The Third Victim Part 7

"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 G.o.d, 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 princ.i.p.al 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 G.o.d'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 hoa.r.s.ely.

"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 G.o.d, 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 cla.s.srooms 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: a.s.sess the crime scene.

(The clean halls and untouched front office. The dented lockers farther in, the spent sh.e.l.ls on the floor. Don't overlook the obvious, that's what they said in cla.s.s. What was obvious in a school shooting?

The dead on the floor?) P: Protect the scene.

(Rainie winced. The EMTs, the battered closet, the sh.e.l.ls 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. G.o.d 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 in.

Stay calm, stay professional. Do your job.

The first room was the hardest. The top half of the closed door was gla.s.s 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 doork.n.o.b 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. Suns.h.i.+ne, bright and fierce, in the front. She rolled across the threshold and came up with her Clock 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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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 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 cla.s.srooms as the fire alarm sounded; teachers begging them in shaking voices to remain calm. The chaos of bodies running for the front doors, pus.h.i.+ng, 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 cla.s.sroom, 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 gla.s.s 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 s.h.i.+rt. 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.