A Function of Murder

by Ada Madison

  At the back of the room, Digital Dan, as we called him, was helping a group troubleshoot a faulty cable connection. Was this an English class? A vocational technology class? I’d heard Dan’s pitch often enough, and knew how he would answer—that there was no need for arbitrarily defined “subjects” and that technological devices were appropriate to whatever they were studying.

  “They let students learn at their own pace, teach skills needed in a modern economy, and hold the attention of a generation weaned on gadgets,” he’d said, sounding like a paragraph from his grant proposal.

  I saw the merit of his position, but knew also that the results were not yet in on the long-term effect of approaches like Dan’s.

  There were similar questions about curricula at the college—always a back-and-forth between those who wanted to keep the offerings purely academic and those who wanted to introduce vocational programs into each department.

  I felt that mathematics sat in a win-win position. We could accommodate the most abstract topics, like number theory and the construction of proofs, as well as the most practical topics, like math for machinists and computer scientists.

  It seemed a bit ironic that my math classes at Zeeman were built on low or no technology, almost a throwback compared to Dan’s English classes.

  I teased Dan about it now as I reached the cable splicing group.

  “Why don’t my math classes get a shot at all this technology?” I asked.

  Dan cocked his shiny, bald-by-choice head and grinned. “Math is already so interesting, you don’t need bling.”

  How could I not agree?

  The bright part of my day was at hand, matching the brightly painted walls that characterized the school décor. I had no doubt that the students had participated in the decorating project that encompassed Zeeman’s classrooms and hallways. I walked down a side hall, the walls of which were covered with children’s renditions of the sun setting in the hills, houses with lawns, and a clear, starry night. Long, curvy blue lines were reminiscent of rivers, and tall rectangles with rows of smaller rectangles reminded one of a city skyline that could have been Boston.

  I thought of the framed print in my den. A drawing of a large ship on one section of wall told me that Zeeman’s children had been on a field trip to the USS Constitution, “Old Ironsides,” the oldest commissioned warship afloat, from the late eighteenth century. I was always amused to recall that one of its first captains was Isaac Hull. With a name like that, what else could he have done but become a sailor? Like the handyman I hired now and then for small carpentry projects, Rick Rafter. Or like me, mathematician Sophie Saint Germain Knowles.

  Just like that, a new puzzle idea came to me.

  It was a good thing I liked class, or I would have skipped out and constructed a list acrostic—people who chose occupations to go with their names—then and there.

  I was always comfortable in a classroom, feeling at-home surrounded by student desks, black-or whiteboards, chalk, pointers, or markers. The setup in the classroom I used at Zeeman was primitive compared to Dan’s, however. Having just stepped out of his futurist model, I felt like a Luddite. I was able to use my own laptop and the whiteboard as a screen to display videos, but only three or four students could play an interactive game at the same time. We used a lottery system, and the others (I tried not to call them losers) were reduced to using actual physical manipulables and worksheets for practice in converting decimals to percents, or adding and subtracting fractions, both topics of the month.

  Many of the games I’d found were disappointing. The math action seemed secondary to scoring a point in a sport. Players spent more time “building a character,” that is, adding qualities to an avatar, than doing the math. In some cases, for every correct answer the player keyed in or selected, there were still several more steps to moving an icon in place to hit a home run or make a goal, having nothing to do with math skills.

  At one table, I tried to encourage two fourth graders to click on a button with ten problems on adding fractions, instead of only one arithmetic operation before the football field kicked in.

  “I have to give my guy some tats first,” clean-cut Bobby said, choosing to place a swooping eagle on his avatar’s torso.

  “Yeah, and look at the bad hair they gave my guy,” his partner said, though her avatar was female. “And she needs some swag.”

  I mentally threw up my hands.

  The atmosphere in my classroom, especially compared to the up-to-date problems kids were dealing with in Dan’s class, was almost enough to make me give up my hard-copy puzzle avocation and create interactive games. Maybe it was time I became part of the educational gaming world.

  Either that or I’d join the opposition who questioned the need for teachers to be entertainers in the first place.

  “Drill, drill, drill,” they cried. Was it time to go back to that? It had worked for my mother, as she often reminded me, and in part for me, though I’d also had a taste of what was called “the new math.”

  So many choices and opinions. And no really foolproof way to determine what results to expect from each decision. I’d never appreciated college teaching for the piece of cake that it was. Except since Elysse and her Facebook Friends muscled their way in.

  Vending machines were not my first choice for lunch food, but I decided to stay at Zeeman through the lunch hour, hoping Principal Richardson would show up. I inserted some coins, then pulled a container with a bagel and cream cheese from a revolving slot. Vending machines now came with flashing lights and high-tech money management, but the food was the same.

  I took a seat at a table in the faculty lounge where Rina Flores and Dan Sachs were just settling in. I sniffed in envy as each of them in turn microwaved something that smelled delicious.

  Except for my time in Dan’s class, with children present, I hadn’t seen either teacher since before the terrible end to Saturday’s festivities on the Henley campus. Both expressed their outrage at the mayor’s murder, and offered detached theories of the crime.

  “Politics, you know,” Dan said. “These days, there are a lot of people who think political disagreements are best settled through physical confrontation. It’s all you see on TV.”

  Rina agreed, and added her thoughts. “A man in the public eye is very vulnerable,” she said.

  After a few more rounds of talk that included sympathy for the mayor’s family, I went out on a limb.

  “What time does Mr. Richardson usually come in for lunch?” I asked.

  “You won’t see him in here very often,” Rina said.

  I took a bite of the cold, hard, tasteless bagel with rubbery cream cheese. “I don’t know why not. The food is delicious.”

  They both laughed and offered to share their meals, but I waved away the idea. I wanted something other than food from them.

  “I wondered if Principal Richardson and the mayor were friends, and I wanted to ask him how he’s holding up.” It was a pretty good line, if I did say so myself, and I wished I’d thought of using it when Superintendent Collins plowed into me.

  Rina, a dark beauty in her late thirties, I guessed, nearly choked on her chicken and black bean casserole; Dan threw his head back; both rolled their eyes.

  “Can you say ‘thorn’?” Rina asked. “That’s what the mayor was to our principal. A thorn in his side. May he rest in peace, but he was always after our principal for one thing or another. Especially when his boy, Cody, was here, but it hasn’t stopped.”

  “You got that right,” Dan said. “Our principal gets special attention from high places. Attention he doesn’t need.”

  It was clear whose side the two dedicated teachers were on, but I suspected both were too loyal to tell me outright whether their principal was breaking the law. I had to be more direct. I braced myself.

  “I’ve heard rumors on my campus, something about grades being reported”—what could I say that wouldn’t be overly offensive?—“higher than they are.”

&
nbsp; My attempt at subtlety didn’t work. Dan screwed up his mouth, his look unfriendly.

  “What are you implying?”

  “Just that I heard something about grades and test scores,” I stammered.

  “You mean how the mayor was accusing Richardson of inflating the grades for funding?” I’d never heard such an angry tone from Digital Dan, not even the last time a fourth grader spilled milk on a keyboard in his classroom. “Just so you know, as awful as it was that the man was murdered, you’re not going to find many people here who will actually miss him.”

  Dan’s flare-up caught me off guard, though I shouldn’t have been surprised. Hadn’t I always said how phony it was to praise the dead just because they were dead? No phoniness here.

  Fortunately, I didn’t have to respond right away to Dan. Rina was on me.

  “I wondered why you were so chummy today, staying for lunch.”

  “Classes are over at the college,” I said in a weak, defensive voice. Grasping at straws.

  “Right,” Rina said, meaning anything but. “You have no idea how hard it is to be beholden to this one and that one for everything. We don’t know from one day to the next what’s going to happen to the school library, or whether there will be any field trips for our kids, or any money for faculty development. Dan did great getting that grant, but it’s a drop in the bucket, really.”

  Dan nodded, more relaxed now. “Even that grant doesn’t cover maintenance or any kind of continuing ed. It’s nice to have new technology, but what happens when it’s all outdated next year? We’ll have a graveyard of old chassis and we’ll all be back to square one.”

  “Everything has strings attached,” Rina said. “All of them—the mayor and the school committee and the parents’ organization—they give us money and they think that gives them the right to tell us how and what to teach.”

  “And how to test,” Dan added.

  “Testing is a big thing,” Rina agreed. “We haven’t had charter schools in Massachusetts for that long. We need to be fully funded to have them work as they were meant to.”

  “And cut some slack to really test our methods. One person’s ‘imaginative academic curriculum’ is another person’s ‘dumbed down school,’” Dan said.

  “And everyone’s an expert,” Rina added.

  I wanted to break in and tell them that I was merely asking a question, not on one side or the other. Neither Dan nor Rina was addressing me directly now. They were letting out their feelings about their school and how it was viewed by others in the education community. But it was clear that the cause of their increasing agitation had been my remark, and I wished I could take it back.

  “If anyone thinks it’s the worst crime in the world to try to save your school, let them come here and teach,” Rina said.

  “And not for just an hour now and then,” Dan added, with a pointed look at me.

  “You’re so right,” Rina threw in.

  She and Dan stood together, as if they’d choreographed the move. They gave me a quick glance, tossed their unfinished meals in the trash, and walked out of the room.

  I was left in the dust with the remains of a bagel so tough that not even an entire bottle of water could soften it.

  I sat for a few minutes, utterly regretting what I’d done. Bruce was right. Virgil was right. I had no business trying to be an investigator. At best, I’d ruined the day for two people I cared about. At worst, I’d betrayed the trust put in me by Zeeman Academy’s best teachers, stuck my nose where it didn’t belong, and possibly alienated two of my friends here.

  What made me think that two hours a week of volunteering gave me the right to know or to judge what went on the other thirty-plus hours?

  I gathered my purse and briefcase, and left the room.

  As I walked past lively classrooms, I reminded myself that while grade inflation might be what was making all this creative learning possible, and might not be a capital offense, murder was. Rina and Dan might justify the means, but not if murder was involved. I did have the best intentions—routing out Mayor Graves’s killer. But that wasn’t my job either.

  I reached the end of the hall, about to pull on the heavy glass doors. A hulking form appeared on the other side and pushed the doors in, sending me tripping back.

  “Sorry, sorry, are you okay?” asked a familiar voice. “I thought you saw me, Sophie.”

  Detective Virgil Mitchell. My first thought was that Rina and Dan had called the police, asking to have me arrested for meddling at the least, slander at the worst.

  “I was just leaving,” I told Virgil, as if he’d asked.

  “I see that.”

  “I had my class and then stayed for lunch.” I babbled, as if I’d been caught speeding and pulled over by a state trooper in his jodhpurs.

  “Good,” Virgil said, giving me a look that asked, What’s wrong with you?

  I slid closer to the door, first checking to make sure a third collision wasn’t in the offing. “So, I’ll see you later?”

  “Later,” Virgil said, and headed down the corridor.

  I left Zeeman Academy with a few bruises to my body and spirit.

  I drove home at the start of a light spring rain, predicted to turn nasty by late afternoon. I used to worry about Bruce, flying a small craft, relatively low to the ground, in stormy weather, but he’d taught me the MAstar refrain: Four to say go, one to say no. Each mission called for a pilot and two nurses in the helicopter, plus the preflight mechanic on the ground. Any one of them could decide that making the flight would be unsafe, and the mission would be cancelled.

  I wished I had such clear instructions.

  I couldn’t seem to get a handle on anything the past few days. I had so many partial truths rattling around in my head, like someone had taken the pieces of five jigsaw puzzles and thrown them into one box. With no picture on the cover. I needed answers.

  On top of it all, between Elysse’s Facebook attack and Rina and Dan’s responses in the lunchroom, I felt my whole philosophy of education was being brought into question. If I couldn’t be sure of the way I taught and what I expected from myself, my students, and my administrators, what was the point?

  I slammed on my brakes at a red light, which at least stopped my head from going into overdrive. The mayor’s murder, and his repeated desire to connect with me, had thrown me off-kilter. Not only that, I was hungry. A couple of bites of stale bagel didn’t cut it as lunch. But I could do this. I could put things in order. That was my specialty.

  While I was on the lookout for food, I’d create a mental lineup of murder suspects. That should be safe territory. There was no one around to hear me and take offense.

  I tapped on the steering wheel with my index finger for the first suspect. Principal Douglas Richardson. It was obvious to me that the mayor had uncovered his fraudulent scheme or schemes to get continued funding.

  Maybe that’s why Virgil showed up at Zeeman today, to take Richardson into custody. I wished I knew for sure; I’d have given anything to call off my own pseudo-investigation. I wondered if Virgil traveled to Zeeman Academy because he’d tracked the mayor’s schedule for the last couple of days, or because I’d introduced the school into our first conversation at the crime scene. I hated to compound my accusatory stance against Zeeman by telling Virgil what I’d just learned at lunch.

  In any case, it was more likely that Virgil was visiting the school today only for routine questioning, not to arrest someone. I knew from television that it took at least two cops and flashing lights to arrest a guy, and that they wouldn’t want to have a perp walk at an elementary school. That’s how informed I was.

  I let Rina and Dan off the hook as suspects even though they had all but admitted that Principal Richardson was guilty as charged by me and that they saw nothing wrong with it. I sympathized with their plight, but, hard as I tried, I couldn’t agree with them. A little exaggeration about student performance on Parents’ Night was harmless, but submitting bogus official rep
ort cards up the funding chain to state and federal organizations qualified as criminal behavior in my book.

  I couldn’t say I’d be relieved if Virgil had evidence of fraud and could tie that crime to Mayor Graves’s murder. Dan and Rina’s argument and description of life at their charter school had reached me, teacher to teacher. I declined to place them on my suspect list, wanting to think their motives were pure and that they’d done nothing wrong themselves.

  Superintendent Collins probably knew of the grade inflation and that might have been the subject of his argument with the mayor on graduation day. Which side would he be on? Were Richardson and Collins in cahoots? I had no idea of the chain of command when it came to submitting grade reports. The two school administrators might have been quarreling today over why they’d had to kill the mayor. Or over the merits of chain versus independent electronics stores.

  I thought of the triangle Kira had presented to me yesterday—Collins and Richardson each having something yet to be determined on the other, and both possibly having something on Graves, that something perhaps being Kira herself. A strange image came to me, from my high school chemistry text—a ring of snakes each biting the other’s tail. It had something to do with how the shape of the benzene ring came to a famous (but not to me) chemist in a dream. Sometimes I had to admit that science had as many interesting stories as mathematics.

  Another possibility was that the superintendent was in danger. What if Principal Richardson was killing off anyone who was aware of the fraud and didn’t agree with his little scheme to keep his school open and hold on to his job? From snippets in the news and the way he cavorted with higher-ups, Richardson had always struck me as more than a little ambitious for his career. A shiver ran through me. If Rina and Dan squealed on me, I could be in danger.