The Third Victim Part 46

Rainie decided to ignore that last comment. She said tightly, "Shep called me from his radio after the shots were fired, meaning he was in his patrol car, not at the school."

"Or he did the deed, returned to his car in the parking lot, and made the call."

"Shep would not frame his own f.u.c.king son!"

"We don't know that he did! Come on, the evidence is all over the place. Danny did it. Wait, no, a second person's present, maybe he did it. You said it yourself, Conner, Danny's got the perfect defense right now the man on the gra.s.sy knoll. Looks to me like he's about to walk. Meaning Shep's either really clever or really lucky."

"You," Rainie said hotly, 'have been watching too many Oliver Stone movies."

"I'll do it," Quincy said calmly. They both looked at him belatedly, as if just now remembering he was there.

"I'll look into Shep," he repeated, then quickly cut off Rainie's objection.

"It's due discipline, Rainie. There are too many things about this shooting that don't make sense. Until they do, everyone must be a suspect mysterious men in black and, yes, the town sheriff."

Rainie sat back. She wasn't happy, but there was no more point in arguing. Quincy returned to the general conversation.

"One last thing," he said.

"If the UNSUB is a stranger, we need to cast a wider net because chances are that he's still in the area."

"You mean in Bakersville?" Rainie asked incredulously.

"No, this town is too small to hide in. He'd look for a neighboring town, maybe a larger tourist resort. Someplace where he could go to

bars and local establishments and watch all the news coverage. He's probably following the investigation very closely and asking others about it. It's his way of reliving the moment, of still having fun. We should make contact with neighboring police departments. Have their officers ask hotel workers and bartenders. Any new faces showing a lot of interest in Bakersville's tragedy? Any mid-twenties to mid-forties white males who've been mouthing off on the subject or asking a lot of questions? That sort of thing."

Sanders nodded.

"I can make a few calls," he said, then shrugged dubiously.

"I don't want to lose my own men to a wild-goose chase, though. You guys may like the notion of some mystery man, but I keep coming back to the victim's injury. I've seen a lot of homicides, and a single gunshot wound to the forehead that's a targeted victim any way you look at it. Maybe it wasn't Danny, but somebody specifically wanted Melissa Avalon dead."

Quincy didn't argue. Neither did Rainie. It did seem to come back to Melissa Avalon, and the fact that they still couldn't understand why made them all very uncomfortable.

"Well, at least we have one lucky break on our side," Quincy said finally.

Sanders and Rainie exchanged startled glances. Sanders did the honors.

"We have a break?"

"The recovery of the .22-caliber slug. You said it yourself, Detective. Most .22.8 become too deformed for a ballistics test. My guess is our shooter knew that too. So he tells Danny to bring a .22.

Chances are, his slug will ricochet inside the skull, obliterating trajectory and rifling marks. Given all other circ.u.mstantial evidence, Danny will be blamed for Melissa Avalon's death as well. Except the bullet doesn't ricochet. It holds a trajectory that immediately lets us know the shooter must have been another adult. And it keeps enough of the base intact to reveal its little secret it's perfectly smooth, indicating a unique weapon. One 40-grain slug later, we know something else happened at that school."

Rainie slowly nodded. Without the slug and its trajectory, there would never have been any reason to look beyond Danny O'grady. Especially with the boy confessing each and every chance he got.

Sanders, however, was frowning.

"I don't get it. You're saying someone asked Danny to bring a .22 to cover for his own .22. But why the h.e.l.l would he do that? Why wouldn't he simply use Danny's gun?"

Rainie stopped. Stared. She looked at Quincy, who for once appeared completely flummoxed.

"The .22 slug is smooth," she murmured.

"It definitely didn't come from Danny's gun. And that poses another question: If the shooter brought his own weapon to kill Melissa Avalon, why a .22? It's not that powerful, particularly for a head shot.

Frankly, many people survive that wound. And yet he fired only one shot to her forehead with his own gun. Risking her living to tell the tale. Risking someone seeing him armed. I don't understand .. .

Something here doesn't make sense."

They all looked at one another. No one had an answer. A preselected victim. A mystery slug. An unidentified man who had cajoled a thirteen-year-old boy into taking part in murder.

They had come a long way from a mindless act of rage, and now, suddenly, Rainie didn't know where they were going anymore. She thought about her small, peaceful town. She thought about the towering trees and the gentle rolling hills. She thought about Danny, so scared and frightened and determined to take credit for murder. She thought of the school halls, still streaked in blood.

And for the first time in fourteen years, Rainie was frightened. Thursday, May 17, 4:21 p.m.

Danny sat alone in his eight-by-eight room, staring at a spider that was slowly working its way across the thin-carpeted floor.

The door was open. Every morning at 6 a.m." the doors were flung wide by burly staff members who yelled, "It's that time, boys and girls."

The doors stayed open all day, joining a series of look-alike rooms to a main hallway until nine o'clock at night, when everyone prepared for bed. More staff people not guards, Danny was told, but guides came by and locked everyone in from the outside. At ten o'clock came lights-out. Danny would find a face peering in through the Plexiglas window, making sure he followed the rules.

Danny followed the rules. He didn't make any trouble. He got up when he was supposed to. He let the guide escort him to the cafeteria. He stared at his tray. He let another guide lead him to a cla.s.sroom, where twenty boys, ages ranging from twelve to seventeen, pretended to be studying under the eyes of some chipper lady who insisted that they could be whatever they wanted to be. Later they were allowed to socialize.

Danny always came back to his room, where he sat alone. No one cared.

Cabot County's Juvenile Center was a newer facility. It operated as a giant, beige-colored dorm, unlike the other places kids whispered about. Old prisons converted into youth facilities where the walls and floors were slabs of concrete and everybody got to watch everybody pee.

Cabot County wasn't anything like that.

Some of the kids got to wear their own clothes as long as they didn't sport gang colors or offensive T-shirts. The social room had lots of Plexiglas windows and real live plants. If kids earned enough merit points, they could watch TV or even rent movies for the VCR.

For the most part, the guides led them through their days, a careful schedule of meals, cla.s.ses, and rec time. As long as you did what you were told and went where you were told, no one made a fuss. You could even be alone during the social time. Sit in your room. Stare at your blue hospital scrubs. Watch spiders. Didn't matter.

The whole point was that you were never going to make it any farther.

The nice rooms had Plexiglas windows for a reason. And all the outside doors were inch-thick steel. Then there was the ten-foot-high fence ringing the yard and topped with coils of barbed wire. The searchlights. The guides who had keys to rifles loaded with rubber bullets. When Danny first got there, the older kids had been fascinated by him, and they told him stories of juvies who'd run for it. Kids who had been flattened by mattresses, ga.s.sed with pepper spray, or, rarely, if they made it beyond the fence, hunted down by growling Dobermans. If the dogs catch you, they're each allowed one bite as a reward, kids said. The guides pick the place.

Danny thought the kids were full of s.h.i.t, but he didn't say anything.

Since the day he'd come in, that had been his motto. Don't give up a word. I'm smart, I'm smart, I'm smart. I'm scared.

Now he watched the spider laboriously climb toward the barred window, thirsty for sunlight or maybe the wind in its hairy little face.

Danny fingered his scrubs no laces, no b.u.t.tons, no belts for a kid under "SWatch' and tried to get his mind to shut up.

The lawyer came to talk to him yesterday. Danny hadn't wanted to see the man. He had a fancy gray suit and an expensive watch and Danny knew he must cost a lot of money, which made him feel worse. His mom

would be stressed about that, trying to figure out how to pay. His father would yell at her that it didn't matter, because good old Shep didn't get how the world worked. He was still lost in his football fantasies where he and/or his son were scoring the winning touchdown during the big homecoming game.

Danny hated worrying his mom. He knew she had cried. He'd heard her himself. Late at night he tried to cover his ears with his hands to block out the sound, but then he'd have to move his hand and stuff it in his mouth to keep from whimpering.

The lawyer made small talk. He told Danny what a lawyer did and what a trial was about. What his role would be and what Danny's role would be. He spoke as if Danny was four years old, and Danny let him. He stared at a point just beyond the lawyer's ear while the man babbled for an hour.

Danny wasn't supposed to talk to the counselors, he was told. They technically worked for the detention center, so it could be argued that they were law enforcement and anything he told them might be used against him at trial. To be on the safe side, Danny should ask for a chaplain or a pastor or a rabbi if he felt like spilling his guts.

Priest-penitent privilege was absolute.