by Lisa Gardner
“What do you want to do?” Shep asked.
“Take off your shirt.”
Shep glanced at his son, followed her train of thought, and unbuttoned his sheriff’s uniform. Underneath it was a plain white T-shirt, worn in places and bleached white by Sandy every Sunday when she did the laundry. The sight of him in just his undershirt made him look all too human and tore at Rainie’s emotions a little more. She resented that.
Shep carefully draped his shirt over his son’s head, as if his boy were made of glass and Shep couldn’t bear to break him.
“It will be all right,” he whispered. He looked at Rainie again, humbled and waiting for her next command.
“Go find Luke,” she said, her voice coming out unsteady. She jerked her head toward the east exit. “Have him bring the patrol car around to the side.”
“I want to ride with Danny.”
“No. Luke’s going to find a state guy, someone we don’t know, and he’s going to interview you. Don’t look at me like that, Shep. You know it has to be done. You and Danny have been alone together. He’s your son.… We have to know what he said to you. What he did. Why you entered a crime scene alone, and”—she smiled thinly—“why you appointed your second-in-command the primary officer the minute you got the call.”
She met Shep’s gaze and, for the first time, saw him flush. “You didn’t think I’d picked up on that, did you? Or were you hoping I’d let it go?”
He didn’t say anything.
“Did you know, Shep? Did you hear the news and already know?”
“It wasn’t like that.”
“I don’t even believe you and I’m your friend. Dammit.” Rainie was suddenly fed up. She was the primary. She had hours of work ahead of her, processing a thirteen-year-old boy, testing his hands for gunpowder residue, demanding to know why he’d shot up his school. Then she’d return to the crime scene, wade through it again and again in order to get into a mass murderer’s head. Finally, worst of all—tomorrow morning, most likely, or evening at best—she would personally attend the autopsies of two little girls who’d died holding hands. She would have to listen to the inventory of the trauma to their bodies. She would have to imagine once again what their last moments had been like. Then she would have to contemplate that another child, one she’d known personally, one she’d been proud of, had done that to them.
“Get out of here,” she told Shep. “Find Luke and get this show on the road.”
“I need to find Sandy first,” Shep said stubbornly. “We have a friend … a lawyer. She can give him a call.”
“Get out of here!”
Shep finally relented. He gave his son one last glance. It looked like he wanted to say something more but couldn’t find the words.
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 asset 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 mass 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 rushing 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 assist 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 muffled sound emerged from beneath the shirt. Danny had heard his mother and started to cry.
Finally, they arrived at the patrol car. Rainie hastily stuffed Danny in the back, the shirt 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 passenger’s seat. With two slams of the car doors, they shut out the chaos and were alone with their murder suspect. Shep’s shirt 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.
“Damn,” Luke murmured.
Rainie stared in the rearview mirror at her young charge. Danny O’Grady, suspected murderer of three, had just fallen asleep.
SIX
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 bef
ore 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 Glock .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 shifts had ended to assist 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 class. According to the third-grade teacher, the two girls, Alice and Sally, had asked for a bathroom pass. 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.”
“Wait a minute,” Rainie said. Sanders shot her an annoyed glance. She could already tell he was assuming control of the case. He was the state guy with a pretty suit and a bigger police shield than hers. He obviously had no use for small-town cops or small-town theories. The big-city guys never did.
“There’s still the issue that six children reported seeing a strange man,” she said firmly. “That must mean something.”
“That hysteria is contagious,” Sanders said.
“Or that they saw something out of place, someone out of place. Look at the shootings. You’re saying it’s a blitzkrieg attack. Most victims are sprayed with bullets and we got holes all over the school to match. But then there’s Melissa Avalon. Single shot to the forehead. That’s a very precise wound for a random attack.”
“Maybe he had it in for her. Do we know about Danny’s relationship with the teacher?”
Officers flipped through their notebooks. No one had followed up on the victim’s background yet.
“Look,” Sanders said graciously, obviously deciding that Rainie wasn’t a complete idiot, “the Avalon angle does appear interesting. I’ll make note of it. And tomorrow, when we start getting the case team assembled, I’ll assign a couple of guys to check it out. Hell, there’s still plenty of footwork to do. This is just the stuff off the top of my head.”
“Then off the top of my head, I don’t think we should be dismissing anything yet.”
Abe rolled his eyes. “Yes, ma’am.” Then he muttered, “Of course, you were the one who arrested the kid.”
Rainie stiffened. She’d had a long day; she didn’t need this kind of bullshit. The anger that welled up in her chest was dangerous. It was also out of proportion, not just because Abe Sanders was obviously some kind of putz, but because she’d arrested a kid she knew and, dammit, she liked.
You stupid, selfish little boy, how could you be so cruel?
Abe Sanders was still looking at her, waiting to see if she’d take the bait. If she ranted and raved, she’d look unprofessional and he could feel better about things. Rainie had no intention of giving him that kind of satisfaction.
She said, “We need to have a conversation tomorrow.”
“Yep.”
“First thing in the morning.”
“Absolutely.”
“Seven-thirty?”
“Seven.”
“Fine. See you then.”
They returned to the CSU technicians still working the school. The building was now ablaze with lights, covered in a swath of yellow crime-scene tape and littered with plastic strips from Polaroid film. In the hallway, sections had been cordoned off to form a grid. The most “active” areas were handled by men in white space suits with special vacuums to suck up every last particle of dust. In other places, technicians scraped blood off windows into tiny vials or sprayed down walls with Luminol in hopes of bringing more carnage to light. Officers stood by, carefully recording all findings into a crime-scene log that would probably fill three binders by morning.
Rainie walked into a classroom and, with a magnifying glass, resumed combing the walls.
She didn’t leave for another two hours, and then the feel of the pine-scented air against her cheeks was shocking, and the stars appeared almost too white in the clear night sky.
She needed to do at least two reams of paperwork. The DA wanted to file charges by noon tomorrow and would need the first wave of police reports. Rodriguez would be taking an aggressive stance. Five counts of aggravated murder for three deaths. A crime so heinous, Daniel O’Grady should be immediately waived to adult court to stand trial. The thirteen-year-old was a menace to society. He had killed little kids. He had betrayed his community. He had reminded his neighbors that evil could be the person next door. Let’s lock him up for the rest of his life.
Never to date, attend a prom, fall in love, get married, have children. To be alive until he was eighty or ninety years old, but never to live.
Rainie didn’t go to the office. She drov
e home, where she could sit on her back deck beneath the clear night sky and listen to the owls hoot. She went home, where she could strip off a uniform that smelled of death and grab a cold beer.
She went home, where, finally free from prying eyes, she rested her forehead against the neck of the cold beer bottle, thought of those two poor little girls, of the schoolteacher, of Danny, of herself fourteen years ago.
Police Officer Lorraine Conner went home and, alone at last, she wept.
Not that far away, a man watched.
He was dressed completely in black and held a pair of high-powered binoculars to his eyes. The binoculars were a recent purchase, made when the need to see her face, her expression, her clear gray eyes, had become too much to bear. Now the view made him giddy. He could see everything on her back deck, every nuance of her slender body, backlit by the moon and topped off by the porch lights. She was crying. Crying.
In all the times he watched, he’d never seen such emotion from her.
It excited him.
It was hard to imagine, but all those years ago when Bakersville had first captured his attention, it had had nothing to do with Officer Lorraine Conner. He’d been reading an article on the Internet, “Small Dairy Community Destroyed by Floods, Promises to Rebuild.” The journalist began with a melodramatic litany of rising river waters, torrential downpours, and thundering mud slides that descended upon a tiny coastal town during one week in February. How neighbor banded with neighbor to drive their cows to higher ground. How the water kept rising, deluging the lower farms, lifting entire houses off their foundations, and still rose, heading up the rolling hills.
