The Third Victim Part 11

The sheriff turned and walked out the front doors. Flashbulbs flashed.

A roar rose up from the crowd at the sign of fresh activity. Then Rainie caught a new sound the faint beating of helicopters bearing down upon them. The medevac choppers had finally arrived to carry the wounded away.

And Rainie couldn't help thinking that it would be much later before the ME's office came for the bodies.

Officer Luke Hayes was thirty-six years old, balding, and shorter than most women. His trim build, however, was a compact one hundred fifty pounds that turned many ladies' heads and became useful in a fight. In Rainie's opinion, however, Luke's biggest a.s.set was his steely blue eyes. She'd seen him stare down drunks twice his size. She'd seen him

hypnotize enraged housewives into lowering their favorite knives. Once she'd even watched him reduce a growling Doberman to a groveling ma.s.s with a single, relentless look.

Shep was smoke and steam. Rainie got restless and moody. Luke balanced out their tiny department with his steady presence and slow, curving smile.

Rainie had never seen him ragged. Until today. Leading Danny to the east-side exit the one opposite the area of incidence Rainie caught up with Luke just outside the door. His head was covered in sweat and he'd soaked his uniform through. For the last fifty minutes, he'd been trying to keep panicked mothers from rus.h.i.+ng the school building, while collecting names and witness statements, and the strain showed on his face.

"Are you okay?" he asked Rainie immediately.

"Good enough."

His gaze flickered to Danny, and his strong shoulders slumped. Rainie understood his thoughts. Luke and Rainie playing with five-year-old Danny in the one-room sheriff's department while Shep took care of something or other. Let's play cops and robbers. Rat-a-tat-tat. Or maybe cowboys and Indians. Bang-bang-bang.

"You know why big cities have so many problems, Rainie?

"Cause they can't do anything like this. Can't bring their kids to the office. Don't have others helping them out. No wonder our jobs are so slow in Bakersville. We're too busy taking care of our own to have time for trouble."

"We need to get going," Rainie said softly. Luke sighed, nodded slowly, and squared his shoulders.

He was ready.

Luke took up the post on the right side of Danny's hunched form. He looped his hand through the boy's bound arm. Rainie did the same on the left. On the count of three, herding Danny between them, they ran the gauntlet to the waiting patrol car.

Compared to the relative quiet inside the school, the sounds and sensations of the outside yard hit Rainie as a one-two punch. Reporters yelling questions as they spotted two cops hustling a cloaked person out of the school.

EMTs shouting orders as they frantically loaded up the next injured student. Children crying, crying, crying in their parents' arms. A mother, alone on her knees on the ground, weeping hopelessly.

Rainie and Luke kept their attention focused ahead as other officers rushed to a.s.sist them.

"Move, move, move," someone was yelling. Rainie thought that was stupid. They were all moving as fast as they could.

"Clear out, clear out. Come on, people, back off!" The reporters were closing in, photographers fighting maniacally for the front-page shot.

Rainie heard a new scream and made the mistake of turning her head.

Shep had found his wife. She was holding Becky tight against her chest and turning toward the running police line.

"No," Sandy cried, took a step, and was caught from behind by her husband.

"No, no, nooooo!"

A m.u.f.fled sound emerged from beneath the s.h.i.+rt. Danny had heard his mother and started to cry.

Finally, they arrived at the patrol car. Rainie hastily stuffed Danny in the back, the s.h.i.+rt still wrapped around his head. The reporters were shamelessly trying to jostle in, but the officers forced them back.

Rainie rounded the driver's side. Luke jumped into the pa.s.senger's seat. With two slams of the car doors, they shut out the chaos and were alone with their murder suspect. Shep's s.h.i.+rt had slipped down.

Danny didn't seem to care, and it was too late to fix it now.

Luke turned on the sirens. Rainie pulled away from the curb.

A moment later they hit a wall of people clogging the street. Rainie prompted them with the horn and they reluctantly parted, all craning their necks to peer at the suspect in the back of the car. A few people looked stunned and saddened.

Others already appeared murderous.

"d.a.m.n," Luke murmured. Rainie stared in the rearview mirror at her young charge. Danny O'Grady, suspected murderer of three, had just fallen asleep.

Tuesday, May 15, Nightfall Rainie worked another six hours.

Together, she and Luke formally processed Daniel O'Grady for aggravated murder. They took his fingerprints and photograph. They tested his hands for gunpowder residue (GSR) and had him exchange his clothes for an orange corrections-department jumpsuit that was twice his size.

Later his clothing would be tested at the state crime lab for gunpowder, hair, fiber, and bodily fluids anything that would further tie him to the crime.

With the Cabot County DA present, they conducted a ten-minute interview before a lawyer, Avery Johnson, showed up and coldly put a halt to further questions.

He berated them for interrogating a child, informed Rainie that his client was obviously not in a stable frame of mind, and demanded that Danny be immediately moved to the county's juvenile facilities, where he could be examined by a medical doctor and treated for shock.

During this whole exchange, Danny sat listlessly and appeared to be a million miles away from the sheriff's office where he had once played after school.

Luke and Cabot County DA Charles Rodriguez made arrangements to drive Danny the forty-five minutes to the juvie facilities. Rainie had to return to the school grounds, where the CSU had finally arrived and some state homicide detective named Abe Sanders was ordering everyone about as if he owned the place.

She exchanged one last batch of nasty stares with Avery Johnson. He told her she would be hearing more from him. She told him she could hardly wait. He told her this was a travesty of justice. She just stared at him harder, because she knew what her next line was supposed to be and her heart wasn't in it.

She sent the lawyer on his way and, with Danny in Luke's custody, headed back to the scene of the crime.

For the next five hours, Rainie walked the scene with the technicians from the state CSU. She reviewed with them what she knew of the EMTs'

intrusion on the scene, as well as her own activities, which had left gunpowder residue and ceiling plaster in the key incidence area. The technicians were not amused. They took her Clock .40 to compare GSR found on it with GSR found at the scene. Then Rainie helped collect more than fifty-five spent cartridges from a shooting that had left three dead, six injured, and an entire town devastated.

Police officers recovered four empty magazines for the .22 and three speed loaders for the .38 revolver. None of the cops liked finding the rapid loaders they were a tool designed to make a police officer's life easier, and it reminded them that this crime hit close to home.

At eight p.m." Rainie held an impromptu briefing out in the playground. She introduced herself as the primary officer and related her experience capturing Danny O'Grady in the afternoon. She thanked the various state and county officers who'd responded to the call and stayed for hours after their s.h.i.+fts had ended to a.s.sist with the case.

Then Detective Sanders, the state liaison, took over, discussing the theory of the crime, which they were developing as they processed the scene.

It appeared to be a blitzkrieg style of attack, he said, occurring shortly after one p.m." when the students had returned to cla.s.s.

According to the third-grade teacher, the two girls, Alice and Sally, had asked for a bathroom pa.s.s. Shortly after they stepped into the hall, everyone heard the first sounds of gunfire.

It was unclear whether they had been the first victims or if that had been the computer-science teacher, Melissa Avalon. She had been alone in the computer lab, so no one knew if she stepped out after hearing the shots or if she was shot first, then the girls. It was doubtful the medical examiner could shed any light on things, as time of death wasn't an exact science. What they were working on now was figuring out the exact path the shooter had walked and the trajectory of the shots so they could extrapolate a logical sequence of events.

No material witnesses? Rainie asked.

None, the other officers agreed. Most students registered the sound of gunshots, then started running toward the exits with no clear idea where the shots were being fired. Six students reported seeing a man in black, but these were the younger children and none of them could be more specific. Where had this man come from? Where had he gone? How tall? How short? Fat, thin? Asked to be more exact, the kids quickly grew confused.

Two officers had followed up at the houses immediately around the school grounds. Those neighbors hadn't spotted any strange man cutting across their yards.

"Ergo," Sanders concluded, 'this man-in-black thing is a dead end.

Probably just the boogeyman, conjured up in traumatized minds. It happens."