excited about it.”
She took her pen and jotted something down.
“Mel was excited?” I said, disbelief in my voice.
Alice actually grinned a little.
“For him, yeah. Ten more words than usual.” She rooted in her jacket pocket, took out her phone and started scrolling.
“Today’s duty roster shows he’s on. I’ll tell him about what that pastor from Michigan said and the mess they could be making with these crap games. What’re the names he gave Jane?”
“Revenge,” I said, the word coming out in a grim tone, “as well as ‘Hitman,’ and ‘Death Rally.’ ‘Revenge’ is the most popular, apparently.”
Alice looked up from writing.
“Yeah. Right.”
She made another note, put the notebook away in another pocket, and stood up.
“Alice,” I said.
“Yeah, yeah. I know you sorry as hell, but you gotta think first.” She paused. “You