Sweetheart (15 page)

It was 10:46
A.M.

“Do they have you in protection yet?” Gretchen asked.

Archie swallowed hard. “Gretchen, you have to turn yourself in.”

He could almost hear her smile through the phone. “You’ll miss me, won’t you? Like I’ve missed you.” Her voice turned cold. “All those Sundays you stayed away.”

“I’ll visit you,” Archie said. His stomach burned, his head ached. “I want to. You know I do.”

“Empty promises.”

Archie could still see Henry on the phone. He had to keep her talking. He fumbled for the pillbox in his pocket and took out four pills and put them in his mouth. Claire handed him a glass of water from his desk, and he swallowed them. “You faked the rape?” he asked Gretchen.

“No,” she said. “I just showed him what he was capable of.”

Archie’s mind turned to the heart scrawled on the bathroom mirror at the prison. “Did you kill him?” he asked. He handed the glass of water back to Claire and she set it back on the desk next to the photograph of Heather Gerber. It was 10:47.

“Does it matter?”

It was just the beginning, Archie knew. If Gretchen was out, the carnage was just beginning. “The missing sheriffs deputy?”

“Dead. Dead. Dead.”

“Turn yourself in,” Archie said. He pressed the fingers of one hand into his right temple, trying to slow the pulse of blood that beat against his skin. Susan was taking notes, recording everything. He didn’t care. “I’ll do anything you want,” he said.

“You know what I want.” She let that linger in the air between them.

“Tell me,” he said.

“I want you,” she said. “I’ve always wanted you.”

The warm pulse under his fingers quickened. He pressed against it harder. “I can’t.”

“I’d love to talk all day, darling. But I’ve got to go. It’s almost time for morning recess.”

Ten forty-eight
A.M.
Archie looked up. Henry was on his phone, and Archie watched as his face colored. They had a location. Henry hung up and punched another number into his cell phone and started talking. “This is Detective Henry Sobol with the Portland Police Department. Do you have lockdown procedures? Okay. I need you to lock down the school.”

Archie turned his attention back to his phone. “Gretchen?” he asked. “Where are you?”

He could hear Henry continue, his voice commanding, urgent. “We have reason to believe that Ben and Sara Sheridan are in danger. Do you know who Gretchen Lowell is? We believe she may be in your building.”

Archie felt disconnected from his body. He didn’t know if it was the pills kicking in, or just shock. But a peaceful numbness settled in his brain, making his head feel dark and heavy. None of this made sense. Gretchen couldn’t have escaped. This couldn’t be happening.

He could still hear Henry. “She is, and I can’t stress this enough, very dangerous. Do not approach her. Just lock down every classroom. No one gets near any of the kids. I have police on their way. Understand? Good.”

“Gretchen?” Archie said again. The numbness was lifting, reason rushing in. His hand clenched around the phone.

“I’m only interested in them,” she said sweetly, “because they remind me of you.” And then he heard it, through the phone. Five sets of two schoolbell rings. The signal for lockdown. She was at his children’s school. She was going to kill them. She was going to kill the last thing that mattered.

“Goodbye, darling,” she cooed, and the phone went dead.

Susan saw the phone fall from Archie’s hand. It was light and bounced once on the carpet before settling on its side, the blue LCD light holding for a moment and then going dark. The room smelled like vomit. No one but Susan seemed to notice it.

Archie stood.

She knew it had been Gretchen on the phone. She had heard Henry call Archie’s children’s school. She had pieced it together. Media blackout or no, she was going with the story. A master’s degree in creative writing. Five years of newspaper journalism. And still, the only question she could manage was, “What’s going on?”

Henry took four steps toward Archie and put a big hand on either of Archie’s upper arms. Archie’s knees buckled and for a moment it looked to Susan as if Henry were the only thing holding Archie upright. “I’ve got units on their way to the school,” Henry told Archie.

“I’ve got to go there,” Archie said. “I’ve got to go there now.”

Henry seemed to waver and then he said, “All right.”

Susan closed her notebook and stepped forward. “Me, too,” she said.

Henry didn’t even hesitate. “No,” he said.

Susan wasn’t going to take no for an answer. She waved the notebook. “Your media blackout is over,” she said. “You’ve locked down a school. Every news van in town is on its way. They’re already live with it. I’m your best bet to controlling the story. Right now, all you’re going to get is hysteria. Is that what you want?” she asked. “Hysteria?”

Henry’s voice dropped. “I want to catch her before she kills someone else,” he said.

Susan lowered the notebook, and looked him in the eyes. “I can help you do that.”

Claire said, “She can ride with me.”

Henry stooped in front of Archie and picked up the phone he had dropped and stood up and handed it to him. Archie took it and looked at Henry and nodded.

Then Henry turned back to Susan. He squinted and wiped some sweat off his forehead with the flat of his hand. Susan could taste the smell of vomit in the back of her mouth.

“Don’t get shot,” Henry said.

W
illiam Clark Elementary School was 1.4 miles from the house. Archie had trip-metered it once. Ben had insisted. Something to do with a bet with a friend about who lived nearer. One point four miles. It seemed farther. It was twenty minutes if you walked it. It took eight minutes to drive in the morning. Six minutes in the afternoon because traffic was lighter. With the lights and sirens on, it took four. That was what lights and sirens bought you: two minutes. One hundred and twenty seconds.

It could make a difference.

Archie knew the protocol for locking down a school. Students were instructed to stay in their classrooms. To push desks into the center of the room, and to stay away from the windows. Hallways were cleared. To control access, every door was locked except for the front door. Teachers turned off their classroom lights and instructed students to get down on their hands and knees. Just another day of public education. It made the old duck-and-cover drills seem quaint.

Archie imagined Ben and Sara in their respective classrooms, terrified, and he hated himself. His phone rang and he snapped it open, his heart sinking a little when he saw the number. He had hoped it would be Gretchen.

It was Debbie.

“Are you safe?” he asked.

“I’m at your office,” she said, her voice steel. “Are you at the school yet?”

He glanced out the window. A school zone sign warned motorists to reduce speed to twenty miles an hour. Henry was ignoring it. “Almost.”

“You protect them, Archie,” Debbie said, choking on the words. “You kill her.” Her voice was a desperate whisper. “Promise me.”

“I’ll protect them,” Archie said.

“Kill her,” Debbie pleaded.

The car squealed to a halt, jumping the curb in front of the school. Eight squad cars were already there, their lights on, sirens eerily quiet. “We’re here,” Archie said. The school, built in the nineties, was a modern one-story brick-and-glass structure that looked more like a junior college than an elementary school. It was a privileged suburban district, a refuge for parents fleeing Portland’s cash-strapped schools. A safe, enviable alternative.

Until today.

Archie snapped his phone shut and unholstered his gun. Henry was already out of the car, his badge out, barking orders, shouting at the uniforms to enter the school. Archie turned the safety off on his weapon and got out of the car. The adrenaline made the pills work faster, and Archie felt the soothing tickle of codeine in his shoulders and arms.

Just in time, he thought.

A
rchie didn’t remember putting on the bulletproof vest from the trunk of the car, but he must have, because he and Henry were both wearing them as they moved toward the school. He didn’t usually like the way those vests felt, the weight pressing against his sore ribs, but today he didn’t notice.

In a school lockdown drill, the police secure the premises. They do not enter the building until the perpetrator in question has been located and the situation assessed. Schools, by definition, come with a couple hundred potential hostages and you didn’t want kids shot because you rushed it. Of course the drills presumed that the mad gunman was another kid. Kids are unpredictable. Kids with guns are extremely unpredictable. And no one wanted to have to shoot a kid, even one with a gun. So, secure, assess, wait.

The drills did not take into account Gretchen Lowell. She was predictable. She would kill until someone stopped her.

“We go in,” Archie said.

“Yeah,” Henry said.

The responding Hillsboro patrol cops had made contact with someone in the administration office. She was afraid but calm. The school was quiet. Lockdown procedure was in place.

A plaque above the front doors read
EDUCATION IS NOT THE FILLING OF A PAIL, BUT THE LIGHTING OF A FIRE.

“Yeats,” Archie said.

“What?” said Henry.

“Nothing.”

They drew their weapons and, followed by six flushed and unsettled suburban cops, they entered the school.

The front doors opened onto a wide carpeted hallway. A life-sized papier-mâché tiger, the school’s mascot, stood in mid-stride, facing the doors. It was painted burgundy with orange stripes. A sign next to it read
DO NOT CLIMB ON ME.

Archie had been to that school a few hundred times. Ben was in second grade. Sara was in first. Both children had gone to kindergarten there. There had been parent-teacher meetings and art shows and fund-raisers and PTA meetings and basketball games and drop-offs and pickups.

That was a lie.

Debbie had been to the school a few hundred times. The nature of Archie’s job kept him away. He had to work early and stay late, so Debbie dropped the kids off. Debbie picked them up. Debbie went to PTA meetings. Archie tried. He attended as many events as he could. He had never missed a parent-teacher meeting. But he had not tried hard enough. He would, he promised himself now, try harder. If they were still alive, he would try harder.

“Ben’s in room six,” Archie said to Henry. “That way.” He pointed past the tiger. “At the end of the hall. I’ll get Sara.” He turned to the patrol cops. “The rest of you move in pairs, secure as much of the school as you can.”

The patrol cops stood motionless for a moment, looking at one another. The only woman among them cleared her throat. She was young. She’d probably been a cop for only a year or two. “What should we do if we find her?” she asked.

“Shoot her,” Henry said.

“No,” Archie said quickly. “She’s dangerous. Don’t confront her. If you see her, you radio me.” He touched the walkie-talkie on his hip.

Henry motioned with his fingers at two of the patrol cops, the woman and a middle-aged man whose age bespoke a decided lack of ambition. “You two go with him,” Henry said. “And if you see her, shoot her.”

They split up and Archie led his small posse away from the grinning tiger, left down the hall, in the opposite direction Henry headed to go to Ben’s classroom. Sara was in room 2. It wasn’t far. Just past the hall wall display of construction-paper dioramas of beach balls and sailboats and sun. Summer break was days away and Sara had already started begging to go to horse camp. They came to her classroom door. Beyond it Archie could see a pint-sized drinking fountain against one wall. A Spider-Man backpack lay unattended on the ground next to it.

God, it was quiet.

Archie tried the doorknob. It was locked. He pounded twice on the door with his fist. “It’s the police,” he said, his voice startling in the silence. “I need you to open the door.”

He heard movement inside and the door opened. Mrs. Hardy, Sara’s first-grade teacher, stood in the doorway. She had been a teacher for thirty years and her red hair had only recently started to fade to a light gray. She held a copy of
Green Eggs and Ham
clutched to her sweater.

Archie lowered his gun, but kept his finger where it rested on the trigger guard. His center of gravity was shifted forward on the balls of his feet. He was relaxed. They taught you that. Keep your breathing steady. If you’re relaxed, you shoot better. There was a moment, when two thirds of the lung’s capacity had been exhaled, when you were most steady. It was called the “natural respiratory pause.” During normal breathing, you had a window of about two to three seconds, but it could be stretched to up to eight seconds to allow time to aim and squeeze the trigger before lack of oxygen began to affect aim.

If you breathed slow enough. If you didn’t think about your children. If you stayed relaxed.