by Gayle Wilson
Lindsey scrawled her name across the sign-in sheet and then turned to find Shannon at her elbow. Although her friend was as fashionably dressed and as carefully made-up as usual, her green eyes looked less confident than they normally did.
“Hey,” she said.
“Hey, yourself. What are you doing here so early?”
Lindsey usually arrived at the school shortly after seven, using the time before the students flooded in to get ready for the day. Like most of their kids, Shannon raced the first bell.
Lindsey couldn’t help wonder if her friend’s being here so early had anything to do with the gossip about her and David Campbell. A way to avoid answering unpleasant questions?
“The county, in its infinite wisdom, has decided to send their so-called ‘grief’ counselors out again today. When they called me to set it up, I told them I was doing your classes. That we’d worked it out in advance. I hope that’s okay.”
Lindsey had been mistrustful of the county’s decision to close the school after Tim’s suicide. She had to admit that, despite David’s death and the resultant uproar in the community about where his body had been found, nothing else had happened during that mandated closure. Now, after last week’s two-day break and the weekend, they would all be back together once more, again comforting their kids in the midst of loss.
“You know it is.”
Lindsey walked behind the counter to the row of teacher cubbyholes. Shannon followed, watching as she emptied hers.
“Look, Linds, I know we left things a little—”
“We had a difference of opinion. We’ve had them before. We’ll have them again. That doesn’t change things between us.”
“Jace said you still have doubts.”
The surge of jealousy Lindsey experienced at hearing Shannon refer to him as Jace was unexpected. She struggled against it, working to keep what she felt out of her voice.
“He came to talk to me. Justin, I mean. He told me he was innocent. And I believed him. I told Jace that. I suggested that he broaden the scope of his investigation.”
“If it’s any comfort,” Shannon said as she turned to take the messily stacked papers out of her own box, “Jace said they’d found nothing to indicate he’d been in trouble before.”
Lindsey nodded, but she kept her eyes on the photocopied sheets of announcements and reminders as she pretended to look through them. She didn’t trust herself not to reveal how far from the truth her assertion was that nothing had changed between them. And now the gulf wasn’t only about Justin.
“First, second, third and fifth periods, right?”
“That’s it. I’ll see you first period, then.” Lindsey smiled, but movement of her lips felt stiff.
“Hey, it’s gonna be okay.” Shannon touched her arm. “As weird as it sounds, Dave’s death will take away the mystique. It won’t be cool to off yourself anymore. Not when the principal’s doing it.”
She was probably right. She usually was about the teenage psyche. Still, the dispassionate statement Shannon had just made about death of a man who had literally risked everything to be with her chilled Lindsey to the bone.
“I hope for their sake you’re right.”
Obviously she hadn’t managed to mask her revulsion. Shannon’s face changed, the beautifully sculpted features rearranging themselves into something less comforting.
“See you upstairs.”
As soon as Lindsey was out of the office, she took a breath, trying to control emotions that threatened to overwhelm her. She would be no help to her students if she couldn’t conquer her own feelings of loss, as well as her sense that the world she’d inhabited for the last ten years would never be the same.
She hurried up the stairs, fumbling her keys out of her purse as she did. There were two girls from her homeroom waiting outside her door. Their parents dropped them off early every morning on their way to work, and, although they were supposed to wait in the commons until the teachers arrived at the mandated time of 7:45 a.m., Lindsey let them stay in her room where they either studied or caught up on homework.
She smiled at them as she inserted her key, letting them enter the room while she removed it. She flicked on the overhead lights, thinking that the dimness fit her mood better.
She put her tote bag down on her desk before sticking her purse in her bottom drawer. Then she took out her lunch and walked over to put it into her wall cabinet. When she turned back, the girls had already taken their seats in the row by the windows, their heads lowered over their books.
Lindsey turned to erase the blackboard and found the janitorial staff had taken advantage of the off days to wash it. They’d also cleaned off the long-term assignments that she always left up in the right-hand corner. Replacing those would give her something to do. Something that might keep her mind off the last classroom she’d been inside.
Determinedly destroying that image, she picked up her desk calendar and carried it to the blackboard. She worked for several minutes replicating the assignments that had been erased. Before she could finish, a feminine voice interrupted.
“Ms. Sloan?”
She turned to find Jean Phillips at her desk. “Hey, Jean.”
“I was wondering if we were going to practice today.”
Scholars’ Bowl, Lindsey realized. The team had a game tomorrow, one she hadn’t thought to cancel.
“I’m thinking we’ll take a break this week. I’m going to try to reschedule our match with Duncan.”
“So when will it be?”
“I’m not sure yet. I’ll put it up on the board when I’ve made the call. Okay?”
Jean nodded. “Can I stay here ’til the first bell?”
“Sure. Plenty of room.”
Lindsey glanced around the room as if to verify that. Steven Byrd had come in and was sitting in the middle of the back row of desks.
The bright blue eyes behind the thick lens of his glasses had sparkled with amusement the last few times they’d interacted. This morning they were cold.
Had Jace talked to him after their phone call? If so, surely he wouldn’t have used her name.
The uneasiness produced by Steven’s glare increased when she realized he had no books out. She thought about telling him that if he were going to sit in her room, he needed to start studying, but for some reason she decided against it. She broke eye contact with him instead, turning back to Jean.
“You can sit anywhere.”
“Thanks.” Jean picked up the enormous backpack she dragged everywhere. She slung it over her shoulder and made her way, lopsided under its weight, to where Steven was sitting.
His gaze didn’t shift to follow the girl’s progress, but remained locked on Lindsey. Nor did he speak when Jean slid into the seat beside him. The girl leaned down into the aisle between them to unzip her bag, wrestling out a notebook. As she laid it on her desk, she glanced up at Lindsey.
“Something wrong, Ms. Sloan?”
Lindsey shook her head. She made herself begin to unpack her tote, but her hands were trembling. She refused to look up, imagining she could feel Steven’s eyes on her as she worked.
He’s into you, Justin had said. Was that what this was about? A manifestation of that crush?
Despite her intentions, she lifted her eyes from the books she was taking out of her bag and found Steven’s gaze still focused on her. She looked at Jean, whose head was down as she thumbed through the notebook she’d removed from her backpack.
When she shifted her eyes back to Steven, his lips lifted at the corners, the motion hardly enough to be called a smile. More like a sneer, she realized. He was sneering at her.
Fury flooded Lindsey’s body, increasing the vibration of her hands. Had he been the one who’d put that damn snake in her hamper? Locked her in a building he’d tried to burn down around her? Had he then targeted Andrea and Tim, hounding them to suicide?
Each memory fueled a rage she hadn’t realized simmered so near the surface. She dropped the tenth grad
e anthology on her desk, taking a perverse pleasure from the bang it made as it hit. On some level she was aware the girls had looked up to see what was going on, but she was past the point of caring.
She marched down the center aisle until she reached Steven. She had to step around Jean’s book bag to lean forward and put her palms on the wooden surface of his desk.
His eyes never left her face. And other than a slight widening as she bent down, they didn’t change.
“What are you doing?”
“What does it look like I’m doing?” His voice was soft, the lift at the corners of his mouth increasing.
“You’re supposed to be studying. Or you need to go.”
“I am studying. My favorite subject in the world.”
There was no doubting his meaning. With that realization, Lindsey knew this was a confrontation that couldn’t take place in this classroom. Not in front of the other students.
Steven shifted forward in his seat, bringing his face closer to hers. She recoiled, straightening and stepping back, only to stumble over Jean’s backpack.
In the split second she had to react, she put her arms out, trying to regain her equilibrium by finding something solid to grab onto. Her right hand found purchase on the seat back of the desk in front of Jean’s. As it tilted backward under her weight, Jean jumped up, scrambling, or so Lindsey thought, to get her bag out of the aisle.
By the time Lindsey managed to right herself, still hanging on to the seat back, she realized that both the boy and girl were bending over the backpack. A couple of books, which she assumed had spilled out when she’d fallen over it, lay beside the bag.
As Lindsey straightened, her balance restored, Jean began to pull something else out of the depths of the backpack. It took Lindsey too long to understand what she was seeing.
And far too long to react.
“Back up,” Steven said, brandishing a gun that seemed to have appeared from thin air.
Despite the threat it represented, Lindsey couldn’t keep her eyes off the object Jean had taken from her bag. The olive drab, rectangular-shaped package had a D-cell battery duct taped to its top. A tangle of wires protruded from it and the tape.
Eyes shining, the girl held it out as if she were presenting a gift. Something wonderful. Something miraculous.
Lindsey heard a gasp from one of the girls seated by the windows, reminding her of their presence. And of their lives. Her students’ lives, which she was responsible for.
“Back up,” Steven said again, gesturing with his weapon. “Do it now, Ms. Sloan.”
She took a step backward and then another. She tried to hold his eyes, willing him not to use the gun.
Even as she did, she was aware of the far greater danger represented by what Jean held. It was clearly some kind of explosive. Maybe four or five pounds of it. And Lindsey had no idea what kind of damage something like that could do. Destroy this room? The whole wing?
Her eyes flicked to the left, to see if anyone in the hall was aware of what was going on. The door to her classroom was closed. Had Steven done that when he’d slipped in?
“What are you going to do?”
His smile widened. “I don’t know. Got a suggestion?”
“Please don’t do this, Steven. Whatever—”
He laughed. “We’ve come too far to go back now. You know that. You knew it when you told your boyfriend to start asking all those questions. You can’t unring the bell, Ms. Sloan.”
Neither could he. Whatever they were planning, Steven would understand very well there was no going back from this.
“You don’t have to make it worse,” she pled.
“Oh, yeah. Yeah, we do. Much, much worse for everybody. It’s the only way to fly.”
“That’s insane.”
“I’m sure that will be said. Aren’t you sure, Jean? That they’ll say we’re nuts? But what’s different about that?”
The girl laughed, her hands cradling the explosive.
“Put that down,” Lindsey urged her, “and I’ll talk to them. I’ll talk to Jace. You know he listens to me.”
“Jace listens, huh? And you talk?” Steven mocked, and then his voice hardened. “You talk to him while ya’ll are fucking?”
“Steven.”
“I forgot. Mustn’t talk naughty to the teacher. You want to wash my mouth out with soap, Ms. Sloan? Well, believe me I’d like to wash you, too. Only not your mouth. ’Cause I don’t mind if you talk dirty to me.”
A distant rattling, like the noise of a jackhammer, came from somewhere outside. Jean laughed in response, the sound jarring and inappropriate.
“You know what that was, Ms. Sloan?” Steven asked.
Lindsey shook her head, afraid to speculate.
“That’s our signal.”
“Signal for what?”
“Signal that the fun has started. And it’s time for us to join in. Go get your keys.”
“What?”
“Get your keys.” He gestured toward the front of the room with the gun he held.
“Why?”
“Because I said so.”
The muzzle of his weapon swung away from her and focused on the two girls sitting by the window. The motion carried Lindsey’s gaze with it. One of the girls screamed. The other laid her head on her desk, burying it in her arms.
“Steven, don’t,” Lindsey begged again.
“Keys. Now.”
She turned and ran for her desk. Before she got there, she had to come to terms with the realization that she might just have missed her chance. If she’d grabbed his gun in the fraction of a second while it was moving away from her—
Then Jean might have done whatever they intended with that bomb. If she had, they might all be dead. As of now, they were all still alive. And it was up her to see they stayed that way.
Lindsey stooped, pulling the bottom drawer of her desk open. She tried to think if there was anything in her purse she could use as a weapon. She jerked it out, feeling inside for her keys. Her fingers encountered the cool metal of her cell phone. By policy, students weren’t allowed to carry them on school property.
“Just the keys.”
Her hand still in her purse, Lindsey looked up to find Steven standing on the other side of her desk, watching. She knew this was another crossroad. If she obeyed, and left the phone in her purse, she would be giving up her only means of communication with the outside world.
“Everything else stays in your purse and it goes back into the drawer,” Steven ordered.
When she hesitated, he put both hands on the stock of the gun, tilting the barrel downward so the dark hole of the muzzle was aligned with her forehead. Then he lifted one brow, the movement obvious despite his glasses.
She found her keys and pulled them out of her handbag, letting him see them as she laid them on the desk. Preventing Steven from pulling that trigger was the important thing now. Not only to preserve her own life, but to keep him from crossing that barrier of killing his first victim as long as she could.
And which of the three already dead wasn’t his victim?
That was different. Or at least she hoped it was. Driving someone who was vulnerable to take their own life wasn’t the same as firing a gun and blowing out the brains of someone you knew. Someone you supposedly cared about.
How much of a role did Steven’s infatuation with her play in all this? Had he seen Jace’s questioning of him as a final betrayal of his fantasies?
She closed the drawer, sacrificing any chance of using her phone to the hope that she could keep the unthinkable from happening.
“What are you going to do?” she asked again.
“That’s for us to know and you to find out.”
The childishness of the taunt reinforced the reality—and danger—of the situation. No matter how bright they were, these two were nothing but children. With a child’s impulsiveness, lack of control, and inability to see consequences.
Their brains aren’t done…
/> Yet in their hands were very adult weapons of destruction. Guns and explosives. And before them lay an entire school, beginning to fill with people who, because they suffered from the same faults, had not always spoken or acted with kindness in their dealings with these two.
Therein lay the seeds of Columbine and every other act of violence that had been perpetrated on an unsuspecting student body. Those seeds had been sown here, too.
And now, she feared, it was time for all of them to reap their harvest.
Twenty-Nine
As Jace put the car into gear to back out of the Carrs’ driveway, he called the dispatcher, impatiently counting off the rings until she answered. He told her he wanted two patrol cars dispatched to the high school and that he’d meet them there.
There was a beat of silence before she asked, “Are those in addition to the one I just sent over, detective?”
The sense of dread he’d felt since Carr’s mother had mentioned the kid taking his “project” to the school blossomed into something far worse. “You’ve already sent a car? For what?”
“One of the school’s maintenance workers reported hearing what sounded like automatic weapons fire.”
“Would he know?”
“Said he’s a Vietnam vet.”
“Jesus.” Jace’s response to that information was as much a prayer as an expletive. He increased his speed, eyes checking intersections he approached as he talked. “Where? Exactly.”
“He thought it came from the commons.”
“The commons?”
“It’s an area off the main lobby. A place for the students to congregate, mostly before school. In the same general vicinity as the lunchroom and the gym,” she added helpfully.
“But the lunchroom wouldn’t be open this early.” Jace tried to remember the geography of the main building.
“Oh, they serve breakfast, too, mostly for the free lunch crowd, but anyone that wants to can buy it.”
Crowd. The word reverberated in Jace’s mind, reminding him of the swarm of teenagers that had poured out of the gym after the pep rally he’d attended.
“How long ago was the call?”
“I dispatched the deputies out about…three minutes ago.”