The Third Victim Read Free

Rainie. You can’t ask me not to think about my children.”
    Rainie fell silent. After eight years of working with Shep, she knew his two children as well as a favorite niece and nephew. Eight-year-old Becky was horse crazy. Thirteen-year-old Danny loved to spend free afternoons at the tiny police station. Once, Rainie had given the boy a plastic sheriff’s star. He’d worn it for nearly six months and demanded to sit beside Rainie whenever she came over to dinner. They were great kids. Two great kids in a building filled with two hundred and fifty other great kids. Not one above the age of fourteen . . .
    Not in Bakersville. Chuckie was right: These things couldn’t be happening in Bakersville.
    Rainie said quietly, “I’ll be the primary.”
    “Thanks, Rainie. Knew I could count on you.”
    The radio clicked off. Rainie hit another red light and had to tap the brakes to slow. Fortunately, cross-traffic saw her coming and halted right away. She was vaguely aware of the other drivers’ concerned expressions. Police sirens on Main Street? You never heard police sirens on Main Street. They still had a good ten-minute drive, and now she was genuinely concerned that that might be too long . . . too late.
    Two hundred and fifty little kids . . .
    “Turn back to channel three,” she told Chuckie. “Order the medics docked.”
    “But there’s a report of blood—”
    “Medics are docked until the scene is secured. That’s the drill.”
    Chuck did as he was told.
    “Get dispatch on. Request full backup. I’m sure the state and county boys have heard, and I don’t want there to be any confusion—we’ll take all the help we can get.” She paused, sifting through her memory to classes taken eight years ago in a musty classroom in Salem, Oregon, where she had been the only woman among thirty men. Full-scale mobilization. Procedure for possible large-scale casualties. Things that had seemed strange to be studying at the time.
    “Ask local hospitals to be on alert,” she murmured. “Tell the medics to contact the local blood bank in case they need to boost supply. Linda needs to request SWAT coverage. Oh, and tell the state Crime Scene Unit to be ready to roll. Just in case.”
    Dispatch returned before Chuckie could pick up the radio. Linda sounded shrill. “We have calls of shots still being fired. No information on shooter. No information on casualties. We have reports of a man in black at the scene. Shooter may be in the area. Proceed with caution. Please, please, proceed with caution.”
    “A man?” Chuck said hoarsely. “I thought it would be a student. It’s always a student.”
    Rainie finally hit the rural highway on the edge of downtown and opened the car up to eighty miles per hour. They were on their way now. Seven minutes and counting. Chuck picked up the radio and ran through the list of orders.
    Rainie started thinking of the other communities and schools she’d seen in the news without completely understanding. Even Springfield, Oregon, had seemed far away. It was a city, and everyone knew cities had their problems. That’s why people moved to Bakers-ville. Nothing bad was ever supposed to happen here.
    But you already knew better, didn’t you, Rainie? You of all people should’ve known.
    Chuckie was done with the radio. Now his lips moved in silent prayer. Rainie had to look away.
    “I’m coming,” she murmured to the children she could see clearly in her mind. “I’m coming as fast as I can.”
             
    ON TUESDAY AFTERNOON , Sandy O’Grady was trying hard to get some market-research reports done and was failing miserably. Sitting in a small corner office—a former bedroom of a converted Victorian home—she spent more time gazing out the window than at the stack of reports piled high on her scarred oak desk.
    The day was beautiful, not a cloud in sight. A true rarity in a state with so much rain that the locals affectionately referred to it as liquid sunshine. The