The Third Victim Part 21

Instead, we're what? The eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth school to go through this? Dammit, we should've known better!"

He pinched the bridge of his nose, clearly trying to pull himself together and not having much luck. His gaze returned to the picture of Melissa Avalon. He pinched his nose harder.

Tm sorry. It's been a long twenty-four hours."

"It's okay," Rainie said.

"Take your time."

"I needed time last night. Now I need a vacation. Well, that's neither here nor there. I'm sure you have more questions, though I already told Detective Sanders the little I know about things."

"Detective Sanders?" Rainie inquired sharply. Warning lights went off in her head. She didn't ignore them.

"What did you tell Detective Sanders?"

"Not much." VanderZanden shrugged, obviously caught off guard by her tone.

"I was in my office when I heard the shots. I came out to the main entranceway to see what was going on and heard someone scream. The next thing I knew, the fire alarms went off and everyone began running for the door. At the time I figured it was something minor.

A student had fired a cap gun in the halls and the smoke had triggered the alarms. Or someone had lit a few firecrackers as a prank. These things happen.

"The first time I realized it was serious was when I saw the face of Mrs. McLain, the sixth-grade teacher. She was white as a sheet; her hands were shaking. I told her to calm down, it was just a drill, and then she looked at me. She looked at me and she said, "I think some students have been shot. I think someone just shot at us. I think he's still there." Even then it wasn't until I saw Will's b.l.o.o.d.y leg in the parking lot that I realized she'd been right someone had opened fire in our school."

"Did you hear anyone say Danny's name?" Quincy asked. VanderZanden shook his head.

"I heard Doric screaming about a man in black coming to get her. Of course, Doric is only seven years old, and we've had problems with her imagination before. Once she had the entire second-grade cla.s.s convinced they couldn't go to the bathroom because little trolls hid inside the toilets to s.n.a.t.c.h children for lunch. You have no idea how messy it can be when twenty-one seven-year-olds won't use the rest rooms. I had parents calling me for weeks."

"Were a lot of children around when she was going on about the "man in black"?" Rainie asked.

"Everyone was around. We'd evacuated the whole school into the front parking lot, as specified in our fire-drill manual."

Rainie blew out an exasperated breath.

"Well, that explains that batch of interview answers," she muttered to Quincy.

"One hysterical girl, two hundred and fifty impressionable minds." She returned to Princ.i.p.al VanderZanden.

"Are you sure none of the teachers saw anything? What about Mrs.

McLain? I can't believe someone was shooting a gun in the hallway and no one noticed."

"I don't think the shooter was standing in the hallway. One of the teachers said that it sounded like the shots were coming from a room at the end of the west wing. Maybe the computer lab. I know that from where I was standing in the main entranceway, I couldn't see a thing." Rainie glanced at Quincy. He nodded faintly, sharing her thought. The killer started with Miss Avalon, then turned to see Sally and Alice.

Shot them as well, then ducked into the now-empty computer room as all h.e.l.l broke loose. It would explain the lack of witnesses as well as the random firing pattern.

"What can you tell us about Danny O'grady?" Quincy asked VanderZanden.

"Was he a good student? Did he get along well with others?"

"Danny's a fine student. He's made the honor roll several times. He was hardly ever sent to my office with discipline issues. Melissa Miss Avalon was just telling me the other day that she'd never seen anyone so good with computers. He has a natural talent for it."

"What about enemies?" Quincy pressed gently.

"Was Danny picked on by other students? Was he considered popular by his cla.s.smates or was he often a target of their unwanted attention?"

Rainie nodded her head at this question. She should've thought to ask it herself last night. Rightly or wrongly, most school shooters felt painfully persecuted by their peers. Rainie had even read somewhere that these homicides weren't that different from teen suicide the less popular kid felt an unbearable amount of pain and decided to do something about it. In the case of a school shooting, however, the kid didn't just plan to end his own life but to take some of the offending parties' lives with him. That's the thing with teenagers they came up with sentences that didn't always fit the crime.

VanderZanden seemed to be struggling with Quincy's question. He finally shook his head.

"I wasn't aware of anything," he said, then added more reluctantly, "I'm an adult, however, and an authority figure. In other words, while I try to be in touch with my students, I'm still probably not the best judge of what really goes on among twenty adolescents during a thirty-minute recess."

"What about close friends of Danny's who might be able to tell us more?"

"I don't think Danny has close friends. He's quiet, keeps to himself."

A thought seemed to strike VanderZanden all at once.

"You know, there was this incident, not too long ago ..."

Quincy and Rainie perked up.

"There's this older boy, Charlie Kenyon. Do you know him?"

"Oh, sure." Rainie supplied for Quincy: "Charlie's the son of our former mayor. Nineteen now, a bit too much money, way too much free time. He was sent off to military school back east four years ago, but he returned last spring no worse for the wear. Now he fancies himself some kind of minor hood. Hangs out where he's not wanted, drives under the influence every other weekend. We've brought him in half a dozen times, but it's always misdemeanor stuff and his father's quick with bail money and high-priced lawyers. I don't get the impression Charlie's feeling a need to reform anytime soon."

VanderZanden nodded his head with real emotion. That's Charlie. About two months ago he started hanging around our school after hours.

Teachers would see him lounging outside the fence, talking to kids on the playground. As long as he was on the street side of the fence, however, there was nothing we could do. Then one day Mrs. Lund saw Charlie hand Danny a cigarette through the fence. She immediately took the cigarette away from Danny and wrote him up, but there was nothing she could do about Charlie. He told the boy not to sweat it.

"Detention is when all the fun stuff happens," or something like that.

We sent a note home to Danny's parents, and we never caught him smoking again, but we'd still see Charlie around. I don't know why he insisted on bothering us at the K-through-eight. You'd think he'd be more interested in the high school."

"Did Charlie know Miss Avalon?" Quincy asked.

"I don't think so. She moved to town just last year, when we got the federal grant. Then again .. ." Princ.i.p.al VanderZanden flushed. He looked at Rainie with something akin to embarra.s.sment. "She was very pretty," Rainie filled in for the tongue-tied princ.i.p.al.

"Very, very pretty."

"She's a very good teacher," VanderZanden added immediately, but his dark eyes appeared wistful. Melissa Avalon had been beautiful.

"How old was she?" Rainie inquired.

"Twenty-eight."

"Young enough and pretty enough to attract a nineteen-year-old," Rainie concluded, and looked at Quincy. He appeared deep in thought.

"Miss Avalon moved to Bakersville recently?"

"Last summer. We hired her in August. Frankly, we'd given up on getting the grant, and then boom. You know the feds. Obviously."

"Where did Miss Avalon come from?"

"She'd just gotten her master's from Portland State University."