Reasoned Alibis

The day thus far had gone ideally for 42 year old Lila Mendez.

A math teacher at one of San Diego's public high schools, she'd been teaching advanced Algebra and Geometry for the better part of a decade. While her job did entail some daily stress and frustration, she counted herself lucky she dealt mainly with students on a college track instead of some of the more rambunctious youth many of her cohorts encountered.

Considering the demographics of the area, many of those 'incorrigible' kids happened to be of Hispanic descent, and as a second generation Mexican-American herself, Lila had a great deal of sympathy for their plight.

Many of those kids didn't have the same built in advantage she'd been blessed with however. Having two involved parents was a supreme blessing, each of whom holding down several jobs at a time during her adolescence to keep Lila and her siblings not only fed, but free to chase the American Dream.

Given the breakdown of the modern family, not to mention the economic plight hitting Southern California even harder than most other parts of the country, there was an increasing amount of students from single parent households, and many of those parents were having harder times finding work. All that led to an increase in gang activity in the area which left the neighborhood Lila had lived in all her life not quite so quaint.

The kids she dealt with on a regular basis had thankfully escaped much of the fallout, but it wasn't hard to look out of her classroom window and see the taggings spray painted in several places to know the wolves were ever present at the door. As depressing as contemplating the future could have been, Lila took a great deal of joy and refuge in the students she sent off to college every Summer, knowing with most of them the future was in very good hands.

While she derived unspeakable pride in her work in the classroom, Lila had also been spending the previous few years taking grad school courses part time at night to get her Masters in Educational Administration. While she could certainly see herself teaching until retirement, there was something constantly gnawing at Lila that she could make more of a difference helping make policy instead of daily homework assignments.

The fact that her Husband's lawn care business had taken off in recent years made grad school much easier to swing, and for the first time in her life, even with one daughter already in college and another only a year away, finances really weren't a constant source of concern.

Basically killing time in her classroom until she had to take her youngest daughter home from soccer practice at 5, Lila meandered through the room, straightening the desks from the group project during the last period and thinking about what she was going to fix for dinner when she got home.

Looking down at her watch, she noticed it was a quarter after 4.

"You could go out and watch the rest of practice down by the gym," Lila presented herself that option but it was a little overcast and the mid Fall breeze did have a little nip to it by San Diego standards.

Having just gotten over a cold, Lila decided to stay in her classroom and get some busywork done on her laptop. Besides, her Daughter, as with most of the kids on the team, hated when a parent showed up to watch practice while the coach was yelling at all of them.

The only real sound at that late hour inside the school was generally the occasional janitor going up and down the hall. Over the years Lila had pretty much trained herself to tune all of that out, the classroom was her domain and there was nowhere she felt safer. That said, lost in the spreadsheet on the screen, Lila didn't even realize a young man was standing in the doorway for several seconds until he cleared his throat.

The flashing cursor on the laptop's screen suddenly became the only movement in the room when Lila looked up and froze.

Waiting for the feeling to return to her lips, Lila finally managed the wherewithal to croak, "...Hello.....Luis," to the young man standing no more than 15 feet away.

It was a rare week that went by that at least one of Lila's former students didn't drop by, or email to say hi. Usually the visitors were students she had great relationships with. Seeing Luis standing there staring back with an intensity she'd never been comfortable with, Lila realized this may have been her first encounter with the opposite scenario.

Lila had seen literally thousands of young men and women pass through her class over the years. There were a handful that left her with more unease than Luis Moralis, but not many. He'd been in her 12th grade Algebra class three years earlier if memory served, and from her best re-collection he'd gone cross town to the University of San Diego after graduation. That was the last she'd saw of him.

With so many students coming and going each year, Lila vaguely remembered something coming up during the tail end of his Senior year, but she couldn't get her brain to immediately process back that far.

"It couldn't have been that big of a deal," she assured herself as she stared up at him standing in the doorway.

While there wasn't on first glance any hint of anger or hostility in Luis' gaze, the longer Lila looked, the more she absorbed the growing blankness of his stare.

"Luis...this is certainly a surprise.....come in," she offered, the words leaving a bitter aftertaste as soon as they left her mouth.

As if waiting for his former teacher to grant him permission to enter, Luis nodded then took a step forward, closing the door to the room behind him in the process.

Any sense of control Lila felt evaporated when she heard the door shut.

"Oh..don't worry Mrs. Mendez...just didn't want the janitors with those big floor buffers in the hall to interrupt us," Luis smiled even though the gesture never seemed to reach the unsheathed daggers of his dark brown eyes.

Luis' words were basically a jumble of sound in Lila's ears as she coiled in her office chair. A chill rippling down her spine, all Lila could focus on were the ivory white shine of his grinning teeth, and the large yellow business envelope sealed in his right hand. Her legs suddenly feeling like two bags of wet sand, Lila couldn't even push her chair backwards as the 21 year old former student approached her desk.

Like a slow loading file opening in her memory bank, Lila desperately tried processing everything she could about the young man now standing directly above her.

The closer Luis got, the more her memory of him filtered back. He was quite sharp, a very intelligent young man, but one who seemed to fancy using his gifts of knowledge and charm more for manipulation than good. She remembered him as an above average student, but also one that didn't like to be challenged. Spoiled was one word that always came to mind when she interacted with him. Lila also recalled that he was quite the ladies' man in high school and how her stomach always rolled when many of the more naive girls fell for his act. Of course at that age, bravado, even if it is false, usually does the trick.

Remembering all that about Luis didn't provide an ounce of re-assurance for Lila as she wondered why he was standing in her room three years after leaving, with the door closed behind him.

"Don't forget there's that panic button they installed under all the teacher's desks," a voice in Lila's head reminded.

The school board had approved those buttons in each high school classroom after a shooting in the district a year earlier, but Lila was not about to reach down and press it. The last thing she wanted to do was make a mountain out of a molehill, and with the system being wired not only into the office, but the 911 system as well, that seemed quite extreme for handling one of her former students that happened to show up unannounced. Besides, this was her classroom and the she wasn't about to show any weakness or loss of control.

Just in case, Lila steadied herself and pushed away from her desk before standing up. Strolling as casually as she could towards the far side of the room, Lila could feel the weight of the young man's stare as he pivoted in the spot he was standing, the large envelope in his hands still draped in front of his chest as if begging her to ask about it's contents.

"Maybe its just his resume or a job application and he's just looking for a reference," Lila tried convincing herself as that yellow square in his hand seemed to take on a life of it's own.

"Last time I was in this room...we didn't end on such good terms," Luis offered, his tone so dry Lila couldn't tell if he was being accusatory or apologetic.

Once again she found herself riffling through her dusty brain cells trying to call up how Luis' Senior year had ended. In a dam burst, it all started to come back to her.

There had been a whiff of a cheating scandal at the school that year. No one was ever caught, but Lila along with many of her fellow teachers noticed several abnormalities in their grading process as the year went on. Having tinkered with a computer program a college professor had developed to weed out such abnormalities, Lila was confronted with a significant shift in grades on that year's finals. While she liked to think of herself as a good teacher who was able to increase a student's performance as the year went on, the spike between the mid-terms and final were troublesome.

A cold exhale left Lila's body when she remembered Luis having one of the biggest spikes. While most of the exams showed anywhere from a 5 to 10 point improvement, Luis' final was over 25 points better than his midterm. Deciding she couldn't just single out a handful of questionable tests, Lila decided to give the entire class a second final. Most of the scores of the second exam fell within an acceptable range of the student's first score but Luis was one of the few that fell off drastically. Her only recourse was to take the grade on the second exam and add it to the final grades for each student.

Luis could now see the fog beginning to lift in Mrs. Mendez's eyes as the past began to filter back to her.

"You cheated on that exam," Lila said defiantly, knowing more than ever now her assumptions back then had been right.

Luis said nothing. Simply dropping the envelope on the center of his former teacher's cluttered desk, he then turned and casually took a seat in one of the chairs that lined the front row.

A couple of seconds of showdown type silence ensued until Luis spoke up.

"Before you go over there and read what I brought...just a little background Mrs. Mendez," Luis put his hand out in a subtle halting motion when he sensed Lila's anxiousness to go over and grab the envelope from her desk.

"The exam you said I cheated on...the one you made the entire class re-take...I don't know if you knew this or not but I had a scholarship riding through a charity group my parents were working with. Everything else was lined up. All I needed was a 3.5 GPA my Senior year and basically my Freshman year of college was taken care of."

"I had it nailed with the grade on that first exam," he continued. "Then you go and give that make-up exam..making all these claims and assertions you couldn't prove knowing no one was in their right minds to take the second test. I would have had 3.5 covered without a problem with the first one...I got a D on the second one which left me with a 3.48."

Luis could see Mrs. Mendez deflating like a tire in front of the window to his left as each word hit home.

"I was still able to go to school...just finished my 3rd year across town at USD so things did work out...but all those loans...all those hours having to work part time..all the sacrifices the people around me had to make when I had a scholarship sitting on the table..I'd be lying Mrs. Mendez if I didn't say all of it still eats at me."

"You cheated Luis..you know...I know..," Lila spat, her head darting forward causing the luxurious strands of her curly, jet black hair to flail around her head until Luis interrupted her.

"There's no way you can prove it, Mrs. Mendez..you made a life altering decision on what you thought, not what you knew. What I brought with me in that envelope has facts...not assumptions," he calmly assured, nodding his head once again in the direction of the teacher's desk.

Now Lila wasn't sure she wanted to see what was inside that sealed envelope. Looking over to the door to the class, she was sure she didn't see Luis lock it when he'd closed it. She knew she could make a run for it, and there certainly had to be a couple of janitors along with a smattering of teachers left on that wing if she called for help. There was the panic button still waiting under her desk that she was sure he didn't know about, and Heaven forbid, the mace she kept in her purse if worse came to worse. Any thought of making a mad dash to safety was quelled however by the fear of what he'd brought with him to show her.

Seeing the furrow grow in his former teacher's brow, Luis leaned back in the desk to make himself comfortable, knowing Mrs. Mendez was lost in deep thought, trying to formulate her options.

"Why didn't they go ahead and put those security cameras in each room like they promised," Lila muttered to herself, knowing it came down between the cameras and a 2% raise at the last budget meeting, and she, along with most everyone else, voted for the raise.

With that she started the cautious walk away from the relative safety of the window where she could have called for help, to her desk sitting at the head of the room.

___________________________

The contents of the envelope were worse than anything she could ever imagine, in essence pulling the rug out from every facet of her neat and tidy existence. The three pieces of photocopied paper contained enough ammunition to send a wave of buckshot through her personal and professional life.

Each page filled with a gobbly-gook of small print and legalese, Lila could tell from the highlighted sections doting the document why Luis had brought it for her to see. There were at least a half dozen mentions of her Husband and his landscaping company.

Seeing Lila stagger as if she'd stepped into a pit of mental quicksand, Luis leaned forward in his seat allowing the full scope of the situation to descend on Mrs. Mendez's shoulders.

"I'm thinking about going to law school after I finish my undergrad and I was lucky enough to land an internship for two months last Summer at one of the firms here in town," Luis started in a voice that was strangely melancholy and matter of fact. A tone that would grow in intensity however with each successive word.

"I figured it would look good on a resume one of these days..but here's the funny thing....the more trust you gain in those circles, the more access you're allowed ...and idle minds do tend to wander. I was filing some old cases late one night and I came across some testimony for a Defendant the firm was working with. Some pretty bad stuff but the DA decided not to file charges because a lot of the witnesses couldn't seem to get their stories straight," Luis continued to patiently spin his yarn.

"One of the names in the case file kept ringing a bell..This is Southern California so there are plenty of guys named Raul Mendez but I'd be willing to bet only one owns tree trimming and mowing business....and also happens to be married to you?"

For her part, Lila just stood there beside her desk, looking almost like a woman struggling with amnesia, as if everything she thought she knew had been taken out to sea like a sandcastle ripped apart by a sudden tide.

Forced suddenly to try and re-live every minute detail of the previous two years, Lila teetered in place as the three sheets of paper hung limply in her hands. In hindsight, there had been some shady characters hanging around Raul after he started the business, but he'd told her they were some guys he'd hired who were either down on their luck, illegals or out of prison looking for a fresh start. When she started noticing the business making a profit, Lila didn't really give any of it a second thought as long as he didn't bring a lot of those undesireables around the house.

A traditionalist when it came to such matters, Lila tried not to mettle in her Husband's business dealings. Even with her background in math, she never once felt the urge to help with the books. Considering what she was looking at now, that may have been a mistake.

>From what she could gather, Raul had gotten an influx of cash to start the company from one of the area's underground big-wigs in return for using the man's connections to supply some of his workforce, along with a percentage of Raul's profits. The fact that several of the competing firms in the area mysteriously went out of business during the time was also noted in the case file as well.

Re-reading some of the highlighted quotes attributed to Raul, Lila appreciated why her Husband was understandably vague in the transcripts when it came to his business dealings. That hesitancy to come clean on Raul's part, among a handful of others, had been why the prosecutor's office decided to put the case on the back burner.

While she definitely had a thing or two to bring up with her Husband over dinner later that night, of a more pressing concern was figuring out why one of her former students had brought this to her attention, and what he wanted to gain from it.

"I don't have much money Luis..are you trying to blackmail me..why did you bring me this?" Lila spoke in barely a whisper as she shook the documents at him.

"Money.....No Mrs. Mendez..I don't want any money," he replied before allowing several haunting chuckles to belch from his throat.

"I just wanted you to see what real cheating was.......and to ask a favor."

"Favor," the last word Luis said now rattled around Lila's taxed brain.

Sliding out of his seat and taking two slow, methodical steps forward, Luis put his hands down on the edge of the teacher's desk and leaned in. Smelling the fear now mixing with the older woman's pleasant perfume, Luis tilted his gaze across the desk to meet hers.

"I really don't want anything to happen with you and your family, Mrs. Mendez," he started with cool but heartfelt candor. "My guess is you didn't have a clue your Husband was involved with all of this..considering how strict you are about doing the right thing here in class, I can't believe you'd knowingly be party to such a thing in your own home."

"Then what do you want?" Lila nearly pleaded as she dropped the transcript copies back down on top of the envelope.

Luis didn't say a word as he stood upright. His eyes still locked on his former teacher standing pensively just a few feet away, Luis reached down and without looking, unzipped the fly of his jeans.

Every drop of blood in Lila's face ran cold when she saw Luis' very forward, and seemingly well thought out gesture. Her weight swaying backwards on the black wedged heels until the blackboard behind her desk prevented her full collapse, Lila opened her mouth but not a single sound came out.

Following every tick and facial movement Lila made, using some of the talents of non verbal perception that the lawyers at his internship had helped him with, Luis proceeded to unbutton the snap of his jeans as well.

Trapped behind her desk with Luis blocking her path to the door, Lila knew she could still hit the panic button beneath her desk but she honestly didn't know if she could even get her arm to move that far.

".....You want to have sex with me Luis......to keep this secret?" she spoke up in a voice of incredulousness.

"Sex...No...," Luis mocked. "I wouldn't want to tarnish the sanctity of you're marriage, Mrs. Mendez."

"Then why are you standing there glaring at me with your pants unzipped," she wanted to scream but just turned her head in disgust.