It didn't take much to make Steve Barkin angry.
Strike that. Anger was unprofessional. Even a minor disruption to Middleton High School's operations resulted in Vice-Principal Steve Barkin exerting aggressive and decisive command authority to address such disruption. However, he wasn't used to dealing with disruptions of this magnitude. Being called to the school last night to deal with a crime was bad enough. Learning that a student had assaulted a teacher had left him quivering with rage and carefully cataloging the punishments that he could level, beyond what the courts clearly would. Learning that the attacker was one of his favorite students and one he considered a role-model to younger girls had left him bewildered. Now, he was learning a possible reason for Kim Possible taking the action that she had...and he was stunned into speechlessness.
"We are only at the accusation stage at this moment," the government agent, Agent Smith, who had accompanied Officer Hobble of the Middleton Police Department, informed him. "So I hope you can understand that we require cooperation to gather any evidence to be found."
"Of course," Barkin managed to find his voice, and a sense of purpose. "The classrooms, hallways and laboratories are completely covered by security cameras, and we maintain a backup of thirty days. It will be a simple task to review last night's activities."
He immediately flinched over what he may have called an activity, but went to work at his computer, calling up the appropriate file.
"The playback feature for the software can be crude," he admitted. "So it may take me some time to find the exact time frame we need."
"Understood," Officer Hobble assured him. "However, while you do that, could I arrange to speak to anyone else who was taking the evening science labs? It's a delicate situation, as we'll be needing to contact their parents or guardians rather than them."
"I can provide the names and contact numbers after checking the camera footage," Barkin assured him.
"Don't you have an assistant who could do this?" Agent Smith asked him.
"Let's involve as few people as possible," the Vice-Principal insisted. "If these accusations are false, I want to limit the damage to my teacher's reputation."
"And she is innocent until and unless proven guilty," Officer Hobble nodded his approval.
"I'm glad we're in agreement," Barkin rumbled. "Ah! Here we are! Last night, about the time the lab started. I have a split screen of a camera inside the lab, in the hall outside the lab, and the nearest entrance."
He activated the appropriate control and turned his screen so that his two visitors could see the display. For a short time, the lab was dark and the hallway was deserted. Barkin got up and closed his office door, then returned to his seat. By this time he finished his chore, the screen showed Miss Allen showing up in the lab. The teacher opened a storage room and pushed out a cart, on which the experimental drone could be seen. The young woman returned to her desk and shortly afterwards, the Possible Twins appeared at the entrance. One of them used his phone. Inside the lab, Miss Allen looked at her phone, left the lab and walked down the hall to the entrance.
Barkin discreetly put his finger on the stop button. If the boys' accusations proved to be true, he had no intention of watching any more than he needed to.
On the screen, the teacher let the boys into the building and looked around the outside while the boys ran down the hall and into the lab. The twins quickly pulled out tools and went to work, while the teacher returned to the lab at a more sedate pace. She stepped into the lab, touched something on her phone and the lab camera suddenly showed only static.
The three men exchanged a glance. On screen, the time display skipped forward, as the system didn't record inactivity. It took only moments, but the screen showed a time lapse of nearly half an hour, before one of the twins, his clothing disheveled, exited the lab and walked down the hall and out of camera coverage. Minutes later, he returned and re-entered the lab. Again, moments in real time reflected over twenty minutes passing on the screen before before the entrance camera showed Kim Possible approach the outside door, while talking on her communication device. She pulled the door open and walked down the hall. When she opened the lab door, she froze for a moment. The camera angle didn't show her expression, but she quickly recovered and charged into the lab. There was another time-skip of a couple of minutes before the boys burst out and ran down the hall, one of them apparently pressing controls on Kim's communication device.
"That's the time dispatch received the call," Officer Hobble noted.
The boys waited at the door until two policemen arrived. The boys led the cops back down the hall and into the lab, whose camera still showed only static. A few minutes went by again, and one of the policemen exited the lab, leading a handcuffed Kim Possible. The heroine and the law enforcement officer walked down the hallway and out of the entrance, and two more policemen and an ambulance crew with a gurney showed up. Another policeman exited the lab, and the building, leading the boys. There was then another time skip before the ambulance crew, with Miss Allen on the Gurney, exited first the lab, then the building.
Yet another time skip showed Mr. Barkin himself arrive and go into the lab. Then, there was another time skip before the last two policemen and the vice principal, carrying a bag, exited the lab.
"I secured Miss Allen's possessions," Barkin informed the other two men. "I locked them in the school safe so that I could return..."
He was struck speechless when, as the footage showed him leaving the area towards the office, the lab camera suddenly came back on.
"That seems to be quite convenient," Officer Hobble noted. "Can you go back a week and show the previous lab?"
"Gladly," Barkin nodded his head. It took him a few minutes to find the proper time. "It takes place every Thursday Night," he explained, to avoid an awkward silence while he did so. "I remember my IT guy saying that there were occasional problems with some of the cameras but I...here we are!"
Again, he started the footage, which showed Miss Allen stepping into a darkened lab, turning on the lights and pushing the drone...visibly in an earlier state of assembly from the last viewing..out of the storage room. Again, the teacher seated herself at the desk and busied herself at a computer for several minutes before the boys appeared at the entrance. Again, the teacher reacted to her phone, went down the hall to let the boys in. This time, she offered a short wave to someone out of view while the boys sprinted down the hall, into the lab and went to work. Again, the teacher walked back down the hall, phone in hand, and entered the lab. She closed the door and went to the boys, clearly listening to something they were telling her about the drone. She smiled, nodded and turned to her desk...
And the camera showed static again. After a time skip of just over half an hour one of the boys...Barkin couldn't tell which...left the lab and walked a different direction than the entrance, only to return minutes later.
"The nearest bathroom is in that direction," he explained after mentally reviewing the layout of that part of the school. "I can call up other cameras..."
"I don't think that's necessary at this time," Agent Smith told him.
Another time skip of twenty minutes saw one of the boys...Barkin assumed it was the other one...slip out and also head towards what he assumed was the bathroom and return. A few minutes later, Miss Allen left the lab and followed the same path, at a more sedate pace. Shortly after she returned to the lab, the camera came back on, showing her observing the boys as they attached components and used diagnostic equipment that Barkin wouldn't pretend to understand. After perhaps forty minutes, during which the drone actually rose off of the cart for a few minutes, one of the boys answered his phone.
The teacher helped the boys clean up the lab and push the drone back into the storage room. She accompanied the boys down the hall and to the entrance, waving to someone unseen as the teens ran out of the coverage area. Then, she returned to the lab, shut off the lights and walked down the hall in a different direction than the entrance being recorded.
"That camera failure was too convenient to be coincidence," Agent Smith noted. "Can we go back another week?"
"We have it," Barkin assured him. "And the week before that. Just let me call it up..."
"You said something about your IT Department saying there was trouble with some of the cameras," Officer Hobble prompted, while he was working.
"Only in this lab," Barkin answered, while working the controls. "It was only during the evening labs. I assumed that whatever they were working on was generating some electric fields that affected them. They're wireless cameras, it saved us a ton of money on installation."
"And the occasional failure didn't bother you?" The policeman asked.
"There was never any vandalism or theft," Barkin told him. "Ah, here we are!"
This time, he included a camera that covered the entrance to the bathrooms that he assumed the subjects were using. Again, the recording showed Miss Allen pulling the project out of the storage room, receiving a call and collecting the boys; waving to someone out of the camera's view before returning to the lab. Minutes after her return, the lab camera went to static. Again, after a time skip, one of the twins left the lab. This time, the audience could see that the boy hurried to the bathroom, went inside, came back out a couple of minutes later and hurried back to the lab. Another time skip and one of the twins...again Barkin assumed it was the other...left the lab, used the toilet and returned to the lab. After that, the teacher exited the lab, went to the ladies room, and returned. Minutes later, the lab picture returned while the three worked on the project. Again, one of the boys answered a call, which prompted the teacher to have them clean up their work before taking them back to the entrance and greeting someone out of coverage.
"I've got one more week recorded," Barkin told his guests. "Just give me a minute, but I think we know what we're going to see."
"Didn't it bother you that because of the camera malfunction, you had students with a teacher, completely unsupervised?" Agent Smith asked him.
"I didn't see this as a problem," he shrugged. "It was a woman teacher, after all. Ah, here we go!"
Again, the recording showed the teacher preparing the project, greeting the twins and returning to the lab. Again, the camera inside the lab malfunctioned shortly after her return; the three took staggered trips to the lavatory, and then the camera started to work again.
"We'll need backups of all cameras," Officer Hobble told him.
"I'll get right on it," Mr. Barkin assured the man, using the appropriate controls to record the data. "It...seems obvious to me that the boys' accusations have some merit. Even if...what they claimed...isn't happening, something fishy is. I'll give you the data from the cameras we saw today, before you leave, and our entire backup as soon as I can make a copy."
"We'll need to examine that camera, as well," the policeman told him. "But I'll get one of my technical wizards to do it. Don't touch it until then."
"No problem," Barkin assured him. "I want to get to the bottom of this as quickly as you do."
"You said that you secured Miss Allen's possessions," the agent reminded him. "Are they still in the school safe?"
"Yes," he nodded. "To the best of my understanding, Miss Allen hasn't been released from the hospital at this time. They will remain there until she either requests them delivered to her, or she comes here herself to get them."
"Don't turn them over to her or to anybody," the agent instructed him. "We will obtain a warrant for them. I noticed that every time the screen went blank or reactivated, she was using her phone."
"Her phone is one of the items in the safe," Barkin nodded, noting the agent's suspicions. "I'll see to it that it stays there until you show up with the warrant." He paused a moment. "Could I make a request of you?"
"Of course," Officer Hobble assured him. "What would you like?"
"To contain this as much as possible while still gathering such evidence that you need," Barkin told him. "Last fall, there were over a dozen students involved in the evening lab. After the semester break, there were only four, including the Possible twins. As of the start of this quarter, it was only those boys. Could I ask you to speak to the other two students; Justine Flanner and Felix Renton, before any others? If you can get what you need from the two of them, it will mean fewer students involved in this." He heaved a heartfelt sigh. "The rumors are going to be bad enough the way things are."
"That sounds reasonable," the policeman told him.
"I've included their parents' contact information on this flash drive," he handed the device over. "As well as the files we saw today. Could I request one more piece of information?"
"You can always request," Officer Hobble told him.
"When will Miss Possible and Miss Allen be formally charged?" He asked.
"Miss Possible is probably being charged as we speak," the officer told him. "She has her parents, and legal council, with her. As for Miss Allen, the Medical Center's schedule means that she won't be given a clean bill of health, or released, until at least 10:30. The formal charge will happen then."
"If possible, I'd like to be there," Barkin flinched at his own words, but stood straight. "If she did what it appears that she did, it's unforgivable but she's still a teacher, one of mine. I'd rather not let her face this without someone at least trying to stand between her and the torches and pitchforks."
"I understand that, as well," Officer Hobble stated. "I'll see to it that you are present. I don't think I have to say that it would be best if she didn't come back to this school unless this turns out to be a major misunderstanding."
"She's on a leave of absence, officially now," Barkin assured them. "Is there anything else?"
"Not at this time," the officer assured him. "We'll be in touch."
After seeing his guests to the door, Steve Barkin returned to the office and made sure that the staff understood that Miss Allen's possessions were to remain in the safe unless the police showed up with a warrant...and he was to be called if and when this happened. Then, he wondered what to do next.
He wasn't about to interfere with an investigation, so he wouldn't speak to any of Miss Allen's students. However, he could try to limit the rumors. The students at Middleton High ran the gamut from geniuses to idiots, so some of them were going to try to piece together what had taken place.
"Mr. Barkin?" The receptionist's voice sounded over his intercom.
"Yes?" He answered.
"We just got a call from Miss Allen, at the hospital," the woman told him. "She's asking if we can get her phone to her, as she wants to call her parents and update them on her situation."
Steve Barkin shook his head, this wasn't going to be pleasant.
It shouldn't have been this hard.
Her daughter was being charged with assault and trespassing. It took every bit of Anne Possible's discipline to not scream at the injustice of it all, but that would do no good. At least Agent Smith was also here, offering a bit more moral support and making sure that Kim's rights were being respected. Still, Anne could see that it was draining on Kim. The younger woman could only nod when the policeman asked her if she understood the charges. To her surprise, Anne could only nod, as well. It came to Agent Smith actually saying that Kim and Anne understood the charges.
"You're being released to your parents' and Global Justice's authority," the officer told Kim. "Consider yourself under probation...grounded if you will. There will be no more missions, no after school activities. We'll see if we can arrange for you to attend school but until that time, you are confined to your parents' home."
"We understand," Agent Smith told the man. "Could I have a few minutes with my client?"
"Of course," the officer gave a look that said the clearly wasn't comfortable charging Kim, but a job was a job.
"Come with me," he instructed the two redheads. "I'd like for the two of you to observe while the boys have their interviews.
He led them to an observation room, while he joined her husband and sons. After some light pleasantries, a detective began the questioning.
"Could you describe the level of contact and language between this teacher and the two of you," the woman asked. "At least while there were other students or teachers present?"
"When there were others at the labs, she didn't really do anything wrong," Jim answered.
"She would pat us, or the others, on the back when we did something good," Tim added. "But that was about it."
"Okay, can you tell me when things started to become inappropriate?" She asked them. "Tell me anything, you won't be in trouble and it's important for us to know."
The boys shared a look, somehow communicating in a way that Anne knew she would never understand.
"It started after we built a small scale model," Tim told her.
"The engines we had for it were actually too small for the scale model," Jim added. "Unless we souped things up a little."
"We...ugh..had some JP1000 rocket fuel," Tim admitted, then both boys gave their father a guilty look.
"We'll worry about that later," James managed to say, although his scowl spoke volumes.
"We kept it in a safety container!" Jim insisted. "But that was the problem!"
"We were pretty sure that if someone reviewed the footage of us using it on our prototype, we might get in trouble for having it," Tim continued.
"We could sneak it into the lab," Jim informed the detective. "But anyone seeing us transferring it from the safety container to the scale model...safely...would be able to tell that it wasn't ordinary fuel."
"We told Miss Allen, and she said that she would be willing to work with it, if we could find some way to fool the camera in the lab," Tim finished.
"So, what did you do?" The detective asked them.
"It was child's play," Tim insisted.
"We installed a local jammer on the lab camera," Jim explained. "And installed an app on Miss Allen's phone."
"The jammer scrambled the camera's feed to the recording devices," Tim told her. "And pretty much all cell phone signals, as well."
"Except for the app itself," Jim added. "We made that work on an ultrasonic, audio frequency."
"Limited range and fail-safe," Tim gloated. "Once Miss Allen activated the app, she would have to keep her phone in range of the camera. Even if she forgot to deactivate the app, the camera would re-establish its link with the school server when she left the lab."
"That's when things started to change," Jim admitted, now both twins were somber.
"When we finished the jammer and app, and proved it worked, she gave us both a kiss on the cheek and told us we could really have some fun," Tim added.
"We didn't think anything of the pecks on the cheek," Jim told the detective. "Heck, Kim did that two Christmases ago."
"I think it was the next lab that she asked us if we had girlfriends," Tim said, his eyes squinted in concentration. "When we said no, she asked us why a couple of cute, smart boys like us didn't."
"Who has time for girlfriends?" Jim shook his head. "We have things to build, games to play and a sister to torment."
Anne noted that Kim flashed her first genuine smile since the previous night at that one.
"We finished the small scale model the next lab," Tim reported. "And it was a success!"
"Even though Miss Allen spent a lot of time asking us what we would do with girlfriends if we had them," Jim added. "It didn't stop her from understanding what we were doing, even flying the model around the lab with a big smile on her face."
"Now it was time to build the prototype," Tim said. "But she asked us to keep the jammer in place, even though we were using fuel that doesn't have special safety regulations. She said that people looking at the security footage might not understand that what we were doing was safe, and might shut down the lab."
"That's when things started to get a little different," Jim informed the detective. "She liked to stand by us, with her hand on a shoulder, while we were working."
"It didn't seem weird at the time," Tim shrugged. "But you told us to tell you when things got...different."
"And you're doing fine," the detective noted. "I know that this might be hard, but please continue."
"I think it was around then that Miss Allen asked mom and dad if it would be easier if she gave us rides home from the lab, rather than have them pick us up," Tim continued. "Dad said that they didn't want to impose on her time any more than they already were."
"I think that it was the next lab when she hugged us both from behind," Jim told the detective. "And she asked us how that felt." He blushed and couldn't meet the detective's, or his father's eyes.
"It felt nice," Tim took up the tale, although he was almost as flustered as his brother. "Miss Allen isn't very tall, for an adult, so she isn't all that much taller than we are. It's wasn't like when mom or Kim gave us a hug. Miss Allen ran her hands..." he ran his hands from his stomach to his shoulders, demonstrating.
Anne felt herself tense up. It was bad enough listening to her sons talk about this; but the act they were describing was one of her ways of letting James know that she was in the mood.
"She said that this was what it felt like to have a girlfriend," Jim shrugged off his shyness to continue the story. "And asked us if we still thought that girls were a waste of time."
"Most of the guys at the high school turn off their brains whenever they're around girls," Tim shook his head. "But this felt really nice, so I said so. She asked if we'd like to learn how to make girls feel nice, like she was making us feel nice. It sounded good, so she...showed me...while Jim worked on the prototype."
"How did she show you?" The detective asked.
Anne bristled even more as her son detailed how the teacher had him spoon up behind her and guided his hands over her body. Again, it wasn't that different than what she and James did.
How could something so loving and right, when she did it with her husband, be so warped and perverted?
"Then she had me do it," Jim took up the tale. "She's taller than we are, so she had me stand on a little step and...well...kiss her neck at the same time. She said that it really felt good. It made me happy to know that I was making her feel good."
"The next lab, we did a lot of the same thing," Tim said. "But she had us slide our hands under her clothes and she slid her hands under ours. The next lab..."
"She had us take off her clothes, while she took off ours," Jim blurted out, when his twin faltered. "The lab after that, she said that we now knew how to get her ready, so she..."
Neither twin was ready to continue.
"I get the idea," the detective told them. "Did she ever bring up a reason for this, other than teaching you how to make a girl feel good?"
"I don't think so," Jim scratched at his chin. "Like what?"
"Maybe how much money your parents were making," the detective prompted. "Or if your parents got along well? Did she ever talk about how well this drone would sell, if you got it running, or about your sister's missions?"
Anne was curious about that question.
"Whenever Kim had a mission that made it on television, Miss Allen would ask if she was okay," Jim answered. "But then again, a lot of our friends from middle school would ask the same thing."
"She asked us to come up with as many possible uses for the drone that we could think of," Tim added. "But she was doing that back in the concept phase."
"Did she ever suggest that you should be paying her, or doing favors for her, because of what you were doing in the lab?" The detective asked them.
"No," the twins answered, and shook their heads, in unison.
"Did she mention that all of you would be in trouble if this was found out?" The detective asked.
"Yes," Tim answered.
"She said that she could go to jail, and that we'd be in trouble," Jim answered.
"So she said that it would be our secret," they finished, together.
"I think that we've had enough for this session," Agent Smith announced. The detective looked at him for a moment or two, then nodded.
"We'll probably be talking some more," the policewoman told the boys...and James. "We're still uncovering evidence and may need the two of you to answer more questions to clarify what the investigation digs up. This wasn't that bad, was it?"
"No ma'am," the boys answered.
"Today was probably the worst," she smiled at them. "I can't promise that it was, but it should get easier from now on. Why don't you meet your mother and sister at the front door?"
Anne was no fool, and neither was her daughter. Both knew that the last remark was aimed at them, so they left their observation room. The first thing that Anne noticed was a group of two uniformed policemen, and one young man wearing a civilian suit, sitting around a screen and discussing the case. The brain surgeon had had enough of it for one day and decided to leave the professionals to their work. She chose to not address them or interrupt them in any way. Instead, she led her daughter towards the front door. She came to a dead stop when she heard one of the three make a not-quite-quiet-enough comment.
"Man, where were the teachers like that when I was in school?"
A/N: Sorry for the delay in posting. Last week, I had a family function that involved a 1700 mile round trip, and I wound up sick.
Again, my thanks to Joe Stoppinghem, for beta reading.
Best wishes; daccu65