“Let’s start with the trophy cases. That seems more personal somehow than a science classroom.” I said.
“Fair enough. Please follow me.” He stood up and grabbed a cane leaning behind his desk. He walked briskly, with just a little limp. I looked at the cane, then back at Massey. He looked to be about fifty.
“Gulf War I?” I asked.
He looked down at the cane. “Yup. I went over for Desert Storm and left a little piece of me in the sandbox.” He thumped his leg with the cane. It gave a hollow metallic ring. “Nowadays whenever somebody’s holding up the line at the airport, it’s probably me.”
“Thanks for serving,” I said.
“It was a long time ago, and it paid for college and grad school with no student loans, so I guess it was a fair trade.” I looked at him, but he didn’t seem at all bitter. It wasn’t a trade I’d have made, but it wasn’t like I chose a career with a great retirement plan, either, so I kinda understood. We walked down one short hall, then turned right into a deserted cafeteria.
Massey pointed to one wall of the lunchroom. “There you go, Agent Brabham. One pair of destroyed trophy cases.” We walked over to the smashed cases. All the glass was gone, and the pieces of the shattered trophies, medals and memorabilia had all been swept up, leaving just a wooden shell with a cracked mirrored back. I looked around inside, but all I saw was me in a cheap suit looking back.
“I thought you said they wrecked all your trophies?” I pointed to one smaller case standing intact beside the two destroyed ones.
“It’s interesting. They didn’t touch that case at all. That one houses our academic trophies and awards. These held all our athletic achievements. We had the State Championship baseball team for the last three years, and our softball team won the Regional Championship last year.”
I looked at the intact case. It was mostly small gold-colored plastic statues and medals. There was a second place Academic Bowl trophy and a third place Math Team competition plaque, but mostly just certificates and a couple of framed photos. I opened the case and took out a photo labeled “Academic Bowl 2014.”
“Can I get a copy of this photo?” I asked.
“Of course, anything you need. But why would you need a copy of that picture?”
Skeeter’s voice buzzed into my ear and said, “Yeah, what are you going to tell him about why you need that picture, Bubba?”
“We feel there might be a correlation between students that are exceptionally invested in after-school activities and targets for Al Queda recruitment,” I said. “With the decrease in their recruitment among the disaffected youth, they’re moving toward more Cleaver-esque recruits. Since many of the athletes are prime targets, I want to cross-reference your academic stars against athletes and see where the overlap is. Then we can begin to vet potential subjects.”
Massey’s face said that he clearly had no idea what I was talking about, which was good, since I didn’t either. I’d just strung a lot of words together that I heard on Fox News and counted on the mention of Al Qaeda to distract the nice man long enough for me to leave with the picture. It worked, and I took a photo of the picture with my phone and put the framed photo back in the case.
“Can I get a copy of the academic files for each of the students on the Academic Bowl team?”
“Is there more you may need to know? I can help you with insights into my students.”
“I’m sure you can, but I find it’s better to absorb the information at my own pace. I may be back tomorrow with more questions.” We went back to the office and I spread the files out on a conference table in the teacher’s lounge.
“What am I looking for, Skeeter?”
“Probably the smartest kid in school,” my own personal black gay Jiminy Cricket replied.
“The principal has no idea that this was all about class warfare, does he?”
“Nope, he’s got no clue that he’s living Revenge of the Nerd. Check that one.” Skeeter drew my attention back to a file I’d just passed over.
“Stephen Bentley? Nah, not him.” I glanced at his photo—good-looking, smiling kid.
“Why not? He looks smart.”
I looked at his picture again. “Yeah, but he’s too good-looking. We’re looking for somebody seriously ostracized. Besides, this kid also plays JV baseball, and you heard the principal talk about the baseball team.”
“You sure this is gonna be a geek going after the popular kids story?” Skeeter asked.
“Wrecked two athletic trophy cases but not a scratch on the academic one? Oh yeah. And did you see the pictures of the kids that got their asses stomped the other night? They made Carlton from Fresh Prince look black, they were so white.”
“Carlton was black, Bubba.”
“Carlton was a total Oreo, Skeeter, and you know it.”
Skeeter at least snorted a little on that one. “Black on the outside, white on the inside, I get it. So what’s the play?”
“I think I’m going to take this footage of the off-campus attack over to the guidance counselor and see if she can identify any of our victims. Then I’ll go talk to one of the kids who got his ass handed to him by a pile of rocks.”
I cleaned up the files and turned to leave, almost running over a small blonde woman on my way out. I reached out with one hand and caught her just above the left elbow and kept her from falling, but I couldn’t keep her armload of books from tumbling to the floor.
“I am so sorry,” she exclaimed, kneeling down to pick up all her scattered papers and stuff.
I got down on one knee to help her, apologizing myself. “No, it was totally my fault. I wasn’t looking where I was going, and to be honest, you’re so small, I just missed you.” She was a tiny thing, maybe a hundred ten pounds in combat boots and five foot even on her best day. She smiled at me, a radiant grin that bounced off her platinum hair.
“Well, I guess it’s easy to overlook us mere mortals from way up there.” She held out her hand. “Terri Drummond.”
“Robert Brabham. Agent Robert Brabham.” I noticed her smile tense up at the corners the way normal people do when I add the “agent” part to my name. At least I didn’t tell her what agency really paid my bills these days. People get nervous enough around Homeland Security. You start mentioning the Department of ExtraDimensional, Mystical and Occult Nuisances, DEMON for short, and they look around for the nearest emergency exit, or the men in white coats. I stood up and held out my hand to help the pretty little teacher to her feet.
“What do you teach here?” I asked.
“Honors English,” she replied, smiling again now that we were on safer footing. Bingo! If there was anywhere I could find the smartest kids in school, it would be under the wing of the hot Honors English teacher.
I gave her my most disarming smile, which usually wavers between “psychotic hillbilly” and “murderous biker” but I’d combed my hair back tight before coming into the school, and an application of expensive beard oil that Agent Amy gave me for Christmas had me looking almost respectable. Or at least respectable enough for Memphis. “Do you think you have time to help me with my investigation? It’ll only take a few minutes, and I promise I won’t ask you to violate any student’s privacy. But there have been a couple of attacks that we think may be related to the vandalism here at the school, and we want to stop it before anyone gets hurt.” I thought that playing to her nurturing side might help. I mean, I don’t have a nurturing side myself, but I’ve heard of it, and figured if anyone would have one, it would be a teacher. Nurturing is kinda their thing, unless it’s my twelfth-grade English teacher. Torture was her thing.
Ms. Drummond looked up at me for a few long seconds, then finally nodded. “I heard about those boys getting beaten last night. We need to make sure whoever is responsible is caught, and quickly. Our students deserve everything we can give them.”
“My sentiments exactly.” I didn’t mention that I might be giving one of her deserving students a size-sixteen foot in the ass, but I figured that
would probably offend that whole nurturing side. I held the door open and ushered the little teacher into the lounge.
I pulled my tablet out of my bag and called up the video. “Can you identify any of the students in this video, Miss Drummond?” I asked.
“Mrs. Drummond,” she corrected me.
“Sorry. Mrs. Drummond.” Good for me, I thought. The last thing I need to do is fall in lust with a high school teacher, no matter how cute she is.
“No problem,” she replied, watching the video. “Yes, I know all these boys. Mark Jackson, Steve Tolbert…I believe that’s Nathan Carpenter, but I can’t be sure. He’s running away too fast. That one on the ground is Eric Wilkinson, he’s the starting pitcher for the baseball team—ouch, I guess he was the starting pitcher.”
“The doctors say he should recover fully, but it will take up to six months. He’ll miss all of this season.”
“That’s terrible! This is his senior year, he was playing for scholarships. UT, Memphis, Vanderbilt—they all came to see Eric play as a junior and told him he could expect a lot of scholarship offers this year. Oh, that’s just awful for him.”
“Do you know of anyone that would have a problem with these particular students, Mrs. Drummond?”
“What do you mean, a problem?” She gave me a look that said she knew I was asking more than I was saying, so I had to step lightly. Not much was getting past this one, blonde jokes be damned.
“We think this attack might be a type of retaliation. Not saying these boys deserved to be beaten like this, but maybe somebody holds a grudge…?”
“There was an incident last year…I don’t know if I should even bring it up…”
“Anything you can share would be helpful. Please?” I pushed gently.
“There was a student in my CP English Four class, that’s College Preparatory English,” she explained at the confused look on my face. “Steve Tolbert and Mark Jackson were also in that class…so was Nathan, now that I think about it. There was a…I guess you could call it a teasing incident, I thought it was more than that, but the administration disagreed.” By the look on her face, she’d been pretty pissed at the “administration” at the time, and the memory was bringing the fire back.
“What happened?” I asked.
“We were studying The Diary of a Young Girl, by Anne Frank, and talking about Judaism, and one day as we were watching part of the film, Steve Tolbert puts a yarmulke on another student’s head and yells out ‘I found the Jew! Call the SS!’”
“That sounds pretty stupid, but not terrible,” I said.
“It would have just been stupid, except the student was the one Jewish boy in the class, and they put the yarmulke on with Super-Glue. He had to shave his head to remove it, and he still got chemical burns on his scalp.”
I let out a low whistle. “That’s a little much,” I agreed.
“I pushed for a lengthy suspension, but it was baseball season, so Steve got a warning. The other students, the ones who brought the yarmulke and glue, didn’t even get that.”
“Let me guess—Mark and Nathan.”
“Exactly.”
“Who was the victim?”
She hesitated. “Mrs. Drummond, I need to know anyone who might have reason to hurt these boys. And if anyone had stuck something to my head with crazy glue, I’d want some revenge.”
“His name is Jacob Lloyd. He’s one of the brightest boys in school. He wouldn’t hurt anyone, I’m sure of it.”
“Unless he was pushed far enough,” I said. “You said Eric Wilkinson wasn’t in that class?”
“No, Eric barely makes good enough grades in regular English to keep his eligibility, he would never cut it in my Honors class.”
“So it was something else that made the monster go after him,” I mused. “Do you know where Eric is today, Mrs. Drummond?”
“I know he’s not in school. I assume he’s still in the hospital,” she said.
My mind starting running over and over different permutations, but none of them came out good. Boy is in hospital, can’t move one shoulder at all and looks like one big bruise from head to toe. His best buds, who got the beatings of their lives, would be on the way to visit him as soon as school let out—oh crap.
“What time does school—” An ear-splitting electronic tone cut off my question. Mrs. Drummond pointed to the speaker on the wall and smiled as a voice broke in for afternoon announcements. The hallways outside the teachers’ lounge went from grave-silent to the din of a thousand or more teenagers all bolting for freedom at the same time.
“Crap,” I muttered. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Drummond, I’ve got to run. Thanks for your help.” I shoved all my gear back into my soft-sided briefcase and hauled ass out the front door. I navigated the sea of small people fairly simply, only to find that when I’d parked my truck in the visitor’s space in front of the school that I’d also parked it right in the middle of the student pickup lane, where hundreds of helicopter parents sat in their cars waiting to pick up little Jimmy or Suzy and haul them away to soccer, or flute practice, or whatever other damn thing they did.
I got in the truck, started her up, and sat there. I’ve been to a lot of sporting events and concerts, and usually somebody will ascribe to the dude code and let you out into traffic. Not so much at schools. Those crazy carpool ladies will stop their minivan in the middle of a row of traffic because one little ankle biter left his lunchbox, but they aren’t letting anybody in line for nothing.
So I sat there. I sat in the parking lot in front of the school for a good twenty minutes before a dad in a pickup paused long enough to let me back out of my parking space and peel out of the lot, headed for the hospital and hoping I got there before any more kids needed to be admitted.
I peeled into the hospital parking lot and slammed on the brakes. “Skeeter, we got a problem.”
“I see it, Bubba.” The cameras Skeeter planted all over my truck, my belt buckle, my favorite Bass Pro Shops ball cap and my bulletproof vest were a little invasive sometimes, but they did shortcut a lot of description. Like now, I didn’t have to tell Skeeter that there was a ten-foot pile of boulders stomping towards the front of the hospital; he could see it himself. I also didn’t have to mention the two teenagers hiding behind a bench beside the door, or the rent-a-cop trying hard to take aim at the elemental while simultaneously holding his bladder and sphincter closed tight.
“What’s the opposite of earth, Skeeter?”
“Interestingly enough, fire. Earth and water are considered female elements, while fire and air are considered male elements. So fire is an opposition element to earth.”
“Fire, I got.” I hopped out of the truck and opened the back door. The back seat flipped up to reveal a two-drawer sliding gun locker. I slid out the bottom drawer and grabbed an M4 with underslung Colt M203 grenade launcher. I popped a 40mm white phosphorous flare into the breach of the grenade launcher, slipped two more plus a couple of M1060 concussion grenades into the pockets of my jacket, and stepped out to wreck an elemental’s day.
“Hey, Stoney!” I yelled, but the moving rock pile ignored me. I sighted on the elemental and pulled the trigger. The grenade launcher made a soft whump sound, and I watched the projectile streak toward the monster, bursting into white-hot flame as it did. The signal flare hit the thing square between the shoulders, and fire bathed the creature for a few seconds before winking out.
“Skeeter, fire might not be the answer,” I said as I chambered a second round and brought the rifle up to my shoulder. I put another round solidly on target, with even less effect. The elemental slowed but only paused for a second before going back after the cowering teenagers. I dropped a high-explosive round in the launcher and brought it to bear on the thing.
Just before I pulled the trigger to blow that rock pile back to gravel, Skeeter came over the headset. “Stop! That won’t do anything!”
I lowered my rifle and said, “What?”
“I don’t think it’s an elemental
. If it was, your fire should have had more effect. You’re gonna have to try something different.” Something different looked like it had only about ten seconds to get between the monster and kids, so I jumped back in the truck and jammed her down into gear. I was in second and accelerating fast when I turned left to face the creature. I snapped my seatbelt into place and stomped the gas pedal to the floorboard. The truck leapt into motion, and two seconds later I crashed into a ten-foot pile of rocks with a couple tons of Detroit steel wrapped around my body.
Rocks, safety glass and the front left quarter panel of my truck exploded across the parking lot, and the elemental, or whatever it was, collapsed back into just a heap of inanimate rock. I got out of the truck and checked myself for injuries. Other than a small cut under my eye and a bruise from the seatbelt that was going to be really impressive, I seemed okay. I took a couple deep breaths, decided my ribs weren’t broken, and walked over to the bench.
“Y’all okay?” I asked the boys.
“Yeah. What was that thing?” the shorter of the pair asked. “It looks like the thing that almost killed Eric last night.”
“I’m pretty sure if something that big wants you dead, you’re going to die,” I said, picking more glass out of my beard. “You got any ideas who wants to beat y’all’s asses?”
“You mean besides every 4-A school in the state?” the taller one said, getting up from where he’d been trying to bury himself under an azalea. Pink flowers and dirt decorated his face. “We’re the champs, dude, all the ladies want to be with us, and all the men want to be us.”
I stood up and turned on the cocky little snot. “Your buddy is in a hospital bed not fifty yards from where we’re standing. If I hadn’t been willing to put my ass and my truck on the line for you, your dumb ass would be laid up in there right next to him. So you want to shelve the Ric Flair impersonation and answer my damn questions?” I hate teenagers. They know everything right up until the point where they need to know something important, then they don’t know shit.
Tall kid, I think he was the one Mrs. Drummond pointed out as Steve in the picture, sat down on the bench and put his hands in his lap. “Sorry, man. I was scared. Sometimes I say stupid shit when I’m scared.”
Grits, Guns & Glory - Bubba the Monster Hunter Season 2 Page 27