plasterboard painted like the corridor. There was a chalkboard, windows, chairs with writing arms. A teacher's table up front with a lectern on it. Chalk in the tray at the bottom of the chalkboard. A big, round electric clock on the wall above the door. It had the personality of a holding pen.
l could taste the stiflement, the limitation, the deadly boredom, the elephantine plod of the clock as it ground through the day. I could remember looking through windows like these at the world of the living outside the school. People usually going about freely. I tried too remember what Henry Adams had written. 'A teacher is a man employed to tell lies to little boys'? Something like that. I wondered if anyone had lied to little girls in those days.
I moved on down the corridor, following the route of the shooters. I was wearing loafers with leather heels. I could hear my own footsteps ringing in the hard, empty space. The shooters hadn't made it to the second floor. The first Dowling cops had shown up about the time the shooters reached the library, and the shooters holed up there. Hostages were facedown on the floor, including the school librarian, a woman of fifty-seven, and a male math teacher who had been in there reading The New York Times. I could almost feel their moment, complete control, everybody doing what they were told, even the teachers. The room was unusual in no way. Reading tables, books, newspapers in a rack, the librarian's desk up front. Quiet Please. I looked at some of the books: Ivanhoe, Outline of History, Shakespeare: Collected Works, The Red Badge of Courage, Walden, The Catcher in the Rye, Native Son. Nothing dangerous. No bad swearing.
The windows faced west. And the late sun, low enough now to shine nearly straight through the windows, made the languid dust motes glisten with its gaze. I walked to the back of the library, near the big globe that stood in the far corner. I would have stood there, where I could see the door and the windows, holding a loaded gun in either hand, in command. King of the scene.
The library door opened as I stood looking at the room, and two Dowling cops walked in. They were young. One was bigger. They were both wearing straw Smokey the Bear hats. Summer-issue.
'What exactly are you doing here?' the bigger one said.
'Reliving school days,' I said.
'Excuse me?'
'School days,' I said. 'You know. Dear old golden-rule days.'
They both frowned.
'Chief wants us to bring you over to the station,' the bigger one said.
The fact that the chief wanted me didn't mean I had to go. But I thought it would be in my best interest to cooperate with the local cops, at least until it wasn't.
'I've got my car,' I said. 'I'll follow you down.'
Chapter 5
THE DOWLING POLICE STATION looked like a rambling, white-shingled Cape. The Dowling police chief looked like a Methodist minister I had known once in Laramie, when I was a little kid. He was tall and thin with a gray crew cut and a close-cropped gray moustache. His glasses were rimless. He wore a white shirt with short sleeves and epaulets and some sort of crest pinned to each epaulet. The shirt was pressed with military creases. His chief's badge was large and gold. His black gun belt was off, folded neatly and lying on the side table near his desk. His gun was in the holster, a big-caliber pearl-handled revolver.
'I'm Cromwell,' he said. 'Chief of Police.'
'Spenser,' I said.
'I know your name,' Cromwell said. 'Sit down.'
I sat.
'Real tragedy,' Cromwell said, 'what happened over at that school.'
I nodded.
'We got there as soon as we heard, contained it, waited for backup and cooperated in the apprehension of the perpetrators,' Cromwell said.
I nodded.
'You ever been a police officer, Spenser?'
'Yes.'
'Then you know how it goes. You do the job, and the press looks for some way to make you look bad.'
I waited.
'We got some bad press. It came from people who do not know anything at all about policework. But it has stung my department, and, to be honest with you, it has stung me.'
I nodded.
'We played it by the book,' Cromwell said. 'Straight down the line. By the book. And, by God, we kept a tragedy from turning into a holocaust.'
'Should I be taking notes?' I said.
Cromwell leaned back in his chair and looked at me hard. He pointed a finger at me, and jabbed it in my direction a couple of times.
'Now that was a wiseassed remark,' Cromwell said. 'And you might as well know it right up front. We have zero tolerance for wiseasses around here.'
I liked the we. I wondered if it was the royal we, as in we are not amused. On the other hand, it still seemed in my best interest to get along with the local cops. I looked contrite.
