The Third Victim Part 2

You're a cop now, Rainie. You're in control. Suddenly, she desperately needed to hold a bottle of beer, The radio crackled again.

Sheriff Shep O'Grady's voice came on as Rainie cleared the first light on Main Street.

"One-five, one-five, what is your position?"

"Twelve minutes out," Rainie responded, weaving sharply around one double-parked car and barely squeaking by the next.

"One-five, switch to channel four." Rainie looked at Chuckie. The rookie made the switch to the private channel. Shep's voice returned.

He didn't sound as calm anymore.

"Rainie, you gotta get there faster."

"We were at Martha's. I'm coming as fast as I can. You?"

"Six minutes out. Too d.a.m.n far. Linda sent the rest of the officers scrambling, but most gotta run home for their vests and sidearms.

Nearest county officer is probably twenty minutes away, and state a good thirty to forty minutes. If this really is a major incident.. ."

His voice trailed off; then he said abruptly, "Rainie, you need to be the primary."

"I can't be the primary. I don't have any experience." Rainie glanced at Chuck, who appeared equally confused. The sheriff was always the primary on the case. That was procedure.

"You have more experience than anyone else," Shep was saying.

"My mother doesn't count-' "Rainie, I'm not sure what's really going down at the school, but if it's a shooting .. . My kids are there, Rainie. You can't ask me not to think about my children."

Rainie fell silent. After eight years of working with Shep, she knew his two children as well as a favorite niece and nephew. Eight-year-old Becky was horse crazy. Thirteen-year-old Danny loved to spend free afternoons at the tiny police station. Once, Rainie had given the boy a plastic sheriff's star. He'd worn it for nearly six months and demanded to sit beside Rainie whenever she came over to dinner. They were great kids. Two great kids in a building filled with two hundred and fifty other great kids. Not one above the age of fourteen .. .

Not in Bakersville. Chuckie was right: These things couldn't be happening in Bakersville.

Rainie said quietly, "I'll be the primary."

Thanks, Rainie. Knew I could count on you."

The radio clicked off. Rainie hit another red light and had to tap the brakes to slow. Fortunately, cross-traffic saw her coming and halted right away. She was vaguely aware of the other drivers' concerned expressions. Police sirens on Main Street? You never heard police sirens on Main Street. They still had a good ten-minute drive, and now she was genuinely concerned that that might be too long ... too late.

Two hundred and fifty little kids'... "Turn back to channel three,"

she told Chuckie.

"Order the medics docked."

"But there's a report of blood-' "Medics are docked until the scene is secured. That's the drill."

Chuck did as he was told.

"Get dispatch on. Request full backup. I'm sure the state and county boys have heard, and I don't want there to be any confusion we'll take all the help we can get." She paused, sifting through her memory to cla.s.ses taken eight years ago in a musty cla.s.sroom in Salem, Oregon, where she had been the only woman among thirty men. Full-scale mobilization. Procedure for possible large-scale casualties. Things that had seemed strange to be studying at the time.

"Ask local hospitals to be on alert," she murmured.

"Tell the medics to contact the local blood bank in case they need to boost supply. Linda needs to request SWAT coverage. Oh, and tell the state Crime Scene Unit to be ready to roll. Just in case."

Dispatch returned before Chuckie could pick up the radio. Linda sounded shrill.

"We have calls of shots still being fired. No information on shooter.

No information on casualties. We have reports of a man in black at the scene. Shooter may be in the area. Proceed with caution. Please, please, proceed with caution."

"A man?" Chuck said hoa.r.s.ely.

"I thought it would be a student. It's always a student."

Rainie finally hit the rural highway on the edge of downtown and opened the car up to eighty miles per hour. They were on their way now. Seven minutes and counting. Chuck picked up the radio and ran through the list of orders.

Rainie started thinking of the other communities and schools she'd seen in the news without completely understanding. Even Springfield, Oregon, had seemed far away. It was a city, and everyone knew cities had their problems. That's why people moved to Bakersville. Nothing bad was ever supposed to happen here.

But you already knew better, didn't you, Rainie? You of all people should've known.

Chuckie was done with the radio. Now his lips moved in silent prayer.

Rainie had to look away.

"I'm coming," she murmured to the children she could see clearly in her mind.

"I'm coming as fast as I can."

On Tuesday afternoon, Sandy O'Grady was trying hard to get some market-research reports done and was failing miserably. Sitting in a small corner office a former bedroom of a converted Victorian home she spent more time gazing out the window than at the stack of reports piled high on her scarred oak desk.

The day was beautiful, not a cloud in sight. A true rarity in a state with so much rain that the locals affectionately referred to it as liquid suns.h.i.+ne. The temperature was mild too. Not as cool as it could be in spring, but not so warm that it started pulling in all the tourists and spoiling the mood.

The day was perfect, a rare treat for all of Bakersville's citizens, who endured all the other days too the rainy autumns, the icy winters, the mudslides that sometimes closed the mountain pa.s.ses, and the spring floods that threatened to destroy all the fertile fields. One good day out of a hundred, her daddy would have noted ironically. But he would've been the first to say it was enough.

Sandra had lived in Bakersville all her life, and there was no other place she'd want to raise her family. Nestled between Oregon's Coastal Range on the east and the Pacific Ocean on the west, the valley boasted lush, rolling hills dotted by black and white Holsteins and ringed by towering green mountains. The dairy cows outnumbered the people two to one. The family farm still endured as a way of life. People knew one another and took part in their neighbors' lives. There were beaches for summer fun and hiking paths for fall glory. For dinner, you could have freshly caught crab, followed by a bowl of freshly picked strawberries topped off with freshly made cream. Not at all a bad life.

In the end, the only complaint Sandra had ever heard about her community was the weather. The endlessly gray winters, the thick, pea-soup fog that seemed to weigh some folks down. Sandy, however, even loved the gray, misty mornings when the mountains barely peeked over their flannel shrouds and the world was wrapped in silence.

When she and Shep had been newlyweds, they would go on walks in the early morning hours, before he had to report for duty. They'd layer up in barn coats and black rubber boots and wade through dew-heavy fields, feeling the fog like a silky caress against their cheeks. Once, when Sandy was four months pregnant and her hormones were raging out of control, they'd made love in the mist, rolling beneath an old oak tree and soaking themselves to the bone. Shep had looked at her with such awe and wonder. And she had wrapped her arms tight around his lean waist, listening to his fast-beating heart and daydreaming about the child growing in her belly. Would it be a boy or a girl? Would it have her curly blond hair or Shep's thick brown locks? How would it feel to have a tiny life nursing at her breast?

It had been a magic moment. Unfortunately, their marriage had not seen many of those since.

A knock at her door. Sandy pulled her gaze guiltily from the window and saw her boss, Mitch.e.l.l Adams, leaning against the old bull's-eye molding. He had his ankles crossed and his hands thrust deep into the pants pockets of a three-thousand-dollar charcoal-colored suit. Dark hair just brushed his collar in the back, and his lean cheeks were freshly shaved. Mitch.e.l.l Adams was one of those men who always looked good, whether he wore Armani or L. L Bean. Shep had hated him on sight.

"How are those reports coming?" Mitch asked. In spite of Shep's concern, Mitch.e.l.l was one-hundred-percent business. He had not hired Sandy because she remained lithe and beautiful even at forty. He had hired her because he'd realized that the former homecoming queen had a brain in her head and a need to succeed. When Sandy had tried explaining this to Shep, he simply hated Mitch.e.l.l more.

"The meeting with Wal-Mart is tomorrow," Mitch was saying.

"If we're really going to convince them to move into our town, we have to have our numbers in order."

"So I'd better get the numbers in order."

"How far along are you?"

She hesitated.

"I'm getting there." Code for she hadn't gotten a d.a.m.n thing done.

Code for she'd had another big fight with Shep last night. Code for she'd be staying late to get the reports done, and that would generate yet another argument with her husband, and she didn't feel as if she could win anymore. But she was too Catholic to do anything different, and so was Shep.