Schooled in Murder (7 page)

Jourdan said, “Those people aren’t rational. They’re so emotionally committed to every single one of their positions, and why? What is the point? And they all back each other up no matter what. They will tell any lie. Where’d they get that information on who’d been where on their travels? Huh? It had to be an administrator. Some administrator is feeding the suckups. I think we should all be very afraid. If Mabel has been arrested, someone will find a lie to get her off. They’ll keep themselves free, you watch. Somebody will dream some shit up. They’ll lie to convict one of us.” He drew a deep breath. “What do I do if they accuse me or try to arrest me? Can the union get me a lawyer?”

I said, “Unfortunately, the union deals only with legal cases connected to the contract between the teachers and the board. Don’t say anything more to the police. Wait for representation. If you can’t afford one, the courts provide you with a lawyer.”

“I think one of my wife’s friends is an attorney.”

“I’d suggest you call her now and put things in motion.”

He said, “This is so awful.” He buried his face in his hands and said, “I should never have said anything at today’s meeting. Why can’t other people do the fighting?”

“They do sometimes,” I said. “Today was just a bad day for you.” I reassured him as best I could. I wanted to get away and get my own reassurances. I was hungry and I wanted to go home.

8

When I left Jourdan’s classroom, I saw Morgan Adair at the top of the stairs at the east end of the building. He was deep in conversation with Steven Frecking, who had his back to me. Frecking still wore the same outfit he’d been in when I caught him with Benson in the storeroom. I saw Morgan touch Frecking’s arm. Frecking yanked his arm away as if he’d been burned. As I approached, I heard Morgan say, “Can we get together?”

“No.”

“Are you okay?” Morgan asked.

I could hear the first wisps of heartbreak in his voice.

“We can’t talk here.” Frecking’s voice was a savage whisper.

“It’s okay. No one can hear us.”

I slowed. Obviously Morgan hadn’t heard what Frecking had been doing in the storeroom. In fact, other than me, the two involved, and maybe the police, I guess no one did know.

Frecking said, “This is not worth the hassle. I can’t do this.” I waited for him to admit what he had been doing earlier. Nope. Instead, “You are not worth all this hassle. I gotta
go.” Frecking turned, spotted me, and rushed toward me. Morgan looked like he’d lost his best friend, which, in a way, he hadn’t.

Frecking didn’t make eye contact as he stormed past me. He bulled his way toward the exit.

Morgan saw me and hurried over. “He’s so closeted. He’s so hot. It’s sad.”

I said, “He just totally dismissed you.”

“You heard that?”

“Sorry, yeah.”

He hung his head. Had he no pride? Was he that desperate for a relationship? I guess so. Morgan would find out eventually about Frecking being in that room, and he’d find out I knew. So I said, “You know where I found the body?”

“Yeah.”

“When I walked in, I saw Steven and Brandon Benson making out.”

“They were there?”

“Yes.”

“With the body?”

“They didn’t know it was there.”

“Maybe they were just talking.”

“With their hands on each others crotches?”

“Benson is married to a woman.”

“I know.”

“They wouldn’t do that in school. Are you sure?”

“I’m not in the habit of altering reality.”

“He wouldn’t.”

“He was.”

“I … You’re sure?”

I just looked at him.

“I can’t believe it. I thought he was the one.”

Morgan did tend to have mad crushes on men after one date.

I said, “I’m sorry.”

“We had wild sex last night. I thought he’d be exhausted. We did it four times.”

“More information than I need,” I said.

Morgan said, “I can’t talk about this now. I’ll talk to you later.”

I didn’t see the cops. I didn’t see any administrators. No friends in sight. I trudged to my classroom.

9

Rain still pelted the windows. The drops joined together and formed rivulets down the panes to the puddles of water that always seeped through and onto the ledges inside the windows. I’d been trying to get that fixed for years. No luck there either.

I sat at my desk for a few minutes and fretted. Then I got fed up and decided to go home.

My classroom door opened. It was my lover, Scott Carpenter. He wore faded blue jeans, running shoes, and a sweatshirt. Water sluiced off his umbrella as he shook it and then placed it open on the floor. We hugged and kissed. I explained what had happened since we talked on the phone. I finished, “The cops said to hang around. This isn’t good.”

Scott said, “I called our attorney, he’s on his way.” Seconds later the two detectives barged into the room. Gault said, “We’ll need a DNA sample from you, Mr. Mason.”

“Why?”

“We’re investigating.”

An obvious and incomplete answer. I said, “I need to speak with my attorney.”

Gault got pissed at that. “You refusing to cooperate?”

Scott asked, “Why do you want a DNA sample?”

Gault said to Scott, “Who are you?”

Scott said, “Scott Carpenter.”

Vulmea said, “You’re the baseball player.”

Scott plays professional baseball. He’s good. He’s famous. He was home in October. The team wasn’t that good.

For a few minutes Scott’s status as a baseball player focused attention on him rather than corpses, killings, and suspects. I call that the “Notting Hill effect.” As in the movie
Notting Hill,
when the Hugh Grant character shows up at his younger sister’s birthday party with Julia Roberts, who is playing a stunningly famous actress. The family’s reaction is priceless and endearing, and I love the movie. I didn’t have time for the detectives’ being in awe of a star right then, but they weren’t asking me. And for a few moments they’d stopped asking for a DNA sample. They’d get back to it.

The reigning administrative triumvirate in the school district barged in: Amando Graniento, the principal; Riva Towne, the superintendent; Kara Bochka, the president of the school board and mother of Fred Zileski. Bochka had remarried since divorcing Fred Zileski’s dad. I knew the custody arrangement was complicated and that the biological parents hated each other. Victoria Abbot, the assistant superintendent who had been around earlier, was not present.

Bochka had a thin hatchet face. She always wore elegant clothes and looked as if she’d come straight from her job as the vice president of a bank in downtown Chicago. I didn’t know her personally, but her public persona was forbidding. I’d seen her at school board meetings putting parents, other board members, and administrators in their place with a withering look, a cutting remark, or the banging of her gavel. We’d been on opposite sides at the negotiations table before. I’d watch her attempting to whittle away at our side. Our nickname for her was Kara the Terrible.

Fortunately, our current union president, Teresa Merton, was excellent in combating this harridan. Merton was quiet, calm, and low-key in her responses, which initially gave the impression that she was weak and ineffectual, but by the time she was done, the opposition would be gaping at the depth, breadth, and thoroughness of her assault. I wasn’t sure Bochka actually understood all of what Merton said. Bochka struck me as startlingly slow, but when Merton was finished, even Bochka could catch on that she’d been refuted and rebuffed; her arguments demolished and twisted to the point of absurdity.

Bochka said, “What’s going on?”

Gault said, “This person is not cooperating with the police.”

Bochka said, “Of course he’ll cooperate with the police.” Gault explained what the police wanted. Bochka turned to me. “Give them DNA samples.”

“Are you an attorney?” I asked.

“No.”

“Then perhaps your suggestions aren’t as helpful as I need right now.”

Amando Graniento, the principal, said, “If you have nothing to hide, why would you refuse?”

Ah, the give-up-all-your-rights defense–a great vehicle for bullying by those in power: “If you were innocent, why would you object?” Because it is insulting and demeaning and treating someone as if they were a suspect.

I said, “I think we all need to calm down.” I turned to Gault and Vulmea. “You’ve made a request. You know that if I refuse, you need a court order. I’ve refused.” To the school personnel, I said, “This is a union matter, a police matter, and a personal matter.”

Bochka said, “Well, we can’t just have people refusing to cooperate with the police.”

“Depends on how you look at it,” I said. “Although I admit that, whether it’s an assertion of basic rights or a refusal to cooperate, the result is the same.”

Gault said, “We’d hoped for more from the school district.”

Maybe he could bully Bochka, Towne, and Graniento into giving DNA samples.

The cops broke the impasse by saying, “Don’t leave. We’ll be back.”

I said, “Wait a second. Has anyone mentioned to you the hate notes Carl Pinyon received earlier this year?”

Graniento said, “I’m sure that was nothing.”

Bochka said, “What hate notes?”

I explained about what he’d received and included the fact that some people suspected he wrote them himself.

The cops took some notes, then stalked out.

Bochka turned to Scott. “Who are you?”

I said, “I’d like to introduce all of you to Scott Carpenter.” I performed proper introductions.

Towne, Bochka, and Graniento shook Scott’s hand.

“The baseball player,” Towne said.

“Oh, yes,” Graniento said.

They discussed neither his fame nor his fortune. They weren’t fans. It was nearly refreshing.

Towne said, “We need to speak with you, Mr. Mason.”

I nodded, said, “Yes?”

Bochka said, “We can’t have this kind of scandal at this school.”

“Which kind?” I asked. Did she mean the body or the sexual trysts? Did they know about them? If so, Benson and Frecking should be very afraid. Perhaps it would have been helpful if they had felt that fear before they started humping away at school. I wasn’t naïve. I knew kids and adults attempted illicit trysts where they could. Adults were supposed to know better.