Mark Dolan signaled to two officers, who were already in position on either side of the gym doors. With his chief trapped inside, Dolan had assumed authority, and he was letting his testosterone take command.
Claire ran through the snow to the cruisers. Dolan and the Two Hills police chief stared at her in surprise as she dropped to a crouch beside them.
“You’re supposed to stay back!” said Dolan.
“Don’t tell me you’re going to send armed men in there!”
“The boy has a gun.”
“You’re going to get people killed, Dolan!”
“They’ll get killed if we don’t do something,” said the Two Hills chief. He signaled to three cops crouched behind the next car.
Claire watched in alarm as the officers scrambled toward the building and took position by the doors.
“Don’t do this,” she said to Dolan. “You don’t know the situation in there-”
“And you do?”
“There’s been no gunfire. Give Lincoln a chance to negotiate.”
“Lincoln’s not in charge, Dr. Elliot. Now get out of my face or I’ll have you arrested!”
She stared straight ahead at the gym doors. The snow was falling faster now, obscuring her view of the building, and through that gauzy curtain of white, the cops looked like ghostly figures floating toward the entrance.
One of them reached for the door.
Lincoln and the boy were at a stalemate. They faced each other across the shadowy gym, the distant beam from the emergency lamp slashing the darkness between them. The boy was still holding the gun, but so far all he’d done was wave it around in the air, eliciting terrified shrieks from the students huddled near the wall. He had not yet aimed at anyone, not even at Lincoln, who had his hand on his weapon, and was prepared to draw it. Two girls were standing just behind the boy, making any shot risky. Lincoln was relying on his instincts now, and they told him this boy could still be talked down, that even as the boy raged on, there was some part of him struggling for control, needing only a calm voice to guide him.
Slowly, Lincoln lowered his hand from his holster. He was facing the boy with his arms at his sides now, a position of neutrality. Trust. “I don’t want to hurt you, son. And I don’t think you want to hurt anyone. You’re above that.
You’re better than that.”
The boy wavered. He started to kneel, to place the gun on the floor, then he changed his mind and straightened again. He turned to look at the classmates who cowered in the shadows. “I’m not like you. I’m not like any of you.”
“Then prove it, son,” said Lincoln. “Put the weapon down.”
The boy turned to look at him. At that moment, the flames of his anger seemed to flicker, grow dim. He was drifting between rage and reason, and in Lincoln’s gaze he desperately sought anchor.
Lincoln moved toward him and held out his hand. “I’ll take it now,” he said quietly.
The boy nodded. Gazing steadily into Lincoln’s eyes, he reached out to surrender the weapon.
The door crashed open, followed by the rapid-fire staccato of running footsteps.
Lincoln saw a confusing blur of movement as men burst into the room from every direction. Shrieking students ran for cover. And caught in the knifelike beam of the emergency lamp stood a dazed Barry Knowlton, his arm still extended, the weapon gripped in his hand. In that split-second, Lincoln saw with sickening clarity what was about to happen. He saw the boy, still clutching the gun, as he turned toward the cops. He saw the men, pumped on adrenaline, weapons raised.
Lincoln screamed, “Hold your fire!”
His voice was lost in the deafening blast.
The thunder of gunfire momentarily paralyzed the crowd in the street. Then everyone reacted at once, the bystanders hysterical and screaming, the cops rushing toward the building.
A teacher ran out of the gym and shouted: “We need an ambulance!”
Claire had to fight a stream of terrified kids pushing out the door as she struggled into the building. At first all she saw was a confusing jumble of silhouettes, men padded with body armor, paper streamers drifting, ghostlike, in the shadows above. The darkness smelled of sweat and fear.
And blood. She almost stepped in a pool of it as she forced her way into the gathering of cops. At their center was Lincoln, crouched on the floor, cradling a limp boy in his arms.
“Who gave the order?” he demanded, his voice hoarse with fury “Officer Dolan thought-”
“Mark?” Lincoln looked at Dolan.
“It was a joint decision,” said Dolan. “Chief Orbison and I-we knew the boy was armed-”
“He was about to surrender!” “We didn’t know!”
“Get out of here,” said Lincoln. “Go on, get out of here!”
Dolan turned and shoved Claire aside as he walked out the door. She knelt down beside Lincoln. “The ambulance is right outside.” “It’s too late,” he said.
“Let me see if I can help him!”
“There’s nothing you can do.” He looked at her, his eyes glistening with tears.
She reached down for the boy’s wrist and felt no pulse. Then Lincoln opened his arms and she saw the boy’s head. What was left of it.
21
That night he needed her. After Barry Knowlton’s body had been removed, after the ordeal of meeting the shattered parents, Lincoln had found himself trapped in the bright glare of reporters’ flashbulbs. Twice he’d broken down and cried in front of the TV cameras. He was not ashamed of his tears, nor was he stinting in his angry condemnation of how the crisis had been resolved. He knew he was laying the groundwork for a wrongful death suit against his own employer, the Town of Tranquility He didn’t care. All he knew was that a boy had been shot down like a deer in November, and someone should have to pay.
Driving through a galaxy of falling snow, he realized he could not bear the thought of going home, of spending this night, like so many other nights, alone.
He drove instead to Claire’s house.
Stumbling from his car through the calf-deep snow, he felt like some wretched pilgrim struggling toward sanctuary. He climbed to her porch and knocked again and again on the door, and when there was no response, he was suddenly gripped by despair at the thought she was not home, that this house was empty. That he faced the rest of the night without her.
Then above, a light came on, its warm halo filtering down through the falling snow. A moment later the door opened and she stood before him.
He stepped inside. Neither one of them said a word. She simply opened her arms to him, accepted him. He was dusted with snow, and it melted against her heat, trickling in cold rivulets to soak the flannel of her gown. She just kept holding him. even as melted snow puddled on the floor around her bare feet. waited for you,’ she said.
“I couldn’t stand the thought of going home.”
Then stay here. Stay with me.”
Upstairs they shed their clothes and slid between sheets still warm from her sleeping body. He had not come to make love, had come seeking only comfort. She gave him both. granting him the welcome exhaustion that eased him into sleep.
He awakened to a view through the window of a sky so sharply blue it hurt his eyes. Claire lay curled up asleep beside him, her hair an unruly tangle of curls off the pillow. He could see strands of gray mingled among the brown, and that first silvering of age in her hair was so unexpectedly touching that he found himself blinking
