Rancher's Deadly Risk

by Rachel Lee

  With no more phone calls, she felt the incident was closed. Over the weekend, though, she’d been texted by Les, the principal, asking that she and Linc speak to the faculty at the weekly meeting at the close of school that day.

  Being the new kid on the block, as it were, she didn’t feel entirely comfortable with that idea, and as she walked she realized she had a minor case of nerves going, the way she often did on the very first day of the school year. Great. She hoped she’d forget about it during the teaching day.

  When she reached the school, she found Linc was still on bus duty. At least he smiled faintly when he opened the door for her.

  “About this afternoon...” she began.

  He nodded. “I can do most of the talking. I understand you don’t want to come off like the new broom.”

  “Exactly. Thank you.”

  Another brief nod. “You just fill in when you think I’ve left something out. I managed to get some of the first few members of our student squad, though. Some of my star players and a handful of the cheerleaders. I didn’t make a general approach, just handpicked a few, but no turndowns.”

  She turned as she stepped inside. “That’s fabulous!”

  He grinned, surprising her. “Despite what happened on Friday, most of our students are good people.”

  She smiled as she walked to her classroom, thinking it was a good start and they’d probably get a handle on the bullying before there was too much more of it. Maybe James Carney and others like him wouldn’t have to endure as much.

  She unlocked the door of her classroom and stepped inside. Immediately she smelled something awful, something sickeningly sweet. Going to her desk, what she saw made her gasp in horror and back up to the door, where she hit the intercom button.

  “School office.”

  “Marian, I need Les right now. Someone left a dead rat on my desk and I’m not going to be able to let the students in.”

  She heard Marian talk to someone. “He’ll be right there with the janitor.”

  She stepped outside and locked her door again, standing guard, trying to keep her breakfast down. Ugly. Ugly. The thing had had its throat cut, there was blood all over her desk pad, and from the odor it had been left to rot all weekend.

  The message was unmistakable, and almost enough to make her double over and heave. She could feel a cold sweat breaking out all over her body, and the nausea was overwhelming. She wanted to leave and never come back.

  She kept drawing deep breaths to steady herself, leaning against the wall for support, and telling herself not to be hysterical. It was a nasty, messy, ugly message, but that’s all it was.

  If they wanted to frighten her off, it wasn’t going to work. She promised herself that even as she felt the urge to leave and not come back. How would she ever sit at that desk again without remembering that rat?

  She hated to think what kind of a person would have done that. One of those bullies? God, if it had been one of them, then James Carney could be in serious trouble.

  For that matter, so could she.

  Several students arrived before Les. “Sorry,” she told them, “you’ll have to wait in the library or lunch room. There’s a bit of a mess that needs cleaning.”

  Did she imagine it, or did one of the boys actually smirk? Anything was possible, but she told herself not to see everyone as a potential enemy in this. She was likely being hypersensitive.

  The nausea had mostly passed by the time Les arrived with the janitor on his heels. Amazingly, Linc wasn’t far behind.

  Les eyed her critically. “How bad is it?”

  “Bad enough that I’m sending my homeroom to the library or cafeteria. Someone is going to have to take attendance. It’s a mess.”

  “Well, let’s see it.”

  She turned to unlock the door. “You’ll excuse me if I don’t go in there again.”

  Linc went in, though, and she noticed he took out his cell phone and snapped a few photos. Les gagged. The janitor even paled, and he must have cleaned up some real messes during his tenure.

  “This goes way beyond a prank,” Linc said flatly. “I think we need to call the sheriff.”

  Les nodded, putting his hand over his mouth and hurrying toward the door. “Don’t touch it. I’ll get Gage out here.”

  “I need to hold class,” Cassie said, trying to cling to some semblance of normalcy or routine. Focusing on the one thing she could do.

  “I’ll arrange for a blackboard in the cafeteria,” Les said as he hurried up the hall. “And I’ll call the sheriff.”

  The janitor, a guy who preferred to be called Gus even though his name was Madson Carson, just stood there shaking his head. “What’s the world coming to?” he asked. “Who the hell got in here?”

  “It’s been here at least since Friday,” Linc remarked. “Let’s get out and wait for the sheriff. I doubt he’ll find anything useful, but we don’t want to contaminate it.”

  Once the door was locked again, he drew Cassie to one side, holding her elbow gently. “Are you okay?”

  “I will be. How could somebody get in to do that?”

  “Remember, you can always get out of the building. All someone had to do was lay in wait until the place was empty.”

  It was true, she realized. All the doors were fire doors, and would open from the inside even when locked. As for her classroom...master keys could be had from several places. Or the lock could be picked easily enough. It wasn’t exactly a vault.

  She bent and looked at the keyhole. “Someone picked it,” she said as she saw some deformation around the lock.

  “Maybe.” Linc sighed. “Damn, what’s happening around here?”

  She had no answers. Straightening, she looked at him. “Reality. Like you said, every place has its bad apples.”

  The hall was becoming crowded with students, and the PA system burst into life, announcing that Ms. Greaves’s classes would be held in the cafeteria today.

  “It bothers me how fast this had to have happened,” Linc said. “The incident was Friday at noon. It’s possible that when I opened the school to let the team in someone snuck in with them, but that’s still the same day as the bullying, and probably a short time after Les called parents.”

  “How many people were in here Friday night?”

  “The boosters, the team, some other parents, a few teachers. The cheerleaders. There’s always a crowd before we leave for an away game.”

  “In short, too many suspects.”

  He nodded, but frowned at the same time. “Are you sure you’re going to be all right? You could take a sick day.”

  “And spend all day at home thinking about this?” She shook her head. “No, thanks. What’s that they say about after you fall from a horse?”

  His frown turned to a faint smile. “You’ve got some backbone. Okay. But depending on how much of a threat the sheriff thinks this is, maybe you should take care not to be alone.”

  As if she would have a choice.

  * * *

  The sheriff arrived with his crime scene unit, and Cassie was grateful that the students had all vanished into classrooms. Not that they wouldn’t hear about this, not that word wouldn’t get out, but they didn’t need to be clustered around and hearing gory details, or getting in the way.

  The sheriff, Gage Dalton, whom she’d met a couple of times before casually, was gentle and kind with his questioning of her. He started with that morning, but inevitably he worked back to the possible motivation for this treatment.

  She looked at Les, who sighed and nodded. “We may as well talk about it all, even though we’re going to do our part, perhaps the most important part. You do have plans?”

  “We’re working on them. Linc and I have both started.”

  “With what?” Gage asked.

  So she explained the bullying incident. Linc refused to let her skip over the phone call she had received. When they fell silent, having explained their plans for dealing with bullying, Gage’s face was dark. />
  “So,” he said, looking at Les, “you thought it was a good idea to hang your teacher out on this?” He turned to Linc. “What about you?”

  Cassie spoke first. “Our main concern was not to get James Carney into more trouble. We were trying to protect him.”

  “So you get blamed for the detentions? You become the focus of this gang?”

  “I don’t like it,” Linc said bluntly. “In fact, it concerns me a whole lot, and more now than it did on Friday. The fact remains, the Carney boy wasn’t the only one bullied. Cassie was bullied, too. So it seemed we needed to deal with that immediately, without getting Carney into more trouble. We can’t have students making implied threats by pushing teachers and ignoring them or we’ll have anarchy, and we won’t be able to control anything.”

  Gage hitched his gun belt, grimaced a bit and leaned against the wall. “You know I could make arrests for what happened Friday. I get the part about not wanting to ruin a young person’s life. I completely get it and don’t want to do that. But given that you had warning of violence, however mild, this is one bull you should have taken by the horns immediately.”

  “James Carney...” Cassie began.

  “I get it about the Carney kid. Believe me, I get it. But despite these moves against Cassie, are you really sure you’ve deflected the attention from him? I doubt it. They’re going to know what’s behind this. All you’ve done is give them a second object.” He shook his head. “Too many suspects now, too. The bullies, their parents, their friends... Unless we find some specific evidence in that mess on Cassie’s desk, we’re going to be stymied. So keep that in mind. This has escalated. Keep that in mind, too.”

  Linc walked Cassie to the cafeteria and she got the feeling she wasn’t the only unhappy one.

  “We were stupid,” he announced.

  “I don’t think so. Les was right about dealing with the infraction against me and leaving James out of it for now.”

  He looked at her, brows lifted. “You can say that after this morning?”

  She bit her lip, then nodded. As nerve-racking as this had become, she didn’t want to do anything to give those bullies more fuel against James. “I can protect myself,” she said stoutly.

  He took her elbow and drew her into a deserted spur of hallway that led to the janitorial rooms. “Don’t underestimate this, Cassie. That rat this morning...that’s extreme. You’d already been bullied twice. This goes a little beyond that, don’t you think?”

  She looked up at him and found his gaze steady and concerned. For once he wasn’t trying to look at something else. The impact of his full attention nearly left her breathless. How could he have that effect with a mere look?

  She had to gather suddenly scattered thoughts, and that involved dropping her own gaze briefly. “I’m older,” she said. “I’m an adult. I can handle it better.”

  “Even a rotting bloody rat on your desk? Are you so sure, Cassie?”

  “Students are different here. Hunting is a part of life for them. This probably doesn’t strike them the same way it would if a suburban student were to think of such a thing.”

  “Now you’re making excuses.”

  “Am I wrong?”

  “I don’t know,” he said forcefully. “And that’s what’s bothering me. Yes, hunting is a part of life for most of our students, but it isn’t usually sport, and it certainly isn’t done for reasons of cruelty. A lot of families look forward to deer or elk to get them through the winter. Killing for the sake of killing isn’t approved by most folks.”

  “And rats are vermin to be exterminated,” she argued, though he was beginning to make her stomach twist edgily again. Maybe there was no way at all to minimize this. Maybe she shouldn’t even try. But she didn’t want to walk around the halls of her new school looking on every student as a potential threat. Heck, she liked almost all of her students.

  “Cassie,” he said quietly, “don’t be stubborn. You know this was an awful thing to do to you and that rat.”

  Some bit of her ego deflated. Her hands came together, clasping tightly. “I know,” she admitted quietly. “But I’ve got to get through the day, Linc. I’ve got to teach, and I have to like my students insofar as humanly possible. I can’t let this poison my relationship with them.”

  He sighed, then nodded. “You’re right. I just want you to stay alert, okay? Keep an eye out. Pay attention. Don’t go blithely on as if nothing happened until we get this sorted out.”

  “Blithe is not my reaction to this,” she said a little tartly. “Far from it. I wish I could scrub that image from my brain.”

  “I’m sure you do.” He astonished her by reaching out to give her shoulder a squeeze. “Do me a favor. Let me see you home after the meeting this afternoon. Do it for me. I’ll feel better.”

  For a guy who had been avoiding her like the plague, he was getting close awfully fast. He must have a wide streak of white knight in him, she thought. “Okay, thanks,” she said finally. It wouldn’t hurt and at this point she wasn’t exactly as full of confidence as she was trying to project.

  But after all her wishing that he wouldn’t remain so distant, she wished something nicer had brought them together.

  With that gloomy thought, she headed down the nearly deserted hallway to take over her first class of the day, a class that was almost over. So much for great ideas. She’d have to bring them up to speed tomorrow.

  She could also tell by some of the looks and whispers as she approached the group in the cafeteria that word had already gotten around. She wondered if they had the details or were going to question her about it all. Twenty-two pairs of eyes fixed on her, but no one said a word.

  “Well, it looks like you guys lucked out,” she said brightly. “Since I don’t have time to cover new material, there will be no math problems for homework. And as for the project for the week, this is your turn to come up with one you’d like using the math and science we cover in class. I want to hear your ideas tomorrow.”

  At least they seemed eager about coming up with their own projects. By the time they headed out a few minutes later, many were already talking about ideas.

  The rest of the day held nothing unusual until she received word that her classroom was once again ready for her. She’d have liked to avoid it at least until tomorrow, but shortly after she was informed, the public address system announced the rest of her classes would be held in the regular classroom.

  Damn, she thought, torn between amusement and distaste, which was an odd place to be. She gathered up her materials into her book bag and set out with the migrating students. Gus was waiting for her.

  “I got it all cleaned up,” he told her. “All of it. Sorry, had to throw out a few things. The school will replace them.”

  “Thank you, Gus. I’m sorry you had to deal with that.”

  “I clean up messes all the time, but never one that made me so mad. Don’t choke on the air freshener, but that smell didn’t want to quit.”

  She sniffed the air. “You did a good job.”

  He smiled awkwardly. “You need anything at all, just let me know.”

  Another white knight, she thought. “Can I be honest? I hope I don’t need you again for anything like this.”

  He laughed and headed out as students began pouring through the door.

  In all, the day felt fractured, everything off-kilter, and she was sure she didn’t do the best job of teaching. She wound up giving all her students a night off from homework because she wasn’t sure she had really explained anything clearly enough. They seemed to be happy about coming up with their own projects, however, and she found herself anticipating hearing their ideas. So at least something good had happened that day.

  The faculty meeting after school disturbed her, too. She was tired to begin with, probably because the day had been emotionally stressful, but to get in there and find there were teachers who didn’t believe the bullying needed to be addressed left her both astonished and disappointed.


  There were a significant number who felt the incident with James Carney was so unusual that it didn’t really mean anything. Others felt that kids were just being kids. She was relieved, however, to find that more than half the teachers agreed bullying needed to be addressed firmly and quickly.

  She was so glad Linc did most of the talking. Within ten minutes she realized that if she had tried to present the problem and the plans, she would have been dismissed. She was an outsider who knew nothing about their school or their students, and she would have been marked as being hypercritical about things she didn’t understand.

  Linc’s presentation was at least received with respect, if not a hugely warm reception from everyone.

  “They don’t want to believe it’s going on,” she said to Linc as he walked her home. “Is it really that invisible?”

  “My guess is yes. The students don’t engage in that kind of behavior around teachers. At least not when they get to this age. Maybe that’s why we thought it was tapering off after middle school. You heard what I said Friday to Les. We usually don’t see this kind of extreme bullying at this age. Obviously, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen.”

  “Obviously.” She sighed. “And maybe this really was an isolated incident. But I don’t like the way it seems to be snowballing.”

  “Me, either. I’m really sorry about this morning. That must have given you a distaste for this place.”

  “Actually, no,” she answered truthfully. “There was a while this morning when I didn’t want to be in school. I admit it. The hardest part turned out to be trying not to be suspicious of every student in my classes. I like most of them. I don’t think any of them were involved, but it still felt like I was attending a lineup for a few hours there.”

  He cracked a laugh. “I have no trouble imagining that. But you got past it?”

  “Of course. It was temporary. The thing is, Linc, I’ve been teaching for a few years. Bad things happen, students do stupid and ugly things sometimes. It’s all a part of growing up. It’s not like I’m going to judge this entire county by one incident.”