The Third Victim Part 6

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 cla.s.sroom 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 pa.s.sed 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 s.h.i.+rt 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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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: n.o.body 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."

Tress 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 cla.s.sroom 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." Tuesday, May 15, 2:05 p.m.

Sandy 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 b.u.mp 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 G.o.d, 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 sc.r.a.ped elbows and knees to be bandaged. Five adults were manning the makes.h.i.+ft 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.

G.o.d, a bullet wound. The shooting was real. Everything was real.

Someone had opened fire in Bakersville's school.

Sandy thought she was going to be sick.

Vice Princ.i.p.al 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 cla.s.s is in the fourth yard down. Danny's would be four yards down from there."