Page 8 - Labelle Gramercy, Detective

Road Kill

get this over quickly for her and send her home. She came in,
snuffling and red-eyed, and sat down with barely a glance at the
imposing figure behind the desk.
“This is Captain Fassner, Sherrie. He’s going to ask you a few
questions about what happened this morning. Don’t be afraid: you
haven’t done anything wrong.”
She gulped and looked at me imploringly. I shrugged.
“Your name is Sherrie Cook?” Fassner’s rasping voice shocked her
into wary attentiveness. He elicited her age, her address and other
routine information very slowly, giving her plenty of time to think
between questions. That helped her gain a bit of composure, I think.
Which she needed once he directed her to recount the significant
event in the morning’s field trip.
“Uh, we—that is, Labelle and I—we were walking along a path
looking for some kind of plants when I heard something and then I
saw it was Mr. Ewidge way over on the side of another hill. He was
waving, I guess he had seen us, and then he pointed at something off
in the other direction. So I looked over there but I didn’t see
anything. And then he started moving really fast, like he was excited,
toward the edge of the hill he was on. And—and then—” she broke
down and cried.
Fassner sat impassively; but slowly, as if they had a life of their
own, his fingers began beating a muffled tattoo on my desk pad. I
found some Kleenex and offered them to Sherrie.
“Yes,” prompted Fassner, after she had blown and blotted. “What
did you see next?”
She grimaced and blurted out, “He tripped! He just tripped and
went right over the cliff. He screamed and then it got really quiet. I
don’t know what I did then. Started running back to the bus where
we were supposed to meet for lunch, I guess. It was awful! Mr.
Ewidge wasn’t a bad teacher! It shouldn’t have happened to him!
Why didn’t he watch where he was going?”
Her voice had risen to near-hysteria pitch, and I went to her side.
Fassner frowned at me, and I remembered his admonition not to
interfere. I stepped back. Plenty of Kleenex left.
But she didn’t need it. “Thank you, Miss Cook.” The policeman
gestured toward the door. “You may go. By the way, are these your
glasses?”

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