The Third Victim (3 page)

“Jesus Christ!” Rainie hurtled herself at his outstretched arm and knocked the Glock .40 from his grasp just before he could fire. Then she turned on him with hard eyes.

“Goddammit. Don’t you ever draw down like that! Not at a crime scene where you’d contaminate all the evidence, and not in a building where everyone is scared out of his mind. Half the parents out there would’ve come running in with their shotguns and blasted you to bits.”

“We gotta get it open!” Chuckie yelled.

“Then throw your shoulder into it! You’re not made of glass.”

Chuckie’s eyes lit up. He took a running leap at the closet as Rainie stepped to the side and prepared to cover. All those closed-up classrooms. Who took the time to shut a door when they were running for their lives? Who sealed up each room neat and orderly, as if they had all the time in the world? Not schoolchildren, she thought. Not teachers. Which left only one option.

The closet door split open. Cunningham crowed his triumph and plunged into the black depths before Rainie could stop him. Then he froze her heart with a cry.

“Oh my God! There’s a kid in here!”

Walt and Emery rushed forward. Rainie pushed them back. “Let me check it out,” she said tightly. “Jesus, Walt, you’ve already used up your nine lives.”

She stepped into the walk-in closet, blinking three times as her eyes adjusted to the gloom. Cunningham was in a corner, leaning over a little girl who had scrunched herself into such a tight ball that Rainie could make out only her golden blond hair. Then the child looked up. Rainie knew her instantly.

“Becky O’Grady! Oh honey, are you all right?”

Rainie motioned for Walt and Emery to enter, then holstered her gun and fell to her knees in front of Shep’s youngest child. At first glance, Becky seemed to be fine. Rainie ran her hands down the little girl’s arms, searching for any signs of injury. No cuts, no bruises. No signs of powder burns or bullet holes, or God knows what under these circumstances. Then she noticed the glassy look in Becky’s bright blue eyes. Carefully, Rainie drew her forward, and the little girl collapsed bonelessly into her arms.

Rainie rushed Becky out of the closet and laid her out on the cool floor. Emery took over.

“Dilated pupils,” he declared. “Lack of response. Can you tell me your name?”

Becky said nothing.

“Can you hear me?”

She remained silent, but when he snapped his fingers, she turned her head toward the sound.

“Shock,” Emery said after a moment. “Probably caused by the trauma. She just needs time.”

Rainie hunkered down in front of the child, less convinced and still worried. Becky had a smudge of dirt across her nose, cobwebs in her hair. She was wearing a green Winnie the Pooh T-shirt, with Pooh and Piglet dancing and a caption saying how merry it was to have a friend.

Rainie gently rubbed one of the sooty marks from Becky’s cheek. She cupped a hand against the girl’s pale face. “Honey,” she said quietly. “How did you end up in the closet?”

Becky just looked at her.

“Were you hiding?”

Slowly, the girl nodded.

“Becky, do you know who you were hiding from?”

Becky’s bottom lip began to tremble.

“Was it someone you knew?”

Becky looked down.

“It’s okay, Becky. It’s all over now. You’re safe.” Rainie glanced at all the closed classroom doors. “No one can hurt you anymore. I just need to know who did this so I can do my job. Can you help me do my job, Becky?”

Becky O’Grady shook her head.

“Just think about it, honey. Just think.”

Minute passed into minute. The little girl remained silent, and finally she turned away from Rainie and rolled back into a ball. Frustrated, Rainie rose to her feet. Walt and Emery had loaded Bradley onto the stretcher. Chuck’s shirt held a thick pile of sanitary napkins to the man’s chest. Bradley’s skin was still pale blue, but he seemed to be breathing more easily. Score one for the good guys.

Rainie looked around. The closet door was splintered. Walt had tossed half its contents into the hallway in his quest for sanitary napkins. He and Emery had tracked bloody footprints everywhere. The hall doors remained ominously shut, and Becky O’Grady was curled into the fetal position at Rainie’s feet.

Then farther down the hall. The fallen teacher. The two smaller forms . . .

Jesus Christ, what had happened at Bakersville K–8?

Rainie pulled Chuckie aside and spoke quietly. “We need to get Becky out of here. Why don’t you carry her outside and see if you can find Sandy? By now the other officers should be arriving. Have them set up a perimeter around the grounds. You tell them for me: Nobody gets inside the perimeter, and that includes the press, the mayor, and the richest parent in town. Then tell Luke he’s in charge of the crime-scene log.”

“Press will be here soon,” Chuckie muttered, his face already scrunching with distaste.

“We’ll let Shep deal with them.”

“Okay.” He was looking around the hallway now, the quiet, still hallway, with the shattered doors at the end. “Rainie? Why are all the classroom doors closed? I thought the counselor guy said they evacuated like a fire drill. Seems like none of the kids would close the doors or turn out the lights when they were running from the building. So who’d do such a thing?”

“I don’t think it was the kids or the teachers.”

“The man in black?”

“Would you take the time to close each door as you were fleeing from your crime?”

Chuckie’s brow furrowed. “Probably not, but who does that leave?”

Rainie smiled at him wryly. “I don’t know, Cunningham, but I guess I’m about to find out.”

THREE
                                                                                                                                                                                                               

Tuesday, May 15, 2:05
P
.
M
.

S
ANDY O
’
GRADY TOOK
the S-corners of the residential street at forty-five miles per hour. The tires of her loyal Oldsmobile squealed their protest, but she didn’t notice. Her hands were tight on the wheel. Her blue eyes were locked forward.

All around her, people were running. Sprinting out of their houses, charging down the neat little sidewalks, their faces white with shock, their mouths already yelling the grim news to their neighbors. They carried first-aid kits and blankets, towels and water bottles and anything else they thought might be of use.

Sandy screeched around the next corner, hit a speed bump hard, and finally had to brake. Just as well. Two blocks from the school the street was clogged with hastily parked automobiles and frantic parents. Sandy drove halfway up the sidewalk, slammed her Olds into park, and joined the fray.

So much noise. Walt’s old ambulance braying. Children crying
Mommy, Daddy,
parents screaming children’s names. She heard police sirens and revving engines. She heard a sharp, loud keening, as if the soul had been ripped from a mother’s heart, and her own blood went cold.

This couldn’t be happening. Not in Bakersville. Not in her children’s school. Oh God, couldn’t someone make this all go away?

She waded through the sea of people and cars. She didn’t know where to go. She just kept slogging toward the school, trying to get closer. Where were her children? Where was her husband? Wouldn’t someone tell her what to do?

Up ahead, she saw a police officer in a Cabot County uniform. He seemed to be simultaneously ushering people away from the school building and asking who was in charge. No one had an answer for him. Parents just wanted to find their children.

Sandy finally arrived at the chain-link fence that surrounded the schoolyard. She pressed herself against it, peering into the parking lot, where she could now see children stretched out on the blacktop, some holding cold compresses to their heads, others lifting scraped elbows and knees to be bandaged. Five adults were manning the makeshift first-aid station, using emergency kits and towels as fast as other people handed them in. Sandy recognized Susan Miller, Johnny’s mom and a nurse at Cabot Hospital. She saw Rachel Green, the head of the PTA and a stay-at-home mom, wrapping an eight-year-old’s wrist. She saw Dan Jensen, the town vet, hunched over a boy whose jeans were caked with blood. Sandy could just make out the hole ripped through the tough fabric. The boy had been shot in the leg.

God, a bullet wound. The shooting was real. Everything was real. Someone had opened fire in Bakers-ville’s school.

Sandy thought she was going to be sick.

Vice Principal Mary Johnson raced by. Sandy snagged her arm.

“Mary, Mary. What happened? How is everyone? Have you seen Becky or Danny?”

Mary looked frazzled, her normally neat hair in frizzy disarray, her faced covered with a sheen of sweat. Her expression was blank for a moment; then she recognized Sandy and clasped her hand.

“Oh Sandy, I am so sorry. We’re doing everything we can.”

“Has something happened to my children? Where are Danny and Becky?
Where are my kids?
”

“Shh, it’s all right. I’m sure it’s all right. I have to ask you to step away from the school. All the children were led across the street with their teachers. We put them in each yard in order of grade. So Becky’s class is in the fourth yard down. Danny’s would be four yards down from there.”

“You’ve seen them? They’re okay?”

Mary Johnson hesitated. Something flickered in her gaze. Sandy felt her breath catch in her throat again.

“I don’t know,” Mary said. “There have been so many children—”

“You haven’t seen them.”

“We evacuated most of the children from the school. It’s just taking us a bit to get it all sorted out.”

“Oh my God, you haven’t seen my children.”

“Please, Sandy—”

“Are there fatalities? Just tell me.
Are there fatalities?
”

Mary Johnson tightened her grip on Sandy’s hand. Then Sandy saw it all in her somber gaze, the news the vice principal didn’t want to say out loud, the news they would all be struggling with for the next few days, months, years: Children had been shot and killed.

It really was happening here.

Sandy couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. She wanted to turn back the clock six hours, when she had been at home, pouring bowls of Cheerios for her children before kissing them on the head. She wanted to turn back the clock to ten hours before that, when she had been tucking their wiggling forms into bed and reading stories of little boy wizards and magical spells. That was what their lives were supposed to be like. They were just children, for God’s sake. Just children.

A shout rose up from the crowd. Sandy and Mary turned toward the school doors just in time to see Walt and Emery come racing out with a stretcher.

“Move, move, move,” Walt was shouting.

The Cabot County officer yelled at people to clear the street. A car was in the way. No one seemed to know who owned it. The officer opened the door and popped the car into neutral. Two young men ran over to help push the vehicle out of the way. People cheered the small victory. Walt was already firing the ambulance to life.

Then Sandy saw Chuckie Cunningham running across the parking lot with a towheaded little girl wrapped tight in his arms.

Becky.

Sandy leapt forward before Mary Johnson could stop her. She raced across the parking lot and opened her arms just as Becky saw her and cried, “Mommy!”

And then her little girl was in her arms. Sandy was holding her close, inhaling the sweet scent of apple shampoo. She was squeezing her tight, tight, tight, and Becky was holding her neck so hard it hurt.

“My baby, my baby, my baby.”

“Mommy, Mommy, Mommy.”

“My baby.”

She raised tear-filled eyes to Chuckie, who she now realized was half naked and streaked with blood.

“Danny?” she asked hoarsely.

“I don’t know, ma’am.”

“Shep?”

“I’m sorry.”

Sandy sank to her knees. She had one child with her, one child safe. But it wasn’t enough. The foreboding was grabbing hold of her again. Something cold and dark flowed through her veins. She raised her head pleadingly to the sky.

“Where is my son? Oh God,
where is Danny
?”

ALONE IN THE SCHOOL,
Rainie gripped her Glock .40 with moist palms. Her breath came in shallow gasps. She could feel her heart pounding unnaturally in her chest. She did her best to ignore the sensations as she walked to the far left side of the school—the end farthest from the bodies—and prepared to conduct a methodical search of classrooms she was already sure weren’t empty.

She turned her mind to dim memories of lessons learned in police courses taken years ago. Some kind of acronym thing. ACCESS . . . AGILE . . . ADAPT. That was it. ADAPT.

A
: Arrest the perpetrator, if still at the scene.

(Was the perpetrator still at the scene? The reports of a man in black. All these closed doors.)

D:
Detain and identify witnesses and suspects.

(The herd of students who’d already raced out of the building. Bradley Brown, still fighting for his life. Witnesses maybe, but other people’s responsibilities now.)

A:
Assess the crime scene.

(The clean halls and untouched front office. The dented lockers farther in, the spent shells on the floor. Don’t overlook the obvious, that’s what they said in class. What was obvious in a school shooting? The dead on the floor?)

P:
Protect the scene.

(Rainie winced. The EMTs, the battered closet, the shells Cunningham had kicked across the floor. The parents who’d taken over the parking lot. The state Crime Scene Unit was going to arrive, and her career would be over.)

T:
Take notes.

(Rainie stared at her gun. She thought of the spiral notepad in her breast pocket. She wondered how she was supposed to hold that and the gun.)

FORGET TAKING NOTES.
She had to focus on step one, arresting the perpetrator if possible. God knew what it meant that she was doing things out of order. At least she was doing them and trying the best she could.

Her mind moved forward. She was searching a particularly large and complex crime scene for a suspect. She had a vague recollection of a lecturer explaining how to work a grid at a large site. Start in, spiral out, slowly expanding the area searched. She couldn’t remember much more beyond the theory and decided she would have to approach this scene as a horizontal strip. She would work left to right. Quiet, calm, prepared.

Rainie put her back to the wall, tucked her chin against her chest to make herself a smaller target, and led with her gun.

Stay calm, stay professional. Do your job.

The first room was the hardest. The top half of the closed door was glass but decorated with so many cutout pictures of bunnies and tulips that she couldn’t see inside. The lights were off as well, as in all the rooms in the school.

Rainie slowly twisted the doorknob with her left hand. From the crouch position, she pushed the door open into the room. Shadows, long and gray, in the back of the room. Sunshine, bright and fierce, in the front. She rolled across the threshold and came up with her Glock held in the two-handed Weaver stance. Right. Left. Front. Back. Nothing.

Rainie finally rose to her feet in the empty room. She turned on the lights and propped the door wide open to keep the premises exposed. And then she prepared for the next room.

Bit by bit she worked her way down the hall. Then she was at the intersection, where bloody gauze still covered the floor and the dents on the bright blue lockers grew worse. She saw more blood splatters. A big dent on a bottom locker, where a body must have careened into it hard. Casings were scattered across the white-tiled floor as if someone had flung a handful down the hall.

She could picture things now. The loud crack of gunshots, followed by the panicked screams of schoolchildren. Little girls and little boys streaming from classrooms as the fire alarm sounded; teachers begging them in shaking voices to remain calm. The chaos of bodies running for the front doors, pushing, shoving, tripping, falling. Blood in the halls.

She took a deep breath, forced her pulse to slow.

Stay professional, Rainie. Do your job.

She checked out the fifth-grade classroom, then the sixth. Next the library, big and sweeping with endless rows of books. Nothing.

Finally she was at the end of the hall, where shattered glass was strewn across the floor from the broken doors, where three bodies lay quiet and still.

Rainie didn’t want to look at the victims, especially not the children. She understood that the sight would hurt her, scar her someplace deep, where even tough guys like her were vulnerable. She knew it would make her think of other times, too, after she had worked years to forget those scenes.

But this was bigger than her. It had needs that had nothing to do with her own. It was about the rights of the victims and the needs of the parents outside, though she knew that from here on out nothing anyone did for three sets of parents would ever be enough.

The first victim, a little girl, lay on her side. Rainie felt for a pulse, though Walt had already warned her and blood stained the entire front of the girl’s shirt. Rainie swallowed hard and moved on, trying not to disturb the scene.

The second victim was also female. Looked approximately eight years old. She had also received multiple bullet wounds to the chest. She was lying just ahead of the first victim. Their arms stretched out toward each other, their fingers nearly touching. Had they been holding hands walking down the hall? Best friends giggling together? Rainie wanted to brush back the little girl’s hair. She wanted to whisper to her that it would be all right.

Her vision blurred, tears burned hot in her eyes. She couldn’t afford that.

Be professional. Move on.

She noted positioning. She noted victimology. She crossed to the third body.

Lying just outside the computer-lab door, this victim, also female, appeared to be a teacher. Three female fatalities—coincidence or plan? She had long dark hair and exotic features. She was also young, her smooth skin making her appear as if she were simply sleeping. Then Rainie noticed the small, neat bullet hole in her forehead.

Small-caliber weapon, Rainie thought. Probably a .22. Christ, the teacher didn’t look a day older than herself. Late twenties maybe. Early thirties. No wedding band, but beautiful enough that you had to think some man would be sitting alone tonight, holding her picture with shaking hands while trying to forget the future that would never be. Christ.

Rainie had to take another deep breath. Only three more doors. All near the epicenter of violence. All dark and waiting. Time to get on with it.

Rainie backed up against the wall and sat in a crouch until her hands stopped shaking.

Only the teacher had a head wound, she thought. A single-entry shot, dead center, delivered with a great deal of precision. The two girls sported a multitude of wounds, high, low, left, right, as if they had walked into a firestorm. But the teacher . . . the teacher was different. Perhaps the intended target? Shooter went for her first, then encountered the two girls walking down the hall?

Or maybe he started with the girls in the hall, and upon hearing the noise the computer-lab teacher opened her door. She would’ve been right in front of the killer. Had he gotten up his courage by then? Decided it wasn’t that different from a video game? Figured why waste bullets if he could do it with a single shot?