Schooled in Murder

by Zubro, Mark Richard

  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

  Much later Scott and I were having breakfast at his place. He was making banana pancakes from scratch.

  After we were settled, he said, “You have triumphed.”

  “It doesn’t feel quite like that.”

  “The suckup faction is out. The bad guys have been arrested. Some of the bad guys are even dead. How often does that happen?”

  “For the moment, things are calm. I like calm.”

  “Why do all that lying about you, especially in this day and age?” Scott asked.

  I said, “I think the key was that they perceived me as being in their way. Their homophobia fueled their hatred and their irrationality.”

  Scott said, “People keep saying they were sick or nuts. I’m n
ot sure that sums it up. This was a pretty dysfunctional crowd.”

  “Despite progress for gay people, it still happens. You and I both know it. I think Bochka was the heart of it. Spandrel was kind of the new Nazi on the block. Their personalities meshed. They thought they could commit mayhem and get the gay guy. Unfortunately, such things happen to gay people. Still. Today. It’s better than it was, but the world is not perfect. And remember, we’re still the only country since the Nazi’s in 1930’s Germany where a major political party wants to legislate second-class citizenship for an entire group of people. That kind of thing enables those who hate.”

  Scott said, “It was a rough year.”

  “I’m going to be happy to not be head of the department.”

  He smiled. “Did they get used to no meetings?” “Most of them.’

  “How did those ninnies expect to get away with all this? The conspiracy was too big.”

  “Remember, they were amateurs, and a lot of the planning was relatively spontaneous. And their silence was monolithic for quite some time. The grade fixing was reasonably minor. Picking on teachers, unfortunately, was normal. Gambling limited to a few. Double dipping among the coaches barely affected the English department. Their social lives were complex but not necessarily felonious, but when things started to unravel, they got desperate.”

  “They were fools,” Scott said.

  “That too. And remember, only two of them knew who committed the murders: the planner, Bochka, and the killer, Frecking. Graniento’s death wasn’t planned. Spandrel might get off with a charge of manslaughter. The murders also offered a convenient chance to get me–it was sort of icing on the cake. Having to plan on the spur of the moment helped them screw it up.”

  Scott asked, “If Spandrel and Eberson were having a lesbian affair, how come they were so determined to discriminate against you?”

  “I’m not sure I’d call them lesbians. I think it was more that they were having a good time with each other and Peter.

  Remember, they were both married to men, and they had children. It might have been one of those ´I’m doing what I want and no one can stop me’ moments. It felt good. They did it. They might have been having fun, but I don’t think it means they were gay or any less prejudiced.”

  Scott said, “I still find it hard to believe Eberson and Higden were going to break ranks and tell.”

  “I’m not sure if they actually were,” I said. “Bochka feared their threats as much as anything. She didn’t trust them. She had a lot to lose. Or the web of lies and plots just got to be too much. Maybe one or both was getting a conscience. For Higden, it seems like he was angry at his poker buddies and once the dam was cracked, the rest of it was going to come out.”

  “As it kept getting more and more convoluted, why didn’t they just stop?” Scott asked.

  “Bochka and Frecking had murders to cover up. If Frecking hadn’t been so worried about being outed, Bochka might never have been so bold.” I quoted Sherlock Holmes: they “had not that supreme gift of the artist, the knowledge of when to stop.”

  Scott said, “Accusing them of any kind of artistic ability is a stretch. My concern is for you.”

  I leaned against the kitchen counter. I said, “I swing between lots of emotions. I’m still really angry. I’m ecstatic the good guys won and that the bad guys are going to pay.” I hesitated. He waited. Those wonderful eyes gazed into mine. I whispered, “Sometimes I’m happy that some awful things happened to some awful homophobes.”

  He said, “A couple homophobic pigs died, others suffered.”

  I nodded. “I try not to do a dance of joy about that. It feels wrong. It’s not seemly. But still, I’m glad awful things happened to them. I’m torn.”

  “That sounds really human to me. It’s going to take time. They were as vicious as they could be to a gay person, and you survived.”

  “I’m not sure I could have done it without you.”

  He pulled me close and hugged me.

  54

  That night Scott and I were in front of his fifty-four-inch flat screen television. We cuddled together on the couch. His arm draped around me. I could feel his black cotton boxers against my briefs. We were watching the extended version of The Return of the King for the umpteenth time. The horns of Rohan were blowing, and the Rohirrim had begun their charge. I still get chills every time I watch that scene, and, frankly, I still get the same chills when I reread the scene in the book. Scott’s hand caressed my arm casually. He leaned down and kissed me. When the battle had been won, I pressed pause.

  I said, “I have something for you.”

  I’d sent away for it. I’d been planning on giving it to him for Christmas. He already had two pewter Lord of the Rings chess sets. Each set was completely different. I’d found a third set, again altogether different.

  I brought in the box. I said, “I wanted to say thank you.”

  “You’re welcome. You’re safe. That’s all I care about.”