Nadya: 'You think he's in the school? With a gun?'
'I hope not. I hope he just took off. But I don't know. We can't take a chance… I'm trying to think, I'm just trying to think…' He looked up. 'The place is just so goddamn big.'
Chapter 32
Carl Walther almost stopped thinking when Grandpa killed himself.
He spent the night wide awake, sprawled on the bed, looking at the dock; the next morning he felt like he had gears in his head, turning slowly, full of sand; the world was not quite in sync.
His mother fussed at him, argued that he should stay home, but he drove into school. Random images popping up as he drove: Grandpa and Grandma dead, the images imagined. His father dead, the image right there, replaying itself-the warmth of his body, his lonely grave out in the clear-cut. The woman he killed in Dad's bed; the lady vagrant on the street, the feel of the wire cutting into her neck; the Russian agents going down.
A car in front of him had a fading WWJD sticker on the back bumper: What Would Jesus Do? And he thought, What would Grandpa do? Grandpa would… work it. He'd play it like a chess game.
But exactly what would he do? In all the years they'd been together, Grandpa kept telling him what to think, but had never quite told him how.
He was playing flag football, still in silent, robot mode-no one at the school had said anything at all about Grandpa being a spy, although he could feel eyes following him in the hallways-when he saw the parade of cars turn the corner and pull up outside the main entrance.
The cars were almost a block away, and there were no sirens or lights, so nobody else paid any attention. But Carl noticed them, and focused, and saw his mother get out of the lead car with the chief, and he knew they were coming for him.
He walked over to the gym teacher and said, 'I've got to get my medicine in my locker. I'm gonna puke, I'm really sick,' and he turned and walked quickly across the playing field, inside, into the locker room, shedding clothes as soon as he was inside. He dressed in one minute, and was out the door, over a fence, down to the parking lot and into his old Chevy.
Where to go? Russia? He couldn't drive to Russia. He just needed to get loose, get away. Get a gun, he thought. Get out in the woods. He got a quick image of himself with a rifle and some pretty neat clothes, like the kind from Cabela's, and maybe a cowboy-type hat, looking through the trees; a Honda four-wheeler. A guerrilla…
He was rolling on teenage hormones. There was some joy in it, a little fear, lots of intensity. He had gas, he wasn't hungry yet, he had seven dollars in his pocket and he knew where he could get both food and guns and there was nobody home…
He went that way.
Chapter 33
Lucas had never felt anything quite so close to panic as when they were running back toward the school. Hopper said, 'You go check the locker room in case he's there. I'm gonna go pull the trigger on the emergency plan.'
There had already been two school shootings in Minnesota that year, three kids dead. The thought that a cold-blooded killer, who'd already wiped out a Russian agent and a cop, and God knows who else, was loose in the school-maybe with a silenced pistol-was a possibility so grim that he could hardly bear to think about it.
He didn't argue with Hopper. Inside the door, Hopper said, 'Locker room,' and pointed. There were a few kids around, gawking at them, and Hopper started shouting, 'Everybody go back to your classroom. Everybody back to your classroom.'
Lucas ran down to the boys' locker room and inside. Dannie Carson continued on to the girls' locker room, her Glock at her side. Inside the boys', a kid was emptying a clothes basket full of towels, and he saw the urgency on Lucas's face and asked, 'What?'
Lucas stepped close, one hand on his pistol, the pistol still under his jacket, and asked, quietly, 'Have you seen Carl Walther?'
'Yeah, he was here two minutes ago. But I think he left…'
'Which way did he go?'
'I don't know, I didn't see him go, I only heard him…'
Lucas did a quick run through the locker room, including the showers, saw nobody else, and went back into the hallway. A gray-haired woman was walking down the hall, bouncing a basketball. Lucas said, 'I'm a cop. Have you seen Carl Walther? He should have been out in the hallway just a minute ago…'
She said, 'Uh…'
Overhead, a speaker burped some static, and then a man's voice said, 'All teachers, we are turning lights out. All teachers, lights out.'
And the gray-haired woman said, 'Oh, shit. Carl? Does he have a gun?'
'We don't know. We can't find him, but he was just here. Were you walking around here?'
'No, I was in the gym…'
Dannie Carson came out of the girls' locker room and said, 'Not there.'
'The 'lights out' code means we're supposed to lock down and report in,' the gray-haired woman said.
'Then do that,' Lucas said. 'Hurry.'
They tore the school apart. Lucas ran through the weight room, checked the swimming pool, and two or three cops walked each row of the huge, elaborate auditorium; every room and cubbyhole was checked. No sign of Carl Walther. Twenty minutes after the search began, a teacher walked down to the office with a student and said, 'Somebody needs to hear this.'
And the kid said, 'You should check the parking lot for his car,' the kid said. 'I saw him come in this morning. He parked right next to me.'
Lucas borrowed the kid and they went out to the parking lot. On the way, the kid described the location where the car was parked-and when they got there, to the exact location, they found an empty space.
'This is mine,' the kid said, pointing to an aging Volkswagen Rabbit in the next slot. 'He's gone. But he was right here this morning. He's got a Chevy.'
The tension backed off a notch. There were now ten city cops and six or eight sheriff's deputies and a highway patrolman in the school. Parents were beginning to arrive outside; the kids had cell phones. Lucas found Hopper and told him about the car and Hopper said, 'Maybe he's gone home. We'll get some guys moving. Nobody's seen him in here, thank God.'
They'd put Janet Walther in the principal's office, and told her to stay there. Now they got her, and Lucas asked, 'Where do you think Carl would go. Home?'
She was scared to death. 'Don't hurt him. He's a good kid, don't hurt him…'
The only places she could think that he might be were at home, at the store, or possibly at Grandpa's.
Lucas, Nadya, and Carson went with Hopper first to Jan Walther's home, cleared the place, then down to the store. The store was locked, and they cleared it; at the same time, they got a call from cops clearing Grandpa's-all the doors were still sealed from the outside.
'I'll talk to the highway patrol, the roads going out,' Hopper said. 'He can't be far.'
Janet Walther grabbed Lucas's arm: 'You don't hurt him. You don't hurt him, okay. He's just scared, you're just scaring him.'
