The Secret Society of The Great Pumpkin Page 6

  Chapter 5 – Report

  “Allen, get in here,” Master Sergeant Thompson yelled from inside his office. The noise boomed out his office and down the hall to where Sergeant Allen sat near the receptionist’s kiosk.

  “That doesn’t sound good,” the receptionist said without looking up from her word processor.

  Allen stood and then marched down the hall to the Master Sergeant’s office.

  Boom Boom Boom, Allen banged with the base of his closed fist on the doorframe.

  “Enter,” Thompson yelled.

  “Sergeant Allen reporting as ordered,” Allen said after centering himself in front of the Master Sergeant’s desk, snapping to attention.

  “At ease,” Thompson said, looking up at Allen, unimpressed. “I need a goddamn report Allen.”

  “I thought you wanted to be updated on Monday.”

  “I want the report now.”

  “Permission to sit down, Master Sergeant?”

  “Denied. The report?”

  “Yes Master Sergeant. Sergeant Cano and I have been working to get to the bottom of this Great Pumpkin thing and every time we confront a cadet they refuse to talk. We were thinking maybe you could talk to Cadet Schroeder who had the jar of shit in his car. We know he knows something. Maybe you could bring him in and question him.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “Why, why not?”

  “Because Cadet Schroeder just withdrew from the Corps of Cadets and dropped out of the fucking university as of yesterday. That’s why not, Allen. Now what the fuck would explain that?”

  “I don’t know Master Sergeant. All I did was ask him why I found a jar of shit in his car. I asked him what he knew about The Great Pumpkin. He didn’t say a word, not one fucking word. He just sat there looking like a smart-ass freshman drill team cadet.”

  “And then what happened?”

  Sergeant Cano followed him a little to see who he would go talk to next.”

  “And then what happened?”

  “That’s pretty much it. We haven’t had time to do anything else. We looked through some cadet files. That’s it.”

  “So you talked to a cadet and less than 48 hours later he drops out?” Thompson asked.

  “I asked a cadet about The Great Pumpkin and less than 48 hours later he dropped out. What does that tell you, Master Sergeant?”

  “What the fuck does it tell you Allen?”

  “It tells me we pulled on the right string,” Allen said.

  “How does pulling this string stop The Great Pumpkin?”

  “To be honest, it probably won’t. I was hoping we could get more info from Cadet Schroeder. Maybe we can talk to Cadet Franklin and the others.”

  “What have you got on them?” Thompson asked.

  “Based on the few files we pulled, it looks like there are a number of junior cadets who give out merits possibly related to The Great Pumpkin in September and October every year. Freshmen and sophomores get merits from the juniors. Cadets stop earning these merits when they become juniors and they stop giving out these merits when they become seniors.”

  “And they’re earning merits for what?”

  “I think they earn merits for any kind of funky shit they collect in the jars like the one I found and the other ones I saw in their cars.”

  “Why would they keep jars of filthy shit in their cars?” Thompson asked.

  “They don’t keep the jars in their cars. They keep them in their dorm rooms. When we announced the health and welfare room inspection, they moved the jars from their rooms to their cars. I stayed close by one the cars and saw freshman Cadet Patterson taking a jar back inside the dorm later that day after the inspection.”

  “You’re saying Cadet Patterson has a jar of shit in his dorm room right now?”

  “Definitely,” Allen said.

  “Let’s go look and see.”

  “I thought you said the General said we couldn’t, Master Sergeant.”

  “He said you couldn’t. Spot-checking dorm rooms is part of my job.”

  Allen saw the glint, that gleam in Thompson’s eyes again, just a touch of crazy.

  “Well howdy fucking do,” Thompson said, holding up the edge of a blanket, looking under Cadet Patterson’s bed. “There’s your jar of shit Allen, just like you said.”

  “Let’s not touch it. Can you see what’s in it?”

  “Flashlight,” Thompson said using an attachment to his key chain. “Looks like some kind of dead animal. Maybe a roadkill skunk. Nasty fucking cadets,” he said shaking his head.

  Allen looked around the room and opened a desk drawer. “Merits,” he said holding up several small white papers, “ten merits in one week.”

  “That’s definitely an unusually high number of merits,” Thompson said. “That’s the going rate for a dead skunk? What next?”

  “We leave everything just like it is. Nobody knows we were here. We check out the cadet that wrote these merits and see what other merits he’s giving out.”

  “You check out the cadet,” Thompson said. “I want a full update on Monday.”

  “I asked the platoon to meet today because I need to find out what you all know,” Allen said after sharing every shred of evidence he had collected, facts, opinions, and speculation.

  “We probably don’t know as much as you think we do,” Sergeant Cameron said. “Four years I’ve been here, I’ve seen a lot of weird cadet shit, but I’ve never seen anything as secretive as The Great Pumpkin. I don’t think any of us have.”

  “I’ve run into nothing but dead ends for the last two weeks. It’s one week ‘til Halloween,” Allen said. “Does anybody have any ideas? Did anybody ever see anything weird? Most of y’all have been here two or more years, working with these cadets, training with these cadets, living with these cadets. Maybe something, anything.”

  “So you’re saying it’s juniors, sophomores, and freshmen. We could just start shaking them down one by one,” Sergeant Phillips said.

  “That won’t work,” Allen said. “The cadets don’t talk and if you press them hard enough, they drop out. The General won’t let us do that, and there are too many possible cadets.”

  “Then we need a way to isolate and focus on just the ones that are the real leads,” Sergeant Simmons said.

  “We need a trend analysis,” Sergeant Reed said. “I’m working on a data analytics team and we did a trend analysis to predict the likelihood of teenagers to start smoking.”

  Sergeant Cano said, “We started a simple trend analysis looking at merits.”

  Reed said, “Maybe we can dig a little deeper. We need the cadet files.”

  “All of them?” Allen asked.

  “No. Just a sample,” Reed said, “like all the A last names and all the S last names. A sample is all we need to build a database.”

  “I can get the files,” Allen said.

  “Let’s make it a party,” Summers said. “We can meet at my house Friday night and build a database.”

  “Hey Allen, I think we may have something,” Reed said less than an hour after they had built their database. “Trends:” Reed continued, “There are definitely spikes in merits in September and October, but also in November.”

  “Bonfire is in November,” Cameron said, sipping a beer.

  “Right,” Reed continued, “but Bonfire merits are spread out all over every cadet dormitory on campus. Merit spikes in September and October are only in five cadet dormitories, Kilo Company. One of the two dormitories we searched was a Kilo Company dormitory. How did you know to search that dorm, Allen?”

  “I didn’t pick the dorms for the search, the General picked them.”

  “Well then you got lucky,” Reed said.

  “What else you got?” Cano asked. “Anything else?”

  “There’s a trend that tracks with rank,” Reed said. “The higher your cadet rank, the more merits you issue in September, October, and November.”

  “So we could focus on Kilo Company leade
rship?” Cano asked.

  “That doesn’t seem right,” Summers said. “The leaders in every company are the seniors and you already said seniors are not part of this. Is that right?”

  “Yeah,” Reed said. “There’s no September October spikes for senior cadets.”

  “That’s what I’m saying,” Summers added. “It’s not the company leaders. It’s gotta be the players who are in line to be the next company leaders when they become seniors.”

  “That makes a lot of sense,” Allen said.

  Cano said, “So Kilo Company’s leadership are the cadets who issued the most merits when they were juniors?”

  “Possibly,” Reed said. “But there’s also a trend showing they were also the ones who earned the most merits as freshmen and sophomores.”

  “But wait,” Cameron said. “Wouldn’t that be true for all companies? The cadets with the most merits and the fewest demerits become the company leaders.”

  “Let’s check,” Reed said. “Summers can you run these numbers?”

  Summers ran the numbers.

  After a few minutes and a few sips of beer, Summers said, “So no, it’s not true. There’s a very weak correlation between merits and demerits in all the cadet companies except one, Kilo Company.”

  “No shit?” Cano asked.

  “No shit,” Reed said. “Kilo Company leaders are the only ones correlated with merits and demerits as sophomores and freshmen. There’s an even higher correlation with the merits they issue as juniors.”

  “So what does it all mean,” Cameron asked.

  “It means we are looking for Kilo Company junior cadets who issued a lot of merits in September and October this year.”

  “No,” Allen insisted. “To stop The Great Pumpkin, we’re looking for the cadets these juniors issue the most merits to.”

  “You’re right,” Cameron said. “Allen, Cano, Reed, Summers, let’s meet at the admin office in the morning, early. We can pull files and figure out who these juniors are and who their favorite cadets are.”

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