"You God Damn Little Prick! You get out of this school now! I don't give a fuck about your contract! You get your ass out of this building. Now!"
"If that is how you want to play the game, I will leave but with everything I own."
"You're leaving now!"
But James had already turned his back on Kawalski and started to take down the posters decorating the walls. Screaming, Kawalski reached down. Grabbing James' shoulder, he rolled him around pushing him into the wall. Kawalski's fingers gouged into James' shoulders as he glared into Makinen's face. Something happened! Kawalski didn't see fear in those eyes. The eyes had turned flat, emotionless. James' hands came up through the hold that Kawalski had on him. They pushed against the inside of Kawalski's elbows and circled around the arms. Kawalski's grip on James was gone. His thumbs were bent back. His arms twisted and locked fully extended. Pressure was applied straight up, tendons stretched joints creaked and Kawalski went up on his toes unable to move. The pain was excruciating.
James, his emotionless eyes penetrating Kawalski's mind, whispered, "I am going to get all my things. You are going to leave."
James released his hold on Kawalski. Joe collapsed down from his tiptoes, his knees wobbling as the pain subsided. Kawalski stumbled away, rubbing the feeling back into his sore arms. He saw the crowd at the doorway. He hesitated. He wanted to turn around, but he remembered the eyes with no fear and the ease in which his hold was broken. The pain still throbbed though his arms. When he looked up again, the crowd was gone and he lurched through the door.
After Kawalski left, the strength went out of James' legs. On his own wobbly knees, he staggered to his desk. He sat heavily on the old rickety swivel chair with a bad spring and tried to understand what had happened to him. His mind drifted from the amazement of the karate move-that he had only practiced alone-actually working, to the real possibility of losing his job.
He sat in dumb bewilderment until he heard over the loud speakers the voice of Joe Kawalski, "James Makinen has been suspended from his duties. If any staff or students have had problems with Mr. Makinen, please come to the high school office during first or second periods this morning. Mr. Makinen's classes will meet in the library this morning. Bring study materials."
Henry Hakanen and Al Gallea had been sitting in the district office waiting to discuss a schedule for interviews with the staff and students about the sexual-assault complaint with Shermon when they heard the announcement echo in from the hallway. They stared at each other in astonishment and said in unison, "Damn!" Together they got up and walked down the hall to the high school office. There they found a red-faced Kawalski standing in his doorway.
Henry was the first to speak. "Mr. Kawalski, this is a police investigation. We cannot have you talking to any potential witnesses before we interview them. I am going to have to ask you not to talk to anybody about Mr. Makinen and to give me a list of names of all the people you have already spoken to."
Kawalski erupted, "I don't give a damn about your investigation! I fired that little prick last night and he still showed up for work today. He won't leave and I ordered him to." His eruption sputtered to a stop as he finally realized who he was talking to and what he was saying.
Henry and Al glanced at each other, an opportunity! "We'll talk to Mr. Makinen. Just remember, don't speak to anyone about him." Henry took a step closer to Kawalski, making sure he was focused on what he was about to say. "I will be stopping by after I talk to Makinen. I expect to have that list from you made out by then. Okay?" He waited until he got a nod.
Henry and Al left the office. "Do you know which room Makinen is in?"
"Yes. My grandson had him a year ago. I picked my grandson up after school a couple of times from Makinen's room."
"Do you think Kawalski blew our case?"
"We never had one. After this little escapade of his, we've got even less. We still have to go through an investigation, but we'll have nothing when we're finished."
"What do you mean?"
"I know the girl, Makinen, Kawalski and Shermon. The only one who hasn't lied so far is Makinen and he hasn't said anything."
"What do you mean?"
"Jenny Rossetti is a 'good time' girl. She never would have met Makinen after school to get help for her schoolwork. I asked my grandson. He doesn't think she is passing a single class. If she met Makinen after school, it was for something totally different. They still could have had sex, which is statutory rape because she is seventeen, but the whole first part of her story is wrong. Kawalski and Shermon are troublemakers. I don't know how they got the jobs they have but they are real bastards. Watch them carefully and you will see what I mean."
He paused for his next thought. "Makinen is on the edge. This thing with the girl doesn't sound right with him. He has been just hanging on since his wife left with his kids. Be careful with him. If he goes over the edge, he could be very dangerous."
Gallea looked at Hakanen in shock. What in the world was he talking about? They continued down the empty hall in silence. When they came to Makinen's room, they found him with his head bowed, sitting at his desk. Henry motioned Gallea to back away from the doorway. Going back a few steps, he said in a loud voice, "This is Makinen's room." When they got to the doorway again, James was piling books on the desk. As they stepped into the room, Al seemed to catch a glimpse of something feral and lost in James' eyes. It scared him.
Again Henry started the conversation. "Hi, Jim. Talked to Kawalski."
There was a slight break in Makinen's voice, "I know. I'm leaving. I told him I'm taking everything I own with me. You know he can't fire me. Suspend, yes. Fire, no."
"I know, Jim. Could I help?"
James looked up in surprise and in gratitude replied, "Yes."
The two deputies helped take down posters and pile books. Hakanen asked, while taking down a poster, "Jim, what are you going to do tonight?"
James paused and looked Henry straight in the face. "The same thing I've done every night for the last six months, go home. Unless, of course, it is Wednesday or Saturday, sauna night at Dad's."
It took awhile for Gallea to catch on to what was said. By the time Al caught up with what was happening, Makinen was sitting in front of his computer deleting programs and files. He was telling Henry, "This school district is so cheap, I had to buy most of the programs I use in class." James got up and picked up a stack of books with the computer still working in the background.
Gallea had to ask, "What are you doing now?" nodding at the computer.
Makinen gave him a conspiratorial smile and said, "I'm defragmenting the hard drive." Seeing the confused look on Al's face, he continued. "I deleted the main program files, resident programs, and data I owned on the hard drive, but with a utility you can bring back the files. You see, all that happens when a file is deleted is that the address is erased. The file will stay there until it is written over. Defragmenting a disk rewrites all the information on the disk drive and stores it at the end of the disk. That means all my files will probably be written over and cannot be used again."
By the way James continued smiling, Gallea knew he had done more than what he said, but he had no idea what. He left the room with an armload of books, feeling that he had participated in something. It was the same feeling he'd had when he was in high school and he and his friends went out during Halloween to soap some doorknobs. Later in the day riding back to the station with Henry, he asked, "What really happened with the computer files?"
Henry laughed, "Just what he said. He just didn't tell you that the computer would probably have to have the system reloaded, which is a real pain. You see, a computer program that you buy is really a set of programs.