Chapter 5

Corporal Andres Mesa, Monday, August 14, 2006

My car was nicer than Javier's, so we had decided that I would drive to school. I arrived at his house about an hour before school was supposed to start. Javier was in the kitchen eating cornflakes.

"You're here a little early," he remarked.

"I figured we'd drive past the Scott house and see what their morning routine is."

"How's the stakeout going?"

"We've definitely established a pattern of movement that's consistent with something fishy, but we haven't got definite ids on the people in the house. According to the phone book, they have two kids, but we haven't seen either of them."

"Are the kids in school?"

"We don't know yet, but if they are, they'll be leaving soon."

"Let's go." He left his half-eaten bowl of cornflakes and got his backpack.

I punched the directions into the GPS and we drove to the Scott residence. Next door was a much larger house with a high fence. I waved at Larry Oquendo, who was parked across the street. He drove off; our being here would give him an opportunity to change cars. We parked in his space and waited.

After a few minutes a school bus stopped in front of the house and two kids got on. They both looked high-school aged.

"It must be going to the public school," Javier remarked, "St. Mary's doesn't have busses."

"You think we should follow it?"

He looked at his watch, "We don't have time, tell Larry to get the license plate this afternoon."

"Alright," I called Larry and told him what we'd seen, and we drove off.

We got to school just as the train was pulling in. Since moving from Adeline to Apertus, the school had a ridiculously large catchment area, and Bill Weems had built a light rail line that stopped at the old campus, just to make the commute easier. The school had still lost students, most of whom probably weren't excited about the whole naked bit, but had made up the difference with new students from as far afield as Orlando. Hunter's boyfriend was getting off, and we followed him onto the school grounds. He met up with Hunter, who helped him stripped off at his locker.

I could see where they were going, and as interesting as it was to watch it probably wouldn't be of any use to the case at hand, so I went to the auditorium. They were holding a school-wide assembly to kick off the first year as an all-Program school. The new principal stepped up to the mic and started giving an inspirational speech about the benefits of The Program and what an honor it was to be the first nudist or, as she put it, "expanded Program" high-school in the world. I took the opportunity to scan the room, but no one looked suspicious. I'd read somewhere that making kids go to school naked stripped away the artificial barriers imposed by clothing and fashion and revealed the true person underneath, but all it did now was make the students indistinguishable from one another; an anonymous mass of teenage flesh.

The 'Program Coordinator, ' who was also Mrs. Weems, stepped up to the mic and started giving the details of how The Program would work in practice. There would be no more 'reasonable requests, ' and the tradition of requesting 'relief' would be replaced by a five-minute extension to the breaks between classes, during which students could relieve themselves or each other. However, everything that took place was to be consensual on the part of all parties involved. This would be closely monitored by the school staff, backed up by a network of cameras installed everywhere in the school, including the bathrooms.

That was going to make my job a lot harder. Usually most on-campus drug use takes place in the bathroom, and I had formed vague plans of hiding out in a stall until I heard a deal going down and then bursting out with my gun drawn and demanding information. I'd have to figure out where kids went to smoke; that would be the next logical place.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Weems was going on about 'service hours.' Instead of whoever was in The Program in a given week being dragged out of class for every school project that required a naked kid, each student would be required to complete a certain number of hours of service to the school. These hours could be arranged with specific clubs or classroom teachers. I suspected the photography club would have to get busy to get everyone's hours in. The presentation ended with another paean to the wonders of the human body, and we were dismissed.