One Breath Away. Heather Gudenkauf
but then her eyes clear. “Your house had too much smoke and fire damage. When you get out of here, you can stay in my hotel for a few days, then you’ll come to the farm with me for a while, just until you’re back on your feet. Then we’ll find you a new house. I’ve already started looking in the newspaper.” She doesn’t quite understand what I mean but I’m too tired, the fever has addled my brain so that I can’t explain in words what I mean. And while most of my burns are healing, I know I’m not getting better. No one is even talking about the day I’m going to get out of here anymore. Sometimes home isn’t the house, I want to say, it’s the people. Augie and P.J. are my home and I miss them terribly.
Mrs. Oliver
“Sit down,” the man ordered. “Over there.” He pointed to an empty desk in the front row. Lily Reese’s desk. She was one of the students absent. The chicken pox.
“How many students are not here?” he asked.
Mrs. Oliver had felt bad that Lily and Maria Barrett were missing this last day before spring break. Now she was grateful. She wished there had been an epidemic of chicken pox, the flu, hand-foot-and-mouth disease. Anything but this. She remained silent, not wanting to reveal even the tiniest scrap of information about her students.
“How many?” he barked sharply, and Mrs. Oliver cringed.
“Now, now,” she said, holding her hands up to placate the gunman. “Two. Two students are absent,” she said in a rush, and the man’s eyes once again swept across the room, searching. “What do you want? Certainly these children have nothing to do with—”
“I said sit down,” he said sharply. Mrs. Oliver sat in Lily’s chair with a plop, surprised. She thought it was only teachers and high school football coaches who had mastered that tone of voice. The one that said I mean business.
“If you just sit quietly and do what I tell you to, no one will get hurt.”
Mrs. Oliver covered her mouth with her hand, hoping that no one could see her smile. She couldn’t help it. Those were the exact words the bad guy on Cal’s favorite police drama uttered the night before. She wondered if this man watched it, too. Maybe he sat in front of his television with a beer, a bowl of popcorn and a pad of paper, taking notes on what to say. Mrs. Oliver, despite herself, always seemed to get the giggles in the most inappropriate situations. At her cousin Bette’s funeral when the pastor sneeze-tooted she had to get up and leave, covering her red face with her Kleenex to hide her amusement. Then there was the time when Cal, while making love to her, called her Love Muffin, sending her into such a fit of laughter that Cal wouldn’t speak to her for two days.
Mrs. Oliver always looked back on these events with such shame and bewilderment. She prided herself on being the responsible, serious, respectful person of the group. Cal told her that she was incapable of handling the truly emotional situations and this was how she dealt with them, by masking them with laughter and mockery. She had responded by asking him if his eighth-grade diploma and fifty-two of years of working at the washing machine factory qualified him as a psychiatrist. He hadn’t spoken to her for four days after that one. She hadn’t meant to make fun of his educational background. In fact, Cal was one of the smartest men she had ever met. He could fix just about anything. He was good with their finances and was the one that their children went to for advice about their relationships. Not her. His job at the washing machine factory had helped pay her way through teacher’s college and provided an excellent insurance and retirement package.
He was right.
For some reason, she hadn’t quite figured out why, she couldn’t handle the emotional moments life had to offer. Or maybe it was that she handled them too well. Cal was the one who had cried at their children’s births, at their weddings, when Georgiana miscarried her first child. It wasn’t that Mrs. Oliver didn’t cry. She did. But in private, locked in the bathroom, with the water running and the fan on.
She glanced over at P. J. Thwaite, who was still enraptured with the stranger. The man appeared to be counting the number of people in the classroom or looking for someone in particular. Maybe he was here after one of her students? she wondered. The only domestic situation she was aware of was the divorce of Natalie Cragg’s parents. She hadn’t seen Mr. Cragg in years, didn’t know if she would even recognize him. Mrs. Oliver looked over at Natalie Cragg, who was looking down at her desktop, crying softly. When she looked back to P.J., his eyes hadn’t wavered from the man’s stern face.
“P.J.,” she whispered, trying to get his attention. He just continued to look at the man’s face. Not at his gun or the knapsack he carried filled with God knew what. It was his face P.J. was memorizing and this more than anything scared Mrs. Oliver. The man would notice, sooner or later, P.J.’s odd fascination with him and she was afraid that he would in turn find reason to focus his attentions on P.J. “P.J.,” she said more loudly, and P.J. reluctantly turned away from the man. P.J.’s black shock of hair, still mussed from his stocking cap, fell into his eyes, and he looked dazedly at his teacher. P.J. had told her once that he wouldn’t let anyone but his mother cut his hair and he wasn’t going to get it cut until she came to get him. “P.J., don’t stare at him,” she whispered fiercely.
“What are you saying? What are you telling him?” the man demanded, raised his gun and pointed it at Mrs. Oliver.
“I told him not to be scared,” Mrs. Oliver lied.
“I’m not scared,” P.J. piped up.
The man leveled his gaze at P.J. and Mrs. Oliver trembled. This was a cold, cruel man with dead eyes, she determined. He would kill every single one of them without a second thought. “Why aren’t you scared?” the man asked P.J.
P.J. hesitated and bit his lip before answering. “Because you said you wouldn’t hurt us. Not if we did what you said.”
“Smart kid,” he answered with a bitter smile.
Meg
I assure Dorothy that we will look into the possibility that Blake could be the one in the school and send her on her way with the order to call me if she hears anything from her son. Already I’m frustrated. We don’t have enough personnel to chase down all the leads that are forming and the weather is growing worse by the minute.
My phone buzzes again. Another text message from Stuart. I read his latest text first. Come on, Meg. For old times’ sake. Just one comment? I shake my head and snap my phone shut without reading the first message. I already know what it says. Stuart would do anything to get the inside scoop on a story, even resort to blackmail, and the intrusion at the school could be the biggest of his career. Up until the Merritt case, Stuart’s investigative reporting in Afghanistan while covering the war a few years ago was the peacock feather in his cap and earned him the Pritchard-Say Prize for Investigative Journalism. Then there was the Merritt story, which was, besides the whole married thing, the decisive nail in the coffin that was our relationship. Now Stuart is back. He can’t resist the scent of a big story and this standoff. I could see Stuart relishing the thought of a Columbine or Virginia Tech–type massacre just for the byline he would get.
By the time I’ve circled the school with the police line tape, the chief has called in our other off-duty officers and our reserve officers, townspeople who have gone through eighty hours of training and forty hours of supervised time with our small police force. The only time I remember our reserve officers being called in was a few years ago when a tornado ripped through the town of Parkersburg and we were asked to assist. The fact that the chief has requested them tells me this is the real thing.
A large crowd has gathered in the main parking lot. I fill in Chief McKinney on what Dorothy has told me and he digests the information silently.
“Any new info on your end?” I ask him.
“Nothing of use besides the man who phoned and said he is in the school and has a gun.” He shakes his head, releasing the snowflakes that had settled in his hair. “Besides that, we have lots of information that only makes things even more confusing. I swear to God,