chips in the air and run, stampeding down the corridor toward the front door. She let them go.
With the exception of Ronnie, that is. Ronnie she grabbed and held, her hand clamped around his skinny arm as he struggled to get free, his bags of chips falling to the floor at his feet. Ronnie with his peach-fuzz goatee and his gangsta sneer. Ronnie with his red bandanna and his falling-down jeans.
It was Ronnie who she wanted.
The classroom they were standing in was familiar to her, Des realized. It was Moose Frye’s classroom. Ben and Ricky’s classroom, with the same tiny desks and the same uplifting motto stenciled on the wall above the blackboard: A GOOD BOOK IS A GOOD FRIEND.
Her eyes fell on the bags of potato chips that were heaped on the floor. Thirty bags of them at least. She found it surprising and upsetting that these small-town kids knew the dirty little secret about America’s favorite snack food-it was a highly effective accelerant, pure grease, that left no telltale residue behind. Dogs that were trained to sniff out accelerants got nowhere with chips, and chemical tests turned up zilch. She thought only the pros knew this. Must be out on the Internet, she reflected unhappily. She would have to tell the arson squad.
Now she turned her cold gaze on Ronnie, who continued to struggle feebly in her grasp. The kid was frailer than a week-old kitten. “You were going to burn down this school,” she said to him accusingly.
“Ricky told you, didn’t he?” he demanded, his head cocked at her insolently. “I’ll kick his ass.”
“Ricky didn’t have to tell me, you moron. I’ve been on to you garbageheads for a couple of weeks.”
He said nothing in response, just stood there trying to strike a gangbanger pose. For such a smart kid he sure was pathetic.
She took a gentler tone. “Do you want to try to explain this to me, Ronnie?”
“Why should I?” he said, jabbing himself in the chest with his thumb.
“Because I have some latitude here, that’s why. I can look upon this as some high-spirited local kids throwing a rock through a school window. Or I can see it as breaking and entering, which is a felony, coupled with attempted arson, which is major-league bad news. We’re talking serious time, Ronnie.” She paused, letting this sink in for a moment. “It’s up to me to decide which way to go, and that depends totally on how you behave over the next few minutes.”
He reached into his jacket for a cigarette and stuck it between his teeth. “You want me to do you a solid, is that it?” he asked, fumbling for a light.
She swatted the cigarette from his mouth, sending it flying halfway across the room. “I want you to talk to me.”
“Well, I’m not giving up the rest of my boys,” he shot back. “You can’t make me do that.”
“Use your head, dope! I just laid my own two eyes on them-I can make them from their school photos.” Des shook her head at him in disgust. “I’m wasting my time here. You’re just a lame-assed punk. I’m running you in.” She started for the door with Ronnie in tow.
He panicked. “No, wait! W-we can work this out. What… what do you want to know?”
“I want to know why.”
“We thought it would be cool,” he answered simply.
“You thought it would be cool to burn down Center School? Man, what are you on? Because I have got to get me some of that.”
“Not a thing,” Ronnie insisted. “Never when we go out on a mission. That’s forbidden.”
“So this is the ‘real’ you talking?”
“Absolutely. And this is something we gave a lot of thought to, okay? We thought it would serve ’em right, okay? All they keep doing is arguing about this place. Jerking us around. Pretending they care about us when they don’t. We’re sick of being jerked around. We’re sick of them telling us they want what’s best for us. They don’t. So we thought we’d show ’em just how we feel, okay?”
Des glanced around at the aging classroom. “You hate this place, is that it?”
He let out a nasty laugh. “I hate everything.”
“Then I really don’t know how to talk to you, Ronnie,” Des said regretfully. “Because if you truly believe what you’re saying then you’re coming from the same moral place as a terrorist. You’re not fit to live among other people. Come on, let’s go.”
“Where are we going?” he wondered, wide-eyed.
“You don’t ask the questions. I do.”
She ushered him outside through the front door and flashed her light three times at Mitch. Their go-ahead signal. His job now was to repair the window and clean up the broken glass-with luck, the school would know nothing about this in the morning. Her job was to lead Ronnie Welmers to her cruiser, which she’d parked in the lot behind town hall.
She put him in the front seat and got in next to him behind the wheel. “Okay, it’s time to deal,” she said, looking him right in the eye. “For starters, the Mod Squad is history. I know who you are and where you live. Anything happens again-graffiti, antics, anything-all five of you go directly to jail. And I am so not goofing, understand?”
He nodded, swallowing. “What else do you want?” he asked, his reedy voice soaring an octave.
She started up her cruiser, pulled out of the parking lot and headed north on Dorset Street in the 2-A.M. stillness. “I want you to be a man instead of a punk. I want you to be responsible.”
“For what?” he asked, watching the road carefully, desperate to know where she was taking him.
“For your little brother. And those ladies next door. They’ve got themselves a problem. And I’m going to tell you straight up what it is-your dad, in case you didn’t know it.”
“I know it,” Ronnie said quietly.
“What’s his story, anyway?”
“He’s a dead man walking. His business is in the toilet. He’s bitter, broke, horny. Plus he’s a total ass.” Ronnie sneaked a hopeful look at her. “Word, did you break his nose?”
“Why, what did he say?”
“That he got hit in the nose with a golf club, by accident.”
“Works for me,” she said, straight-faced.
“You have it wrong, you know. He’s not hot for Phoebe. He’s hot for Mrs. Beddoe.”
Des glanced over at him in surprise. “How do you know that?”
“Phoebe told me.”
“You two are friends?
“Kind of.”
“Why did your dad give Ricky that black eye?”
“Because Ricky talked back to him.”
“Ricky told me you gave it to him.”
“No way. I love the little turd. All we’ve got is each other. He’s just afraid the law will come down on Dad and we’ll end up in some foster home.”
She thought this over as she steered her cruiser up the Old Post Road in the darkness. “You like Phoebe a lot, don’t you?”
“I mean, yeah…” he answered uncomfortably. “But they’re grooming her for the big leagues. She’ll go off to Yale, marry a lawyer.”
“You could do that. Go to Yale, be a lawyer.”
“I’m not that smart.”
“Word, I used to be married to a Yale Law School graduate-they aren’t that smart.” She glanced across the seat at him. He looked incredibly young, riding there next to her. They always looked younger when they were in custody. And smaller. “From now on, Phoebe’s family to you. If I get one more phone call from that mother of hers, I’m busting you for tonight’s antics, understand?”
“Does this mean you’re not busting me now?”
“Depends. Do you realize the enormity of what you almost did?”
“Why are you asking me that?” asked Ronnie, frowning.
“Because if you don’t, then I’ll have to run you over to the Troop F Barracks in Westbrook, where they’ll lock you up in a cell for the night with the rest of the trash. Man, are they going to love that smooth white flesh of yours. In the morning you’ll be arraigned at New London Superior Court on-”
