The Principal Cause of Death by Mark Richard Zubro Page B

said she was going to quit.”
    â€œI guess. I was going to check in with Carolyn Blackburn to see if Jones told her anything or left a written record, although if he did, I assume she’d have said something to Fiona by now.”
    â€œShe’d have said something,” Meg agreed. “He must not have left a record, so Fiona is probably in the clear.”
    â€œOr they haven’t found it yet.”
    Meg shrugged. “You still have to talk to Longfellow.”
    I glanced at the clock. It would have to wait until after school.
    I opened the door to my classroom and stopped. Three items lay on top of my desk that hadn’t been there when I left. I drew a deep breath as I neared the desk and recognized the grayish lump in the middle, a dead rat, its head half severed and its entrails splattered from one corner of the desk to the other. Almost absently I pressed the button for the intercom as I walked the rest of the way to my desk.
    In the middle of the gore on each side of the rat’s head was a picture. The one on the left was a nude female centerfold. On the right was a male centerfold, with the genital section slashed to ribbons.
    Georgette’s voice came over the intercom. “Yes, Mr. Mason?”
    â€œHas any one seen Dan Bluefield in school today?” I asked.
    â€œLet me check.”
    The intercom clicked off. I picked up the trashcan from next to the door. Using the spine of my teachers’ manual, I nudged the mess from the center of my desk into the garbage. I covered it with several layers of paper.
    I was furious. Any guilt I felt for beating up Bluefield was gone. There was no doubt in my mind about whom the rat and the nude pictures had come from.
    Georgette’s voice came over the intercom. “He’s listed officially as absent. One of the kids here waiting to see Mrs. Dalrymple says he thinks he saw him early this morning lurking in the halls.”
    At my request, she sent down Carolyn Blackburn. I showed her the debris. She lifted a hand to her mouth. “This is too horrific,” she whispered.
    Carolyn agreed that this needed to be reported to the police. I passed up the temptation to dump the mess on Donna Dalrymple’s desk. Before Carolyn left, I thanked her for backing me up against Dan Bluefield’s claim.
    She said, “Besides the fact that I don’t believe you would molest a child, Dan made it tough to believe him when he only reported it the morning after.”
    Last hour passed in a blur. I did ask if any of the students had seen Bluefield. They hadn’t. I think I forgot to give them homework, and the kids were fairly stunned about that.
    First thing after school I hunted for Marshall Longfellow while keeping a sharp lookout for Bluefield. Once again the elusive Mr. Longfellow proved difficult to find. I had Georgette page him on the intercom, and he still didn’t respond.
None of the custodians had seen him for over two hours. We began a search. Carolyn Blackburn, currently doubling as school principal until a replacement could be found, joined the search.
    I hunted through the oldest basement of the school, calling his name without getting a response. I explored every corner. The basement was directly underneath the old gym. From the door I could see the old coal furnaces, which had been converted to oil, then to natural gas, and then finally abandoned. They lurked like cold dinosaurs in dank dimness. Add a few shower stalls and this could be the locker room. I proceeded slowly through the room.
    Cobwebs brushed against my face when I rounded the huge furnaces. The light became dimmer farther into the room. In one corner, steady drips of water fell from some of the old beams. I guessed I was beneath the shower room. The drips formed into a stream that flowed toward the back of the room. As I proceeded farther, more damp spots appeared on the floor and more drips added to the flowing water. I began to hear a rhythmic