Dog Helps Those (Golden Retriever Mysteries) (11 page)

“No, he’s sweet.” I turned to the dog, who was still barking. “Rochester, hush.”

Then I looked back at the kid in the doorway. “Can I help you?”

“Lou from the writing lab told me to come talk to you. I’m Dustin De Bree.”

“Oh, yeah. Come on in, have a seat. Lou said you were having a problem?”

“Can I close the door?” he asked.

“Sure.”

He closed it, then sat down across from me. He wore a light blue Eastern ball cap turned backwards on his head.

“So what’s going on?”

“Can this, like, be in total confidence? I’m really freaked and I don’t know what to do.” He picked nervously at a zit on his neck.

“I can’t promise you anything until I hear what your problem is. But I can tell you I have a friend on the Leighville Police, so if you’re in trouble with them…”

“Oh, no, it’s not illegal. I mean, I’m not in trouble. But I saw something I wasn’t supposed to. And that might be illegal.”

I blew a breath out through my pursed lips. “Let’s start from the beginning. You’re a student here, right?”

He nodded. “I’m a sophomore, majoring in computer science. I’ve always been really good with computers. I have a work-study job in the IT department. My job is to go around to people’s offices and stuff and fix their computers when things break.”

“We really have people who do that? I thought you just put a help desk ticket in and they ignore it.”

“Lots of stuff we can’t actually do anything about. There’s this weird control program installed on all the computers on campus, called Freezer Burn. No matter what you do to the computer when it’s on, as soon as you reboot, Freezer Burn brings it back to the original configuration.”

We’d had a similar program at the place where I worked in California. “But can’t you customize Freezer Burn to accept changes if an administrator makes them?”

He shook his head. “It’s a really crappy program, but Mrs. Parshall won’t let us use anything else.”

That sounded like Verri M. Parshall to me.

 He took a deep breath. “That’s where the trouble is.”

“Go on.”

He sat up. “See, I kept wondering why we use such a crappy program. It’s constantly screwing up all kinds of systems because it wasn’t designed for such a large installation like we have here.”

That made sense. I remembered hearing the problems the registrar was having with graduation audits, and Verri’s unwillingness to do anything about them.

Dustin gave up picking at his zit, but began rubbing his hands against each other.

“So why are you here, Dustin? Sounds like a problem within your department. And you’re only a work-study student, aren’t you? It’s almost the end of the semester. Your job’s going to be over in a week or two.”

He nodded. “But see, the other day I saw something I wasn’t supposed to, and I feel weird about it, like I should report it to someone. It’s really messing with my head, you know? Like we had to sign the Eastern Pledge, right?”

The Pledge was something all freshmen had to sign. Students agreed not to cheat on exams, to plagiarize papers, to steal from the College or from each other, and so on. I’d signed it myself, long ago.

I nodded, though I didn’t know what the Pledge had to do with anything.

“Mrs. Parshall had left this folder open on her desk, and I saw a check inside,” Dustin continued. “From this company called MDC.”

“So?”

“So that’s the company that makes the Freezer Burn software.”

I was starting to get impatient with Dustin. I had to get back to my press release and get it finished before some other crisis came up. “Was it some kind of refund?” I asked.

He shook his head. “No. It was payable to her personally. For like twenty thousand dollars.”

I turned my head a few degrees and pressed my lips shut. Why would Verri M. Parshall be getting a personal check from a vendor?

“You get it, right?” Dustin asked. “It must be some kind of payoff, for using this crappy software. And I’m afraid she knows I saw the check. What if she has me killed or something?”

“I think you’ve been watching too many movies, Dustin,” I said. “Mrs. Parshall isn’t a mob boss. You’re not going to wake up one morning with a horse’s head in bed next to you.”

Dustin recoiled in horror. “A horse’s head? What would that be for? Does she keep horses or something?”

“It’s a scene from a movie.
The Godfather
. But don’t watch it. It’ll only give you horrible ideas.”

“I’ve got enough of those.” He was wearing one of those evolution T-shirts, the kind with a progression from left to right, starting with a monkey, then a Neanderthal, and so on. At the far right was a guy sitting at a computer terminal, with the slogan “Something went terribly wrong” underneath it.

“What should I do, Mr. Levitan? What she’s doing is wrong, and it’s screwing up the college computers. But I’m afraid that if she knows I reported her, she’ll fire me, or even get me expelled or something.”

“Let me think about it.” I had been puzzled over Freezer Burn’s obvious flaws, and yet Verri’s unwillingness to take action. If she had accepted a bribe to install inferior software, that explained her behavior. It was also a very serious charge to make against someone, especially a college employee with such a long tenure and so many friends in high places.

I had no idea what I could do, but my words seemed to have a good effect on Dustin De Bree. For the first time since he’d walked into my office he relaxed.

“Leave me your phone number and your email address,” I said. “I’ll get back to you.”

He scrawled it on the top page of an Eastern College logo pad, and pushed it across to me. “I feel so much better. You’re like, really cool. Lou was totally right about you.”

“Thanks.”

He left, and I went back to my press release, which was sounding wooden and boring. I couldn’t focus on it when I had Rita Gaines and now Dustin De Bree taking up space in my brain.

So I took Rochester out for a walk. Instead of traipsing down the hill, like we usually did, we circled around the back of the campus, where the hillside sloped down sharply to a wooded ravine. A burbling creek marked the edge of the college property. Beyond it lay a series of fields burgeoning with new growth. I let Rochester off his leash and he took off down the slope toward the darkness, his golden flanks shimmering as he ran.

It was so peaceful back there—and yet my brain was filled with murder and corruption. Just like that thicket, dark places could be found around the campus, both literal and metaphorical. The college newspaper regularly reported break-ins and the occasional assault. Students had been arrested on and off campus for drug possession, and at least once a year a depressed young man or woman committed suicide.

I shook those gloomy thoughts off as Rochester dashed around, stopping to sniff and pee, then galloping again. Every time I saw him going toward the thicket I called him back, but he couldn’t resist stepping in to the dense underbrush. I had to scrabble down the slope myself and step between the trees, pushing aside fiddlehead ferns and something prickly.

It was much cooler inside. I could barely hear the noises of the campus—the whirr of the generators, the beep of a truck backing up, rap music from a car passing. It smelled musty and primeval.

Rochester had stopped to sniff some flat-topped mushrooms, and I was able to hook his collar and jerk his head back before he could eat any. Holding him tight, I backed out of the thicket, scratching my arm on the tree bark. Once we were outside I turned and dragged him back up the slope behind me.

We stopped at one of the lunch trucks on the way back and I got a couple of slices of pepperoni pizza. We sat on a bench and I fed him the meat circles as I ate. By the time we were finished I felt refreshed enough to tackle the graduation press release again. I had it ready to go by the time I had to leave for the last day of my tech writing class.

Lou was standing at the teaching podium when I walked in. He’d smartened up for his presentation, wearing a collared shirt and neatly pressed jeans. As the rest of the class filtered in, he said, “I can’t get my presentation to start. I don’t know what’s wrong.”

I groaned. It drove me wild when I was teaching and the computer systems weren’t up to date, and there was nothing I could do about it. Every time I wanted to show a class a Flash movie, I had to fill out a licensing form. Each time I wanted to open a PDF file, I had to accept the conditions of the software. I couldn’t download and install anything myself, even freeware to help students edit pictures or sound clips for their presentations. And when a student used a personal address to email me a paper and I tried to download it, the system took it for a virus and forced my system to reboot.

Lou turned the computer off and then on again, and we waited for it to cycle through its seemingly endless start-up menu. But once it did, whatever had hung it up before was fixed, and he was able to get his PowerPoint running.

The first screen had a picture of a bunch of students sitting at computers, with his name and the title of his presentation:
writting better with the help of the lab
. I chose not to point out the typo in the headline.

“The Writing Lab is located at the rear of Blair Hall, around the corner from this room,” he said to us. “You may never have been there, but it can be a valuable resource for you. I’d like to explain why.”

He clicked forward to a list of all the help a student could get at the Writing Lab. “Most students think the Lab is only for remedial help, but anybody can go in for paper reviews, too,” he said.

He showed a short video clip of himself working with a female student I recognized as his girlfriend Desiree. He was explaining how important structure was in an academic paper.

When the video ended he flipped forward. “Need help with your research or citation?” he asked the class. “You can come to the Writing Lab for help.” He showed a second clip, of him helping Dustin De Bree with MLA-style citations for an English paper.

As the second clip was finishing, the computer froze. “Shit,” Lou said. Then he looked up at the class. “Sorry.”

“Reboot,” I said. I took a deep breath. It never paid to get irritated when things went wrong in class; the students could sense your fear and uncertainty and would pounce on you like wolves, asking if they could leave early, get extensions on deadlines, or skip taking exams. “While you’re waiting for the computer to come back, why don’t you take some questions from the class?”

Barbara Seville asked if professors minded if students got help from the Lab. “Isn’t that like cheating?”

“We get lots of students who come in with referrals from their professors,” Lou said. “What do you think, Prof? Is it OK with you?”

“I think it’s great, as long as the tutor only helps you recognize your problems and gives you advice on how to fix them.”

The computer came back up, and Lou was able to finish his presentation. But it crashed again on the student who followed him, and then on another, and I considered us very lucky to finish the last presentation just before the class was over.

I felt a great sense of relief when I stood up. “Thanks for being a great class,” I said. “Remember, you get an extra twenty points added to your final score if you fill out the online course evaluation by next Monday. If you have missed any assignments, you have until Saturday at midnight to submit them through the online system. I’ll be calculating your grades and I’ll post them sometime next week.”

The class applauded, which was always nice. Especially since I was a fill-in; they had started the semester with Perpetua Kaufman, who had died during the winter break. It was my first time teaching that class in years, so I was lucky she had left behind detailed lecture notes, assignments and links to online exercises.

As the class was filing out, Lou stopped next to me. “Did Dustin talk to you?”

“Yeah. I’m not sure what I can do to help him but I’ll try.”

“Thanks, Prof. He’s a good guy. I know you can help him.”

I wasn’t sure Lou’s optimism was warranted, and as I walked back to Fields Hall I kept thinking about what I could do to help Dustin. I was so preoccupied with his problems I’d forgotten all about Felae Popescu—until I found him in the hallway outside in my office, accompanied by Lili Weinstock.

As I opened the door to my office, Rochester jumped up from his place by the french doors and rushed over to Lili, who scratched him behind the ears. Her masses of auburn curls were tamed by a series of butterfly-shaped barrettes, and she wore a blue chambray shirt and skinny black jeans. She had her messenger bag over her shoulder. After all the drama I’d been going through between Rita Gaines’ death and Dustin De Bree’s problems, I was delighted to see her, even if she was accompanied by the dour Felae.

 “Felae called me this morning and I convinced him to come in,” she said. “I thought maybe you could talk to Rick Stemper for him.”

Felae stood beside her sullenly. “I am Felae,” he said, extending his hand to me. “Dr. Weinstock tells me I must come to you for help.”

“Sit down, Felae, and cut the act, all right? You know exactly who I am, and I’m tired of this stupid pretense you have. If you don’t remember that I was your teacher last year for the mystery fiction class, and that you’ve seen me around campus at least a half dozen times since then, then you’re probably dumb enough to have killed Rita Gaines.”