Malus Genius 4

Mr. Kopeck tossed his copy of "Claudius the God" down beside him on the couch, and stared at the gym bag in the center of his living room. It was no use trying to read over the demon's steady stream of invective.

"Foolish mortal! I will torment thee beyond imagining!" snarled the demon in Latin.

Mr. Kopeck frowned. "Yeah, you talk real big for somebody in a gym bag."

Twenty-four hours of hearing the demon cursing at him had strengthened his resolve considerably. He was still afraid of it, but he was damned if he was going to let it push him around.

"Te exanimabo!" snarled the demon. "Testiculos tuos dentibus sanguinolentis conteram!"

Mr. Kopeck put his feet up on the coffee table. "Kiss my entire ass."

The gym bag fairly shook with rage.

Mr. Kopeck smiled in satisfaction. If he was going to go to hell anyway, he thought, he might as well enjoy the trip.

The sound of the doorbell halted the demon in mid-curse. Mr. Kopeck got to his feet, wondering who could be at his door. Usually when students toilet-papered his front yard, they just honked their car horns.

He opened the front door, and froze.

"Oh my God," he said finally. "Kandee."

The blonde smiled up at him. "Mr. Kopeck, you are, like, totally cute when you're surprised."

She was wearing a short pleated skirt and a skin-tight top that was just abbreviated enough for him to see the ring in her navel. Mr. Kopeck swallowed, and found his voice again. "Quick," he said, reaching out to haul her inside. "Get in here before someone sees you."

Kandee's nose crinkled happily as he yanked her in and shut the door. "Mr. Kopeck! I was hoping you'd be glad to see me, but you are sooo the eager beaver."

His lips thinned into a grim line. He took one look at the living room, remembered the demon in the gym bag, and marched Kandee in the other direction, toward his kitchen. If Principal Waters got wind of this visit, he thought, there was going to be hell to pay.

"Sit down," he said, pushing her toward a dinette chair.

She sat.

"Kandee," he said, stabbing an accusing finger in her direction, "do you have any idea how much trouble you've already gotten me into?"

Blue eyes blinked up at him innocently. "Me? Like, what did I do?"

Mr. Kopeck clasped his hands behind his back, and glared at her. "You know very well what you did! First you proposition me -- "

"Proposition you? Like, no way, Mr. K." She tucked her chin and looked up at him through her lashes, a hint of a grin on her lips. "Or can I call you, you know, Larry, now?"

"You most certainly may not call me Larry. And I think 'I'll do anything if you change that D to a B, Mr. Kopeck. Anything, anything at all,' is pretty clear. I haven't seen such a blatant come-on since Ginger found out Gilligan was judging the Ms. Castaway contest."

"Since who was, like, what?" Kandee asked, even more confused than he'd come to expect from his weakest student.

"Never mind," he half-snarled. "That's not even the worst of it. Did you really have to go telling all your friends about your offer, making it sound like I was actually considering it?"

"Oh please." Kandee balled her fists on her shapely hips, pulling her T-shirt even tighter

He shook his head in confusion. "Look, that's beside the point. The point is, word of your little offer got back to Principal Waters. Only, the way he heard it, I propositioned you."

Kandee squealed. "Seriously? Oh, that is, like, totally hilarious!"

"Yes," said Mr. Kopeck dryly. "When he told me he wanted to fire me, I thought I was going to bust a gut."

Kandee giggled. "You are sooo funny, Larry," she said. "That's why I like you so much."

"Don't say that. And don't call me Larry."

She grinned up at him frankly, the dimples deepening in her cheeks. "But I do like you. For an old guy, you're totally hot."

He was struggling not to notice the shininess of her ash blonde hair, the pertness of her upturned nose, the taut muscles of her teenage body. She had the kind of flat stomach that made him want to reach out and run his hand over her smooth skin.

Good lord, he was old enough to be her father.

"What if someone knew you were here right now, Kandee?" he asked in a strained voice. "What if your parents knew, or Principal Waters? Can you imagine what they would think?"

"No," she said. "What?"

Mr. Kopeck counted slowly to ten. "Kandee, you should go now."

She leaned closer, her soft lips parted. "I really don't want to get cut from the cheerleading squad. But, like, the grade wasn't the only reason I offered, you know?"

The shirt she wore was cut low, so low he could almost see the tops of her nipples. Mr. Kopeck looked away hastily. "It doesn't matter why you offered, Kandee," he said stiffly. "You should go."

"Are you sure?" she asked, her voice a husky whisper.

Mr. Kopeck swallowed. "Kandee..."

They both froze as the doorbell rang for the second time that day.

****

Mr. Kopeck lived in an ordinary white clapboard house on an ordinary street in an ordinary neighborhood. As Mulder knocked, Scully noted some flaking paint on the shutters, and a spectacular display of late fall dandelions going to seed in the front lawn.

"Agent Scully?" Mr. Kopeck half-asked, obviously surprised and flustered to find them on his doorstep. He looked at her, blinked twice, then shifted his gaze. "And Agent, um..."

"Mulder," her partner supplied smoothly, slipping his badge back into his pocket. "We'd like to ask you a few questions. May we come in?"

"What? Oh. Of...of course." Mr. Kopeck stood aside and ushered them, with what looked like reluctance, into his living room. "But I told the police everything I could think of..."

"Routine follow-up, Mr. Kopeck," Scully assured him, taking in the sparse furnishings and minimalist decor. There was a gray rectangle under the window where the carpet was still its true color and deep indentations near the corner where a large piece of furniture had once plainly stood. A gym bag and some small weights were pushed under a water-ringed coffee table that matched nothing else in the room, newspapers were scattered around, and mugs and drinking glasses rested on most horizontal surfaces. The couch and matching chair had seen better days. The only conversation piece in the room was a saber-toothed tiger skull on the dusty mantle.

"Routine how?" Kopeck asked apprehensively and tucked his hands into the front pockets of his jeans. "I don't know what else I can tell you about Mrs. Chernoff's awful ... um ... accident."

"We're just finishing up the paperwork," Mulder said easily. He pulled out his notepad and pen. "I'm sure, as you said, that there isn't much you can add, but since it was your classroom, we have to conduct a formal interview. Shouldn't take more than a few minutes." He nodded toward the couch. "May we sit?"

Scully watched Mr. Kopeck's eyes swing around the room. "Sure," he said. "Sure, just let me get this junk out of..." He lifted the bag and weights and took them quickly into a room she thought must be the kitchen. "I was getting ready to go out..." His voice drifted off.

"Nervous," Mulder mouthed to her, as if he'd made some great discovery.

Of course he was nervous. People almost always got nervous when you waved a badge in their faces. Particularly, she'd noticed over the years, the innocent ones, the ones who thought they'd never have a run-in with law enforcement more interesting than a speeding ticket. "Duh," she mouthed back. That got her a smile.

"So, um..." Mr. Kopeck was standing in front of them again. "Can I get you anything?" he asked her, without so much as a glance toward her partner.

"No, thank you," Scully replied. "We don't want to tie up your Saturday, Mr. Kopeck. Especially if you were, as you say, on the way out."

"That's right," Mulder continued in a tone that was entirely too jovial. "I'm sure you've got plans. If you could just answer a few questions, we'll get out of your way."

Kopeck perched on the chair opposite them, looking decidedly uncomfortable. "I was just going to the gym. But, all right."

Mulder flipped through his notes. "You've been at Craftsbury Academy for six years, is that right?"

"Yes."

"And before that, after graduating from Boston University, you worked for Art-o-Fax?"

"Yes." Mr. Kopeck nodded. "It was the family business."

"Specializing in?"

"Reproductions."

Scully arched an eyebrow. "Reproduction?"

Kopeck shook his head and grinned a little sheepishly. "Reproductions," he said, emphasizing the final *s*. "Antiquities. Coins. Jewelry. Movie models. Fossils, real or imagined." He nodded toward the skull on the mantle. "Copies of the Declaration of Independence, the Treaty of Versailles. That sort of thing. Mainly mail order."

"And your mother sold the business after his death?"

"The time was right," Mr. Kopeck nodded. "Dad started out doing props for theatre in college, then got into movie work, doing sets, props, special effects. The business started out as a sideline, and grew from there. But it was more work than either mom or I wanted to put into it after he was gone."

"Movie work?" Mulder leaned forward, a curious gleam lighting his eyes despite the routine nature of the questioning. "Your father wouldn't happen to have been Richard Tyler Kopeck, would he?"

Mr. Kopeck looked surprised. "You've heard of him?"

Mulder nodded rapidly and scooted even farther forward, so far that Scully momentarily feared he was going to fall off the edge of his seat. "I've seen every -- " he began eagerly.

Just then he seemed to recall her presence, and that they were in the middle of and interview with a suspect. He stopped, glanced at her quickly, and then looked back down at his notes. "That is, uh..." Mulder flipped a page. "You did keep a few souvenirs from your father's business when you sold it, is that right?"

"Yes." Mr. Kopeck's frown grew. "Look, I don't see what this..."

"I don't either." Mulder gave a *what-can-you-do-about-it?* shrug. He was really playing up the Good Cop routine, Scully thought. "But I have to ask. For the report. I'm sure, being a teacher, you can understand about paperwork."

"Oh." Mr. Kopeck sounded deflated. "Yes, of course."

"You live here alone?"

His mouth twitched. "I do now."

Mulder nodded in that *been-there-done-that* way he had. "Children?"

"Just the ones I teach."

"We interviewed a Miss..." Mulder turned to her. "What was her name, Scully? Sandy? Mandy?"

Finally, Scully thought, her cue. "Kandee, I believe. Kandee Caine."

Across from them, Mr. Kopeck's jaw dropped. He glanced quickly from one of them to the other, alarm in his expression. He appeared to decide that she promised a more sympathetic ear, even if she was supposed to be the Bad Cop. "Look," he said to her in a rush, "whatever she told you, it isn't true."

Scully felt her eyebrows climb. Oh, brother. So he was hiding something after all. "And exactly which part wasn't true?"

Mr. Kopeck swallowed nervously. "All of it. Or some of it. Whatever she told you about -- about us."

"About the two of you?" Scully asked.

Mr. Kopeck had gone absolutely pale. "I never touched her -- I swear!"

Scully traded a look with Mulder.

"It's just..." Mr. Kopeck shifted his appeal to the only other man in the room. "It's just, women today -- " He shook his head in confusion.

"What about women today?" Scully asked, a little sharply.

"I wish I knew," Mr. Kopeck said, with a helpless gesture. "I grew up in this town. It used to take three dates just to get to second base, for God's sake. There used to be rules."

Scully wondered if Mulder was as baffled by all this as she was. "What does any of this have to do with you and Kandee, Mr. Kopeck?"

He shook his head. "Don't you see? This place is one of the most old-fashioned, traditional little towns you could ever hope to find - and even so, there are sixteen-year-old young women with navel piercings jumping out at a person from behind every tree."

Scully was still in the dark, but she could see Mulder nodding sagely. "Sexual politics aren't what they used to be, even in small towns."

Scully found herself struggling to catch up. She frowned at Mr. Kopeck. "So you're saying that Kandee...made a pass at you?"

"I was out of the dating scene for thirteen years and, frankly, it scares me now," said Mr. Kopeck with a troubled expression. "I'm only thirty-seven, but it seems to me things used to be different. Women used to be different."

Scully waited for Mulder to set Mr. Kopeck straight and forge ahead with the interrogation. Instead he surprised her by nodding sympathetically. "The sexual dynamic has shifted," he said. "Women have always been in charge, but now they don't even bother to pretend otherwise."

Mr. Kopeck gave Mulder a grateful look. "That's right. I knew it wasn't just me."

Mulder stuffed his notepad back in his breast pocket. "It's unsettling, given that modern man evolved from hunter-gatherers."

Again Mr. Kopeck looked at him with gratitude. "Exactly! We're supposed to be the hunters."

"Of course, we're still better off than the male black widow spider. The female of the species kills him after they mate," Mulder observed, using the rapid monotone he usually employed when spinning theories. "Or the male praying mantis. The female mantis is initially passive throughout the mating dance, letting the male make all the moves. If he seems to hesitate, however, she seizes him in her mandibles and bites off his head, the source of his sexual inhibitions. Then, as his now-headless body reflexively proceeds to mate with her like there's no tomorrow, she continues to devour him. Finally there's nothing left except his still-twitching sexual organs."

"But back to your meeting yesterday, Mr. Kopeck, we -- " Scully began, trying to bring the conversation back to the investigation.

"Yes," Mr. Kopeck replied glumly, ignoring Scully altogether, "at least we're better off than that. I sometimes think we're headed in that direction, though."

Scully clenched her jaw, biting back her growing irritation. Mulder's apparent inability to stay on topic was annoying enough all by itself. Not only that, but she sensed he intended his little side-trip into entomology as a veiled jab at her.

Enough, she thought. If Mulder was the Good Cop, that must make her the Bad Cop. She'd just put an end to this conversation. "So Mrs. Chernoff found out about your affair with Kandee?"

"No!" said Mr. Kopeck, his gaze darting to her wildly. "No, you have it all wrong. There was no affair. Kandee was worried about her grades, and rightly so, and, and...well, she propositioned me. Her exact wording was 'a lay for an A, Mr. K.'" He blushed slightly, and shot Scully an apologetic glance. "I told her in no uncertain terms that I wasn't interested, that I AM not interested, but the next thing I know I'm being called down to Principal Waters' office to explain the affair Kandee and I never had."

"I see." Scully nodded slightly. "Mr. Kopeck, when we spoke with her, Kandee implied that Mrs. Chernoff was not well liked by the students...or the staff."

He was silent for a second, absorbing this information, and then a look of horror dawned on his face. "Oh my God. You think -- don't tell me you suspect Kandee and I planned -- "

"Just routine questions, Mr. Kopeck."

"I thought you said it was an accident." He didn't look at her, instead choosing to pick at a spot on the arm of his chair. "The coroner here said it was."

"It seems to have been," Mulder reassured him. "We're just tying up a few loose ends."

"Because I would never kill anyone, and as for Kandee...well, if you knew her, you'd realize she's hardly the criminal mastermind type."

"I can believe that," Scully said dryly.

Silence fell. Then, from the kitchen, she heard a faint rustling. She could tell Mr. Kopeck heard it, too, because he sat bolt upright.

"Is there someone else here?" she asked.

"No!"

"Because I thought I heard something -- "

"It's a rat," said Mr. Kopeck quickly.

"A rat?"

"A rat. Absolutely."

They all looked at one another.

After a moment Mr. Kopeck sighed and said, "Okay, I admit it. I have a confession to make. Kandee was here earlier. I hustled her out the back door when you rang the doorbell, but it's not what you think. I never expected her to drop by, and I asked her to leave as soon as she arrived. Absolutely nothing happened. If I seem jumpy, it's just that this has been a tough week for me. My job is on the line."

Mulder, the Good Cop, nodded. "Thank you for telling us."

Mr. Kopeck stood up. "Now is there anything else you need to ask me? Because I'd really like to get to the gym."

Scully shook her head. "Nothing else."

"Good."

She and Mulder both got to their feet, and Mr. Kopeck ushered them the few steps to his front door. "I'm glad you understand about Kandee," he said, with a nervous smile. "Even a false accusation of impropriety..." His voice trailed off.

"It's the sort of thing that could ruin a career," Mulder agreed with a nod.

Mr. Kopeck sighed. "Even if it is only a teaching career."

They shook hands and he closed the door behind them.

A few seconds later, as she and Mulder were getting in the rental car they'd left parked in the driveway, Mr. Kopeck's garage door opened. The man must be a regular fiend for working out, Scully thought. She could see him hurrying into his Camry, his weights in one hand and his blue leather Nike bag slung over his shoulder.

"Did you ever work out, Mulder?" she asked.

He shot her a strange look. "I still do."

She raised an eyebrow. "Do you?" she said, fastening her seatbelt. "Huh."

****

End 04/10

Plausible Deniability & Amanda Wilde (MaybeAmanda)
Address:
pdeniability@hotmail.com / maybe_a@rocketmail.com

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