Schooled in Murder (36 page)

“But you knew about it,” I said. “You planned with them.” “Yes, but they’re dead, and there will be no proof. Frankly,
it’s good that Graniento is dead. One less person to worry about having a conscience.” “Towne will know.”

“She’ll realize what’s good for her. She’s in as deep as I am.”

“Did she kill anyone?”

“No.”

I said, “Frecking, you killed Gracie.”

“It was great,” he said. “It was maybe the most exciting moment of my life. My dick got hard as she flopped around. I was turned on as much by that as by that dope Benson.”

“Why did you kill her?” I asked. “None of these scandals would have touched you. Even the grade scandal might have meant little more than a reprimand.”

He snorted, then said, “I didn’t have a lot of choice. Bochka had got wind of Benson’s and my making out. This wasn’t my first time at school. She’d set a trap and caught us once. She was blackmailing me.”

“Were you blackmailing Benson?” I asked.

Bochka said, “He was cooperating without it. I was saving that to use it later. You don’t want to give away everything if you don’t have to.”

Could I keep them talking? Scott would be negotiating traffic. Damn the Dan Ryan and reconstruction. He’d sit outside for a few minutes. Try to call me on my cell phone, get worried, and come looking. If he could get into the school. If he could get here fast enough.

“How’d you know Gracie would be there?”

“I didn’t have to kill her that night,” Frecking said. “It had to be soon, and I’d been checking on the opportunity for a few days. She happened to go to that room. It was perfect. That Benson would soon be there added to the thrill.”

An insightful murderer, who would expect that in a PE teacher?

“What if he’d have walked in on what you were doing?”

“Then he’d have died, too. He wouldn’t have told anyone where he was going. Of course, he’d never admit to having a tryst with me, especially in school. I’m much bigger and stronger than he is. I was having the best of both worlds–murder and sex.”

My cell phone rang. Scott.

“Give it to me,” Frecking ordered. Keeping the guns in one hand and out of my reach, with the other he grabbed my phone, then smashed it to the floor. The ringing stopped. Was Scott close?

I looked at Bochka. “But why did they have to die? Why not bribe them with something or threaten them? Something?”

Bochka said, “They wouldn’t listen. As Mabel said, they were no longer willing to be part of the, as you would put it, suckup faction. They were planning to turn on us. Neither would submit to blackmail. Believe me, I tried.”

“But why had they decided to turn on you?”

“It started with Gracie. Idiot Spandrel was winding down their affair. Then Peter was angry about that poker mess. He always wanted what was best for him, only him. Once they broke ranks, they had to die. Getting you accused of murder or fired for inappropriate behavior with boys would have been a bonus.”

I said, “But Fred told the truth and ruined that part of the conspiracy.”

“Yes, my idiot husband has corrupted that boy. He left me hysterical messages on my voice mail starting around 4:30.”

I said, “You guys were either really daring, really stupid, or really desperate. How did you figure all this would be kept quiet?”

“All the conspiring we’d done had been concealed so far,”
Bochka said. “That’s over two years since Mabel started. We figured it would keep working.”

I said, “So Bochka plans and Frecking kills.”

“Yes, that sums it up nicely,” Bochka said. “Spandrel, Towne, and Graniento helped do the other dirty work.”

I asked Frecking, “How’d you kill Peter?”

“I offered to give him head in his car last Thursday. We’d done that before. After Benson and I told our lies to the cops, I saw Peter. He was restless. So was I. It wasn’t that odd. We went out and got in the back of his SUV. He left the car on to warm it up. After we finished–and it didn’t take long–I got out first and ran around to the driver’s seat. Higden thought I was playing some kind of joke, and he got out too. If I hadn’t had to run him over a second time, he’d have died laughing. Putting his body next to your tires was a stroke of genius.”

“Why didn’t you come to me when she threatened you?”

“You fool, it wasn’t because I’m gay that she was blackmailing me, it’s because I was giving a guy a blow job in school. I was fucked.”

Bochka said, “We’ve got to get this to look like Mason killed them both.”

“Gonna be tough,” I said. “I’ll have to have powder burns from both guns.” I hoped it was forensically provable–or at least I had to hope that they watched at least one of the CSI programs and believed it was forensically provable. “They fired separate guns at each other. You’ll have to get the angles that they fired at accurate as well. I’d have had to fire at one from near the door, at the other from the desk. I can’t have been two places at once. Are you going to slit Spandrel’s throat? You’ll have to get my fingerprints on the knife, and then it’s got to be logical that I shot at her and then stabbed her. Why would I do that?”

“Maybe you’re as poor at planning as she is.”

“Why are you going to kill Spandrel?”

“She’s expendable,” Bochka said. “She’s a loose cannon, and she’s not too bright.” Spandrel swore.

Bochka laughed. “The conspiracy got out of hand. Too many people knew. I have to limit the number of people, especially now.”

I turned to Frecking. “You think she’ll let you live?”

Frecking said, “Mutual self-destruction. I know about her, she knows about me.”

Bochka said, “As for making it look like you did it, easy as pie. You shot one of them from the door. When you got to the desk, the other one came in on you, so you shot him.”

“How’d I change guns?”

“I’m working on it,” Bochka said.

“It’s all going to come out,” I said. “You’ll never keep this quiet.”

Bochka said, “We’ll work it out.”

Scott said, “Not likely.”

The three of us turned to the door. Scott and Frank Rohde stood there.

Rhode’s gun was out. Seconds later, uniformed officers flooded the room. I knocked Frecking’s guns away. Bochka’s knife hung at her side.

51

I rushed to Scott’s arms. He enfolded me in a fierce embrace. I felt dizzy and safe.

52

The state board of education took over the management of the school district. That happens once in a while in Illinois, although it’s usually when a school district is in financial trouble.

Lots of bad things happened to bad people.

Grade fixing and statistic rigging: administrators and PE teachers and those who helped them were losing their jobs. Georgette went around with a permanent smile on her face. Double-dipping PE teachers were being reprimanded or fired.

The English department: kicking and screaming, I was put in charge. I insisted it be temporary. I insisted on having my own way. I stopped having departmental meetings. I figured, no meetings, no forums for acrimony. I told teachers that they could use the methodology they were comfortable with as long as the students performed up to expectations. This meant that they were to be judged on the progress the students made rather than on an arbitrary standard. You had the kids–you were responsible for them. I junked all the outdated textbooks. At a designated spot in the library I collected
samples of all the textbooks and reading and English programs from all the companies that made them. I told the teachers to vote for their top three. Then I told them to vote for their top one. They could campaign for what they wanted. They chose a mixture of old and new programs, textbooks, novels, software. Good for them. Mrs. Faherty, the temporary head of the board of education, told the rest of the board they were going to “spend their goddamn money on kids.” Nobody in the department got to impose their will on others.

Gambling: stopped. A few people got reprimands.

Schaven, Pinyon, Milovec, and Benson got fired. Benson’s wife filed for divorce.

Towne tried to hang on, but she was fired that summer. Which might have had something to do with the suit for discrimination I filed against the school district and the administration and anybody else I could think of. My attorney expected them to settle for a hefty sum. I thought I’d donate any proceeds to the Point Foundation, a gay group dedicated to helping gay college kids pay for school.

Bochka, Frecking, and Spandrel were to be tried for conspiracy and murder. The States Attorney was confident of convictions, especially with each of them fighting to implicate the others.

Victoria Abbot agreed to testify against anybody she could. Later she found a job in a school district in California.

Spike settled on purple hair on a semipermanent basis. He and his motorcycle began attending junior college the next fall.

Fred rededicated himself to placing a verb in every sentence. The last bit of prose he handed in had been suffused with verbs, most of them used correctly. Mr. Zileski had full custody. Fred continued to distinguish himself on the football field. The team continued to lose more often
than not. Without Graniento’s warnings about booing and stomping, the kids had gotten bored. And as it was getting into November, fewer and fewer were showing up to cheer on their less than successful athletes. Fred did get a small scholarship to a Division II college for football. I wrote a letter of recommendation for him.

53