Schooled in Murder by Mark Richard Zubro Page A

was a threat, and it happened here. I have no idea about the connection.”
    “We’ve got to find out something,” Bochka said. “We can’t be kept in the dark. I don’t like that older detective, Gault. He was rude to me. I’m going to report him to his superior.”
    “How was he rude?” I asked.
    “He told me not to interfere in the investigation. I’m president of this school board. I’m responsible to the voters. All I did was try to go into the storeroom to try to see what was going on.”
    “He was just doing his job,” Towne said.
    Bochka pointed at me. “Haven’t you had experience with this kind of thing before?”
    The bodies-plopping-in-my-path reputation had preceded me. I repeated what I’d said to the members of the factions. “I’m sure I don’t have much more insight than anyone else. You’re already annoyed with the cops. You said they were rude. If they knew someone was trying to investigate, they’d be more than rude.”
    Bochka said, “You seem to know some of the River’s Edge police. Could you ask them?”
    I said, “I have no official standing.”
    “Yes, but you know these people,” Towne said.
    “The one I know best is not here,” I replied.
    Graniento said, “This questioning could go on for hours. They’re demanding to talk to custodians, secretaries, members of other departments. It’s awful. Our reputation will be ruined. The teachers are saying awful things about what’s been going on in the English department.”
    Like the truth, I thought.
    Graniento was continuing. “They’ve got more questions for everyone. Every petty bit of squabbling is going to come out. Every minor tiff and spat. The police are going to know all of this. It’s all going to get into the papers.”
    I said, “Then maybe it will stop. It should have stopped a long time ago.”
    “What do you mean?” Graniento’s voice was low and threatening.
    “With your implicit consent, this infighting has escalated tenfold since you’ve been here. You may or may not have encouraged it, but you did nothing to stop it. You took no action. Other administrators have been around longer, and they’ve done nothing to stop it. One could lay some of the guilt for this murder on yourselves, if the motive for the killing turns out to have been driven by the interdepartmental war.”
    Graniento said, “We’ve done nothing.”
    I said, “We must have a different definition of nothing.”
    Among other things, Graniento and Spandrel had rammed a new curriculum and new pedagogy down the throats of the members of the English department. They’d modified and ordered implemented what’s called the “workshop model.” It’s a methodology that makes some sense. Students learn by doing rather than passively listening to lecture after lecture. However, there is an emphasis on group work often to the exclusion of individual achievement. It also demands a level of attention to individual students that is difficult for some teachers to attain while still controlling a class. Graniento and Spandrel had demanded the model be used but that the kids work silently. They never fully explained how group work was supposed to be done silently or, if it was silent, how it was group work. They’d insisted on teachers’ having at least thirty individual contacts with students during each class period, and they’d showed up in people’s classrooms with charts and ledgers, keeping track. They’d stopped counting mine after fifty in one class period. Well, that day the kids needed help writing correct openings for essays. What was I supposed to do?
    The administrators had soon tired of the onerous duty of being in so many classrooms. Fortunately for the teaching staff, the administrators have tons of paperwork to shuffle.
    Towne said, “All schools have problems.”
    Bochka said, “No one told the school board about any problems.”
    “Bull,” I said. “One rumor I heard is that you met with one of the factions in the