Hell, at this point, with the trees swaying sickeningly in front of her eyes, she wished there was more she could do for herself.
How had Danny gotten out of the detention center? And why had he come to her back porch? Had he suspected Richard Mann might show up there? Had he wanted to help her?
Or was he still Richard’s accomplice? She thought of what Quincy had said yesterday. Once the dominant partner got the other to kill, it became too difficult for the weaker one to walk away. And Danny had killed. He had told her about it today in a thin, high voice that sounded as fragile as a reed.
She didn’t know anymore. She was trying to hold the thoughts together in her mind, sort through them, come up with a plan. Her face was on fire, and the pain was becoming more intense.
Mann staggered back to his feet. His flashlight swung wildly. It illuminated two dark spots on the dusty trail and made him curse. The man was bleeding quite nicely. He kicked up dirt over the blood, grabbed a tree limb to rake over their trail, and gave Rainie a look that was downright feral.
“Up,” he snarled.
“I think I’m going to vomit,” Rainie murmured.
“Up!”
“Okay,” she said. She leaned forward and threw up on his shoes.
“Fuck me!” Mann leapt back two feet, kicking furiously at bushes and needles in a vain attempt to get the puke off his shoes. His arms flailed. His face had gone purple. Rainie didn’t hesitate. Maybe it wasn’t a pretty plan, but it was as good as it was going to get.
“Run,” she yelled at Danny. “Run!”
And then she hurled herself at Mann.
They went down in a tangle of bodies, the gun flying from his grasp. She heard Mann thrashing and swearing. It seemed his legs and feet were everywhere, and she instinctively tried to protect her head. Her eye, her eye. Oh God, her cheek was exploding on her. But she couldn’t bring her hands up. They were tied behind her back, leaving her churning on the ground like a helpless worm.
Richard went after her with a vicious kick. She barely rolled out of the way; then he abruptly backed off.
Shit. He was going for the gun. She rolled back and kicked him as hard she could in the back of his knee. His legs folded beneath him. She went after his shot-up hip with her pummeling feet.
She couldn’t see any sign of Danny. Please let him have run. If she could buy time, give him a chance to get farther away . . .
Richard was trying to get to his feet again. She saw his gaze go to the handgun he must have snatched from Danny, which was now lying just four feet away in the dust. He gritted his teeth and lunged. She rolled to the right as quickly as she could and managed to kick him in the side of the head.
“Damn bitch,” he swore. Then he suddenly got a curious smile on his face.
He reached out and curled his hand around a big helping of pine needles and dirt. Rainie ducked her head. She closed her eyes to protect herself, but she had no hands to hide her bloody face as he flung the dust and needles at her head.
She spluttered, blinked reflexively, and buried eight tiny needles in her one good eye.
“Goddammit!”
It hurt. Hurt worse than she’d imagined pain feeling. Hurt even worse than all those years ago, when she’d been so small and helpless. Fuck that. She would not be small. She would not be helpless.
She went after Richard Mann with her pummeling legs and realized for the first time that he was laughing. He was standing now, not even going after the gun. He just stood there, watching her writhe on the ground and finding it funny.
“Going someplace, Lorraine?”
“Bastard!”
He laughed again.
She rolled toward Richard Mann with a kamikaze yell, and he calmly kicked her in the damaged side of her face.
Lights exploded. She saw blazing, fantastical colors, followed by a white-hot blur. And then the corresponding agony ripped a scream from her lips.
“Had enough yet, Lorraine? Want to taste a little more?”
She started rolling again. She couldn’t see. Just felt him coming after her and knew what kind of pain he’d like to inflict next. She wanted to be fierce and brave, but the pain was too much and now she fled in the dirt. Rolling, rolling, rolling, seeking some desperate way out.
Her kneecap smacked into a tree trunk. She howled. Mann laughed. Footsteps coming closer. Faster, faster. She switched directions suddenly, working on memory only, and ripped her way across the earth. The gun, the gun, the gun. Somewhere around her, the gun.
“No!” Richard Mann yelled suddenly.
And then she knew she had him. She rolled on top of the 9-millimeter and grabbed it with her bloodied fingertips.
“What are you going to do, Lorraine?” Mann taunted breathlessly. “Shoot it with your kneecaps?”
She said hoarsely with her back to him, “Halt. Police.”
“Hand it over, Lorraine. Be a good girl, and I promise I’ll kill you quickly.”
Footsteps coming closer.
Her wet, slippery fingers frantically trying to orient the heavy pistol, find the trigger.
The sound of Mann’s ragged breath, bearing down on her. She couldn’t see him, had little hope of aiming. Just try to find the trigger. Pull it back. Do something, even if she only ended up winging his big toe. The gun slipped again. She was doomed.
Mann bending over her. Mann rearing back his leg to kick her in the face—
“Halt! Police!”
Flashlights suddenly flooded the area. Rainie tried to focus her dirt-filled eyes. The lights were too bright, the voices too far away. Her fingers reclaimed the gun as she turned her head and saw Richard Mann gazing toward the lights. He was breathing hard. So was she. His face was ugly and mottled with rage. And hers?
“Fuck them,” Richard Mann snarled. He reared back to wallop her in the head—
And Rainie pulled the trigger.
Richard Mann dropped to the earth, just as three other officers opened fire. Rainie rolled over. She lay three feet from Mann’s body and watched the hate slowly dim and die out in his eyes.
A moment later, Quincy came forward. Rainie knew him by his smell as he bent down and cradled her against his chest.
“I came as fast as I could,” he murmured. “I told you that I would.”
She could see the others now. Abe Sanders. Luke Hayes. Shep O’Grady. And Danny, standing with his father’s arm around his thin shoulders and tears on his cheeks.
“How did you find us?” she asked.
“Danny left us a trail with pieces of his T-shirt. He’s been ripping them off and dropping them down his pants leg.”
Danny said simply, “I’m smart.”
Rainie turned her face into Quincy’s embrace then. His arms were warm. His heartbeat strong. He felt so nice.
I’m finally being held, she thought.
And then she started to cry. She wept for Danny, who had caused so much death, and she wept for herself and what she knew she must do next.
EPILOGUE
Two weeks later
THE SUN WAS OUT when Rainie descended the stairs of Cabot County’s courthouse. She wore jeans and a simple white T-shirt, tucked in and belted at the waist. The days were already warm with the promise of summer, and after four hours in the office, she enjoyed the feel of spring on her still-healing face. In the good news department, the swelling in her jaw and eye socket had finally gone down. In the bad news department, her face was now approximately eighteen different shades of yellow and green. At least Richard Mann had not inflicted as much damage as she’d originally thought. Her doctor assured her that she’d be fine within another few weeks—after he muttered that this proved once and for all that she was thick-skulled. Wiseass.
The Bakersville task force had been busy in the days since Richard Mann’s shooting. Abe Sanders had gotten his wish—formal jurisdiction over the case. He’d also gotten more federal agents breathing down his throat than any one man could handle.
The fingerprint r
esults had been stunning. Richard Mann was really Henry Hawkins of Minneapolis, Minnesota. Born to a domineering army lieutenant and his meek librarian wife, Hawkins had moved a dozen times in his childhood. He’d grown up hard, according to his journal, steeped in guns and his father’s quick fists. He’d mastered a chameleon personality as he’d shuffled from town to town, school to school. And he’d honed his rage. At his father’s harsh ways. At the other children who always saw him as an outsider. At his mother, who never stood up for herself or him.
At the age of twenty, Hawkins’s parents died unexpectedly in a car crash, robbing him of any chance for retaliation or forgiveness. And his homicidal rampage began.
At this point, the FBI had linked him to two other school shootings. They were revisiting those cases now, interviewing the boys who’d craved notoriety so badly they’d gone to prison rather than admit someone else had been involved. The feebies were also looking into a handful of other shootings, where children had lashed out unexpectedly while Hawkins was living in their town. No doubt some cases were coincidences. They weren’t sure, however, that would be true for them all.
Hawkins still owned his parents’ house in Minnesota. He had armed it with a number of pipe bombs and booby traps to make the investigators’ lives more interesting. It slowed down efforts but did not stop them. Sanders was leading that raid, and Hawkins had met his match in the state detective’s meticulous nature.
It would probably be months, maybe even a year, before the last of the evidence was processed. Not that it would matter to Henry Hawkins. With no one to claim his body, he had been laid to rest in potters’ field.
Danny’s case was also being revisited. Shep and Sandy were now working with Charles Rodriguez on a plea arrangement. There was still a long road ahead for Danny. He had killed two little girls, and even understanding that he had been influenced by a savvy outsider didn’t change that fact. There should be barriers in all of us, the DA had argued this morning, lines we should know better than to cross. And one of those barriers should be resistance to taking human life. Danny hadn’t possessed that barrier, and that had to be addressed.
In the end, it appeared that Danny would enter an admission to the charge of aggravated murder in return for a guarantee of remaining under juvenile court’s jurisdiction. There he would receive a disposition of serving at a youth correctional facility for a period not to exceed his twenty-fifth birthday. The Oregon Youth Authority would formally assume custody over him, conducting a new mental-health assessment and providing resources for his treatment. It would be up to the OYA to determine when he was ready for parole.
Sandy and Shep put their house up for sale. Chances were that Danny would end up at the Hillcrest facility in Salem, so they were looking to relocate there. Shep was interviewing with various security companies. Though most suspected that he’d engineered the “car crash” that allowed Danny to escape, there was no proof of wrongdoing, so his record remained clear. Sandy wanted to focus on her children and become more active in reforming juvenile law. Technically, they remained married, though the last time Rainie had seen them, she’d witnessed few moments of intimacy. She had a feeling they’d reached a point of living together but separately. Maybe they thought it was better that way, for Becky.
Rainie reached the bottom of the courthouse steps. She was trying to decide whether to head immediately to her car or spend the rest of the sunny afternoon walking around town, when she heard a voice behind her.
“Hello, Rainie.”
Rainie turned and spotted him immediately. She smiled before she thought to stop herself, and then it was too late to take it back.
Quincy leaned against the stone wall, wearing one of his expensively cut suits and a conservative blue tie. It had been two weeks since she’d last seen him. Following the scene on the mountainside, he’d flown immediately to the sites of the other Hawkins school shootings to handle the reopening of those cases. She imagined he’d been flying all over the country since, interviewing youths and juggling more crime-scene photos.
Now he was in front of her, and she no sooner looked at him than she realized she’d missed him. He was smiling at her. Maybe he’d missed her too.
“Hey,” she said.
“Shep told me you’d be here.”
“I didn’t know he spoke to federal agents.”
“Neither did he.”
Quincy motioned to the empty spot beside him. She made a big show of wandering over, trying not to move too fast. He smelled good. Someday she’d have to ask him about his cologne, because, damn, she liked that scent.
“How are things going?” she asked.
“That was going to be my question.”
“Things are looking up for Danny,” she offered. “A lot of people have come out to support him. Not that they condone his actions, but Henry Hawkins/Richard Mann/Dave Duncan fooled the entire town, including the school district. After that, it’s easier to understand his impact on one troubled child.”
“And Becky?”
“Better. The minute Sandy told her Richard Mann was dead, the weight lifted off her shoulders. Apparently in the confusion of the shooting, she ran to find her brother. Unfortunately, she spotted him and Richard together in the computer lab, not far from Miss Avalon’s body. Richard told her if she talked, he’d kill Danny. And if Danny talked, Richard would kill Becky. He was right, you know. Simple strategies can be highly effective.”
“Well, now he and the devil can debate the matter to their hearts’ content.” Quincy’s smile lifted the corner of his mouth. The familiar expression tugged at her. She wished she didn’t feel so awkward. She wished she could touch him.
“Rainie?” he asked quietly. “How are you?”
She shrugged. There was no point in lying anymore. This was the new and improved Lorraine Conner. Telling the truth until it hurt. “I’ve been better.”
“Is the DA going to press charges?”
“Don’t know.” She jerked her head toward the courthouse. “My attorney and I just had a meeting to hear our options. Funky thing, Oregon law. I thought since I shot Lucas when I was seventeen, it would fall under juvenile jurisdiction. Nope. In Oregon, it’s the age I am when it comes to the attention of the court that matters, not the age when I committed the crime. That means Man One, up to five years’ jail time. The DA said that ‘given the nature of the extenuating circumstances,’ he might be willing to deal down to less than a year, served locally. All I have to do is plead guilty to a felony murder charge. I wasn’t—I wasn’t expecting that.”
Rainie didn’t have to say anything more. Quincy understood. A felony charge would bar her from law enforcement for the rest of her life. She wouldn’t be able to get a job working security. She wouldn’t even have the right to carry a gun.
“Can’t you fight it?” Quincy asked after a moment. “Plead not guilty due to diminished mental capacity. Or argue you acted in a dissociative state, brought on by the trauma of your mother’s murder.”
“You sound like my lawyer. She doesn’t think the state has a leg to stand on. Frightened seventeen-year-old girl. Rampaging suspected murderer with more tattoos than morals. She considers this case a slam dunk.”
“So you’re pleading not guilty,” Quincy said.
Rainie merely smiled. She peered up at the blue sky, turning over facts that were still new and troubling to her. “I think I want to plead guilty and give full allocution,” she said quietly.
“Why? You have a need to eat jail food?”
“I think I just need to tell, Quincy. I need to get it out in the open. What I did fourteen years ago was horrible. And you were right: no matter how long it has been, it will never be long enough.”
“He raped you, Rainie.”
“Yes.”
“Did you try to go to your mother?”
“Yes.”
“But she didn’t believe you.”
“No. And then I went to Shep.”
For the first time, Quincy
was surprised. “He knew?”
“I wanted to press charges, but Shep didn’t believe me. He was just starting out, and I was a seventeen-year-old girl from the wrong side of town. No one gets out of life without a few regrets.”
“So you went back to your mother,” Quincy deduced.
“No. I just went home. I didn’t know what else to do. But I guess she just needed time to think about it. I’m not sure. Later that night Lucas came over. Drunk—what else was new? They had a huge fight and she threw him out, yelling at him to keep his stinking hands off her daughter. I think that’s the first time I felt proud of my mother. The first time I had hope that things might be better.
“Then I came home the next day, and Lucas had shot off her head.”
“And Shep was remorseful?”
“Not when he arrested me. But Bakersville didn’t have any female officers, so he had to take me to Cabot County for processing. There a woman made me strip so she could bag my bloody clothes as evidence. And I . . . And I was pretty damaged from what had happened. When she left the room, I heard her tell Shep that either my boyfriend really liked it rough or I’d spent a long night with the Hell’s Angels. Poor Shep. It couldn’t have been fun to realize what a mistake he’d made.”
“Did he give you the shotgun, Rainie?”
“No. At that point, I think he simply saw the error of his ways. Between my condition and the neighbor’s report on the time of the gunshot, they put out an APB on Lucas. They figured he’d flee the scene, but I wasn’t convinced. He didn’t have a lot of money, he specialized in being a mean son of a bitch. I think . . . I think I just knew he’d come back. That had been the point. My mother was dead. Now he could do as he pleased.
“I didn’t have any more weapons. I wasn’t old enough to legally buy a gun. The shotgun was the only thing I knew about. So I went downtown. I waited until six o’clock when the sheriff locked up the office for the night. I knew the volunteer officers were out on patrol. If any other business came up, the department’s answering machine told you how to reach the sheriff at home, so everything was deserted and safe. I broke into the sheriff’s office.”