Thursday, 28 August

Another fine day at the office, and Frank was going thru some paperwork from yesterday that he had blown off after his conversation with that crazy Perault. There was no longer any doubt in his mind that the dude was seriously unbalanced. If he was like that in the military then it’s no wonder he could only find a job mowing grass. As he’s going thru some of the reports, he catches that more than a few of them are from the same person.

Seems a Rebecca Hutton filed several reports of being harassed by a Derrick Ellis. Reading further into the reports Frank finds that this Derrick dude is in her English Lit class. How did we miss this? I fuckin’ hate guys that have to harass women, gutless punks the lot of them. I need to go and pay this guy a visit right now. Let’s see who’s the teacher there…Titus Lindholm. Grabbing his nightstick and tazer Frank heads for his cart for the drive over to see Mr. Lindholm.

Titus was having a rather informal moment. For him anyway. His jacket was thrown over his chair and his sleeves were rolled up. He kept the tie, though, depicting Mickey Mouse in various acts of adventuring. He thought it made him look dashingly retro-cool, or something like that.

Today they got to read Nathaniel Hawthorne! Yay! Titus didn't like it much either, but he figured if he didn't cover it now they'd never be exposed to Hawthorne's long, meandering sentence structure, and he wanted to drill it into their impressionable young brains early. This was a pretty good class. Quiet, (mostly) attentive. Titus gave them an offhand, but relatively interesting little blurb about the author and began asking a list of leading "let's discuss this as a class" questions he'd decided on last night.

No quizzes. Today was a good day.

And then came Frank.

Taking a deep breath to compose himself, Frank opens and enters into the classroom. Immediately all eyes are on him and his sudden appearance in the room. Okay, play this nice and easy Frank, no losing your temper here.

Frank scanned the classroom of students, and quickly located the good professor. He quickly made his way towards him, while each student followed his move. "Mr. Lindholm, sorry to interrupt you discussion, but I have a matter that needs your attention." He motions Lindholm to follow him away from the ears of the watching students. In a soft whisper "I need to see the following student if he's here a Derrick Ellis. In need him to come with me to the office for questioning. Is he here?"

Titus cast his eyes over the class, nodding. "How serious a matter is this?" he asked in a soft voice, his body language tensing up. "I would prefer not to make a scene. Perhaps I could simply send him to the office and you could intercept him."

"I'd consider this a very serious matter. It was brought to my attention that he has been harassing a girl in one of your classes." Frank lets this information settle in while he takes a quick glance back at the students to make sure they didn't hear him. His face is stern as goes on "I'd rather not make a scene either, so I'll go and stand by the door and you can direct him up to me. That sound good to you?"

Titus nods. "That is satisfactory." He turns, walking into the classroom. Nonchalantly, he says, "Derrick, you're needed in the office. Shoo." The kid stands, glancing at the other side of the room, where a girl was attempting to hide behind several of her friends. He looked up at Titus.

"What for?"

Titus sat on the edge of his desk, crossing his arms. Though he was making an effort to appear casual, this was perhaps actually a bad move for him, as he normally...wasn't. The kid's eyes narrowed as Titus answered, "I believe it concerns a schedule change. However, it is not my business. Find out yourself."

Derrick cocked his head, halfway to the door. "Yeah, but why would they send the security guard to tell you instead of emailing you or whatever?"

Titus sighed, patience wearing thin. "Derrick. Just go." And finally, thankfully, the kid does. Looking suspicious the whole time. The moment he catches sight of Frank, he stiffens guiltily and tries to brush past.

The kid can see a look of disgust on Frank's face as he walks in the hallway. As the door closes, Frank pulls Derrick aside with a firm grip. "So you think it's fun to harass women do you" Franks says angrily. Derrick's look of suspicion quickly drains away to be replace with a look of fear. Derricks voice stutters "I,I,I don't know what your talking about, I wouldn't do that." As soon as he's finished Derrick manages to duck out of Frank's grasp and quickly runs back into the class room. What the hell did he run for, crazy kid Frank thinks before he hears the startled sounds of the Prof. class.

Titus saw him coming and instinctively reached out, testing the bonds of force that held all actions together and kept the universe from flying into a pandemonium of potential free energy, and other such gibberish. He stared straight into Derrick's dull, pockmarked face and forced Derrick's energy to seep out of his body.

Derrick's nose made a very satisfying crack as it hit the floor, and he whimpered. As far as anyone in the class could tell, he'd tripped squarely over a tile, and that was just how Titus liked it. When the kid crawled up to his knees Titus was standing in his way, giving him a fierce, level glare, Mickey Mouse tie askew. "No sudden moves," Titus growled, in a fair imitation of Clint Eastwood. He was rather enjoying this, in a catharthic sort of way. "Relax. You aren't going anywhere." He glanced at the door, making sure Frank was enroute.

Frank ran back in the room, confused as hell. What the hell was running back in the room going to do for the kid. If he had gotten to a window he might have been able to get away, but that didn't look like the kid's plan had gone from the way the Professor was standing over him.

"Thanks Prof. You saved me the trouble of having to chase him down." He grabs Derrick and pulls him up to his feet. "Why oh why did you think you could run? Now I got to add this into your report. Think that's going to help your cause any?" Frank says very sternly.

"Nice work there Mr. Lindholm. I suppose he was trying to get out the window, but you stopped him cold. I'm impressed." he says before he walks out with Derrick.