Are You Nuts? (10 page)

We caught up with Meg.

I said, “I'm going to keep digging, Meg. I'll prove you're innocent.”

“I don't want you to do anything,” she repeated. It was a weak snarl, but a snarl nonetheless. I never expected to hear her speak to me in that tone. “Stay out of my life.”

She stalked away. Todd hurried after her.

Scott and I stared after them until they disappeared, then turned to each other.

Scott said, “Something bad must have happened while she was locked up.”

“I have never seen her like that. She's never snapped at me. Maybe Todd will have an insight and some information later.”

“He can't tell us if she told him something in confidence.”

“I know.” I shook my head. “I am stunned.”

“Or maybe nothing bad happened,” Scott said. “Maybe she meant just what she said.”

“I can't believe that.”

“She sounded awful definite.”

“But she's been a friend. I'm not going to abandon her just because she's in trouble.”

“She specifically asked you to.”

“How can I?”

“You don't want to believe what she said, because if you did, you'd have to accept the fact that a friend you've been very close with for a long time no longer wants you as a friend. That's not easy to take. Especially when she didn't give you any reason why.”

“It's because she's worried.”

“Tom, maybe she's guilty.”

“Is this the way a guilty person would act?”

“I don't know and neither do you.”

“Why wouldn't she want help with the investigation?”

“Maybe just not by you.”

“Then who's going to help her?” I asked. “She doesn't have any family here. Her ex-husband hasn't talked to her in twenty-five years. I don't even know if he's still alive. She's got a few older cousins down in southern Illinois, I think. That's it.”

“Maybe she wants to rely on the police or her lawyer?”

“The cops think she's guilty. Todd will do his best for her, which is a great deal, but is he a criminal lawyer?”

“It's not his specialty. I can't believe what she said to us. Why don't you leave it for now and talk to Todd later?”

I was totally flabbergasted and confused. She'd said some hurtful and harmful things, but I put them down to the terrible strain she'd been under. I could rise above what she'd said because she was a close friend. I began to wonder. Even if you are totally traumatized, do you turn on one of your dearest friends, especially when they are trying to do the biggest favor they could possibly do? Confused, I returned to school. Scott went back to his place to continue canceling engagements and trying to bring some control and order to his life.

 

I had brought a change of clothes with me so I wouldn't have to work at school in my suit. I changed in the empty locker room, carefully hung my suit on the hanger Scott had stuck in my gym bag, and walked to my room. I found my door still securely locked. Georgette came down as I was opening it.

“How is Meg?” she asked.

“Having a tough time,” I replied.

“Poor woman. I'm going to call her later.”

“Good idea. She's going to need all the friends she can get.”

“Any luck so far?” Georgette asked.

“Nothing substantial. I'm going to keep asking around.”

Georgette left. I sat at my desk. As I thought about my last statement, I began sorting out which teachers' editions of textbooks I would need the first week. The kind of idiot work that allows time for rumination. I certainly wanted Meg to be innocent, and I'd done a considerable amount of running around and investing time in proving just that in the last day and a half. And she'd flat out told me to stop. As is so typical, I figured the fault had to be in me. I didn't need a round of self-doubt.

Or putting the blame on Meg. More satisfying and even less productive. Had someone else come and talked to her? Could two nights and a day in jail change someone so quickly? Obviously it had Meg. I know it's hard to accept when someone rejects you, but this was all out of proportion. Or maybe she was guilty.

Then I noticed something was wrong in my room. I stood very still. Something had been moved or changed. A lot of crap was all over every surface. Getting a classroom pulled together requires a lot of unloading boxes of new materials and supplies and unpacking cabinets crammed with paraphernalia. In the process, junk gets scattered hither and yon, but once again, I had the odd feeling that something was wrong. My skin tingled, and my paranoia level skyrocketed.

I walked around the room carefully. As far as I could tell, the papers were where I had left them, and the boxes and trash were undisturbed. The packing material was still in little heaps on the floor, unmolested by a passing custodian.

Then I realized the computer was on. The screen had faded to black, but the little green light that indicated “on” was still lit. I thought I had turned it off. In fact, I was sure I had turned it off. Little niggling doubts surfaced. I guessed I could forget something like that. But I distinctly remembered doing so.

I flipped the switch for the monitor. The screen filled with gibberish. I tried the commands I knew to get to a different screen. Nothing worked. I didn't want to just turn it off. I didn't know what that would do. I knew enough that you aren't supposed to turn off computers without exiting all functions. I'd been warned that if I did so, I could harm the computer or mess up my data or destroy my computer or inadvertently erase all the memory banks in the Pentagon or, as far as I knew, start a thermonuclear war. You can't be too careful or too paranoid in the electronic age.

Like most of us dabbling in the cyber world, first I wondered what I had done wrong. Did I inadvertently press a button that erased the memory of every computer in a thousand miles, or had I ruined mine by doing something stupid? I tried to think rationally. I remembered turning off all the functions yesterday when I saved the class lists I'd finished typing. I found the disk secure in its folder in the top drawer of my desk.

I forced myself to not look over my shoulder as I walked down the hall to the computer lab. The district technology specialist, Rita Fleming, was typing rapidly at a computer. At the end of the last school year she'd been given $100,000 to upgrade all her programs and equipment. She was surrounded by mounds of open boxes, yards of plastic wrapping, and an electronic cornucopia. She looked up, typed a few more seconds, then smiled at me.

“Mr. Television Star.”

“Until a two-headed dragon shows up.”

“I suspect there aren't many of those in this neck of the woods.”

“One would do nicely.”

After briefly mentioning her trip to Japan with her husband and two kids for four weeks this past summer, she said, “It's terrible about Jerome and Meg. I can't imagine that Jerome is dead and Meg, of all people, is being accused of his murder.”

“Did you know Jerome?”

“I probably would have recognized him on the street. Meg I like. Are you helping her?”

“Yeah. Right now I need assistance with my computer in my classroom.”

“What's wrong?”

I explained.

She accompanied me down to my room. She fiddled with all the connections. Then she put her hands on top of the monitor, shut her eyes, and said, “Heal.”

I smiled. “Does that work?”

“Not often enough.” After a few more minuites of fiddling with it, she said, “I'm turning your buddy here, off. I'll probably have to go into its innards after I do to make sure none of programs or the data have been messed up. You have all the setup disks?”

I showed her my little pile.

“You save anything on this yet?”

“My class lists, but I have a backup disk.”

“Smart man.”

She flipped the computer off, waited a moment, and then turned it back on. I stood next to her and felt like a fool as she typed and screens scrolled by.

Finally she said, “Here's your problem.” She tapped several more keys. A message appeared on the screen.

It was simple and terse: “Fuck you faggot” in large, bold letters.

“Somebody doesn't like you,” she said.

“I guess not. How'd it get on there?”

“Let me check.”

Again she typed and more data flashed by. It took several minutes before she said, “Somebody got into your hard drive and reprogrammed a lot of it. No matter what you would have tried on the computer, it would have come up with this message. I can eliminate the message for now, but before you can use the computer, I'll have to come back for some internal surgery. If you're lucky, it might be as simple as redoing the start-up.”

“How much knowledge of computers would someone have to do this? Somebody with a computer degree?”

“Half the bright kids in the school could probably do it.”

“That many?”

“Yep, or it could have been one of the teachers. Many of them have taken advanced computer classes.”

“Any way to find out who did this?”

“Not from the data.”

I shook my head. “This is too much.”

“Hell of a thing to find on a screen. I'll be in later to finish fixing it. I've got to get to a meeting. Let me shut everything down before I go.” She did so.

I told her about all the other problems and about securely locking the classroom.

“Somebody really doesn't like you. Any kids hate you particularly last year?”

“Not that I can think of.”

“Maybe it's got something to do with all your appearances. Lots of homophobia running around these days.”

“Somebody would have to risk being seen in the school as they tried to get in here.”

“Not if it is somebody who belongs here.”

Not a cheery thought. One depressed lover, one messed-up computer with a nasty message, one undone and tampered with classroom, one friend who had turned on me, one murder left unsolved.

She left.

Sitting at my desk brooding accomplished nothing. I could brood while I worked. I pulled the posters off their shelf. Numerous unpleasant thoughts jumbled through my mind as I began taping the backs of the pictures. I started with a forest-glen scene. I wished my forest would look like this someday.

I was most worried about Meg, but now a close second was finding out whoever had been sabotaging my room. Was the minor moving around of small items connected to the message on the screen?

After finishing the fifth poster I decided to move on to attaching some bright lettering to one of the front bulletin boards to emphasize the emergency procedure rules. We used to be told to post these every year. Now they've encased them in plastic and riveted them to the wall. I began rummaging in my cupboard for the letters. I knew I had a box of them somewhere. I was reaching behind some books with my left hand when I dislodged a stack of books deep in the shelf. A small cascade of reference books tumbled out.

I reached to pick them up and stopped. Staring up at me was a
Smith's Comprehensive Encyclopedia
covered with what looked depressingly like dried blood.

Without touching anything more, I examined the cupboard as best I could. Taking great care and using my hanky to touch the encyclopedia, I put all the books back precisely as I had found them. Then I sat down at my desk and considered.

I thought about calling the cops or my lawyer, probably both. As I'd bumped the books, I wasn't sure if I'd left my fingerprints on the encyclopedia. If I had, would the detectives believe my excuses?

More important, what was the damn thing doing there? Who had put it there? How long had it been there? It was at the opposite end of the room from where the textbooks had been turned around. Was it connected to the murder? How could it be? How could it not be? The cops had the murder weapon. Maybe this was another sick joke by whoever had been sabotaging my room. Or were there two murder weapons? Anything was possible.

So far there'd been one thing in my classroom slightly out of kilter at a time, escalating to the computer message. Was this connected to those relatively minor acts of sabotage? Or maybe the computer, the bloody book, and the sabotage were completely unrelated. I had a brief vision of people scampering up and down the halls of Grover Cleveland, like the Marx Brothers maniacally chuckling as I went slightly goofy.

I slowly walked to the exit, eased myself into the hall, and locked the door as best I could. I worried that someone was hiding in the nearby rooms, ready to pounce or laugh at my concern and confusion or accuse me of murder. I found one of the kids doing community service. I asked the nearest custodian if I could borrow the teen for a few minutes. She said sure.

I stationed the kid at the door to my room. “If anyone tries to get into my room, kill them.”

He gave me a kind of mopey look.

“Just kidding. Don't let anyone in. If somebody tries to get in, stop them. Call for help if you have to.”

This kid proved that you could mix a nonverbal snarl and a nod at the same time. I love teenagers.

I walked to the learning center. The crime-scene tape was gone. I wanted to find out how many
Smith's Comprehensive Encyclopedias
we had originally and how many were missing. It was absurd to think this was the same one the cops had. Of course, the book could have been from another library. It could have been carried into school in a teacher's briefcase or a student's backpack or gym bag.

Between two metallic bookends, I found four duplicate volumes. Obviously
Smith's Comprehensive Encyclopedia
was a popular resource. I turned on one of the terminals for the computerized card catalog. It confirmed that the encyclopedias were kept only behind the reference desk as the cops had said. It also told me there were supposed to be two more. I could account for both of them.

I gazed out at the stacks of books. I heard the buzz of the clock on the wall behind the checkout desk. I heard it make a soft click. All was mostly silence and the smell of books.

I walked to the front of the room and began a circuit as I imagined Meg had done. I came to a large drop cloth covering one spot on the carpet.

I lifted it up. I saw a small, dark red stain. They'd probably have to remove only that section of carpet. Nothing leapt out and said, “I'm a clue.”

I walked back to my classroom. The teenager said nobody had even been down the hallway. He volunteered to help me anytime. Not a snarl in sight. I supposed it was easier work than anything else he had to do. He sauntered off.

I ascertained that the bloody book was still exactly where I had left it and nothing around it had been disturbed.

I chose to stand at the window and stare out. Random puffs of air tantalized me with the promise of a cooler evening. Mostly I stood, sweated, and thought.

Since Meg was such a great suspect, why try to implicate me? What if it came down to a question of her or me as a suspect? What if Meg had put it there to implicate me? Then why a second book in the library with her prints on it? The murderer put one with Meg's prints on it next to the body and one here? Why? To implicate both of us? Whose prints were on this one?

If it was connected to the murder, why hadn't the killer found a way to let the police know it was here? An anonymous call from a pay phone was all that was needed. Maybe the killer had put it there and changed his or her mind. Then why hadn't the killer come back and gotten it?

It was frightfully easy to break into my room, as was evident. Planting the bloody book could have been done at any moment. Maybe it wasn't the murder weapon at all. What if
all
the messed-up items in my room were connected with the murder? Why would they be? How could they be? One was a set of odd circumstances with today's message moving beyond the practical-joke, simply annoying level. This book implicated me in a crime.

Could there be two murder weapons? That seemed unlikely. Had I left a print when I was reaching back for the letters? If this was the murder weapon, what did the police have?

The killer bashes Jerome over the head. Then gets another encyclopedia and bangs him over the head again? Why? A whimsical killer? An extremely clever killer? This certainly seemed to eliminate Meg as the murderer. Why leave one book with your fingerprints on it near the body and hide this one? Unless you were interrupted in what you were doing? Or somebody saw Meg do what she did and then planted her purse and a second murder weapon near the body? Which would mean she was trying to implicate me and some guardian spirit or raving loony wanted to implicate her. But then why wouldn't that guardian spirit remove the book from my room?

Even more, what was I going to do about the bloody thing? Any moment hordes of police, tipped off by a crazed killer, could swoop into my room. This thought made me uneasy.

My classroom door swung open.

I looked over at the cupboard. I'd covered any telltale signs carefully. My imagination conjured up a neon arrow pointing to a large black
X
on the spot. My heart beat faster and extra sweat oozed from my pores. Carolyn Blackburn did not stare meaningfully in that direction.

“How was Meg?” she asked.

“Not good.” I gave her a brief synopsis, leaving out the hurtful things Meg had said and her request for me to do nothing.

“Is she going to come back to work?” I asked.

“That's the latest controversy. The ‘fire Meg immediately' crowd has learned that you can't just dump someone unceremoniously. Due process has to happen. Innocent until proven guilty will prevail in this district if I have anything to do with it.”

“If she's found innocent, will you keep her here?”

“I won't recommend she be fired. I can't speak for the board. Lydia is doing her best to cause an uproar.”

“Maybe Lydia's the real killer. I hear she and Jerome had some difficulties.”

“That's more than I know.”

“Do Belutha and Lydia get along?”

“You know it's odd, now that you mention it.”

“What?”

“They were on the same side in the election and all the controversies, but I've never noticed them being friendly with each other. You'd think they would be.”

I mentioned Lydia confronting me in the hall the day before.

Carolyn nodded. “She's a tough case.” She was standing near my desk and eyeing the chart I had started at home and brought to school.

“Do the police have everyone's movements on the night of the killing?” I asked.

“I don't know.” She gazed carefully at my handiwork. “You've got everybody on the list.”

“Everybody who I know was there.”

“Including me.”

“Well, yeah.”

“If it were me, I'd put every possible name. Saving a friend is important.”

I wondered if I was still doing that or saving my own butt.

She made several suggestions of people and times I could fill in, then left.

I decided the smartest thing I could do was call my lawyer. I did the guard-the-door thing again. I hurried to call from the English department office.

Todd wasn't in. I asked the secretary to page him.

“Is this an emergency?” she demanded.

I assured her it was.

Todd called back moments later. “I'm on a recess from court. I've got a chance of winning a million-dollar settlement in the next half hour. This better be important.”

Rachel was working in a corner. Several other people were on the other side of the room drinking soda. I put my lips on the receiver and cupped my hands around it. I felt like a cheap gangster in a low-budget 1940s crime movie. I spoke slowly, softly, and distinctly.

“In my classroom there is a bloody encyclopedia hidden behind some books.”

“Go to your classroom. Stay there. Let no one in. If someone comes to the door, speak to them in the hall. Do nothing until I arrive.”

So I returned to my room and did nothing. That's not quite true. I sweated and I worried. A lot.

I hadn't dared continue working on my room. Who knew what fingerprints I might be erasing or adding? By three-thirty I was bored beyond words. I'd thought of trying to get some work done on my computer. Would the bloody-dictionary depositor have touched those keys? He or she would have if he or she was the same person who was trying to mess with my mind. I brooded about that problem for a while. I dared to look in my desk drawers for something to do. It already had to have a million of my fingerprints on it. In the bottom drawer of my desk, I found a paperback book left by one of my students last year. I'd forgotten the thing. The cover and the first ten pages were missing. It was a ghastly, torrid, teenage-torture opus. I was bored. I read it.

At three fifty-five Kurt swung open my classroom door.

As much to keep him out as eagerness to see him, I hurried to meet him. I used our embrace to steer him closer to the door. “It's cooler in the hall,” I said as I ushered him out the door.

“How are you?” I managed to ask with a credible display of interest, considering the circumstances.

“I'm terrific. Doing nothing all summer has a great deal to recommend it.”

He looked wonderfully tan and fit. He must have lost at least twenty pounds.

He said, “I heard about Meg. How is she?”

“Awful.”

I told him about everything except what was sitting in my classroom.

He shook his head when I told him what Meg had done at the courtroom. “She didn't mean what she said, I'm sure,” Kurt said. “You're probably her best friend here. She must have just been in shock.”

“I agree.”

“You've got some solid information. That Belutha-versus-Lydia stuff has got to lead somewhere.”

“I want to talk to them, but I don't know how I'm going to get them to open up.”

“I'm not sure either. On the other hand, you could call the police anonymously and say Beatrix killed him.”

“Don't tempt me.” I gave him a detailed account of Beatrix's ravings.

“I hope I don't run into her,” Kurt said. “Listening to that woman is the equivalent of having a dentist clean your teeth with a chain saw. How is Scott after all that touring and publicity?”

“Okay, I think. I'm a little worried.” I explained about how depressed Scott was.

“I don't know,” Kurt said. “I think that's what's been missing in you guys' relationship. Metaphysical angst about your sexuality. I think you'd be a lot more popular, get on more talk shows. Coming out, going back into the closet, having a revolving door on the closet. It has a ring to it. Popular culture likes their gay people depressed or dying. You guys aren't dying, are you?”

“No.”

“Then go with depressed.”

“You don't think it's serious?”

“I think he loves you deeply. He knows who he is. He was in pain. Like he said, it was a low moment. He doesn't hate himself. Was he as affectionate as ever?”

“Yeah.”

“So, it was an momentary aberration. He's the most celebrated gay figure in America and you're right in there with him. Be happy. Be strong. You'll both be fine.”

“I wish I had your confidence. Did you see the propaganda Seth put out about the election?”

Kurt laughed. “I've done a good job. I'm sure he's embarrassed about putting out something that stupid.”

I wasn't so sure about that. “Is the election still going to happen?”

“I think so.”

“We can't let him win.”

“Why not?”

“What if he wrecks everything you've fought to build?”

“I'm not going to have another heart attack for them. Let him fight the battles for a while. Let him see what it's like to bat your head against a wall and have nothing happen.”

“I guess. Do you know Belutha and Lydia well enough to talk to? Maybe you could go with me to question them.”

“No thanks. I care for Meg, but I don't want to be involved in this. I'm glad I was two thousand miles away.”

I felt deflated. I was grasping for any kind of help and here was a good friend bailing out on me. I wasn't about to beg either.

I said, “Didn't you tell me Jerome was in favor of gay rights?”

“I don't remember saying that. I don't know if he was or not.”

I knew he'd told me. I wouldn't have misunderstood something like that. I was even more discouraged. At that moment I saw Todd coming down the hall. He was in his funereal best, although when brighter light caught his outfit, I thought his suit might be deep, midnight blue instead of actually black.

Todd and Kurt knew each other slightly. We chatted briefly and then Todd said, “I need to speak to Tom about Meg's case. Will you excuse us?”

Kurt gave a friendly wave and walked off.

Todd and I entered my classroom.

He said, “Tell me exactly everything that you did when you entered this classroom today.” He took a yellow legal pad and a fountain pen out of his briefcase. He took notes while I talked.

When I finished that, he said, “Now, tell me everything you can remember doing in here since the murder.”