One Breath Away Page 22

  Chapter 82:

  Meg

  I lower myself into the nearest seat. The RV has been effectively transformed from a recreational vehicle to command center. There��s a laptop and a police radio on the kitchen counter and blueprints of the school are spread out over the breakfast nook table. Chief McKinney hasn’t told me what’s going on yet, but I refuse to believe that it might have something to do with Tim.

  “Meg, this is Terry Swain, a hostage negotiator from the state police, and we’ve got Anthony Samora, who leads the state tactical team, on the phone. The weather prevented him from making the trip.”

  Samora’s tinny voice comes over the speakerphone. “I tried, though. Roads are terrible. Now let’s get down to business.” I swallow hard, afraid of what’s coming next. “Just about forty minutes ago, we got word that your ex-husband, Tim Barrett, was reported missing by his mother. He told her that he was called into work unexpectedly this morning, and when she didn’t hear from him after several hours, she called his place of work.”

  Chief McKinney leans forward and rests his forearms on his knees. “Meg, Tim was never called into work today.”

  I try to keep my tone even and neutral. “I’m not sure what my ex-husband’s fibbing to his mother has to do with me.”

  “Now, Meg,” the chief says uncomfortably. “I know that your divorce with Tim was difficult, that you had some custody issues to iron out.”

  “Most divorces are difficult, Chief,” I say, irritated that my personal history is being pulled into this discussion. I cross my arms in front of me. “Most divorces involving children involve custody issues. We worked that out a long time ago.”

  “Officer Barrett,” Terry Swain, the hostage negotiator, says, “let’s get right to it. You had a contentious divorce with child custody issues, your ex-husband lied about his whereabouts and has been off the radar for several hours, and we have a hostage situation in the school where your daughter attends. And she just happens to be absent today.”

  “She’s absent because she is spending spring break with her father. It doesn’t make any sense that Tim would be in that building!” My voice rises and I forcefully try to lower it. “There has to be a logical explanation.”

  Swain stares intently at me for a moment as if trying to read my face for any hidden information. Anthony Samora pipes in over the phone line. “You’re right. That in itself doesn’t lead us to that scenario.”

  I lift my hands in exasperation. “Then what? What could possibly lead you to believe that my ex-husband, that Tim, would be involved in this?”

  “Fifteen minutes ago, Terry tried to make another contact with the intruder,” the chief explains. “He got on the bullhorn and reached out to the man, asked him what he wanted, what his demands were.”

  My mouth has gone dry. Looking through the RV’s windows, my eyes lock onto the school building.

  “We got a call a few minutes later, from a cell phone belonging to—” Swain checks his notes “—a Sadie Webster.”

  “Sadie Webster?” I say in confusion. “Doug and Caroline Webster’s daughter?”

  Swain nods. “Yes, the call came from Sadie’s phone, but the caller definitely wasn’t a twelve-year-old girl.”

  “Who was it, then?” I ask.

  “We don’t know,” Swain admits, and I immediately relax.

  “So this is all conjecture? You have no proof that Tim is the gunman in that school?” I laugh in relief. “Jesus, Chief, you scared the hell out of me.”

  “Meg,” Chief McKinney says seriously. “We don’t know who the caller was, but we do know that it’s all over the news that your ex-husband is unaccounted for.” Damn, I think to myself. Stuart was right. “We also know,” McKinney continues, “that the man in the school has only one demand at this time.”

  “And what is that?”

  “He asked specifically for you.”

  “For me?” I ask in disbelief. “Why would he ask for me?”

  “Have you had any differences of opinion with Tim lately?” the chief asks, leaning in close to me. He is trying to be kind about this, fatherly.

  “No, Norman,” I answer fiercely, using the chief’s first name. “I already told you that things are fine between Tim and me.” I cross my arms and shake my head. “In fact, he invited me to spend spring break with him.”

  “And you said no,” Swain states. It isn’t a question.

  “I said no,” I say simply.

  “Was he angry about that?” the unseen Samora asks.

  “No, he was fine with it.” I’m exasperated and pissed off. “Why are you wasting time on this? Tim would never do something like this. He doesn’t even own a gun!”

  “Right now there’s a man with a gun in that school.” Swain points toward the school and then to me. “And all we really know is that you have some kind of connection with him.”

  “Okay,” I say, trying to sound more reasonable. “If you really think this person is connected to me, then look at someone besides Tim. Someone I arrested at one time, or my brother, Travis, for instance. He’d be a hell of a lot more likely to do something like this than Tim.” In the past, I had confided to the chief the complicated history I had with my brother. How Travis’s juvenile delinquent behaviors and shady friends kept our family held hostage, so to speak. At least until Officer Demelo came along and for the first time let me know I could fight back using the justice system. Good thing she did, because at that point in my childhood I truly felt like I was capable of smothering Travis in his sleep with a pillow.

  “I haven’t seen Travis in over ten years and haven’t talked to him in seven. The last interaction with my brother was most certainly not warm and fuzzy. His final words to me were, ‘Why are you such a bitch? You think you are so much better than me, don’t you? I hope you’re enjoying your happy little family while you can because I will never forget this, Meg.’”

  “What happened between you two?” Swain asks.

  I hate rehashing the bad blood between Travis and me. Frankly it is all so embarrassing to me as a law enforcement officer, but lives are at stake so I let out a big breath and explain. “Seven years ago I got a call from the Waterloo Police Department. An officer there said he had Travis in custody for drunk driving. Travis gave him my name, told him I was a police officer, said I would vouch for him, come bail him out.” I rub my eyes at the memory. I felt nothing at the time. Not one iota of pity or sadness for the state of my brother’s life. Just a dull resignation. He would never change. “I told the officer that I could not and would not bail my brother out.”

  “That’s it?” Swain asks unsatisfied. “He threatened your family over a DUI?”

  “No, there’s more. After I hung up the phone with the officer and he told Travis he was out of luck, Travis freaked out. Punched the officer in the nose, broke his nose, went for his sidearm, ended up tearing some tendons in the officer’s hand. Travis ended up being charged with a slew of crimes and has spent the past seven years in prison. Got out last November.”

  Swain shrugs. “So he said something in anger seven years ago. He called you from jail pissed off. Not unusual.”

  “I got that call last week.”

  “We’ll check on it,” Chief McKinney says, nodding toward Aaron, who writes something down in his notebook.

  “I still think you’re making a big mistake, but let’s say it is Tim or my brother or whoever, what do you want me to do?”

  The men look at one another. But no one speaks.

  “Well?” I lift up my arms in defeat. “Do you want me to call him? Already tried it, no answer. Do you want me to get on the bullhorn and try to reason with him from out here? I will be happy to do it. I need a little direction here, guys.”

  “He wants to see you,” the chief says in a tired voice.

  �
�Fine, I’ll go in there. No problem,” I say, standing, but the men remain seated, still looking unsettled. I glare especially hard at Aaron, who hasn’t said a word yet.

  “It isn’t protocol,” Samora says, “to send an officer who hasn’t been trained in tactical operations into a building.”

  “Right, I get that,” I agree, “but I am an officer, I’ve started my tac training and if it gets those kids out of the school safely, I don’t understand what the issue is.”

  “The issue is we’ve got six available officers here that will make up our makeshift little rapid response team and their lives are on the line once they enter that building,” Swain says harshly. “We need to make sure every single officer that goes in there knows what they are doing.”

  “But if I go in there on my own, find out what he wants, then no other officers get hurt. Whoever it is,” I say, glancing at Chief McKinney, “won’t feel threatened by me. I’m just one person.”

  “I don’t like it,” the chief says, getting up to pour himself another cup of coffee from a thermos sitting atop the counter. “No shots have been fired. There are no reports of injuries. The lockdown plan says we fall back and wait. I don’t want to go in there and force the situation.”

  “So we have to wait for someone to get shot or hurt before we can move?” I ask. “I can see that for a typical situation, but obviously whoever is in there has a beef with me, not with anyone in the school.”

  “We don’t know that for sure,” Chief McKinney says, handing me a cup of steaming coffee. “We just know that he wants to talk to you.”

  “I think she’s right,” Samora says. “Maybe she’ll be able to talk him down.”

  “Or get herself killed,” Swain counters. “I don’t like this at all.”

  “How did he contact you?” I ask.

  “A different cell phone,” Swain says. “Belongs to a kid named Colton Finn, a seventh grader. We think he went into all the classrooms and collected as many cell phones as he could.”

  “I figured as much.” I nod. “That makes sense. First he knocks out all the landlines and then takes all the cells he can…. Limits communication with the outside world.”

  There’s a knock on the RV door and Officer Jarrow pokes his head in. “Hey, Chief, I’ve got a Cal Oliver here who says his wife called him from the school. He’s pretty upset. You want to talk to him?”

  “Absolutely,” the chief says. “Let him in.”

  Chapter 83:

  Mrs. Oliver

  Mrs. Oliver cradled her jaw in her hand. The light pressure seemed to keep everything held in place and kept the discomfort to a dull ache rather than sharp bursts of pain. She looked at the man who, remarkably, by a nod of his head, had agreed to let all of the children go. She didn’t know what this meant for herself, but didn’t really care, just as long as her students got out the door safely. She wondered if, before this was all over, she would get the chance to learn why the man had invaded her second home, her classroom, where she spent most of her waking moments. She had the feeling that the whole episode was bigger than she was, bigger than the students in her classroom, but in all the time she had spent with the man on this day, she hadn’t been able to piece together his reasoning for his actions. He was certainly interested in that phone of his. He had been furiously texting and making calls, so someone outside of this room was most definitely involved, but whether it was an accomplice or a victim, Mrs. Oliver couldn’t tell.

  “It’s time,” the man said. Mrs. Oliver saw the weariness in his eyes, but not just from the exhaustion that came from the events of the day. His eyes had no life to them, no hope, and this more than anything prodded her into action.

  Mrs. Oliver stood swiftly, causing a dizzying rush of pain to stream through her jaw and hip, and hobbled to the door. She clapped her hands sharply together and all heads snapped up. “Up,” Mrs. Oliver managed, forcing her mouth open wide enough to let the brief word escape. The students stood without hesitation. She pointed to her own eyes and every pair of eyes in the room met her own. Mrs. Oliver scanned each of her students’ faces, tried to memorize every freckle, every gap-toothed mouth, each tousled head. It was just too bad, she thought to herself, that the last image they would have of their teacher would be one of her in a wrinkled, stained, formerly Bedazzled denim jumper. She imagined that her hair was a fright and her face…well, she could tell without seeing herself that she must look monstrous. She snapped her fingers once and pointed to the classroom door and the students immediately walked swiftly but in an orderly manner past the man with the gun, their eyes never leaving their teacher’s, to the door.

  “Beth,” Mrs. Oliver mumbled through her broken teeth, and Beth, still weeping softly, came to Mrs. Oliver’s side, clutching her little sister’s hand. “Take the children,” Mrs. Oliver said, holding on gently to Beth’s arm. Beth nodded in comprehension. “Go and don’t look back.” Mrs. Oliver looked at the gunman and then her eyes flicked toward the closet door where Lucy was locked away with the chair wedged beneath the doorknob.

  The man shook his head. “No.” Mrs. Oliver wanted to argue with him, but could tell by the finality in his voice that negotiations weren’t an option.

  “Go, now.” Mrs. Oliver pushed lightly on Beth’s shoulder and in a straight, single-file line, just as she had taught them, her students were leaving.

  Chapter 84:

  Meg

  Everything about Cal Oliver is long. He is tall with long limbs, long fingers, long nose, long narrow face made longer by his downturned lips. He stoops as he enters and looks uncertainly around the RV.

  “Cal,” Chief McKinney says, standing and holding out his hand for Cal to shake. Before he can introduce each of us, Cal is going on and on about a phone call.

  “Wait a second, Cal,” the chief interrupts, “please take a seat and start at the beginning.”

  Cal perches himself on the edge of a metal folding chair and takes a deep breath. “I was over at Lonnie’s,” he begins, “when my cell phone rang. Right away I see it’s from Evie.” At Swain’s questioning look he adds, “My wife, she’s the third-grade teacher at the school.” When the man nods in understanding he continues. “Right away I can hear a boy yelling. It was hard to hear exactly what he said, everything sounded muffled.” Mr. Oliver runs a hand across his bushy white eyebrows that frame his watery blue eyes. I wonder if they are wet from age, the biting cold or worry. “Then I hear Evie talking real loud saying something about how thankfully no one was hurt and about someone named Lucy in a closet.”

  “Your wife told you no one was hurt?” I ask.

  “It wasn’t like she was talking to me, but more like she was talking for my benefit. Anyway, she also said something about how he had no business in her classroom.”

  “She didn’t know who he was?” Chief McKinney asks. Mr. Oliver shakes his head helplessly.

  “She didn’t say a name, but I just don’t know.” Mr. Oliver pulls a carefully folded handkerchief from his coat pocket and swipes at his nose. “Then I heard a scuffling noise and then Evie screamed.” Mr. Oliver bows his head so low that his nose is nearly touching his knees, his shoulders shaking with quiet sobs. “She told me she loved me and then she was gone.”

  Chapet 85:

  Augie

  Something is happening inside the classroom. There is the scraping sound of chairs being pushed and feet running across the floor. I hold my breath and try to make myself as small as possible, but if the man comes out in the hallway I will be pretty hard to miss.

  Suddenly the classroom door is open and Beth steps out. She is holding her little sister’s hand and, without even glancing my way, she is moving down the hallway. I watch as the kids walk quickly and then they are moving faster and faster until they are running. I am trying to find P.J.’s feet through the blur of
tennis shoes that are echoing like thunder down the hallway. My heart skips a beat when I realize that I don’t see him. Still the children are streaming past me and there is no P.J. “Hey,” I call out from my spot under the drinking fountain. No one even slows down. “Hey, where’s my brother? Where’s P.J.?”

  Something happened once that classroom door opened and the kids in P.J.’s room came out. Suddenly all the doors in the hallway open and heads are peeking out. Teachers look up and down the hallway, but once they see Mrs. Oliver’s classroom rushing down the stairs it’s like an invitation. Soon the hallways are crowded with students and I am trapped in my spot beneath the drinking fountain. I must have missed him, I think to myself. He must have run right past me. He is in that crowd of students heading out to the parking lot right now. I wait until there is a break in the traffic so I can pull myself up and not get trampled by a bunch of third and fourth graders. And once again I find myself all alone. The hallway is completely deserted. I spin around in disbelief. How could I have not seen him? His bright red Converse high-tops are impossible to miss. Without thinking I move toward Mrs. Oliver’s classroom. The door is shut, but I press my nose against the window in the door to see inside. My stomach drops and then the door is opening and I am being pulled inside.

  Chapter 86:

  Meg

  Chief McKinney gently hands Cal Oliver off to a victim’s advocate, in this case Father Adam, who volunteered to assist. “Everyone is doing their best, Cal,” Father Adam kindly explains when Cal balks at the thought of leaving. “Let’s go on back to Lonnie’s and wait. Chief McKinney will call you as soon as he has any information. Right, Chief?” Father Adam looks pointedly at Chief McKinney and he nods.

  “As soon as we get any news about Evelyn, you’ll be the first to know,” he promises. “We are all working hard to end this whole thing with the best possible resolution.”