Chapter 6
712 Words
byEven before the coroner removed the body, state police detective Kelly Stonebreaker was knocking on the office door directly across from the victim. Invited in, she found Dr. Mark Levine, a mid-fifties professor in the Department of English with gray flecks amidst the brown hair, sitting at his desk and grading.
After identifying herself, she said, “I saw on your door that you hold office hours all morning today. Do you usually keep your door closed during that time?”
He looked at his watch. “I’d already talked to half a dozen students by 10:00 when I heard a student scream on finding Inez Forrest’s body. I shut the door when all the commotion started so I could work.”
“Did you know Ms. Forrest?” said the detective.
“Only to exchange polite meaningless words. She’s an instructor in our first-year English courses, who liked to keep to herself.”
“So if you’ve had student conferences all morning, the students could back you up as being here?”
“Sure. Their names and appointment times are on the door.”
“I saw them beside your office hours. You’ve had a busy morning already.”
“Mid-semester grades have to be turned in tomorrow.”
“Did you see anyone enter or leave Ms. Forrest’s office?”
“Let’s see…Inez came in at 8:00…so not until Louisa went in and came back out screaming.”
“This Louisa—”
“Ledbetter, a student in my sophomore lit class last year. I remember her because she was always in my office asking for help.”
“Poor student?”
“Fine at reading as I recall, but she couldn’t write.”
Detective Stonebreaker shifted her weight. “Let’s get back to Ms. Forrest. Was she well liked?”
“Hated might be more accurate. Inez had a reputation as a real stickler for grammar and failed a lot of students for it. Unfortunately, her first-year classes caught many students who had failed it the previous semester.”
“Thanks.”
Louisa Ledbetter was waiting in Department of English’s conference room where Stonebreaker had left her.
“Your basic story has been confirmed,” the detective announced. “How long were you in Ms. Forrest’s office?”
“Maybe five minutes, ten at most.”
“But she was dead.”
“I couldn’t tell. She always sat behind that forty-five inch computer screen. I think she put it there on purpose so she didn’t have to look at you while she trashed your writing. It was only when I stood up to leave after she hadn’t said a word to me since I came in that I even noticed she was dead.”
Stonebreaker pulled out her smartphone and located the pictures of the crime scene. She had even sat in the same chair as Louisa, and a picture confirmed the student’s story about the impossibility of seeing anyone at the desk. Stonebreaker thumbed through her photos until coming to the one of Forrest’s computer screen. On it was what purported to be a suicide note.
THE PRESSURE AND THE POOR STUDENTS IS TOO MUCH TO TAKE.
EVERYONE HAS THEIR POINT AT WHICH THEY BREAK, AND THIS IS MINE!
THE POISON SHALL HELP ME PASS PAINLESSLY TO THE NEXT WORLD.
Stonebreaker studied the picture of the filled coffee cup next to instructor Forrest and the letter opener on the desk beside it. Then she turned to Louisa. “Forrest’s grade book showed you were failing her course. I have just one more question.” The detective paused. “Did you press the letter opener against her to make her drink the poison you brought to her office and put in her coffee?”
“How…how did you know?” confessed the distraught student.
Louisa did indeed stage the poisoning of her writing instructor to look like a suicide. Aware she was failing at mid-semester and hence as good as out of school, Louisa went to her instructor’s office not to reason with her, but to kill her. Although a non-English major, Detective Stonebreaker knew a strict grammarian such as Forrest could not have written a suicide note that contained a subject-verb disagreement and a pronoun-antecedent disagreement.
- Writer
