“except a couple of guys were talking about the research on the way out of the session and really yucking it up. I again cautioned them not to discuss the research outside of the session, but they kind of blew me off.”
“Yeah,” Jeff, another assistant said, “they were the ones talking throughout the session. I walked by and told them several times not to confer with anyone. I thought I saw one of them with another sheet of paper at his desk, but when I got closer to check, it was gone.”
Suddenly Paula jumped out of her chair and ran out of the lab. She returned a few minutes later with a metal wastebasket.
“When you said ‘paper,’ I remembered I saw a guy in today’s testing session, maybe one of those you were talking about, tear up a paper and throw it into the wastebasket. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but it just now registered as something that might be interesting and, perhaps, important?” Her eyes moved to the pile of “unscorables.” Paula read me far too well.
“Okay, let me level with all of you. Some of those unscorables look a bit suspicious. There’s no reason for any of you to see them before Investigator Der does. No, no,” I assured them as they looked concerned, “there are no descriptions of murders there, but some of them are ‘different’.”
“I guess you don’t mean ‘different’ like we found earlier this year with all the sexual detail in the stories, do you?” Jeff said.
“No, not that kind of unusual description. These are something else, something I want Investigator Der to look at. He should be here any minute. I told him we’d be in the lab this afternoon doing a preliminary run-through of the results.”
As if waiting for his cue, Der stuck his head around the door and said, “How’s it going?” greeting each of my assistants by name.
“We’ve got something for you.” Paula presented him with the wastebasket she removed from the testing room. He looked surprised, but accepted the metal container, peering into its depths.
“There are fingerprints on those papers. That’s why I brought the whole can. Evidence, you know,” Paula said. She planned on law as a career and appeared to be pleased that she was following what she felt to be sound criminal procedure.
“Maybe you can explain why the trash container to Investigator Der,” I said to Paula.
“Oh, right.” She ran through what the assistants observed during the session, and I added that there were some descriptions Der might want to read.
Der assured all the assistants that they did very well and told them he would get back in touch with them at some future date.
“Again, let’s keep any information about the testing session to ourselves,” he said.
After the assistants left, I showed the unusual stories to Der. He agreed with me that they appeared to be related and were odd enough, given recent events, to merit getting all the subjects tested this week together for a talk. If Der and I could get the students who wrote those stories to come forward so that Der could question them, we wouldn’t have to go through legal manipulations to connect names of subjects with particular stories. Possible violation of anonymity of subjects was serious business and neither the college attorney nor I was willing to risk this ethical principle without the intervention of a judge via a court order.
“What about this wastebasket?” Der peered into its depths. “It’s filled with papers of all kinds. We’ll have to extract the bits from the other sheets and sort through all the contents.”
Der dumped the contents on the large worktable in the lab. He handed me a pair of latex gloves, “Just in case anything criminal comes of this,” he said, and we began to extract the bits of paper from the rest of the contents of the basket. Less than half an hour later we seemed to have all the scraps.
“Now comes the hard part,” Der said. “They need to be put together. Call me when
“Yeah,” Jeff, another assistant said, “they were the ones talking throughout the session. I walked by and told them several times not to confer with anyone. I thought I saw one of them with another sheet of paper at his desk, but when I got closer to check, it was gone.”
Suddenly Paula jumped out of her chair and ran out of the lab. She returned a few minutes later with a metal wastebasket.
“When you said ‘paper,’ I remembered I saw a guy in today’s testing session, maybe one of those you were talking about, tear up a paper and throw it into the wastebasket. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but it just now registered as something that might be interesting and, perhaps, important?” Her eyes moved to the pile of “unscorables.” Paula read me far too well.
“Okay, let me level with all of you. Some of those unscorables look a bit suspicious. There’s no reason for any of you to see them before Investigator Der does. No, no,” I assured them as they looked concerned, “there are no descriptions of murders there, but some of them are ‘different’.”
“I guess you don’t mean ‘different’ like we found earlier this year with all the sexual detail in the stories, do you?” Jeff said.
“No, not that kind of unusual description. These are something else, something I want Investigator Der to look at. He should be here any minute. I told him we’d be in the lab this afternoon doing a preliminary run-through of the results.”
As if waiting for his cue, Der stuck his head around the door and said, “How’s it going?” greeting each of my assistants by name.
“We’ve got something for you.” Paula presented him with the wastebasket she removed from the testing room. He looked surprised, but accepted the metal container, peering into its depths.
“There are fingerprints on those papers. That’s why I brought the whole can. Evidence, you know,” Paula said. She planned on law as a career and appeared to be pleased that she was following what she felt to be sound criminal procedure.
“Maybe you can explain why the trash container to Investigator Der,” I said to Paula.
“Oh, right.” She ran through what the assistants observed during the session, and I added that there were some descriptions Der might want to read.
Der assured all the assistants that they did very well and told them he would get back in touch with them at some future date.
“Again, let’s keep any information about the testing session to ourselves,” he said.
After the assistants left, I showed the unusual stories to Der. He agreed with me that they appeared to be related and were odd enough, given recent events, to merit getting all the subjects tested this week together for a talk. If Der and I could get the students who wrote those stories to come forward so that Der could question them, we wouldn’t have to go through legal manipulations to connect names of subjects with particular stories. Possible violation of anonymity of subjects was serious business and neither the college attorney nor I was willing to risk this ethical principle without the intervention of a judge via a court order.
“What about this wastebasket?” Der peered into its depths. “It’s filled with papers of all kinds. We’ll have to extract the bits from the other sheets and sort through all the contents.”
Der dumped the contents on the large worktable in the lab. He handed me a pair of latex gloves, “Just in case anything criminal comes of this,” he said, and we began to extract the bits of paper from the rest of the contents of the basket. Less than half an hour later we seemed to have all the scraps.
“Now comes the hard part,” Der said. “They need to be put together. Call me when
Similar Books
