The Third Victim Part 27

"Yeah, that's right. She's taken over the case, and G.o.d knows she's barely old enough to vote."

They also brought in a fed," the man at the bar offered.

"Some expert in school shootings."

The feds got an expert in school shootings?" The bartender spoke up for the first time. The man grinned at him.

"Interesting, isn't it?" he said.

"Now we just have to find out if the man is any good."

Eight p.m. the streets of Bakersville had descended into dusky shades of gray, and Rainie's mood had grown tense. After speaking with Princ.i.p.al VanderZanden, Rainie and Quincy had paid a visit to Melissa Avalon's tiny apartment, hoping to learn more about her life. By all appearances, Melissa Avalon was specifically targeted in the shooting.

Perhaps she'd even been the only intended victim, and Rainie was having a hard time believing Danny O'grady would purposely shoot the one teacher who'd been kind to him. Which raised the question of who Melissa Avalon was and, better yet, who might have wanted her dead.

After hearing Quincy's suspicion of an Avalon-VanderZanden romance, Rainie was starting to lean in the princ.i.p.al's direction. Or maybe his betrayed wife .. .

Quincy, on the other hand, wasn't convinced of anything yet. He seemed to buy Melissa Avalon as the primary target, but he didn't think that meant the shooter had to know her. He'd murmured something about plenty of strangers having murdered plenty of young pretty women simply for being young pretty women. Rainie really didn't want to know what the agent read at night.

Unfortunately, Sanders had halted their investigation cold by getting to Avalon's apartment first. Drawers were rifled, the kitchen dismantled, the bed ripped apart. The crime-scene technicians had even pawed through the woman's tampons.

Rainie would have to wait for the state's report on the evidence or beg Sanders for information about her own d.a.m.n case. It didn't leave her feeling amused.

She had stormed back to the task-force center with Quincy just in time to meet Luke Hayes and Deputy Tom Dawson. They had hoped to interview Becky O'grady before dinner. They had failed. Avery Johnson had been at Shep's house. He had demanded to be present for the interview, and Sandy and Shep had insisted on sitting in as well. That had put an eight-year-old witness in a tiny family room with five scrutinizing adults.

Becky did the logical thing. She held her stuffed bear tight, curled up in a ball on the sofa, and fell asleep.

After fifteen minutes Luke and Tom headed for the door. Shep didn't see them out. The lawyer took care of that, after informing the officers that the O'Gradys would be changing to an unlisted number immediately due to hara.s.sing calls. Also, he wanted patrols to guard the family's safety. Hadn't they seen what some hostile redneck had written on the O'Gradys' garage?

The graffiti had really bothered Luke. He took two Polaroids for their files. Then he drove straight to the hardware store, where he purchased one bucket of primer and one bucket of white paint. He and Torn had spent the last hour personally repainting Shep's garage.

Neither Shep nor Sandy ever came out to thank them.

Rainie didn't know what to say. Tragedies brought out the best in towns. But they could also bring out the worst.

Luke and Tom had no sooner left than the mayor paid Rainie a visit.

He'd just received a call from Sally Walker's parents. What was this about the autopsies being pushed back until the next day? Why couldn't the families get their daughters' remains back so they could get on with the funerals? The parents were furious.

Also, had Rainie managed to catch George Walker on the five o'clock news? That's right. The father had appeared on camera stating to anyone who would listen that Danny O'grady was getting away with murder. He'd killed three people, and the Bakersville sheriff's department would never go after him because he was Shep's son.

Favoritism plain and simple, so all you mothers out there had better round up your children and lock the doors. One day soon, Danny O'grady would be back in town.

All afternoon long there had been a run on rifles at the sporting-goods store. Not just in Bakersville but also in neighboring Cabot County.

People were frightened, the mayor stated bluntly. People were angry.

So Rainie had better wrap this case up quick. Or there would be a h.e.l.l of a lot more violence in these small-town streets.

Right after the mayor left, Rainie got out a new box of number-two pencils. She sat across the sawhorse desk from Quincy and methodically broke every single one in half. Then she broke the halves in half.

Then she composed her thoughts.

It did her no good. Day two of the investigation and she had nothing but a longer list of questions. Why had Danny shot the one teacher who had apparently been trying to help him? Had Charlie Kenyon influenced Danny to act? Or maybe someone Danny met on-line? It seemed farfetched to think that a stranger could influence a teenager to kill, but by all accounts Danny was a vulnerable kid and, G.o.d knows, stranger things had happened.

The single, small-caliber shot to Melissa Avalon's forehead. The scattered wounds on the others.

It seemed as if she ought to know more by now, but instead she had no answers, and she had worked herself into a state where the there sound of Quincy's pen scratching against paper made her want to grab his notebook and beat him over the head with it. He'd laughed when she broke the pencils in half. The fed guys never knew how to have any fun.

He wasn't so bad, really. Cool in his detached FBI sort of way.

Curious in how he kept staring at his cell phone, as if he was both expecting an important call and dreading it. And intense. More intense than she would've guessed this morning.

There was something about the way he had moved through the scene at the school, something about the way he had meticulously picked through Melissa Avalon's ravaged apartment, as if every bit of information was going into his brain and by sheer force of will he'd make the pieces fit. She had the impression that Quincy might be a little bit bright, and a little bit serious, and a little bit strong. That made her stomach tighten, which was something she needed right now about as much as a hole in her head.

d.a.m.n FBI agent. d.a.m.n state detective looking to prove a point. d.a.m.n Danny O'grady. And d.a.m.n a bunch of drunken fools who'd decided the only answer to violence was more violence. Christ, didn't they know how much paperwork they were going to cause her?

Rainie glanced away from the window and the night descending upon Bakersville's streets. She looked down at her new sawhorse desk, found that her hands were still fisted at her sides, and knew that her jumbled thoughts were all just noise. She could handle an FBI agent and a state detective. She honestly didn't give a rat's a.s.s about what the mayor wanted for some press conference, and she wasn't afraid of a few local boys full of too much beer and not enough common sense; she'd dealt with that before.

What she didn't know, what she genuinely feared, was tomorrow morning at five a.m." when she would drive to Portland to watch the chief medical examiner cut open two little girls.

The thought of it unnerved her. She didn't want to see Sally and Alice again. Not now, when she knew their names and their families and that they had been best friends from birth. She didn't want to think of their final walk down that hall or the single cemetery plot that would now hold twin coffins.

Last night, for the first time in over five years, Rainie had dreamed of her mother's death. The blood and brains on the wall. The smell, the G.o.dawful stench of seeping human fluids and fresh gunpowder settling into the carpet. The headless body slumped on the floor, looking so strange and alien Rainie wouldn't have known it was her mother except for the bottle of Jim Beam still clutched in her lifeless hand.

And as she'd been staring, seventeen years old again, gray matter dripping down onto her hair, Danny O'grady had come walking out of the kitchen and calmly handed her the smoking shotgun.

"I only did what you wanted done," he'd said, then exited out her front door.

Rainie had woken up in a cold sweat at four in the morning, shivering

uncontrollably. She forced herself to walk into the tiny living area, where the brown carpet and gold-flowered wallpaper had long ago been replaced. She studied every single aspect of the room new, modern, fourteen years later and she could've sworn she saw blood on the ceiling.

Rainie went back to bed, but she knew from the trembles in her hands when she woke up an hour later that her dreams had still been unkind.

This case was getting to her. She hadn't expected that after all these years. It frightened her. And it made her mad.

"I want dinner," she stated abruptly, standing up at the crude desk and beginning to gather her things.

Quincy looked up from his notebook. His expression was mild, but he'd discarded his jacket, rolled up his sleeves, and loosened his burgundy tie. It made him look more approachable. It also emphasized the dark circles beneath his eyes. Apparently, superagent hadn't been sleeping much even before arriving in Bakersville.

They have food in this town?" he asked with feigned surprise.

"And here I'd thought we skipped lunch out of necessity."

"Lunch is for sissies," Rainie said.

"Come on. I'll take you to Martha's Diner. Best chicken-fried steak in town."

Quincy raised a skeptical brow, maybe questioning Martha's claim to fame, maybe already antic.i.p.ating his arteries hardening. Either way, he grabbed his navy blue jacket and followed.

Martha's Diner was quiet at this hour. Most working folks had already eaten, and most farmers would soon be in bed. Nothing like several thousand cows to ruin a town's nightlife. Rainie recognized the credit union's president, Donald Leyden, eating alone after his divorce. Then Rainie spotted Abe Sanders.

Sitting alone in a corner booth, Sanders was holding his cell phone with one hand while picking at a skinless chicken breast with the other. In between comments on the phone, he chewed raw carrots from a Ziploc bag. Then Rainie noticed the Tupperware container of lettuce.

The state detective traveled with salad. If she hadn't known before, she definitely knew now Abe Sanders was the Antichrist.

"Yes, I hear the puppy," he was saying with some exasperation into the cell phone.