“What are you doing?” the older patrol cop asked.
“It’s a school,” Archie said. “We’re in a fucking school, for Christ’s sake.”
Henry came around the corner with his weapon drawn. His eyes darted, scanning the hallway; his shaved head glistened with sweat. “The principal came and got Ben,” he said.
“Sara, too,” Archie said. “The office is this way.” Archie holstered his weapon and turned to the patrol cops. “Put your weapons away. Go door to door.” They looked at him, not understanding. “Calm. Them.”
The older one looked at the woman. “But what if the Beauty Killer’s still here?” he said.
“She wants me,” Archie explained. “Or my children.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Go.”
Archie started jogging for the principal’s office, Henry a step behind him. “She’s fucking with us,” Henry said as they ran. “This whole thing. It’s not right.”
There was a poster of a frog on the administration office door with a slogan that read LEAP INTO LEARNING. Archie slammed the heel of his fist against the frog’s face three times. “It’s the police,” he said. “I need you to unlock the door.”
The door opened and the office secretary appeared, her eyes wide behind thick glasses.
“Ben and Sara Sheridan?” Archie asked.
She tilted her head toward a door marked PRINCIPAL.
Archie reached the door just as it opened. Archie had met Principal Hill only once, at a fund-raiser. He was a black man in his mid-forties. He had a master’s degree in education. The school board had recruited him from Philadelphia, and everyone had been excited because he’d once played a year on a major league baseball team. He came to the door with a heavy wooden bat in one hand. His other arm was wrapped around Archie’s daughter’s shoulders. Ben was standing next to her.
Archie slid to his knees and both Ben and Sara ran to him and he took them in his arms.
“What the hell is going on?” Principal Hill asked, lowering the tip of the bat to the carpet.
Archie held his children close, breathing in the smell of their hair, tasting their skin with his kisses. “It’s okay,” he told them. “It’s okay now. I promise.”
Out of the corner of his eye he saw the bat fall to the carpet and looked up to see Principal Hill raise both his hands and take a half step back, his eyes focused behind Archie.
Archie heard the gun a moment before he felt it press against the back of his neck. A single metallic click. The sound of someone turning off the safety of a semiautomatic.
“Let go of the children,” a voice commanded. “Now.”
CHAPTER
24
The sun felt good.
It was a funny thing to notice, Susan realized, given the current situation. But that was the thing about Oregon; it rained most of the year, so when the sun came out, you noticed it. Gretchen Lowell was loose. Archie Sheridan’s children were in danger. And she was having a sun moment.
Not that there was anything she could do. The school was surrounded by cops. Susan counted five fire trucks. What, did they think the school might burst into flames?
Susan had lost sight of Claire. She had left Susan behind in the car as soon as they’d arrived, and Susan couldn’t get near the school without a police escort. There she was, the first reporter at the scene, and not only could she not get close to the school, she had forgotten her pen.
So she was sitting on the hood of Claire’s Festiva scribbling notes with a stick of Chanel kohl eyeliner. It may have been the most expensive writing implement she’d ever used. The mid-morning sun was huge and egg-yolk yellow. That was nice. She wrote that in her notebook, “egg-yolk yellow.” Underlined it.
She squinted up at the school. SWAT had rushed in five minutes before. They had been in there awhile. Five minutes, when you were watching a building, was a long time. Susan felt her stomach tighten with anxiety. She saw a heavyset man in a Hillsboro PD uniform walk by on the other side of the tape, and slid from the hood of the car with her notebook.
“Hey!” she called. “Susan Ward. With the Herald. What’s going on in there?”
The cop walked by her quickly without even the usual seething glance of disregard.
The TV media had started to arrive. Charlene Wood from Channel 8 was first, bursting from the passenger seat of the Channel 8 van, and staking her claim for her live shot. She was tall and skinny with legs that looked like piano legs and black hair that she always wore parted on the side and curled under at her shoulders. Everyone loved Charlene. Ian claimed that she kissed him once at a KGW holiday party, but Susan didn’t believe him.
A SWAT member jogged by, a walkie-talkie in each hand.
“Susan Ward,” Susan shouted at him. “Oregon Herald. Can you tell me what’s going on in there?”