One Breath Away

Meg

As I move back toward the parking lot I see Dorothy Jones, the owner of Knitting and Notions, a local craft shop, and the president of the school board, walking toward me.

“Hi, Dorothy, I don’t have any info. You’ll have to move back behind the tape.”

“Please, Meg,” she begs. “I’ll just take a few minutes of your time. It’s important.” I invite her to join me in the cruiser. She walks around to the other side of the car, opens the door and climbs in.

Dorothy is fiftyish with midnight-black hair that is cut into a severe, chin-length bob and is attractive in an eclectic, trendy way. She normally wears bright red lipstick and artfully ripped jeans and Chuck Taylor tennis shoes, but now her face is bare of any makeup and she has on sweatpants and a thin spring coat. She has resided in Broken Branch for just over two years, but has accomplished much in the short time she has lived here. A single mother of two teens who attend the school, Dorothy opened Knitting and Notions, renovated an old farmhouse south of town and managed to be elected to the local school board, ousting Clement Heitzman, who had been president for the past twelve years. Dorothy has also been instrumental in the coordination of the consolidation of several area schools, which will now lead to the closing of Broken Branch’s school, sending all the high school kids to the nearby town of Conway, the middle school students to Bohr and the elementary students to Dalsing or Broken Branch, depending on where they live. The construction of Broken Branch’s new elementary school is scheduled to be completed this July, ready to open at the end of August. Many folks around town are miffed with Dorothy for closing their beloved school, as most townspeople spent the entirety of their education within the walls of that building. As somewhat of an outsider, I can understand the reasoning for closing the school. It’s a monstrosity, impossible to heat in the winter and sweltering in the warm months. Its water heater and furnace are ancient and I’m certain the ceilings are full of asbestos. Dorothy, along with the superintendent of schools, somehow convinced the rest of the board that by consolidating four area towns’ schools, the children would be well-educated and safe.

Dorothy gathers her spring jacket more tightly around herself. “I should have never put away my winter coat. That little taste of spring we had last week fooled me.” Dorothy gives me a pained smile. I try not to appear impatient, but I certainly don’t have time to talk weather with the school board president. I smile back but do not respond to her small talk. Dorothy takes a deep breath and looks at me levelly. “I can’t be sure about this, but I wanted to make sure you knew about a few things that had been going on in the school. Things that could possibly have some relevance to what’s happening.”

“What kinds of things?” I ask.

“Technically, I’m not supposed to say anything about this. The discussions we had were in a closed session of a board meeting.”

Now I am beginning to become impatient. “Dorothy,” I say, “if you have any information that will help us resolve what’s going on in there, you need to tell me.”

“I could get in big trouble for this. There are legal issues, lawyers involved.”

“Dorothy,” I say warningly.

“I know, I know.” Dorothy bites her lip. “There was a personnel issue with a teacher last year. He was charged with assaulting a student last year.”

“Yes, Rick Wilbreicht,” I recall. “I remember that. I thought he moved to Sioux City, but we’ll definitely have someone check it out. Thank you.” I pat her on the shoulder and wait for her to exit the car. She stays put.

“Dorothy, I really need to get moving here.”

“Okay.” Dorothy exhales loudly. “I’ve become aware of a situation with one of the students here. Severe bullying. Name calling, pushing, hitting.”

“Really?” I ask in surprise. Not that I’m not naive that bullying is going on in the school, but I would have thought the school administration would have reported any physical abuse to us. But still, I don’t have time for this unless it directly relates to this case. “Dorothy, is this going somewhere?”

“The student did report it to his teachers, many times. But nothing changed.”

“So you think this student is so angry, he would have gone into the school with a gun to get revenge? Was the bullying that bad?”

“He said it was constant. Things were posted online about his sexuality. A video making fun of him and showing kids pushing and shoving him is online also.” Tears begin to pool in her blue eyes and she starts to shiver, though the interior of the car is warm, hot air blasting through the vents. An electric current runs through me. We finally might be getting a break in the case.

“Dorothy, who is this boy? Does he have access to a gun?”

She shakes her head miserably. “I can’t imagine it would be too hard to get hold of one, though. Every home in the area has at least one gun safe.”

“Dorothy, tell me his name,” I say sharply.

She looks desperately at me, tears flowing down her cheeks. “I think it might be my son. I got a call from the school this morning. Blake didn’t show up. I can’t find him anywhere.”

Holly

I know when it’s eleven o’clock because that’s when my mother shows up at the door of my hospital room for the second time each day. She comes right away in the morning at eight, and then at ten she goes for coffee in the hospital cafeteria. She always returns at eleven, and knocks on the doorjamb, pokes her head through a crack in the door and calls out in a cheerful voice, “Is this a good time to visit?” For the first week I didn’t bother answering. Every movement, even forming words, was excruciating. My mother would come in, anyway, pull a chair more closely to my bedside. She brought magazines and her knitting and for the next three hours she would just sit. She didn’t utter a word unless I opened my one good eye, and when I did, the familiar voice of my childhood would settle over me like a crisp, sun-warmed sheet fresh from the clothesline.

“Remember,” my mother begins today, “the time when you were home alone and something spooked the cattle and they somehow got through the gate?” I try not to smile; the muscles in my face screamed with any twitch. I can feel the infection bubbling beneath my skin and wonder what new antibiotic they will try to fight this current setback.

Until just that moment I had forgotten that humid August day the cattle escaped. My parents, along with my brothers Wayne, Pete, Jeff and Todd, decided to make a day trip over to Linden Falls where there was a farm auction. I had no desire to spend my day looking at crappy old farm equipment so I pretended to be sick and stayed behind.

I had lain luxuriously in bed, long after they had left, when I heard the bellow right below my window. I was well accustomed to the mooing and lowing of cattle, but this sound was much too close. I scrambled from my bed, untangling myself from the sheets, and pushed aside my white linen curtains that hung heavily in the humid air. Below me two dozen or more white-faced black baldies wandered lazily in the front yard. I pulled on my barn boots and spent the next four hours trying to corral the cattle. I hollered and pushed and prodded and begged the beasts to return to the pen. Our six-month-old blue-mottled Australian cattle dog, Roo, tried to help me, but after thirty minutes she collapsed in exhaustion beneath the lone crab apple tree in our front yard.

“Oh.” My mother laughs as she also remembers that day. “When we came in the house you were sunburned, bruised and sore from your cattle wrangling, but all of the animals were back where they belonged.” My mother pauses in her knitting. “I remember your father telling everyone he knew about how responsible you were that day. ‘Regular cowgirl,’ he said. He was so proud of you.”

I remember each achy muscle, the way the heat rose from my sunburned skin, the way the ice cream that my father made a special trip into Broken Branch to get just for me felt as it slid, cold and smooth, down my throat. I feel my mother’s hand against my uninjured cheek. “What would you like to order for lunch today, Holly?” she asks me. “Ice cream sounds good, doesn’t it?”

I nod, my cheek absorbing the coolness of her skin against mine. I think of Augie and P.J. so far away, and even though I know it will slow the healing process, I begin to cry. I miss them terribly. Me, the person who could walk away from anyone without so much as a backward glance. “Home,” I manage to grunt.

My mother looks confused for a moment and for a second I know she thinks I’m asking to go back to Broken Branch, 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, why the hell are cell phones allowed in school? You’d think that we’d get good solid information from inside, but all they’ve done is jam up the phone lines and cause otherwise sane people to go crazy.”

“No one has seen anything?” I ask in disbelief. “We don’t know why he’s in the school, what he wants?”

“From the calls we’ve got from within the school, here’s what we know.” McKinney pulls off a leather glove and ticks the points off on his fingers.

“We’ve got one gunman. We’ve got three gunmen. We’ve got a man with a machete, we’ve got someone—can’t tell if it’s a male or female—with a bomb. We’ve got shit, that’s what we’ve got.” McKinney runs his hands over his mouth and his icy mustache crunches beneath his fingers.

“We just wait it out, then? We don’t go in?” I ask, already knowing the answer.

“We do just what we’re doing right now, containing the scene and falling back. If we can communicate with the suspect we can get those kids and teachers out safely. It’s this weather I’m worried about,” McKinney says, looking up at the iron-gray sky. I do the same and instantly my vision becomes blurred as snowflakes fill my eyes. “Interstates and highways all over the state are already closed. I’ve called in all the off-duty and reserve officers and dispatchers, and asked Sheriff Hester to bring in his off-duty folks. I’ve got them covering each corner of the building.”

I look to where he’s pointing and see the sheriff’s deputies walking around with M4s slung across their backs. “You think we’re going to need a tac team?” I ask. A tactical—or tac team, as we call it—is a group of officers that comes from all over the state and are specially trained to respond to situations like this.

“Looks that way,” McKinney says. “But if it keeps snowing like this, we’re not getting one. We’re the tac team.”

I see movement through one of the main office windows and place a hand on McKinney’s arm. “Look,” I say, peering through the veil of snow and touching my sidearm like a talisman.

Augie

The cold from the floor is seeping through my pants and it feels as if we have been sitting here forever, but it’s only been like half an hour. All I can think about is that after all that’s happened, I’m not going to be able to see my mom. We’re supposed to get on a plane to Arizona tomorrow and spend the week there.

I wonder what she looks like now. The last time I saw her, her hands were all bandaged up, her hair was all frizzled and her face was bright red like she’d taken a walk in the desert without her hat. Her eyelashes were gone and the nurses had rubbed a thick, shiny lotion all over her arms. P.J. and I talk to her every night, but usually for just a minute or two. She’s too tired or drugged-up from pain medication to talk for very long, but mostly I think she just sounds sad. I know she feels terrible that P.J. and I had to go away, especially to Broken Branch, which she always told us she spent the first seventeen years of her life hoping to leave.

From somewhere outside the classroom we hear banging and a crashing sound and I’m sure he is coming our way. Next to me Beth covers her ears with her hands and begins rocking back and forth and I put my arm around her shoulders. I don’t know what’s going on with Beth. She is the tomboy of our class, the one to go four-wheeling and deer hunting, and now she’s just a mess.

“I’m getting out of here,” Noah says. He stands up and moves toward the windows.

“Sit down, Noah,” Mr. Ellery says strictly.

“No way,” Noah answers, trying to make his voice tough, like he’s some sort of badass. But the words come out so squeaky that I almost feel sorry for him.

“Noah, sit down. If someone’s out there he’ll go right on by us if we’re quiet. The door’s locked. He can’t get in.”

“Like a fricking gun can’t shoot its way through this door,” Noah snaps back, and tries to open a window that leads out to the teacher’s parking lot. Another crash echoes through the hallways and there’s the tinkle of breaking glass and far-off shouts and Noah drops to the floor. If I wasn’t just as scared as he was I would have made a crack about it. For a minute the only sound is everyone’s heavy breathing and Beth’s teeth chattering together.

“Who do you think it is?” Drew whispers in my ear. I shake my head. I can’t speak. Beth pulls on my sleeve and I look over at her.

My dad, she mouths at me, and then covers her face with her hands.

Mrs. Oliver

Mrs. Oliver kept turning around in her seat to see how her children were doing. Most were holding it together, sitting quietly, but she was especially worried about Lucy Shelton, who had some autistic tendencies and didn’t adapt well to changes in her schedule. The buses were due to arrive at one-twenty, two hours earlier than usual, marking the beginning of their spring vacation. It didn’t appear as if their captor was anywhere near done with them and one-twenty was drawing closer.

She was also concerned about Wesley, who had a bladder the size of a thimble. The closest bathrooms were just outside the doorway but it was highly doubtful that he would allow the children to leave the room. Each time she twisted in her seat to check on her charges the man snapped at her to face front. Now I know how Bobby Latham felt, she thought wryly. Bobby had the most severe case of attention deficit disorder that she had ever encountered in her forty-three years of teaching and she had seen a lot. Bobby, face the front, she repeated over and over until she finally gave up and gave him a seat in the back of the room where he could stand, turn around, do cartwheels if he had to, just as long as he didn’t distract the other students in class. This was long before ADHD medication such as Ritalin and Strattera were being prescribed like candy. Oh, she had come to appreciate the effect the medications had on her students with attention concerns, but she didn’t like the way some teachers and parents felt as if it was the perfect panacea. Drug the kid and move on. It wasn’t like that. Students like Bobby needed to learn strategies that helped them focus, tips to be more organized. The medicine just slowed down their brains long enough for their teachers to help give them those real-life skills.