Red Rain: A Novel (36 page)

Before Samuel could answer, someone stepped in front of them, someone large, blocking their path. Her appearance was so sudden and unexpected, it took Samuel a few seconds to realize he was staring at Mrs. Maloney, the principal.

She wasn’t in her usual school outfit. She had an oversize man’s white dress shirt pulled over sloppy, faded jeans. Her bird’s-nest hair was matted in spots as if it hadn’t been brushed. She kept blinking and gazing down the hall, as if trying to force away a bad dream.

“Well, what a surprise. To find so many of my lovely chickadees in school so early. What are you all doing here?” she shouted over the chatter of conversations. “Can any of you darlings explain this to me?”

Daniel stepped up to her. “How did you get into the building, mum?”

She lowered her gaze to him. “Daniel? Are you here, too? And your brother? What are you doing here? Why are the doors locked? Can you be telling me what’s going on?”

“But how did you get in?” Daniel repeated.

The principal dangled a ring of keys in one hand. “I know some hidden entrances. This is my school, don’t you know.”

“No. You don’t rule the school, mum.” Daniel spoke softly, blue eyes probing hers. “We rule the school.”

My bruvver looks calm but I can feel his agitation. We made a mistake last week. We forgot to paint an arrow on her cheek. We let her get away.

“Daniel, lad, you don’t make any sense,” she said. Her eyes were over his shoulder. Samuel could see her counting, taking a tally of the kids in the hall.

They had all grown silent. All eyes were on the confrontation between Daniel and the principal. And the tension was evident in the heavy, ringing hush over the hall.

“Who brought you all here?” She raised her head and shouted. “Did someone force you to come here?”

Silence. No one moved now.

“Somebody tell me what this is about. I don’t want to punish you all. But you will give me no choice.”

Daniel nodded as if he agreed with her. He signaled to Samuel with another nod of his head.

Samuel took a deep breath and started to heat up his eyes.

Mrs. Maloney seemed like a nice woman. She should have stayed home. Now she will be sizzling like Irish bacon.

“The police have been notified,” the woman shouted. “They are on their way. I saw a crowd of people outside the building. Many of them are your parents, waiting to see you. How many of you would like to go out and see your parents right now?”

No hands went up. A boy giggled. That made several other kids laugh.

“What’s funny, kiddos?” Mrs. Maloney demanded. “Someone tell me, what’s funny?”

The red curtain had started to form over Samuel’s vision. But he could see the uncertainty in her eyes, and he saw the uncertainty turn to fear.

She tried again. “Your parents will be so happy to see you. Come
on, everyone. Follow me. Let’s all go outside.” She motioned toward the front doors and took a few steps. But no one made a move.

“You don’t understand, mum,” Daniel said almost in a whisper. “We rule the school.”

Her eyes widened in surprise. “Daniel? You? You are behind this bizarre behavior? You and your brother? I . . . don’t believe it. You are good lads, I know. What—?”

And then Samuel turned his eyes on her, aimed the full heat of his power at her forehead. He misjudged. Aimed a little too high, and her hair caught fire. That bristly steel-wool hair burst into red flames.

She screamed and grabbed at her head with both hands. And he lowered the beam to her forehead. The skin peeled open, blistered, and split apart.

Her head is opening up. Like a flower blooming
.

She raised her hands and pressed them against her burning face. Dropped heavily to her knees. And Samuel sent the fire to the top of her head, a powerful blast that made him dizzy for a second, made him quake, his knees threatening to buckle.

Her head burned like a torch. Her eye sockets lay black and empty now. And her nose was gone, just a dangling flap of charred skin.

The eyes burn so quickly. How quickly a face melts.

The fire moved down her neck, crackling, popping, setting the shirt ablaze. She toppled forward. Her charred head hit the hard floor with a
smack
. Her big body a beached whale, a pile of kindling.

She ended her life as a bloody bonfire.

Samuel shut his eyes. Kept them closed, waiting for them to cool, listening to the sizzle of Irish bacon.

A hard pounding, a deafening
boom,
jarred him from the pleasure of the moment. He turned to Daniel as a deep voice on the other side of the front door bellowed: “Open up! Police! Open this door—
now
!”

P
into and Pavano arrived at the middle school less than five minutes after they got the call. Pinto bumped the black-and-white onto the curb and muttered, “Oh, shit.”

Pavano saw the crowd move toward them. Maybe twenty or thirty people. Parents? “How the fuck did they get here before we did?”

The two cops had no choice. They climbed out of the car. The shouted questions were like an attack.

“Are our kids in there?”

“What did you hear? Who brought them here?”

“Are they hostages? Is this a kidnapping?”

“What’s going on? What are you going to do?”

A jumble of frightened voices.

Pavano spotted three people, two men and a woman, at the side of the building. It took him a few seconds to realize they were about to climb into an open classroom window.

“Hey! Stop!” Pavano took off, shouting as he ran. “Back away! Now! Back away from that window!”

A young man in gray sweats turned to face him. “We want to get our kids out.”

“We’ll get your kids,” Pavano said, struggling to catch his
breath. “But we don’t know who’s in there. If this is a hostage situation, you could put your kids in even greater danger.”

The three parents stared hard at him, a tense face-off.

“Step back. Let the police handle this. We have to figure out what is happening here.”

The parents finally relented. Pavano led them back to the sidewalk.

The parents formed a circle around the two officers. The women were dressed in shorts and T-shirts, some in morning-run or workout sweats or tights. A few of the men appeared dressed for work. A very tanned man wore a black swimsuit and flip-flops and had a blue beach towel over his shoulder. A gray-haired couple held each other around the waists of their maroon sweats, tears rolling down their faces.
Must be grandparents
.

Pinto crossed his arms on his uniform shirt. He had a distant look in his eyes, as if he was willing himself away from this. Pavano raised his hands for quiet, but the shouts and frantic cries only grew louder.

“We know how worried you are. But don’t do anything crazy. We’re going to take care of this. Your kids will be safe.” He told them what he thought they wanted to hear.

He glanced up the lawn at the school building. The red morning sunlight glowed in the long row of classroom windows. No sign of anyone near the school or at the double doors of the entrance.

Pavano let out a sigh of relief as, sirens blaring, a convoy of cars pulled onto the grass. He saw Franks in the first car, an old Ford Crown Victoria, black, with
New York State Police
emblazoned in yellow on the door. Followed by two more state cars and then the feds in three unmarked Escalades.

The state guys went to work, pushing back the crowd, herding them off the lawn and toward the street.

Jogging along the sidewalk, his brown suit jacket flapping around him, Franks waved both hands, motioning Pinto and Pavano toward the building. “Let ’em know we’re here.”

As if the sirens weren’t a tip-off.

Pavano trotted after Pinto, up the long stone walk to the front entrance, past the bare flagpole, past an abandoned red backpack in the grass, the flap open, obviously empty.

“What’s the plan here?” Pavano said, a heavy feeling rising in his stomach as they stepped into the shade of the three-story school. “We just knock on the door and they come out?”

“Beats the shit out of me.” Pinto picked up the abandoned backpack, inspected it, and tossed it back onto the grass. “Do I know what the hell is going on? Kids go missing on Friday and Saturday. All found in school on Monday? Does that fucking make sense? Why would kidnappers take a hundred kids to school? It’s fucking insane.”

Pavano stared hard at his partner. Pinto was already red-faced and breathing hard, beads of sweat glistening on his broad forehead despite the coolness of the morning.

“You read the reports from yesterday. Just about every parent said the same fucking thing. Their kids vanished without a word. No sign of violence. No break-ins. The kids were just gone.”

“I read ’em all,” Pinto said, eyes on the entrance. “And what was that shit about blue arrows on their faces?”

“Just like Sutter’s kids, remember? They said it was a school thing. The principal told them to do it.”

Pinto grunted. “It’s an alien thing, Andy. The kids were all abducted by aliens. They’re slaves on another planet by now.”

Pavano snickered. “Neighbors saw kids coming into the school this morning carrying laptops and TVs. No way they can be on another planet if they’re robbing every house in the neighborhood.”

“Just sayin’.” Pinto didn’t smile.

A shadow passed over them. Cawing birds swooping overhead made Pavano glance up. The clouds overhead were jagged and torn, as if a big cloud had been shredded into long pieces, the sky as frenzied and chaotic as everything down below.

Pinto took the front steps two at a time. He tried one door, then
the next. “Locked.” He raised both fists to the double doors and pounded against the wood. “Open up! Police! Open this door—
now
!”

Before they could detect any response, Franks stepped up behind them, badge dangling on his suit lapel, followed by four federal agents with
FBI
stenciled in red on their gray flak jackets.

Franks raised both hands in a halt signal. “Hold up. We’ve got to deal with these parents first. Make sure they’re out of the way—in case there’s trouble.”

Trouble?
Pavano wondered what the captain was expecting.

Franks rubbed the scar on his chin. “If this is a mass kidnapping or a hostage situation, we might face weapon fire. There could be explosives—”

The rest of his words were drowned out by the shouts of the parents. Ignoring the outnumbered state cops, they surged forward, stampeding to the bottom of the wide concrete steps.

“We want our kids.”

“How are you going to get them out of there?”

“Who locked them in? Who brought them here?”

“What are you doing? You’re just going to pound on the door?”

The parents glared up at the officers, their faces frantic, voices shrill. In their utter confusion and helplessness, they all shouted at once, anger rising over their fear.

Pavano saw one of the state cops hand Franks an electric megaphone and Franks began to plead for quiet. “I need you to step back. Quiet, everyone! Quiet! Everyone, please be quiet and step back.”

His requests were unheeded. The shouts grew angrier and more desperate. Pavano saw more SUVs pull up and more frantic parents running to the steps. A young couple tossed their bikes to the grass and came jogging to join the others.

As Franks continued to plead, his voice washed back at him as if by a powerful wave. Two officers flanked him. They assumed a defensive position, their faces hard, and unholstered their revolvers.

That’s what it took to quiet the crowd. Pavano let out a long whoosh of air. He hadn’t realized he’d been holding his breath.

“What now? Their guns are drawn? They’re going to fucking
shoot
the parents?” Pinto murmured, close to his ear.

Pavano shook his head. “Can’t blame the parents for being in a panic. If it was your kid in there . . .”

Pinto spit in the grass. They stood just behind Franks. Pinto crossed his arms in front of him. Pavano stood stiffly, hands clenched into tight fists.

“We have no information at this time,” Franks declared, his voice magnified like the voice of God, booming over the nearly silent crowd.

The exact wrong thing to say,
Pavano thought.
What a fucking jerk.

And yes, it ignited the parents again. Cries of alarm and a barrage of frantic questions.

When the cops finally restored quiet, Franks took a different tack. “We are going to get your children out of there. And we will get them out safe and sound.”

Some muttering, but the reassurance seemed to calm them a little. Gazing down at the crowd from the steps, squinting into the spreading glow of sunlight, Pavano recognized Lea Sutter. She stood near the back of the crowd, dark hair down around her face, arms crossed, wearing a pale blue sweater.

Next to her, he spotted Sutter’s sister. Roz. She stood with her hands on the shoulders of her squirming little boy, leaning over him, trying to get him to stand still. Lea Sutter stared straight up at the school building, frozen like a statue.

She has four kids in there. What must she be feeling? What horror is she going through? Four kids . . .

Pavano had read the report taken by a state cop late Saturday night. The Sutter kids were reportedly in the guesthouse out back with some friends. And all vanished, kids and guests, leaving no trace. He pictured the twin boys she and her husband had adopted from that hurricane-devastated island. What a tough introduction to American life those poor boys were getting.

He swallowed.
Especially if their new father is a murderer.

And then he couldn’t stop the gruesome images from playing through his mind. The young girl with her stomach burned open, lying facedown in a pile of her own intestines. If only he hadn’t seen that. And the boy with his head completely burned off. And . . . and . . . the man in the car . . .

If only he hadn’t seen the three victims. Then he wouldn’t see them in his dreams. Or when he closed his eyes for a moment. Or when he woke up. Every day. He saw them every day.