by Ninie Hammon
And never would be a parent.
Instantly pulling a mental lever, he shifted his train of thought onto another track before it could pull up at stations where he never stopped anymore. But he wasn't quite quick enough and a lone rogue thought made it into his consciousness.
Brice McGreggor would never have children because he didn't dare.
Chapter Three
Brice glanced at the big clock on the school office wall as he stepped into the principal's office — 2:37 p.m. Riley was last seen at 1:20 p.m.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
He took a seat in one of two chairs facing the principal's desk, feeling a wave of "principal's office anxiety" wash over him. In some ways, you never grew up. Bergman sat behind the desk. He was an older man, surely circling the drain of mandatory retirement, with white hair and a neatly trimmed white beard and mustache. He was dressed in a suit and vest. A gold watch was visible in the vest pocket that put Brice in mind of Dobbs's pocket watch that had never kept time. It had helped him rescue a family from a flood, though, so it had earned its keep.
Each of the three elementary schools in the county was unique, in part due to the different characters of the schools' principals. In East Point Elementary School, the principal was what Brice called a "hangly-dangly" kind of woman, who had paper mobiles made by the children decorating her office and the school hallways. The principal of Madison Elementary School was into Precious Moments figurines — along with ceramic Winnie the Pooh and Harry Potter characters … plus hobbits, dwarves, elves, gnomes, fairies, and other small, unidentifiable creatures. Bergman was a motivational-posters kind of guy. In National Geographic-esque pictures, inch-high saplings stood beside California Redwoods above the word Determination, the Golden Gate above the admonition to Be the Bridge and a photo of a single drip of water hitting the surface of a pond, above the words Attitudes are ripples. Change your attitude and you change your world.
Melody McCallum sat in the seat beside Brice, looking like a child herself, a petite woman with delicately beautiful features. Her hair was striking — thick and an unusual caramel shade of brown, hanging in loose curls that framed her face. She was seated in a shaft of sunshine, and he could see reddish copper highlights — either natural or skillfully colored — that caught and reflected the light, giving her hair a glossy, sparkling sheen. Her complexion was very pale and he suspected she could sunburn from the picture of a beach on a postcard.
She wore a neck brace.
"Whiplash," she told him when she saw him notice it. "I was in a wreck six weeks ago. I get the brace off tomorrow afternoon."
"Melody downplays the accident," Bergman said, giving her a paternal look. "A pickup truck driven by an illegal … oh, no, that's not politically correct." He almost ground his teeth. "There were three Hispanic men in a pickup with no license plate or vehicle registration and without a speck of identification — a driver's license or anything else — among them. The driver blew past a huge sign that said "right lane closed" like perhaps he couldn't read English. Ran Melody right off the road." He didn't smile, but you could hear lightly veiled satisfaction in his voice when he continued, "All three of the men were killed."
That was odd. Why were there fatalities in the other vehicle when Melody's was the one run off the road?
"The side of her car was ripped open, but she was thrown free, thank God. Found her unconscious beside the road."
She dismissed his concern with an "I'm fine" and focused on Brice. "Please, you have to find Riley! I don't know where he could have gone. He was there and then …"
"Start at the beginning, please." She looked down at her hands, clasped in her lap. She was trembling. No, make that vibrating.
"I can't remember anything that was different—" Her voice broke. She was desperate to recall every detail and the sheriff knew from experience that such effort usually had the opposite effect.
"Please, Ms. McCallum—"
"Melody."
"Melody, I'm Brice. I know you're upset but I need you to relax. If you try too hard to remember everything, you won't remember much of anything. Just tell me what you do remember. If you think of some other detail later, you can give me a call."
That helped to relax her.
"When did you see Riley for the first time today?"
"Before school started. I'm at my desk half an hour before the bell rings and the doors open so I'm always there when the children arrive. The first bell rings at 8:15, the final tardy bell rings at 8:45."
"Classes start at 8:45," Bergman said. "First recess is short, just fifteen minutes, at ten o'clock. Lunch is 11:20 to 11:50. Second recess is longer for the younger children, K through third grade — they have more energy to run off — a full half hour between 1:15 and 1:45. The busses start running at 3:15."
"What do the children do when they first get to school, before the tardy bell rings?"
"This morning, Riley came in right after Beth Singletary. Corey Warren was the last of today's feeders."
Brice looked quizzical.
"My classroom is a bit of a zoo and the children take turns feeding — it teaches them responsibility. I have a parakeet named Frodo, two gerbils named Frick and Frack, an aquarium full of fish and a terrarium on a table by the window. The children are most fascinated with Bambi."
She answered his unasked question.
"Bambi is a tarantula spider almost as big as a saucer. He lives in the terrarium."
Brice was horrified. He wasn't arachnophobic, but spiders totally creeped him out and he would not willingly get near one.
"You have a hairy black spider in your classroom?"
She almost smiled at his surprise.
"In many cultures spiders are revered as gods. But in our culture, we're scared to death of them, prejudiced against them. First-graders are so impressionable and I want them to understand that prejudice, in any form, is unacceptable, that it's not okay to pre-judge something — or somebody — you really know nothing about. A spider is the perfect object lesson."
Brice thought he could have come up with a less horrifying object lesson but he didn't say that.
"I let the students name him. They chose 'Bambi,' which shows you how they felt about him. None of my students is afraid of him."
Her smile faded. "No, that's not true. Riley was still a little bit … I knew he'd get over it, though. School only started a week ago. It was his job this morning to feed live grasshoppers to Bambi. He did it, but he didn't want to watch … you know, he didn't want to see the spider kill the grasshopper, so I let him feed the fish." She looked stricken. "You don't suppose that's why, that he ran away—"
"We don't know that he ran away. Please continue."
"That's one reason I let him help me. He seemed to still be a little upset over feeding Bambi this morning, so I picked him as one of four boys to help me load up the paperbacks into my car at the beginning of second recess." She gestured toward her neck brace. "Carrying things is awkward."
Melody explained that the children had been bringing in their parents' old paperback books as a class project. The bargain bookstore paid a quarter apiece for them and last year's class had raised more than thirty dollars to donate to the county animal shelter. She was supposed to deliver the books today to the bookstore, which was only two blocks from the school, so she and the children carried the boxes from her room out to her car parked in front of the building and put them into the trunk.
"Were the children ever alone when—?"
"Never. I never left them alone. Not for a second. With the boys' help, it only took one trip, maybe five minutes. Then I told Riley and the other three — Danny, Corey and Damien — they could go on out to the playground to play. I watched them go into the building and down the hall toward the playground door. The last time I saw Riley, he was going into the boy's restroom and the other boys were going outside. Then I left, drove to the bookstore and unloaded the books. I was seated at my desk before the bell rang for the end of rec
ess. But Riley never came back into the room. I asked one of the boys to go see if he was still in the restroom. Maybe he had gotten sick and stayed in there. But he wasn't."
"There are four teachers on the playground at all times during recess," Bergstrom said, with an edge of defensiveness beginning to creep into his voice. As soon as the shock of the boy's disappearance abated a little, everyone would naturally slip into CYA mode. It would eventually occur to the whole staff, from the custodian to the librarian, that they might somehow be held responsible for the boy's disappearance.
"I will want to talk to those four teachers," Brice said.
"Certainly, but I already talked to them. Gwen Ragland — her classroom is the first one on the right when you come in the building — distinctly remembers seeing Riley playing, said he was on the slide with some other boys. But the other three can't specifically recall seeing him at second recess, though two of them remember seeing him outside during first recess."
"I should have walked them all the way out to the playground." Melody's voice quavered like a grieving child. "But my car was in the bus lane right in front of the building. And I saw them go down the hall."
There were windows in the front doors of the building and floor-to-ceiling glass panels on both sides of the doors. Anyone in the hallway could have seen her car. The view from the window in the principal's office on the left side of the front doors was partially blocked by shrubbery, but nothing obscured the view from a whole room full of windows in the classroom on the right side of the doors.
"What did you do after the boys went inside the building?"
"I delivered the books to Twice Told Tales."
"Immediately?"
"Yes." She paused. "Well, no. I remembered the grocery sack of books — Megan Magee brought it in this morning and left it sitting beside the door in my room. So I went back inside and got it, took maybe two minutes, then drove to the store, dropped off the books, was back here before the end of recess. But Riley, I saw him walk down the hallway … and I never saw him again."
A bell outside rang loud and long.
"That's the first bell, 3:10. The busses start running at 3:15," Bergman said.
"Not today, they don't," Brice said. "The last children who saw Riley, the three little boys, I'd like to see them now, one at a time."
Chapter Four
While Brice sat alone in the principal's office, waiting for the first little boy, he stared down at the photo of Riley that Fletch had texted to all the officers. It was a school picture and he was wearing a plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows and a white t-shirt underneath. He had curly red hair, not carroty red, but not a deep wine color either. An attractive red. His skin was so pale it was almost translucent, with red freckles, little ones, like he'd been dusted with chili powder, and red eyebrows that almost vanished into his face. His eyes were a clear blue, the same color blue as the blue in his plaid shirt, and Brice wondered if his mother had done that on purpose, matched the blue in his shirt to his eyes for his school picture. He was not smiling but not frowning either. If Brice had to guess, he would suspect that the solemn look on the boy's face was his face in repose, his natural look. He appeared to be a serious child, perhaps sensitive, as evidenced by his reluctance to watch the tarantula spider eat the grasshopper he'd put into the terrarium.
Brice shuddered. A tarantula. Fragile little Melody McCallum owning a pet spider was glaringly out of character. It was noble, he supposed, to use a spider to teach tolerance, but Brice suspected that more than a few of those children were at least unsettled by Bambi. Spiders were inherently scary creatures. The author Stephen King once said that the true embodiment of evil was a spider. Brice couldn't have agreed more.
Mr. Bergman escorted a boy into his office and introduced him to Brice as Corey Warren. The boy had brown hair slicked up with "product" into a faux hawk, and there were strips of no hair on both sides of his head like racing stripes. He hadn't yet grown into the incisors that had so recently replaced the blank space in front and his mouth seemed too full of teeth to talk.
Brice was glad he'd been called to the school out of uniform. He suspected the sheriff's uniform would have been intimidating, and his size alone was intimidating enough. He was seated when the child came into the room, and didn't rise. Six feet, five inches was a long way up for a kid to have to look to make eye contact.
Corey sat in the chair beside Brice and he noticed that the boy's feet only barely touched the floor.
"You know what's happening, right? That Riley is missing."
"Uh huh, Miss McCallum said so but we already knew because she got real upset when she couldn't find him after recess. Where'd he go?"
"I was hoping you might know."
"Me and Riley ain't friends. We play together sometimes, but he's not my BFF or anything like that."
Brice smiled. BFF. The boy was clearly proud of owning that word and grateful for the opportunity to use it.
"When was the last time you saw him today?"
"We were helping Miss McCallum load boxes of paperbacks into her car and then she sent us back out to the playground for the rest of recess. Riley stopped to go to the bathroom and I didn't see him after that."
"Do you think Riley would have run away?"
"Naaa, not Riley. He's not the type."
"What type is he?"
"The type that wouldn't run away."
Damien House was the next child, a black boy with a fro half again as big as his head. He was wearing a Pittsburgh Steelers t-shirt.
"You a Steelers fan?"
"My dad says he bleeds black and gold."
"You play?"
"No, you have to be eight. My dad played in college, though. He was a blocker, and when he lined up, he'd chant, 'I am da house and da house don't move.'"
Brice smiled.
"You know Riley Campbell is missing. When did you see him last?"
"On the playground at recess."
"After you and the other boys helped Miss McCallum haul the books to the car?"
"Uh huh. When we were finished, Me and Danny and Corey went back outside for the rest of recess."
"Corey said Riley stopped to use the restroom and the rest of you went on outside."
"Yeah, I guess. But I saw Riley later on the slide."
"So you know Riley came out of the building to the playground after you helped Ms. McCallum?"
"I saw him on the slide." The boy paused. "I think."
"I need you to think real hard. Did you see him or didn't you?"
"I saw him on the slide, at the top, and he yelled something, you know just hollered out like 'woo-hoo,' like that, before he went down. I remember. But maybe it was at first recess."
Danny Keeling had a mop of blond hair and dimples deep enough to eat pudding out of.
It was clear he did not want to talk to Brice. He fidgeted in the chair and refused to make eye contact, answered questions with one- and two-word replies.
"Did you see Riley out on the playground after you boys loaded the boxes into the trunk of your teacher's car?"
"I don't know."
"Think about it — was he on the swings or the slide?"
"Maybe."
"Are you … afraid of something, Danny?"
The boy looked stricken.
"No!" But every syllable of his body language was screaming, "Yes!"
"Because you're not in any trouble. I just need help finding Riley. If you were lost, you'd want your friends to help the police find you, wouldn't you?"
"I won't get lost. I don't want to get in trouble."
"What do you mean?"
The boy squirmed and said nothing.
"In trouble with your teacher?"
He shook his head, still not looking at Brice.
"With your parents?"
"I'm not allowed to go out of the yard by myself or I'll get in trouble."
Brice decided not to pursue the subject, but he made a mental note to do a littl
e nosing around. This child was more scared than he ought to be of "getting in trouble."
"Did you see Riley go into the bathroom as you boys were leaving the building?"
He nodded his head.
"Did you see him come out?"
He shook his head.
"Do you know anything about Riley that might help me find him?"
He said nothing, then, "He doesn't like Bambi. He's afraid of Bambi."
"So am I," Brice said, and the kid's head snapped up and he looked Brice in the eye for the first time. "Did having to feed that grasshopper to Bambi this morning bother Riley?"
"I guess. I know he asked to be moved out of the row of desks by the window so he wouldn't have to be so close to Bambi."
"Do you know any reason why Riley might run away?"
"I don't think he ran away. I think somebody took him."
Brice froze, then forced himself to ask the next question casually.
"What makes you think so?"
"There are lots of bad people in the world."
"Do you know who took him?"
He shook his head. "But if you're not careful, bad people will take you away and make you do terrible things. I don't think Riley was very careful."
None of Brice's questions managed to pry any more information from Danny.
After Brice interviewed the children, he talked to the four teachers who'd had playground duty — Wanda Phelps and Roger Dunlap, third grade; Angela Reed, second grade, and first-grade teacher, Gwen Ragland. None of them remembered seeing Riley on the playground during second recess. Mrs. Ragland had told the principal she did, but when the sheriff questioned her, she admitted that perhaps that had been at first recess, not second. All the teachers stressed that with more than a hundred children running around, chasing each other, squealing, they could have missed a quiet boy like Riley.
When the last teacher left the principal's office, Brice sat for a moment, looking over his notes for a pattern. He saw nothing. He looked at his watch — 4:15. Children would already be at least an hour late getting home from school today, and even though he'd had Fletch make announcements on the local radio station, and post notices on the school's website, the sheriff's department's website and on both their Facebook pages, he knew parents' anxiety was growing by the minute.