Schoolhouse Rock Ch. 01

This story is part of an ongoing series. The chronological order of my stories is listed in WifeWatchman's biography.

Feedback and constructive criticism is very much appreciated, and I encourage feedback for ideas.

This story contains graphic scenes, language and actions that might be extremely offensive to some people. These scenes, words and actions are used only for the literary purposes of this story. The author does not condone murder, racial language, violence, rape or violence against women, and any depictions of any of these in this story should not be construed as acceptance of the above.

Part 1 - Prologue

"And then there are heroes of other sorts

Like the heroes we know from watching sports

But a hero doesn't have to be a grown up person, you know

A hero can be a very big dog

Who comes to your rescue

Or a very little boy who's smart enough to know what to do"

------- Schoolhouse Rock, 'My Hero, Zero'

Wednesday, January 16th. Mrs. Thomas's class filed into the library of Eastside Elementary School and sat down on the floor in front of the large flat-screen television monitor in the back right corner. In the back right of the library room was an office space, with the door next to the monitor. The computer feeding the monitor was in that office.

Yvonne Newton was the librarian. She'd gotten her old job with the School System back when this spot had opened up. She started the video in the office, then came back out and went to the main desk. The video began, showing Marcie Harper beginning a simple math lesson on addition with double digit numbers, including 'carrying the one' to the next column.

Marcie Harper had brown hair that was styled straight down on all sides like a dome, and bangs over her eyes. Her face was a bit longer than a circle, a.k.a. oval-"ish". Her body was slender-ish and she wasn't very tall, which was good for television purposes.

She taught her ten to twelve minute lessons in what looked like a classroom. There was a desk with a monitor, computer, and mouse on the left, a chalkboard behind her that she used while teaching. Above the chalkboard were placards, each with a blue train on it going from right to left, and a letter of the alphabet was on each train's side. An analog clock on the wall at the left upper corner, near the corner of the chalkboard, showed the time of day.

After a few minutes, Carole Troy got up and walked over to the desk. "Ms. Newton," she said, "can you call my dad? There's something wrong on the video."

"Carole," said the teacher Mrs. Thomas, "you need to sit back down with the class."

"Please, Ms. Newton?" Carole persisted. "Something's wrong!"

"Carole," said Yvonne Newton, "even if something's wrong, why would you want to call your dad?"

"Because my dad is the Police." said Carole. "And something's really wrong."

As Yvonne Newton picked up the phone, Mrs. Thomas said "Ms. Newton, you can't call her father for something like this."

Yvonne replied "You do know who her father is, don't you? And she's really asking us to call the Police..."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

I came into the library room as the kids were being lined up to walk back to their classroom. "It's the Iron Crowbar!" yelled Jameis excitedly. He came up to high-five me, and did not pull his hand away as he'd done on the first day of school. We high-fived.

"Hi kids." I said. I ended up going down the line high-fiving them all, which made them very happy, and my hands very sticky. When I got to Carole, I said "You come with me."

"Commander," said Mrs. Thomas, "Carole has to go back to class."

"Oh, I'll bring her back." I said. The teacher was clearly unhappy with that as Carole led me to the main desk.

"Hello, Yvonne." I said as I availed myself of some alcohol gel to clean up my hands. "What's the problem?"

"Carole asked me to call you." said Yvonne. "It's about the Marcie Harper video they were watching."

"There's something wrong on it, Daddy." Carole said.

"Okay, let's go watch it." I said. We went into the office area and sat in front of the computer and it's monitor. The chair was one of those metal rotating high chairs, with a metal ring footrest. I sat down and Carole stood on that footrest in front of me. Julie brought up the URL to the video, and we began watching.

"There it is!" Carole said after a few minutes. I stopped the video. "See?" Carole said. "The mouse changed color! And the trains over the board are different!"

I looked closely, then rewound and brought it forward. Marcie Harper had asked a question for the students to discuss and the video faded to black for a second, then came back up. When it did, the mouse on the desk had changed color from blue to green. And the placards of the trains above the chalkboard were different; some of the train wheels were almost solid black instead of white with black rims, and one had a puff of smoke coming from the smokestack.

"Wow, Carole." I said. "You're right. There's something going on, there." I started the video again and after three minutes, Marcie Harper asked another question and the tape faded, then came back up again. Now the mouse was blue again, and the trains had white wheels with black rims, and none had puffs of smoke.

"What is it?" asked Yvonne.

"I'm not sure." I said. "But you were right to call me. Tell you what, I'll take Carole back to class, then come back and ask some more questions, okay?"

Part 2 - Video Views

When I took Carole back to her classroom, the principal, Mr. Butler, was in the hallway outside the door, along with a School Security man, who was an off-duty TCPD Officer, and Mrs. Thomas.

"Hello, Sims." I said to the Officer.

"Commander?" said a startled Sims. "It's your daughter they're talking about?"

"If you mean Carole, here, then yes." I said, "Carole, go on back into your class."

"Okay." said Carole. "Bye, Daddy." I returned the salutation as Carole went into the classroom.

"I'll handle this, Mrs. Thomas." said the principal. She went back into the classroom. Mr. Butler turned to me and said "I'm sorry you were disturbed, Commander. You should not have been called."

"Au contraire, Mr. Butler." I said. "My daughter was correct to ask for me to be called, and Ms. Newton was correct to call me. They have alerted me to a possible serious issue."

"Even so, Commander," said the principal, "we don't, and we can't, allow parents to be called upon just any whim of the child."

"I do not agree." I said. "First of all, if a child asks for their parents to be called, I'd suggest doing so if it's for any good reason. Second, in my daughter's case, she was not asking for me to be called as her father, but as the Police. And I fully expect that no problems will come to either my daughter or Ms. Newton as a result. If you'll excuse me, I have a criminal investigation to begin. Carry on, Sims."

With that, I walked back down the hallway and back to the library, leaving behind a speechless school principal...

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

"Okay, how do I get more of these videos?" I asked Yvonne.

"You can't, Commander." said Yvonne. "They put one up each week, we show it to the kids, then they replace it the next week. There's no access that I know of to previous videos on the website."

"Hmmm." I said. "I'm going to copy this one manually, then." I took out my Police iPhone and turned on the video recorder, then set it up to record off the computer as I played the video again.

"While that's running," I said, "tell me the routine of Ms. Marcie Harper's videos."

"They make one every week, and it's available Wednesday through Friday." said Yvonne. "They're mostly on math or word subjects, and on some rare occasions they may put up a second video, in which case we get an email about it."

"So there's no way at all to get back copies?" I asked.

"Not that I know of." said Yvonne. "Unless someone is making copies. But that's actually hard to do with the encryption they have on the software. Your iPhone may be the only way that works."

"Is Marcie Harper part of the school system?" I asked.

"No," said Yvonne, "she was a schoolteacher, but she left to begin making these videos. They're good, and the kids love them, so many of the State school systems have bought subscriptions. This is her third school year of doing them, I was told."

"Oh, so she doesn't repeat old ones each school year." I said. "Every one is completely new?"

"As far as I know." said Yvonne. "The date is written on the chalkboard, so it would be obvious if they sent a repeat video."

"That's true. And that's very interesting." I said. I checked on my recording, which was finished. It had worked, though sometimes the video got staticky as if the Slender Man were present, as the video encryption was trying to beat my recorder's ability to record through it. But I had enough to work with.

I thanked Yvonne, told her to let me know if anyone tried to cause her trouble over calling me, and also told her to not discuss the specifics of what we'd found today. Then I went back to my office at Headquarters.

Part 3 - First Salvos

"Guess I got the idea right here at school.

Felt like a fool when they called my name,

Talkin' about the government and how it's arranged,

Divided in three like a circus.

Ring one, Executive,

Two is Legislative, that's Congress.

Ring three, Judiciary.

See it's kind of like my circus, circus."

------ Schoolhouse Rock, 'Three Ring Government'

And boy! was Schoolhouse Rock right about Government being a frickin' circus!

When I got back to Headquarters around 11:15am, Deputy Chief Cindy Ross was waiting to pounce. Green Crowbar followed Red Crowbar into my office. I had her sit down.

"Did you hear the news?" she asked.

"No." I said.

Cindy took the remote, turned on my television monitor, and switched to the one of the two internal Police channels. She then asked me to have the MCD DVR piped into this monitor using the system Myron had installed over the past few months.

It was an SNN broadcast, and blonde reporterette Jenna James was reporting: "State House Democrats passed a resolution yesterday asking the State Supreme Court for a ruling on a key clause of the State Constitution. The State Senate passed a separate resolution today which covered the same question."

"The Legislature did not pass a budget last year." explained Jenna. "The State Constitution states that if a Budget is not passed this year, then spending would revert to, and I quote, 'the previous year's budget'. But without that previous year's budget, no budget this year would mean that there can be no spending on anything beginning July 1st. Roll tape."

Tape rolled showing Katherine Woodburn explaining in an interview room somewhere: "It is our contention that if we do not have a Budget this year, if Val Jared vetoes the Budget we pass, then there will be a State Government shutdown beginning July 1st. A total shutdown; no money can be spent on anything. We have asked the State Supreme Court to clarify the State Constitution's wording on that."

Back to Jenna: "The State Supreme Court will convene tomorrow morning to discuss this, as well as hear other cases that are coming to them."

The DVR ended there. Cindy turned off the monitor. "Well, the first shot across the bow has been fired." she said.

"So it has." I said. "I told Chief------ er, Sheriff Griswold about our lunch with Molinari and Cerone, and I would imagine he passed on the information to the Governor.. which is what they hoped we'd do when they told us about it."

"Is that why they told us?" Cindy asked. "I was wondering about that."

"That was some of it." I said. "They're also keeping us in the loop for the day they'll come begging us to tell them how to get out of the mess they're in over it."

"By 'us', you mean 'you', of course." Cindy replied. "And don't take this the wrong way, Don... but why do they come to you, of all people?"

I smiled, understanding of what she was asking. "I dunno, really. Part of it is they want me to give them a solution, then they'll take credit if it works but blame me if it doesn't. But why specifically me?" I shrugged my shoulders.

"So what is your solution to this going to be?" Cindy asked.

"I dunno." I said. "I know what I would do, but I'm not in charge... thank God. And you're more of a political atheist than I am... what would you do?"

Cindy thought about it, then said "I'd have to think a lot more on it." she said. "In the meantime, is everything okay at Carole's school?"

"I want you to keep this under your hat." I said. "I'm telling you in case something wet happens to me, but let's keep it under wraps." I showed her the video, which I'd put into the evidence servers, and gave her the Marcie Harper backstory.

"That is strange," Cindy said, "but nothing illegal about it."

"Vee shall see." I said in my 'German' accent. "Carole got a vibe about it the second she saw it, and when I saw it I thought it was strange, also. I mean... why do that? Why change the mouse and a few placards for a few minutes, then change them back?"

"Just look at previous videos, and see what's going on there." Cindy said.

"And that's another thing about all this." I said. "There is no access to previous videos, either on the school system website, Marcie Harper's website, or the State Education System's website. I did Google and DuckDuckGo searches to see if any old pages were saved. Two came up, but the videos don't work on either one; the content has been taken down."

"Marcie wants to get paid for her content." said Cindy. "So she's protecting it."

"Well, that may be the case, but it's strange." I said. "And they make new ones every time, rather than recycle old ones. That's a lot of extra work for nothing. So yeah... I'm going to do some digging, and see what I find."

"You must be really bored." Cindy said as she got up. "You are looking for cases... in all the wrong places." My eyes cut over to her, and she took that as her cue to leave and go back to her office.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

FBI Special Agent in Charge Jack Muscone called me and offered to buy me lunch at the Cop Bar. Of course I accepted. We sat in the second room, the 'old back room' before the remodeling. Jack ordered the Double Cheeseburger plate, and I had the Breakfast Burger plate.

"Things are going very well in Southport." said Jack. "Crenshaw is going to take the Supervisory Agent job down there, and Tim Jenkins has accepted a transfer to there. And even better... someone cracked. Guess who it was?"

"The logical choice would be Don Grundfeld." I said. "But that gleam in your eye suggests it wasn't. So I'd suggest Jace McPherson."

"Four hundred years ago..." said Jack "Seriously, you're right, it was McAllen, a.k.a. McPherson. I think his attorney told him Grundfeld was about to take the deal, and that he really needed to cut a deal himself. And he was really feeling the heat over the money laundering charges; Nash was really good in pressuring him on that."

"So you're charging the other guys?"

"We're going to try to." said Muscone. "The U.S. Attorney is very, very skeptical, though. We were hoping to charge them with murder in the commission of a felony for the killing of the pharmacist during one of their robberies. But I guess you can see the problems, there?"

"A bunch of problems." I said. "First, the Feds don't have jurisdiction, since it wasn't a bank robbery."

"We're hoping to apply some Federal charges due to the narcotics they stole." said Muscone.

"Even if you get that, murder is not a Fed offense but a State one." I said. "And that mixing of jurisdictions might be a problem for the murder-in-the-commission try. Your bet there would be for Southport to handle it... oh, you can't do that if the crime was in Turpin Heights, which is in the State to our south. So you need to go to them to bring charges and try it."

"Yep, you're getting there." said Muscone. "You're right that murder is a State crime, normally, and Southport is not the jurisdiction. But we're going to try to go the Federal route, and also get 'continuing mischief' because they were laundering money through the gambling. It's going to be complex."

"And it's interesting to me," I said, "in the way watching two Grandmasters play chess is interesting to me... I'll enjoy seeing what legal decisions come out of it, but in the end the Grandmasters will agree to a draw, and I suspect your legal cases might have hard mountains to climb."

"That's true." said Muscone "So... what do you think about this State Budget business?"

"Between you, me, and the double cheeseburgers," I said, "if the State Supreme Court rules they have to have a Budget passed this year... it's going to be a seriously ugly situation, and a huge threat to the People of this State... and most of them have no idea how bad the threat is going to be..."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

After lunch I stopped by Sheriff Griswold's office in City Hall, as he had requested for me to do.

"Have a seat, Crowbar." he said as I came in and looked around the office. He'd hung up his citations from when he'd been a Police Officer, and there were pictures of him and his wife, a young Charlie and the now-famous one of him, Charlie, and the Governor in the Hospital, and a framed woven icon of the Clan of the Crowbar which I'd given him for Christmas. I'd also given Teresa, Todd, and Teddy Franklin similar woven icons.

"I just wanted to tell you," he said, "that the Governor appreciates you letting me, and therefore him, know about the Legislature's plans regarding that State Constitutional clause. It's given him and his team time to formulate plans of action."

"Is he going to oppose it in the State Supreme Court?" I asked.

"No, he's all for it." the Sheriff said, which shocked me for a second.

"Oh." I said, realizing it after a moment's thought. "He thinks he can win with it, just like Woodburn thinks she can beat him over the head with it."

"Not much gets past you, Crowbar." growled Griswold. "Yes, he thinks that since he's a lame duck with nothing to lose, it's the politicians of both parties that stand to lose the most. You think he's right?"

"No sir." I said. "It's the People of the State who will suffer the most. This situation is a very real and present danger to us ordinary folks if a Budget is not passed."

I don't think Chief Griswold expected that out of me. "Surely you're not suggesting that Val should compromise his principles, are you?"

"No sir." I said. "Not his core principles of standing for what is right and opposing what is wrong, like he's done with Illegal Immigration. I'm just saying he should not look at it the way Katherine Woodburn and the Swamp Frog Republican Establishment are looking at it, that the lives of the People of the State are mere bargaining chips in a political power game."

"You know, it's funny." said the Sheriff. "There was a time, when Val was in business and then climbing the political ladder, that he was regarded as the consensus builder, and approached by both sides as being able to get deals done. Now... both sides despise him and are doing all they can to destroy him. I'm not sure exactly what happened, there..."

"He did two things, sir." I said. "First, he did the right thing instead of the politically correct and politically expedient things. He did what was best for the People instead of what enriched the politicians and expanded their power."

"That's fer damn sure." said Griswold. "What's the other thing?"

"He told the truth about what the politicians are doing." I said. "Nothing engenders the hatred of those bastards more than stripping away the carefully worded phrases and politically correct language that the politicians and their Media allies have built up for so long, and exposing the light of truth to their actions."