Bruce - Finals Week, Part Three
Oct. 5th, 2021 08:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
drewkittyBruce - Finals Week, Part Three
Looked at from one angle, I was off the hook. I had certainly earned my $600 and Mike was honest; I'd get paid eventually. Certainly the opposition knew my face and if they had any sense, would be running what little they knew about me past students, PIs, lawyers, etc. trying to figure out who I was and why I was in play. So I should really go home and hide under my bed for a couple weeks until this all blows over.
But looked at from another angle, I was furious. This had gotten far beyond "I'm not getting in the van until after you show me the candy, I'm not an idiot."
So I found myself doing a CSR - that's Counter Surveillance Route for those not in the biz - and then another one. I then and only then got a free taxi ride (a perk I'd earned years ago, long story) to a friend of a friend who kept a box for me. I changed in her unlocked laundry room, which was the deal.
Now I was equipped to play busy, nervous student again. No gear at all, just textbooks plausible for the area of campus I planned to attend.
The campus was half shut down; those who had finished their finals had left campus, stage right, for laundry at home or variations on a theme that involved sex, drugs and having a good time.
I was on a lawyers, guns and money sweep myself. So I carefully snuck up on the psychology building.
A damn good thing, too, because my 'stuff' was still there.
Most campuses have prowlers of one kind or another. No point dressing up like a homeless person unless there are homeless people to mix with. So it was rather odd that my sleeping bag and backpack and other items were still there on the sidewalk waiting for someone to steal them.
Fine. I'll take a risk ... no, I'm going to slowly just walk ... WHOOP!
Not one of my better days. I stepped out of the way of the campus police car which had snuck up behind me.
It stopped alongside.
"Good afternoon," called the officer, studying me intently. "I don't believe we've met."
This was going to call for some serious acting.
"Um, no, officer."
"What's your next final?
"Physics."
"Show me your textbook."
I let my body language act puzzled as I put both my hands into the backpack, overriding the screaming and twitching that told me Don't Do That Bruce You Will Be Shot!
Sure enough, the officer had his right hand out of sight, still seated in the police car, and I knew that the retention strap of his handgun was undone and the firearm was in his hand.
That would have been enough by itself to get the average person shot in town. But campus works on different rules.
I held up the book in both hands. "Physics in the Space Sciences," by S. Ride.
"Be on your way," the officer said after reading the title, and kept slowly cruising.
I therefore followed in the officer's wake, headed to the Physics Building as if it were my next exam.
Because the officer paused in the next courtyard to see that I did exactly that.
I'd put in some work to get on campus. Now I needed to put in some more work to get the hell off campus.
That plan changed too when I went to the Student Union and saw another police car, this one a townie, parked between the Student Union and the main drag.
The odds of our local yokels believing that I was on campus for the fuck of it approached zero, lower once they compared notes with Officer Kemper.
Yet they should not be on campus at all.
Yet there they were.
Operation Rope A Dope. A pre plan for locking down parts of town in search of felony suspect(s).
If I had a radio, I would be able to listen to determine which town units had been assigned where.
And if I'd had an earpiece just now, Officer Friendly would have stopped and FI'd me, discovered my lack of a campus ID, and channeled his inner street cop just long enough to give me a wedgie and put me in the back.
Heart of danger, safety, yada yada yada. So I entered the Physics building, went down the hall, reconned the secret passage to the underground... stopped ... heard moaning.
My path through the otherwise empty lecture hall was past two students of indeterminate gender getting an early start on that sex and partying thing.
I looked again. OK, one was male for sure.
"Sorry, gotta get to my final, sorry," I muttered as I walked past them.
They didn't notice. Or they tuned me out.
That got me into the Psychology building, just as it had for Mike and J... the principal.
There was now, however, a new factor.
Walter.
My God. Walter.
Dense as ever, in an ill fitting uniform, next to a open fire panel with blinking lights.
I'd last seen Walter quit his job as Loss Prevention at WalMart after witnessing a police shooting at close range. (I'd had a ringside, or should I say cartside seat.)
Yes, the campus did have security, kind of. When a fire panel didn't work, they had fire watch.
It made me very, very grateful that I hadn't pulled the damn fire alarm, because odds were so-so that it wouldn't have gone off, as opposed to the 100% yes it will go off required by law and regulation.
But I couldn't get to the other side of the building without getting past Walter. And the fucker was as dense as a straight man in a lesbian dive bar, but he would still recognize me, and with no filter between his brain and his mouth, he would burn me eventually.
I settled in for a long evening. Because there was one thing I could count on Walter to do.
Piss.
He took restroom breaks the way some people stretch or take smoke breaks.
I was lucky. Only twenty minutes, and Walter looked around left and right, failed to see me, and sidled into the Men's Room.
I made my way past. This allowed me to get to a 2nd floor window that looked out on the grounds where my sleeping bag and stuff had been lying this whole time.
This venue was apparently no longer of interest.
Except for one little problem.
The principal's Chemistry final was 0800 tomorrow morning. She would make it, or she wouldn't. The Chemistry building was on the far, far side of the Physical Sciences Quad which put it three buildings away from here.
Her last final of the semester, after which she could and would flee for healthier climes, was at 1300 hours in this building. A fact we all knew, good guys and bad guys and goats like me.
I'd already infiltrated. I hadn't eaten, it would likely be unsafe for me to try to sleep, I'd have to use care to avoid using the plumbing between end of day and when Walter went home tomorrow morning. Even a dense guard can wonder why a toilet upstairs flushes at 3 AM.
I had a team radio, blanked, and a backpack with some useful emergency equipment. Also two packets of SPAM and a water bottle. I might even be able to reprogram the radio, after a fashion, since I literally had all night.
And it could still be a trap. I'd stolen and set fire to an ambulance. That attracts attention. It also pisses off the owners of the ambulance, and their insurance company. Not to mention campus PD.
The shit that used to belong to me would just have to stay down there.
Walter was the other wild card. A competent fire watch would diligently patrol every floor, including the roof and both stairwells, on a one to three hour schedule.
Walter might get so mind numbingly bored that he might actually do his job. And that would be bad.
I went upstairs another flight. There was a graduate lounge which had a hot water dispenser, powered off. I turned it on and found some tea bags in the back of a drawer. Then I found a coffee cup less stained than the others, and scrubbed it slightly less filthy than it had been.
It was going to be a long, long night and I needed some caffeine.
###
I had plenty of time to study the building in the kind of detail I normally don't have the luxury to do.
This is actually kind of fun. Evading Walter felt like playing the first level of Pacman when you're a high score winner. Just enough to keep me awake.
Four story building, plus a basement and the three connections to the campus underground tunnel system.
Nope, not just the lecture hall bypass.
Very careful recon looking out the windows at the correct angles to avoid being backlit allowed me to determine that the enemy outer-perimeter team was on the job. They were in fact surveilling my discarded homeless clothes, hoping I would come back. But they were also ready for what the morning might bring. Hopefully their target.
They weren't however in the building. 1) Technically, commercial burglary, given their intent to commit a felony on premises. 2) Cameras. I wondered what they knew about them.
That got me thinking. Fire panel is bypassed like a Christmas tree. Security panel?
I studied the plans of the building using the emergency exit diagrams until they were graven into the grooves in my brain.
Then I studied them again.
There was only really the one place to put the camera feed. Third floor server closet.
Dropped ceiling, too.
I shrugged. There were no interior cameras, I suspected campus policy. So I went over the dropped ceiling like a good intruder and had the shock of my life. So much so that I paused and did not drop down into the room.
Most places use digital video recorders or DVRs. Hard drives with a video in jack.
Some of the more advanced installations, more and more, and slipping into the home market, upload the video directly to the Internet. Hard to fuck with it there without passwords and stuff. Unless you have friends, and those friends have time.
There was a little VCR whirring away. A box of tapes labeled ONE through THIRTY-ONE. They were self overwrite tapes. The theory is that someone comes upstairs each day and swaps the ONE tape for the TWO tape, etc until you have a month.
The SEVENTEEN tape was in the VCR and had been in there for long enough for a fine layer of dust to cover everything.
They were overwriting the same day over and over again. Had been for years. The tape was probably shot from overuse.
As a delightful bonus, there was a monitor with a split screen showing the nine camera views.
From my vantage halfway through the ceiling, I started to memorize them too. Then realized courtesy of a passing police prowl car that they didn't have the resolution to pick up license plates, faces, or even the logo on the side of the campus police car.
The cameras were not a factor. Useless.
I climbed down, carefully so as not to make a mess or leave tell-tale dust.
It was a little after midnight.
Either Mike would sober up the principal and she would make it to the Chemistry final, or he wouldn't or couldn't.
My understanding is that she would get most of the grade she needed just by showing up and filling out the first blank on the answer form. Her name. Even if she technically flunked the final, she passed the class, and that was all she needed outside her major.
So I would operate on the assumption that she would then sober up some more, or take the F in Chemistry, and try at least to make her Abnormal Psychology final at 1300 hours in the 1st floor lecture hall.
Prof and students would arrive about 1230 or so and unlock the room, take up positions and bullshit. Then the prof would wait until 5 minutes after and either pass out a photocopied test, or project it on the projector using film (old school) or a PC (high tech). Babysit the room until 1500, kick out any remaining students, lock up and leave. Hand the stack of finals to some grad student to grade.
I knew which classroom and time. I therefore knew which professor. And I was in a building with the textbooks in it somewhere.
Hey. I've always wanted to know Abnormal Psychology.
The syllabus was posted on the exterior wall of the professor's office. The reading was about five hundred pages.
And I'd seen a lot of crazy shit in my time.
I slide-latched my way into the small departmental library, helped myself to Abnormal Psychology In the 21st Century and a couple supplemental texts, and started reading.
Bonus, there was even a standard blue essay blank book, of the type needed to take an essay final.
After some trolling around, I even found a couple of #2 pencils.
As I studied, I thought about it. Why not just break into the prof's office and read the final for myself, early?
Because that would be cheating. And he might notice. And between the textbooks and the blue essay blank book, I had the beginnings of a very crazy idea.
###
My eyes hurt. I'd adjourned to the grad lounge with the books; I could just leave them there and they'd float back to where they belonged. I'd boiled the tea bags until they screamed for mercy.
Admittedly, I could have used this class over a decade ago. My stepmother the narcissist and my stepfather the clinical sadist. Principal, bipolar psychotic with pedophilic tendencies.
I knew this stuff.
I really did. And if I'd had a different life, not so very fucked up, I'd have taken a degree in this stuff.
I decided on a cat nap. I'd just be another oversleeping student even if the police or Walter did a patrol, and Walter hadn't climbed the stairs since he'd gotten here.
###
I woke up to footsteps in the hallway.
The professor coming in to get his materials. Made lots of noise, between the elevator and his wheelchair.
I waited until he passed, made sure I had my essay and pencils in my backpack, and slunk around the other way. One floor down, checking the four clocks on the wall, I'd identified the one that had the correct time and kept that time.
Twelve thirty seven.
Showtime.
About fifty students in the lecture hall. I kept my face showing and my head down, avoiding eye contact. The worried student, to a T. No sign of the principal.
Probability approached unity that another player or two or three would also be in the room.
I could just see Mike shaking his head, arguing with the principal. "It's too dangerous. Too much drama. Police involvement. They might have gotten a civil restraining order."
I thought about it.
The worst they could hypothetically do would be to arrest me as a felony arson suspect. I could beat that, it would just take time and money. Worst that would actually happen is a ban from campus and being blacklisted from enrollment. Oh well.
I took out my essay booklet.
The professor wheeled himself up to the front of the room, and had a graduate assistant - again in uniform of pithy T-shirt and blue jeans - set up his laptop for him, and show the final exam slide.
"Explain the difference between functional and non-functional psychosis. Use one real life and two fictional examples to illustrate your point. Identify three potential treatment strategies and their strengths and weaknesses."
I took out my essay. Wrote the name on the front page and also the top.
Today I was J. Henderson.
I started taking the exam.
###
I'd kept my options open. If the principal had showed, I could just fail to turn in my essay and extract.
But I was going to write the best essay I knew how to write. And it was a risk. One risk was that someone would know the principal's handwriting, and there would be a cheating accusation.
I was a goat. Baaah. Baaah. Nothing connected me to her. It could be defended.
If she didn't show, and she didn't take the final, it would be an F and she would flunk out of the class she needed for her major. So the difference between an F and a risk of being nailed for cheating was a lot more significant than just buffing a grade.
Another risk is that I might do too good a job. Don't laugh. One time, I'd taken out an assassin because they'd done too good a job trying to deliver a pizza with extra silencer. I'd made them, and under the circumstances bet my freedom and my life that I was justified in shooting first.
So I channeled my worry into my essay, and into making sure my handwriting was legible and smooth instead of jagged.
About an hour into the exam, the front door of the classroom opened. Mike came in. He had the principal on his arm. She was escorted by a campus police officer as well.
The professor wheeled himself over and started having a whispered conversation, either not knowing or not caring that the acoustics of the room allowed his words to carry as well as if he had shouted.
"What is this?"
There was an explanation. She had been injured and rescued, was sorry she was late, but was willing to take her final.
After about ten minutes, the professor started to relent.
"Let's go up to my office to discuss this."
Mike was excluded because he was not a student. The cop was excluded because it was safe in the building, and the professor wanted to talk to the student.
The cop still trailed behind, suspicious, as the party minus MIke walked out the hall to the elevator upstairs.
That's not pizza. _They got to the professor._
I finished my essay. I was not the first to do so, two had already been turned in and the winning students had left.
Now I had the problem of being in two places at once - turning in my paper without causing a scene like last time, and getting my ass into the train wreck that was the kidnap about to go down.
I had a way.
I walked up front with my thighs tightened and my feet all but crossed.
"Excuse me, TA..." I stage whispered.
"Yes?"
"I gotta go real bad. Can I leave this with you, use the toilet and come right back?"
Out of four TAs, I'd had the chance to pick the one that had the least power in their lives, hated everyone, and looked for a chance to indulge petty sadism whenever possible.
"No. You turn it in and take your chances."
I found a nearby seat, pretended to scribble an ending, pee-pee danced my unhappy bladder to the essay pile (now slightly thicker), added it, and pee-pee danced out of the classroom.
I then raced upstairs, past Mike who was guarding the elevator and watching the stairwell.
He saw me and recognized me, but didn't say a word.
Good.
FIrst floor, running up stairs without making noise takes work. Catch a little breath, second floor.
The professor's office was full of enemy personnel.
Should have been just the prof and the student, right?
Why the four burly men and one token female attendant?
The principal was trying to push back and forth, a beefy hand around each of her upper arms.
One of the men had a syringe in his hand.
###
California Criminal Jury Instructions.
JUSTIFICATIONS AND EXCUSES [at 505]
Justifiable Homicide: Self-Defense or Defense of Another
The defendant is not guilty of (murder/ [or] manslaughter/ attemptedmurder/ [or] attempted voluntary manslaughter) if (he/she) was justified in (killing/attempting to kill) someone in (self-defense/ [or] defense ofanother). The defendant acted in lawful (self-defense/ [or] defense ofanother) if: 1. The defendant reasonably believed that (he/she/ [or] someone else/[or]) was in imminent danger of being killed or suffering great bodily injury [or was in imminent danger of being(raped/maimed/robbed/ ) POISONING, KIDNAPPING]; 2. The defendant reasonably believed that the immediate use of deadly force was necessary to defend against that danger; AND 3. The defendant used no more force than was reasonably necessary to defend against that danger.
###
I picked up the fire extinguisher on the wall, pulled the pin, and discharged it into the tiny room. Half discharged, I slammed it directly into the head of the kidnapper with the syringe. Then again for good measure, letting it go with blood and I hoped brains on it.
I then toppled a bookcase on top of two kidnappers as I entered the room. This freed up my hands, which grabbed a tall person's head. Tall person was not my principal, was not the professor, and therefore was a lawful target for deadly force. I locked my hands and moved my body, holding their head still as their body was forced to spin the other way.
I felt and heard a sickening crack under my hands. The person voided bowels and bladder.
The female kidnapper had something in her hand, so I did something I generally avoid doing. I rabbit-punched her in the jaw. For the second time in as many seconds, I felt bones break under my hand.
The item in her hand made contact with me.
###
PAIN.
###
Then it lost contact. Stun gun, probably 100,000 to 200,000 volt model, powered by a single 9 volt battery. Just what you need to help your drugged victim stay compliant.
I knew this was going to hurt. I was mad and I didn't care.
I grabbed her hand, stun gun still activated, and folded it up back into her and shoved it into her throat.
It didn't hurt.
Me.
###
One more suspect, starting to free himself from the mess made by furniture and a professor in a wheelchair trying to hide in a corner that did not exist and four downed people, at least one of them hors de combat. He had been one of the arm boys, holding my principal.
He stopped, stared. I saw a visual that I immediately understood.
My principal's hand on the hilt of something that disappeared up and into his guts. Larger than a switchblade, smaller than a dagger. And from below, pointed upward, into his gut and possibly his abdomen. Could be even his heart.
"Don't pull it out!" I shouted. The would-be kidnapper, weakly trying to bring his hands up.
She let go of it.
I stood out of her way as she made a beeline out the door, headed for the stairwell.
Where was the cop in all this?
Start with there's never a cop when you need one. Then realize that this was part of a team. If I'd had a radio, I'd have known what the cop-summoning distraction was and when it had been carried out. But I knew this business well enough that I didn't need a radio, just like I didn't need a gun.
I grabbed the fire extinguisher. The potential prints on the edge of the stun gun would have to take care of themselves.
I met the eyes of the stabbed kidnapper, now desperately trying to hold his own guts in. Ripped a piece of shirt off one of the other kidnappers trying to get out from under the bookcase, and failing because I toppled the other one.
I wiped the edges of the bookcases, I wiped the extinguisher handle and the rubber hose where I had touched it.
The professor stared at me.
I thought about it. Every word I spoke was a risk. But some things need to be said.
"'Evil is a choice,'" I quoted to him, out of his own textbook.
I then tossed the piece of cloth to the badly wounded man. Cloth doesn't take prints and I had no further need of it.
"Don't let that come out. Call 9-1-1 now. Tell the dispatcher there's an impaled object. Wrap that cloth around the blade. Breathe shallow. You might live."
The professor stared. I recognized that stare.
Some people become experts in a subject as a form of substitute. His legs didn't let him be a killer. So he studied killers.
"Professor, if that knife comes out, I know and the campus police will know that you did it. More importantly his friends will know, I will even tell them. NOW CALL 9-1-1."
That was all I could do.
I had four minutes to clear the area before all hell would break loose.
Memorizing the layout of the building got me out of it within 90 seconds. I had to do just a little parkour, sliding down the stair rail.
I'd prepared an escape for this situation. Actually I'd prepared three.
The student court, eating a burger while all hell broke loose.
The pool at the gym, doing laps while all hell broke loose.
A motorcycle, riding off into the sunset while all hell broke loose.
None would work. Too much physical evidence, and we were playing the A game now. This was murder in connection with kidnapping, and that meant a world of hurt at a level that I usually refused to play at. You can run circles around your local yokels all day, but when you play with the Feds you play with tactics and tools and tech you can barely fathom.
High mobility strategy would be as bad as a stay and wait strategy. The campus was closing for the holiday, staying around would buy nothing and create great risks.
So I did what everyone should do when things turn to absolute shite.
The unexpected.
###
A bicycle. Discarded sweatshirt with a different color shirt underneath. All the routine tricks. But in the bushes between the campus motor vehicle yard and the campus warehouse, a fresh pair of shoes and different colored sweatshirt, both in my size, kept clean by being bagged in plastic. The same bag, with my old clothes, tossed not into a storm drain (they clean those) nor in the bushes (where playful lovers always find them), but in a trash dumpster at the back of yet another campus building.
A bike trail that then took me off campus, past Operation Rope A Dope without a matching description. A ride through nature trails and parkland that put me half a town away.
I kept pedaling. I was tired and dizzy, and could really use some water right about now. But people, even police who should know better, often underestimate how far a bicycle rider can actually go on a bicycle.
I avoided two convenience stores. I drank my fill of water at a park water fountain. I wiped my hands carefully, twice, in the running water.
About an hour along, I discreetly relieved myself in a convenient spot.
As I approached nightfall, I was near another town. Not without resources, either.
My friend Sheila had a schedule of points to check. I'd ridden hard to make this one, the last.
We put the bike in the back of her hatchback, poured me into the passenger seat, and she drove off.
"How hot?" was the only thing she said.
"Thermonuclear," I replied as I fell asleep.
###
I woke up the next morning in Vegas.
Good call, Sheila.
Everyone rents a hotel room in Vegas.
Not everyone has a selection of off-strip hotels where you're just another low-life.
After my shower, I caught the news.
Nothing.
I told you.
Campus always plays coverup.
Looked at from one angle, I was off the hook. I had certainly earned my $600 and Mike was honest; I'd get paid eventually. Certainly the opposition knew my face and if they had any sense, would be running what little they knew about me past students, PIs, lawyers, etc. trying to figure out who I was and why I was in play. So I should really go home and hide under my bed for a couple weeks until this all blows over.
But looked at from another angle, I was furious. This had gotten far beyond "I'm not getting in the van until after you show me the candy, I'm not an idiot."
So I found myself doing a CSR - that's Counter Surveillance Route for those not in the biz - and then another one. I then and only then got a free taxi ride (a perk I'd earned years ago, long story) to a friend of a friend who kept a box for me. I changed in her unlocked laundry room, which was the deal.
Now I was equipped to play busy, nervous student again. No gear at all, just textbooks plausible for the area of campus I planned to attend.
The campus was half shut down; those who had finished their finals had left campus, stage right, for laundry at home or variations on a theme that involved sex, drugs and having a good time.
I was on a lawyers, guns and money sweep myself. So I carefully snuck up on the psychology building.
A damn good thing, too, because my 'stuff' was still there.
Most campuses have prowlers of one kind or another. No point dressing up like a homeless person unless there are homeless people to mix with. So it was rather odd that my sleeping bag and backpack and other items were still there on the sidewalk waiting for someone to steal them.
Fine. I'll take a risk ... no, I'm going to slowly just walk ... WHOOP!
Not one of my better days. I stepped out of the way of the campus police car which had snuck up behind me.
It stopped alongside.
"Good afternoon," called the officer, studying me intently. "I don't believe we've met."
This was going to call for some serious acting.
"Um, no, officer."
"What's your next final?
"Physics."
"Show me your textbook."
I let my body language act puzzled as I put both my hands into the backpack, overriding the screaming and twitching that told me Don't Do That Bruce You Will Be Shot!
Sure enough, the officer had his right hand out of sight, still seated in the police car, and I knew that the retention strap of his handgun was undone and the firearm was in his hand.
That would have been enough by itself to get the average person shot in town. But campus works on different rules.
I held up the book in both hands. "Physics in the Space Sciences," by S. Ride.
"Be on your way," the officer said after reading the title, and kept slowly cruising.
I therefore followed in the officer's wake, headed to the Physics Building as if it were my next exam.
Because the officer paused in the next courtyard to see that I did exactly that.
I'd put in some work to get on campus. Now I needed to put in some more work to get the hell off campus.
That plan changed too when I went to the Student Union and saw another police car, this one a townie, parked between the Student Union and the main drag.
The odds of our local yokels believing that I was on campus for the fuck of it approached zero, lower once they compared notes with Officer Kemper.
Yet they should not be on campus at all.
Yet there they were.
Operation Rope A Dope. A pre plan for locking down parts of town in search of felony suspect(s).
If I had a radio, I would be able to listen to determine which town units had been assigned where.
And if I'd had an earpiece just now, Officer Friendly would have stopped and FI'd me, discovered my lack of a campus ID, and channeled his inner street cop just long enough to give me a wedgie and put me in the back.
Heart of danger, safety, yada yada yada. So I entered the Physics building, went down the hall, reconned the secret passage to the underground... stopped ... heard moaning.
My path through the otherwise empty lecture hall was past two students of indeterminate gender getting an early start on that sex and partying thing.
I looked again. OK, one was male for sure.
"Sorry, gotta get to my final, sorry," I muttered as I walked past them.
They didn't notice. Or they tuned me out.
That got me into the Psychology building, just as it had for Mike and J... the principal.
There was now, however, a new factor.
Walter.
My God. Walter.
Dense as ever, in an ill fitting uniform, next to a open fire panel with blinking lights.
I'd last seen Walter quit his job as Loss Prevention at WalMart after witnessing a police shooting at close range. (I'd had a ringside, or should I say cartside seat.)
Yes, the campus did have security, kind of. When a fire panel didn't work, they had fire watch.
It made me very, very grateful that I hadn't pulled the damn fire alarm, because odds were so-so that it wouldn't have gone off, as opposed to the 100% yes it will go off required by law and regulation.
But I couldn't get to the other side of the building without getting past Walter. And the fucker was as dense as a straight man in a lesbian dive bar, but he would still recognize me, and with no filter between his brain and his mouth, he would burn me eventually.
I settled in for a long evening. Because there was one thing I could count on Walter to do.
Piss.
He took restroom breaks the way some people stretch or take smoke breaks.
I was lucky. Only twenty minutes, and Walter looked around left and right, failed to see me, and sidled into the Men's Room.
I made my way past. This allowed me to get to a 2nd floor window that looked out on the grounds where my sleeping bag and stuff had been lying this whole time.
This venue was apparently no longer of interest.
Except for one little problem.
The principal's Chemistry final was 0800 tomorrow morning. She would make it, or she wouldn't. The Chemistry building was on the far, far side of the Physical Sciences Quad which put it three buildings away from here.
Her last final of the semester, after which she could and would flee for healthier climes, was at 1300 hours in this building. A fact we all knew, good guys and bad guys and goats like me.
I'd already infiltrated. I hadn't eaten, it would likely be unsafe for me to try to sleep, I'd have to use care to avoid using the plumbing between end of day and when Walter went home tomorrow morning. Even a dense guard can wonder why a toilet upstairs flushes at 3 AM.
I had a team radio, blanked, and a backpack with some useful emergency equipment. Also two packets of SPAM and a water bottle. I might even be able to reprogram the radio, after a fashion, since I literally had all night.
And it could still be a trap. I'd stolen and set fire to an ambulance. That attracts attention. It also pisses off the owners of the ambulance, and their insurance company. Not to mention campus PD.
The shit that used to belong to me would just have to stay down there.
Walter was the other wild card. A competent fire watch would diligently patrol every floor, including the roof and both stairwells, on a one to three hour schedule.
Walter might get so mind numbingly bored that he might actually do his job. And that would be bad.
I went upstairs another flight. There was a graduate lounge which had a hot water dispenser, powered off. I turned it on and found some tea bags in the back of a drawer. Then I found a coffee cup less stained than the others, and scrubbed it slightly less filthy than it had been.
It was going to be a long, long night and I needed some caffeine.
###
I had plenty of time to study the building in the kind of detail I normally don't have the luxury to do.
This is actually kind of fun. Evading Walter felt like playing the first level of Pacman when you're a high score winner. Just enough to keep me awake.
Four story building, plus a basement and the three connections to the campus underground tunnel system.
Nope, not just the lecture hall bypass.
Very careful recon looking out the windows at the correct angles to avoid being backlit allowed me to determine that the enemy outer-perimeter team was on the job. They were in fact surveilling my discarded homeless clothes, hoping I would come back. But they were also ready for what the morning might bring. Hopefully their target.
They weren't however in the building. 1) Technically, commercial burglary, given their intent to commit a felony on premises. 2) Cameras. I wondered what they knew about them.
That got me thinking. Fire panel is bypassed like a Christmas tree. Security panel?
I studied the plans of the building using the emergency exit diagrams until they were graven into the grooves in my brain.
Then I studied them again.
There was only really the one place to put the camera feed. Third floor server closet.
Dropped ceiling, too.
I shrugged. There were no interior cameras, I suspected campus policy. So I went over the dropped ceiling like a good intruder and had the shock of my life. So much so that I paused and did not drop down into the room.
Most places use digital video recorders or DVRs. Hard drives with a video in jack.
Some of the more advanced installations, more and more, and slipping into the home market, upload the video directly to the Internet. Hard to fuck with it there without passwords and stuff. Unless you have friends, and those friends have time.
There was a little VCR whirring away. A box of tapes labeled ONE through THIRTY-ONE. They were self overwrite tapes. The theory is that someone comes upstairs each day and swaps the ONE tape for the TWO tape, etc until you have a month.
The SEVENTEEN tape was in the VCR and had been in there for long enough for a fine layer of dust to cover everything.
They were overwriting the same day over and over again. Had been for years. The tape was probably shot from overuse.
As a delightful bonus, there was a monitor with a split screen showing the nine camera views.
From my vantage halfway through the ceiling, I started to memorize them too. Then realized courtesy of a passing police prowl car that they didn't have the resolution to pick up license plates, faces, or even the logo on the side of the campus police car.
The cameras were not a factor. Useless.
I climbed down, carefully so as not to make a mess or leave tell-tale dust.
It was a little after midnight.
Either Mike would sober up the principal and she would make it to the Chemistry final, or he wouldn't or couldn't.
My understanding is that she would get most of the grade she needed just by showing up and filling out the first blank on the answer form. Her name. Even if she technically flunked the final, she passed the class, and that was all she needed outside her major.
So I would operate on the assumption that she would then sober up some more, or take the F in Chemistry, and try at least to make her Abnormal Psychology final at 1300 hours in the 1st floor lecture hall.
Prof and students would arrive about 1230 or so and unlock the room, take up positions and bullshit. Then the prof would wait until 5 minutes after and either pass out a photocopied test, or project it on the projector using film (old school) or a PC (high tech). Babysit the room until 1500, kick out any remaining students, lock up and leave. Hand the stack of finals to some grad student to grade.
I knew which classroom and time. I therefore knew which professor. And I was in a building with the textbooks in it somewhere.
Hey. I've always wanted to know Abnormal Psychology.
The syllabus was posted on the exterior wall of the professor's office. The reading was about five hundred pages.
And I'd seen a lot of crazy shit in my time.
I slide-latched my way into the small departmental library, helped myself to Abnormal Psychology In the 21st Century and a couple supplemental texts, and started reading.
Bonus, there was even a standard blue essay blank book, of the type needed to take an essay final.
After some trolling around, I even found a couple of #2 pencils.
As I studied, I thought about it. Why not just break into the prof's office and read the final for myself, early?
Because that would be cheating. And he might notice. And between the textbooks and the blue essay blank book, I had the beginnings of a very crazy idea.
###
My eyes hurt. I'd adjourned to the grad lounge with the books; I could just leave them there and they'd float back to where they belonged. I'd boiled the tea bags until they screamed for mercy.
Admittedly, I could have used this class over a decade ago. My stepmother the narcissist and my stepfather the clinical sadist. Principal, bipolar psychotic with pedophilic tendencies.
I knew this stuff.
I really did. And if I'd had a different life, not so very fucked up, I'd have taken a degree in this stuff.
I decided on a cat nap. I'd just be another oversleeping student even if the police or Walter did a patrol, and Walter hadn't climbed the stairs since he'd gotten here.
###
I woke up to footsteps in the hallway.
The professor coming in to get his materials. Made lots of noise, between the elevator and his wheelchair.
I waited until he passed, made sure I had my essay and pencils in my backpack, and slunk around the other way. One floor down, checking the four clocks on the wall, I'd identified the one that had the correct time and kept that time.
Twelve thirty seven.
Showtime.
About fifty students in the lecture hall. I kept my face showing and my head down, avoiding eye contact. The worried student, to a T. No sign of the principal.
Probability approached unity that another player or two or three would also be in the room.
I could just see Mike shaking his head, arguing with the principal. "It's too dangerous. Too much drama. Police involvement. They might have gotten a civil restraining order."
I thought about it.
The worst they could hypothetically do would be to arrest me as a felony arson suspect. I could beat that, it would just take time and money. Worst that would actually happen is a ban from campus and being blacklisted from enrollment. Oh well.
I took out my essay booklet.
The professor wheeled himself up to the front of the room, and had a graduate assistant - again in uniform of pithy T-shirt and blue jeans - set up his laptop for him, and show the final exam slide.
"Explain the difference between functional and non-functional psychosis. Use one real life and two fictional examples to illustrate your point. Identify three potential treatment strategies and their strengths and weaknesses."
I took out my essay. Wrote the name on the front page and also the top.
Today I was J. Henderson.
I started taking the exam.
###
I'd kept my options open. If the principal had showed, I could just fail to turn in my essay and extract.
But I was going to write the best essay I knew how to write. And it was a risk. One risk was that someone would know the principal's handwriting, and there would be a cheating accusation.
I was a goat. Baaah. Baaah. Nothing connected me to her. It could be defended.
If she didn't show, and she didn't take the final, it would be an F and she would flunk out of the class she needed for her major. So the difference between an F and a risk of being nailed for cheating was a lot more significant than just buffing a grade.
Another risk is that I might do too good a job. Don't laugh. One time, I'd taken out an assassin because they'd done too good a job trying to deliver a pizza with extra silencer. I'd made them, and under the circumstances bet my freedom and my life that I was justified in shooting first.
So I channeled my worry into my essay, and into making sure my handwriting was legible and smooth instead of jagged.
About an hour into the exam, the front door of the classroom opened. Mike came in. He had the principal on his arm. She was escorted by a campus police officer as well.
The professor wheeled himself over and started having a whispered conversation, either not knowing or not caring that the acoustics of the room allowed his words to carry as well as if he had shouted.
"What is this?"
There was an explanation. She had been injured and rescued, was sorry she was late, but was willing to take her final.
After about ten minutes, the professor started to relent.
"Let's go up to my office to discuss this."
Mike was excluded because he was not a student. The cop was excluded because it was safe in the building, and the professor wanted to talk to the student.
The cop still trailed behind, suspicious, as the party minus MIke walked out the hall to the elevator upstairs.
That's not pizza. _They got to the professor._
I finished my essay. I was not the first to do so, two had already been turned in and the winning students had left.
Now I had the problem of being in two places at once - turning in my paper without causing a scene like last time, and getting my ass into the train wreck that was the kidnap about to go down.
I had a way.
I walked up front with my thighs tightened and my feet all but crossed.
"Excuse me, TA..." I stage whispered.
"Yes?"
"I gotta go real bad. Can I leave this with you, use the toilet and come right back?"
Out of four TAs, I'd had the chance to pick the one that had the least power in their lives, hated everyone, and looked for a chance to indulge petty sadism whenever possible.
"No. You turn it in and take your chances."
I found a nearby seat, pretended to scribble an ending, pee-pee danced my unhappy bladder to the essay pile (now slightly thicker), added it, and pee-pee danced out of the classroom.
I then raced upstairs, past Mike who was guarding the elevator and watching the stairwell.
He saw me and recognized me, but didn't say a word.
Good.
FIrst floor, running up stairs without making noise takes work. Catch a little breath, second floor.
The professor's office was full of enemy personnel.
Should have been just the prof and the student, right?
Why the four burly men and one token female attendant?
The principal was trying to push back and forth, a beefy hand around each of her upper arms.
One of the men had a syringe in his hand.
###
California Criminal Jury Instructions.
JUSTIFICATIONS AND EXCUSES [at 505]
Justifiable Homicide: Self-Defense or Defense of Another
The defendant is not guilty of (murder/ [or] manslaughter/ attemptedmurder/ [or] attempted voluntary manslaughter) if (he/she) was justified in (killing/attempting to kill) someone in (self-defense/ [or] defense ofanother). The defendant acted in lawful (self-defense/ [or] defense ofanother) if: 1. The defendant reasonably believed that (he/she/ [or] someone else/[or]
###
I picked up the fire extinguisher on the wall, pulled the pin, and discharged it into the tiny room. Half discharged, I slammed it directly into the head of the kidnapper with the syringe. Then again for good measure, letting it go with blood and I hoped brains on it.
I then toppled a bookcase on top of two kidnappers as I entered the room. This freed up my hands, which grabbed a tall person's head. Tall person was not my principal, was not the professor, and therefore was a lawful target for deadly force. I locked my hands and moved my body, holding their head still as their body was forced to spin the other way.
I felt and heard a sickening crack under my hands. The person voided bowels and bladder.
The female kidnapper had something in her hand, so I did something I generally avoid doing. I rabbit-punched her in the jaw. For the second time in as many seconds, I felt bones break under my hand.
The item in her hand made contact with me.
###
PAIN.
###
Then it lost contact. Stun gun, probably 100,000 to 200,000 volt model, powered by a single 9 volt battery. Just what you need to help your drugged victim stay compliant.
I knew this was going to hurt. I was mad and I didn't care.
I grabbed her hand, stun gun still activated, and folded it up back into her and shoved it into her throat.
It didn't hurt.
Me.
###
One more suspect, starting to free himself from the mess made by furniture and a professor in a wheelchair trying to hide in a corner that did not exist and four downed people, at least one of them hors de combat. He had been one of the arm boys, holding my principal.
He stopped, stared. I saw a visual that I immediately understood.
My principal's hand on the hilt of something that disappeared up and into his guts. Larger than a switchblade, smaller than a dagger. And from below, pointed upward, into his gut and possibly his abdomen. Could be even his heart.
"Don't pull it out!" I shouted. The would-be kidnapper, weakly trying to bring his hands up.
She let go of it.
I stood out of her way as she made a beeline out the door, headed for the stairwell.
Where was the cop in all this?
Start with there's never a cop when you need one. Then realize that this was part of a team. If I'd had a radio, I'd have known what the cop-summoning distraction was and when it had been carried out. But I knew this business well enough that I didn't need a radio, just like I didn't need a gun.
I grabbed the fire extinguisher. The potential prints on the edge of the stun gun would have to take care of themselves.
I met the eyes of the stabbed kidnapper, now desperately trying to hold his own guts in. Ripped a piece of shirt off one of the other kidnappers trying to get out from under the bookcase, and failing because I toppled the other one.
I wiped the edges of the bookcases, I wiped the extinguisher handle and the rubber hose where I had touched it.
The professor stared at me.
I thought about it. Every word I spoke was a risk. But some things need to be said.
"'Evil is a choice,'" I quoted to him, out of his own textbook.
I then tossed the piece of cloth to the badly wounded man. Cloth doesn't take prints and I had no further need of it.
"Don't let that come out. Call 9-1-1 now. Tell the dispatcher there's an impaled object. Wrap that cloth around the blade. Breathe shallow. You might live."
The professor stared. I recognized that stare.
Some people become experts in a subject as a form of substitute. His legs didn't let him be a killer. So he studied killers.
"Professor, if that knife comes out, I know and the campus police will know that you did it. More importantly his friends will know, I will even tell them. NOW CALL 9-1-1."
That was all I could do.
I had four minutes to clear the area before all hell would break loose.
Memorizing the layout of the building got me out of it within 90 seconds. I had to do just a little parkour, sliding down the stair rail.
I'd prepared an escape for this situation. Actually I'd prepared three.
The student court, eating a burger while all hell broke loose.
The pool at the gym, doing laps while all hell broke loose.
A motorcycle, riding off into the sunset while all hell broke loose.
None would work. Too much physical evidence, and we were playing the A game now. This was murder in connection with kidnapping, and that meant a world of hurt at a level that I usually refused to play at. You can run circles around your local yokels all day, but when you play with the Feds you play with tactics and tools and tech you can barely fathom.
High mobility strategy would be as bad as a stay and wait strategy. The campus was closing for the holiday, staying around would buy nothing and create great risks.
So I did what everyone should do when things turn to absolute shite.
The unexpected.
###
A bicycle. Discarded sweatshirt with a different color shirt underneath. All the routine tricks. But in the bushes between the campus motor vehicle yard and the campus warehouse, a fresh pair of shoes and different colored sweatshirt, both in my size, kept clean by being bagged in plastic. The same bag, with my old clothes, tossed not into a storm drain (they clean those) nor in the bushes (where playful lovers always find them), but in a trash dumpster at the back of yet another campus building.
A bike trail that then took me off campus, past Operation Rope A Dope without a matching description. A ride through nature trails and parkland that put me half a town away.
I kept pedaling. I was tired and dizzy, and could really use some water right about now. But people, even police who should know better, often underestimate how far a bicycle rider can actually go on a bicycle.
I avoided two convenience stores. I drank my fill of water at a park water fountain. I wiped my hands carefully, twice, in the running water.
About an hour along, I discreetly relieved myself in a convenient spot.
As I approached nightfall, I was near another town. Not without resources, either.
My friend Sheila had a schedule of points to check. I'd ridden hard to make this one, the last.
We put the bike in the back of her hatchback, poured me into the passenger seat, and she drove off.
"How hot?" was the only thing she said.
"Thermonuclear," I replied as I fell asleep.
###
I woke up the next morning in Vegas.
Good call, Sheila.
Everyone rents a hotel room in Vegas.
Not everyone has a selection of off-strip hotels where you're just another low-life.
After my shower, I caught the news.
Nothing.
I told you.
Campus always plays coverup.
(frozen) Epilogue
Date: 2021-10-06 04:21 am (UTC)Someone wired me $600 to the drop account I'd given Mike.
Someone mailed six $100 bills in a paperback book to my legal address. The title of the book, a classic. _Godfather_ by Mario Puzo.
Someone asked about me around town. They waved some money around. A taxicab kicked them out on the South side and the police impersonator was mugged for $600 and a gun he was probably fond of. He was at least as unhappy the second time as he had been the first time.
Someone talked to someone who caused two men in black business suits to visit me at my apartment. Because they were polite and had IDs that matched their badges, I let them in and made a pot of coffee. Because they turned rude, I threw them out before it finished brewing. The brief conversation in between established that they were just tracking another false lead, and the piece of furniture had no interest in me. But they left an envelope with $600 from the Crime Victim's Restitution Fund. Or so it was labeled.
A professor took a sabbatical to do physical therapy for his pre-existing condition. He also started seeing a therapist.
EMS run logs indicated that three persons had been transported from campus. A man with an abdominal wound to Southwest. Campus Hospital would have taken him but they were busy with a broken neck, a paraplegic case after a sudden fall. On precautionary a woman with nonspecific swelling of the throat had been intubated and transported to Regional. All survived to start their long recoveries.
And J. Henderson got an A in Abnormal Psychology before transferring to Stanford. Or Harvard. Or somewhere in between. And that's neither her old not her new name.