“Yes, but—”
“I’m gonna send you the license plate. Have the Department find who it belongs to, and text me that information.” Let Linda know? The last thing Olivia wanted was hundreds of kids in a screaming panic. “Look, it may be nothing—some speaker’s idiotic idea of a cute demonstration—so don’t bother Linda yet. I’ll let you both know the minute I figure it out.” She hung up, snapped a photo of the van’s back end, sent it, and pocketed the cell.
Then she switched off the sound on her radio.
Taking another deep breath, Olivia tightened both hands on the gun, and eased along the wall toward the van.
12:44
Nick
Why would the school’s two hottest kids be interested in sports medicine? Nick guessed that Mina Santos made sense, since (underneath how she looked) she was the kind of person who’d want to help people by being a doctor, or at least a physical therapist. (And maybe it was good she wore that kind of clothes—he could imagine that having a really gorgeous doctor could be awkward.) At least her friend Sofia wasn’t here. The pair of them always made Nick want to stammer and blush. Funny, though: he’d have thought that of the two, it would be Sofia who was interested in sports medicine, since she’d been a basketball player. Of course, that was before her sister was murdered.
Was basketball the reason Brendan Atcheson signed up for this session? He’d come in late, but went to stand next to Mina, which looked funny because she didn’t even come up to his shoulder. Brendan was almost as good-looking a guy as she was a girl. Although until Brendan had stopped to talk with him a few minutes ago, Nick wouldn’t have said he was anywhere near as nice as Mina. Maybe he just hid it better.
And what about Nick Clarkson? Well, Nick was there because Mom was a nurse, and so was Grams, and they loved their jobs. The other kids here were a mix, too, a dozen of them, along with the principal’s husband, who was probably there to help keep an eye on the pricey equipment. And of course Tío, cleaning up after lunch.
And the PT, who was talking about healing after trauma. Which Nick had forgotten could be a physical thing as well.
12:45
Olivia
Olivia’s blood pounded as she followed her gun along the endless metal side of the white van. Cálmete, she ordered herself. You really don’t want to empty your gun into somebody’s confused abuelo.
But she got as far as the open door and nobody’s grandfather had stepped out. Olivia braced herself, then whirled around with her gun covering the interior.
Both seats were empty.
So was the rest of the van.
She sagged in relief at the sight of that long expanse of clean floor. No barrels of fertilizer-and-fuel-oil explosives, at least. Could it be that bike lock was innocent? Insanely stupid, illegal as hell—and innocent?
But Mrs. Hopkins knew nothing about it. And Mrs. Hopkins knew everything. Now ask Linda?
No, first things first.
Find the damn driver.
12:45
Mina
Mina realized that she was happy. In the last eleven months she’d been a lot of things, but happy? That word was way too simple for what Mina had been. But today, standing in the near-empty cafeteria while the PT talked about why he liked sports medicine, it occurred to Mina that the world was a better place than it had been for a long time.
It wasn’t just that Brendan had come in at last. And it wasn’t even because, after handing Mr. Kendrick his late slip, he’d walked around all the others and come to stand right next to her! (Looking all preoccupied, maybe, but boys just had to seem cool, didn’t they?)
No, Brendan’s arrival might have made her aware of her happiness, but it wasn’t the cause of it—not the whole cause. She was happy, Mina decided, because of that tapestry thing Ms. McDonald had talked about.
These were the people she was woven in with. Her family. Brendan, sure, but also Mr. Kendrick, quietly ready to lend a hand—to a girl who liked languages, or a guest speaker with equipment, or a janitor with lunch tables to move. Tío himself was a kind of family, the old man folding up all those tables to clean the floors completely, instead of just pushing his mop around their wheels like the old janitor used to. Tío cared about the school, and as far as Mina was concerned, he was more her “uncle” than any of the ones in Rio or Tehran. Even weird Nick Clarkson, next to Mr. Kendrick: she didn’t really know Nick, since he was two grades below her, but he was a nice kid, and was risking a lot to stand up for Bee, in spite of all the trouble she’d brought him.
And outside the cafeteria, the rest of her school family: Sofia, of course, who’d spent the past year fighting hard for some scraps of happiness. And in the same room with Sofe, right now, Chaco Cabrera, who didn’t know it (yet!) but the girl he scowled at so fiercely was seriously interested in him.
And the further threads—like Sergeant Olivia Mendez. Mina suspected Sergeant Mendez felt this way about the whole town. And of course Principal McDonald, standing tall at the head of a school that even Mina could see was getting better because of her. And beyond those, at the other end of a text, Mâmân, fragile and strong.
Mina felt like humming with pride.
12:45
Brendan
Brendan didn’t hear a word the PT was saying. He wondered that the people next to him weren’t staring at his chest, where his heart was thumping wildly as it waited for everything to start. Any minute now, the cafeteria door he was staring at was going to come open…
12:45
Olivia
Olivia pressed her ear to the crack between the gym doors, hearing mostly the thuds of her heart. No bike locks here, no van. And a man speaking inside, in a normal voice. No trace of alarm, no panic. Lecturing.
The driver couldn’t have passed by more than a minute or two ago. Of course, if that was his voice inside, so calm and even, the guy was an outright nut job.
Olivia worked the handle, the door clicked open: not locked. The voice kept on—something about training camp. With the gun at the back of her thigh, she opened the door a couple of inches: Coach Gilbert, forty kids scattered across a patch of bleachers, and the retired baseball player.
Coach saw the door move and started to get up. Olivia forced a smile and shook her head, letting the door drift shut.
If he wasn’t here, that left the equipment shed across the drive or the school itself. She dismissed the shed instantly, because honestly who cared, when there were hundreds of students off to her right?
Gun still tucked against her leg, Olivia reached the end of the gym. She leaned forward to look around the corner: lunch shelter, school yard, outdoor courts, playing fields beyond. Completely empty but for a figure on the far side of the baseball diamond, walking slowly back from the far fence carrying a black bag.
So he must’ve gone down one of the quads. And though she kept trying to convince herself that there could be an innocent explanation for that damned bike lock (though by God if there was she’d string ’im up), just now she couldn’t really believe it. Not when her pounding heart was shouting at her that Guadalupe was running out of time.
12:45
Linda
Linda sat against the edge of the teacher’s desk in room B18, back to the door. She was telling the students about her experiences as a young nurse and teacher in Papua New Guinea when she heard the door come open. She figured it was Tom Atcheson—who no doubt had some excellent reason for not bothering to arrive on time—but because he’d irritated her with his high-handed attitude (to say nothing of his lack of concern over Brendan), she decided to make him wait for her to finish what she was saying.
Until twenty-eight bodies went rigid in their seats, twenty-eight faces going taut with shock.
She spun away from the desk, arms outstretched as if to hold the kids back from threat.
All she could see was the black maw of a massive pistol, pointing straight at her.
12:46
Olivia
At the end of th
e gym, a pair of bathrooms faced the lunch shelter. They should be empty, but as Olivia passed under the girls’ room window, she heard a sound. A whisper? Something dragging across the tiles? Where the hell was Torres? It felt like an hour…
She flicked a glance down at her watch: two minutes since she’d talked to Mrs. Hopkins? Jesus.
The restroom door was set back behind a narrow section of wall that blocked the view from the tables. It was the worst possible layout for a right-handed cop: by the time Olivia’s gun cleared the door frame, her whole body would be exposed.
She took hold of the handle (If this is all some kid’s joke, I’ll castrate the little bastard!) then yanked it back and leapt inside, crouching with the gun before her.
The bathroom was empty, but the door’s crash and the noise of her entrance didn’t quite cover a quick scuffle and squeak of alarm. One of her knees gave a crack as she squatted to look under the stall dividers: legs, just inside the handicapped stall—four legs, not two, wearing jeans and middle-school shoes. Unless the guy was standing on a toilet…
“Girls?”
“Yes?” The voice was high, but naturally so: not that of a terrified child with a gun in her face.
“Is there anyone in here with you?” The door lock clicked. Two girls, wide-eyed, looked out—Esme Gustafson and a friend. “Show me your hands.”
Both girls’ arms came around: cellphones, with matching pink covers.
“Is anyone else here?”
The friend spoke over Esme’s shoulder. “Just us. We needed to—”
“Doesn’t matter. Shut this door after me, and lock it. Don’t let anyone in until I come and tell you. There’s a…there’s a burglar on the school grounds.”
Burglars sounded infinitely less threatening than lunatic terrorists or vengeful drug lords, but the two girls hastened out of the stall. The moment Olivia stepped out of the restroom, she heard the dead bolt turn, followed by furious whispers.
This would be all over the Internet in ten minutes flat.
Olivia studied the grounds again from behind the narrow section of wall. The figure coming from the fence-line was Señora Rodriguez, she decided—who would not be placidly collecting trash if she’d seen something out of place. Olivia came into the open to peer down B Quad. Empty tables. A row of nine closed doors—or at least semi-closed—along the quad’s far side. There were three partially open doors, emitting a mix of talking voices.
She came out of the shadows and into the quad, keeping an eye on the right-hand doors leading to the gym and cafeteria. All shut, but no bicycle locks.
Cafeteria first, she decided, then the classrooms. By that time Torres and Wong better damn well be here. And once they knew who the van belonged to, they’d have an idea if they were looking for gang-bangers, drunk fathers, bona-fide terrorists—or some random maniac she’d missed entirely. She could text Mrs. Hopkins and check on Sofia Rivas and Nick Clarkson, since Taco Alvarez was pissed off at one of them and Charles Cuomo at the—
But that was as far as Olivia Mendez got. Before the thought was finished, before her hand had even started to stretch out for the cafeteria doors, hell broke loose at Guadalupe Middle School.
12:47
Linda
The gun pointed at Linda forever, threatening to swallow her up in its yawning black mouth. She was too terrified to move—not for herself, but because of the children behind her. If one of them started to panic…
Her eye, casting about frantically for something that wasn’t the end of a gun, caught on the Band-Aid wrapped around one of the man’s fingers. For some absurd reason, the banality of the tiny wound changed matters. It freed her to speak—although addressing eight hundred faces in the gymnasium was nothing compared to the effort of summoning words now, in calm, even, comforting tones. “Kids, you know what to do in an emergency, we’ve drilled this. Just sit quietly for a minute, and we’ll figure it out together. Sir, I wonder if we might—”
That was as far as her speech got. She didn’t hear what drew his attention, but when he turned to glance back through the partially open door, whatever was out there set him off. His heavy gym bag dropped with a metallic clatter as his hands came up to the stance seen on a million television shows.
When he started pulling the trigger, the twenty-eight children behind her began to scream.
12:47
Olivia Mendez was the first to fall.
Even if her sidearm had been up and aimed at the door of B18—even if she’d been prepared to fire in the direction of the kids hidden behind it—she still wouldn’t have had a chance. The first bullet spun her around and threw her police-issue Glock against the cafeteria doors. The second punched through the wood, and then the wall behind her began to explode into pocks—four, five times—before the eighth round plowed up under the edge of her vest. She went still. Blood began to edge down the concrete.
Every student in the school was bolt upright in instant terror. In the Visitors’ lot, the Clarion reporter, checking her cell for the latest painful insider news of the Alvarez trial, jerked, gaping out the car window. Across the road, the field workers straightened up from their planting, staring openmouthed at the sprawl of buildings.
Two miles away, a police cruiser finished its U-turn and flicked on its strobing lights, to accelerate up the road from town.
12:47
Gordon
Noise hit the cafeteria like a jackhammer. At the first BLAM, the PT dropped a dumbbell, Tío jerked upright, the children all stared at each other in confusion—and Gordon spun around to face the quad. An instant later, a second explosion punched a hole through the farther set of quad doors, zipping past Gordon to hit the stage and spray the air with splinters. The kids shrieked, the speaker bolted, Tío cursed, his mop hitting the floor, and Gordon was in motion. At the fourth BLAM, Gordon’s shoulder slammed into a folded-up table and began to shove. Tío was halfway toward the children. At the ninth, Brendan gave a startled noise as Mina collapsed into his arms.
By then, most of the kids were fleeing after the panicked speaker, who had abandoned the closer set of access-road doors and was racing for the other pair. Tío was gathering the kids who hadn’t bolted, shoving them from the line of fire, while Gordon had worked the locks on the farther quad doors and was sprinting toward the others, hauling another folded-up table as he went.
As the fifteenth round slapped the wall, Gordon finished bolting the doors and rammed the table against them, whirling to look at the cafeteria.
One more shot, then a pause. Ringing silence emphasized the sobs of children, the ragged curses of the guest speaker, struggling at the access-road doors, and the wordless noises of comfort from Tío.
The school siren rose up. But in the moment before the wail drowned out all thought, a boy’s voice trickled through the cafeteria, strained and thin.
“Mr. Kendrick? I think…I think Mina’s been shot.”
12:47
Seconds after the gunfire ended, the lockdown siren began to bellow. It was a known noise, and triggered the automatic response of much-rehearsed drills. Doors were slammed shut. Locks were turned, blinds jerked down, lights slapped off. Guest speakers watched as students leapt from their seats to hunker along the edges of the rooms. Teachers snapped out orders for silence, moved to help the kids with mobility problems, and told the guests what to do. The students in the gym stood up in the bleachers, and after a moment of confusion, Coach ordered them to the boys’ locker room—yes, girls, too. In the quad-side window of the girls’ bathroom, Esme Gustafson’s face came into view. Her eyes went wide at a sight from a video game: a man in a baseball cap, shooting—then Esme jerked backward with a squawk as the bathroom’s other occupant remembered the drill and snatched her down.
Three employees did not follow the rules of the drill. For the kitchen ladies, the daily 12:40 bell was their signal to finish loading the dishwashers, roll down the service screens, and (on a nice afternoon like this) go out to sit in the sun for half an
hour, their first break since morning. As usual, they took their lunch—and Karen, her pack of cigarettes. Because of the cigarettes, the three ladies kept plastic chairs on the far side of the windowless, concrete-block equipment shed where no one would see them. They were six minutes into their break when the gunfire started. Karen dropped her half-smoked stub, Susanna’s coffee flew into the air, and Maria said a phrase her family would not have believed she knew. All three were on their feet, staring wildly at each other as shots smashed through the air. Six, eight—a dozen? Too fast to count, and then…silence followed, stretching out…
All three squeaked when the siren began to wail.
Maria crossed herself and crept to the corner of the shed, peering down the access road at the back of the school. What she saw confused her. The white van hadn’t been there earlier, or they wouldn’t have got out the door. The others tugged her back into the safety of the concrete blocks. She crossed herself again with a shaking hand, and told them what she’d seen.
Karen gave a sob. Susanna reached for her cellphone. But when the next volley of shots came, terrifyingly close, the ladies broke and ran for the apple orchard.
Not so the front office. At the first set of shots, Mrs. Hopkins struggled up from her chair to lunge for the panic button. She picked up the phone, snapping orders to her three waiting students as she hit the numbers. They instantly moved to pull the door’s shade, turn the lock, and drop the window-blinds, then hunkered down in the lee of the counter. Mrs. Hopkins told the 911 responder that she had to step away for a minute, handing the phone to the most sensible of the three—the girl—while she hurried to the principal’s office to do the routine with lock, blinds, and lights. She came back, took the telephone, gave the kids some reassuring words (calling each by name), then lowered herself awkwardly to the floor beside them, putting the receiver to her ear again.