Schooled in Murder (5 page)

Morgan said, “At least the lazy-ass social workers will have something to do.”

All public schools in Illinois now had, by law, crisis teams. Each teacher had to have a copy of the district’s “crisis plan” that had to be attached visibly to some part of their classroom. I don’t know one teacher who has read it or one teacher for whom it has made a difference. Certainly the administrators
all feel more important because it gives them something to do and makes them feel like they’re protecting kids. They can shuffle paper instead of actually talking to teenagers. The stark reality is that insane things do happen, and sometimes they can’t be prevented. And that’s sad, but you cannot live your life because you fear the sky is falling.

I come down on the side of taking all necessary precautions, but madness and useless panic resulting in nonsensical paperwork and pointless rules are not my style.

The referred-to social workers at Grover Cleveland High School were a stunning collection of younger men and women who desperately wanted to be in private practice. I don’t remember one child in whose life they actually made a difference. Of course, they didn’t have to report to me, but teachers usually hear.

Jourdan said, “And the kids will be weeping. They loved Gracie Eberson. She never gave homework. Never.”

Some of the young teachers believed in the philosophy that kids won’t do homework so why bother to assign it? I thought anyone who held that philosophy was a lazy-ass fool who didn’t belong in the classroom. Yeah, it’s a battle to get them to do homework. What did these young teachers think they were going to do when they got in the classroom? And those silly studies claiming homework is harmful? Yeah, it’s too burdensome for some parents to say things like, “Do your homework” to a teenager. That might require enforcing a rule, turning off a television, hanging up a phone, not texting a friend, postponing an Internet chat. Those parents want to be their kid’s friend, and they don’t want to be the bad guy. They don’t want to be the one to say no. Letting teenagers run the asylum was not an option, at least not yet, not in my classroom.

Luci said, “She was the most popular English teacher among the kids. She and her ilk cultivated them as friends.”

Morgan said, “The ones I can’t stand will be the students who didn’t know her and who are weeping. Trust me, there will be tons of those. Remember when that junior died in a drunk-driving accident? His teachers barely knew him, and before the accident he didn’t have friends. No one sat with him in the cafeteria at lunchtime, but the weeping went on for weeks. It was sad that the kid was dead and that he’d been lonely, but they were taking advantage.”

Brook shuddered. “Teenagers clustered together in the halls and washrooms feeding on each others’ melodramatic nonsense.”

“Did Gracie have kids of her own?” I asked. “A husband?”

Luci said, “She married her childhood sweetheart right out of high school. They’ve got four boys, six, four, two, and the one she had in August. I’ve seen pictures. Cute kids.”

“It’s going to be awful for them,” I said.

Luci said, “I met the husband once. He seemed nice enough. An electrical engineer who couldn’t get a job out of college. He opened a coffeehouse. How does a family recover from this?”

Time and pain, I thought. What else was there when faced with a relatively young person’s unexpected death? As the Deborah Kerr character says in the movie of Tennessee Williams’s play
Night of the Iguana,
sometimes you just have to endure.

Jourdan said, “I hope Mabel did it. Even if she didn’t, she’s been arrested, and she’ll be humiliated. That’s what I want. To see her humiliated. She is an asshole and a moron and evil incarnate and a Nazi.”

“We’ll get you a thesaurus in a minute,” Morgan said.

The door to the faculty room crashed open.

5

Ludwig Schaven rumbled in huffing and puffing. He was three hundred pounds at least, by far the most heavyset man in the department. His jet-black hair was slicked back from his forehead. He’d played tackle on his high school football team. After his third concussion, the doctor told him to stop playing before he did permanent brain damage. There were those of us who thought the damage had already been done. His friends called him Looie. The less kind in the opposing faction tended to call him Looie the Loon.

Carl Pinyon, he of the travel chart at the meeting, and Basil Milovec, another leader of the suckups, followed in Looie’s wake. Milovec was in his late twenties, black hair in a jumble of natural ringlets the envy of women in both factions. Most days of the week, he wore tight black jeans that emphasized what a stud he thought he was. He was thin and scrawny with a scruffy goatee which he let students tease him about relentlessly. He was a taciturn young man given to reciting Wordsworth in the faculty lounge at lunchtime. He believed that teaching teenagers poetry was the way to save their souls. Probably better than drugs, but I wasn’t sure by how much.

They marched up to us. “I heard you people,” Looie screamed, then banged his fist on the table. “I heard you people. You were saying terrible things about Mabel and Gracie.”

Morgan said, “How long have you been standing out there?”

“Long enough,” Looie said. “They’re all true,” Brook said.

Did anybody really think this was a good time for a fight? Obliviousness in the face of tragedy was more than simply a presidential failing.

Listening outside other people’s doors was a tactic some of the more immature members of both factions had adopted. It was depressing. Many of us wound up talking in whispers in the middle of rooms. I would never admit to deliberately leaning over to a colleague and whispering a string of nonsense words when I thought one of the suckups was trying to listen.

Jourdan barked. “Lower your voice. Be a professional.”

Mistake.

Schaven went nuts. He roared at full volume. “We’re the ones who are professional. We’re the ones who are trying to make this school better. You’re the ones who are trying to destroy children.”

Jourdan said, “And sucking up is the way to be professional? Spying on the rest of us is the way to be professional? Sucking up and spying help children how?”

“We’ve never spied on anyone. None of us would do that.”

Luci said, “I walked in on Gracie Eberson going through my files. I saw her. She didn’t notice me at my classroom door. She was going through everything. She made some lame excuse and left. When I checked the computer, I found it had been tampered with. Not hard to figure she was up to something.”

Milovec spoke for the first time, “Exactly what good would that do?”

Luci said, “Precisely. She wouldn’t need to use my computer to get on the Internet. Why bother? There was no point in hunting in my stuff. She couldn’t have been looking for curriculum materials. All she had to do was ask. There was nothing in those files.”

“So what’s the problem?” Milovec asked.

“Snooping on other people’s computers, hunting through other people’s files and desks is okay with you?” Jourdan asked.

Schaven banged his fist on the table. “You have to stop talking about Gracie and Mabel.”

Jourdan said, “We still have constitutional rights. You Nazis aren’t in charge yet. Who are you going to report us to? Gracie’s dead and Mabel’s been arrested.”

Milovec said, “Mabel was not arrested. They’re just taking some time to ask a few more questions.”

“Yeah, right,” Brook said.

Schaven said, “There are laws about slander.”

I had heard more than enough. I stood up and said, “I’ll see you all later.”

This brought proceedings to a halt.

Carl Pinyon said, “We’d like to talk to you.”

“All three of you?” I asked.

“It’s a union issue,” Pinyon said.

I agreed to speak with them.

The others began to stand up and clear their places. While I was washing my cup at the sink, Jourdan sidled up next to me and said, “Can I talk to you?”

I was going to have to give out numbers like at the deli counter. I told him I’d see him after I talked to the suckups.

6

Once out in the hall, Schaven said, “Let’s talk in Milovec’s classroom, it’s closest.”

It was also directly across the hall from the storeroom, which now had crime scene tape over the doorway. I was suspicious about their motives, but I was willing to listen to them.

The four of us huddled up near Milovec’s desk.

The key with a lot of faculty is they often tell their union representative a lot of things, sort of like their father confessor. For example, Milovec two years ago had been worried about what would happen if the administration found out he was having an affair with one of the Spanish teachers who, at the time, had been married to another guy. I didn’t see a problem, but he was worried. Over time I became his confidant about his little conquests with female members of the faculty. So often straight guys have absolutely no one else they can talk to. He did confess to using school e-mail accounts to send the Spanish teacher letters. At the time, I strongly suggested he not use the school accounts. My current understanding was that Milovec was engaged. His
confiding in me had stopped, presumably so had his affairs. I didn’t ask. Wasn’t my business.

Schaven said, “You’re sitting in the lounge with the obstructionist old guard. They are all negative assholes. I always knew you were on their side.”

Schaven too had once confided in me. His problem was that when the school hired him he hadn’t disclosed a past history of fighting cancer. He’d come to me, and I had reassured him that in this day and age, they weren’t supposed to ask for medical histories. He’d been cancer-free now for three years.

I wasn’t about to put up with crap from these guys, not because I knew stuff supposedly no one else knew, but because I was not going to put up with madness from either side.

I said, “I will sit with whom I wish when I wish. What you may choose to interpret about that is not my problem. What did you want to talk about with me? It’s late.”

“You’re the union guy,” Schaven said. “You have to be impartial.”

“To whom is that news?” I asked.

Milovec said, “You’re our union guy, you’ve got to help. Gracie’s dead. You’ve got to do something.”