Blind School (2 page)

    She quickly scanned the road: no cars just passed that she could see.

   Then she saw the
Fulton
girl, Tracy, coming out the house and heading to the
Pontiac
. The long black coat she wore looked odd on her, at least two sizes too big; and as she got in the car, Beth noticed the shotgun for the first time.

   She took a step back from the curtain as Tracy Fulton fired up the
Pontiac
and swung out of the driveway. But she waited until the car was fully out of sight before she went to the phone and dialled 911.

She’d seen that on films too: baddies seeing callers on the phone and turning back to take them out.

TWO

Mocha Bocha Cafe,
Cedar Falls
.

Half hour after school closing was one of the Mocha Bocha’s busiest times. Shoppers, late coffee-breakers, moms with younger kids ordering lattes and milk shakes, but by far the largest crowd was from nearby Cedar Falls High, who regularly decamped to the Mocha Bocha to chill out after school.

Ryan Lorimer, Tommy Rawlton and 'Ginge' Caldwell, all eleventh-graders, had commandeered their favourite table in the corner of the cafe. Books and schoolbags were spread out, though mostly forgotten as Tommy mooned about their new history teacher, Rachel Torrens.

‘I ask you – is she hot or what?’

‘Or what? being the operative question,’ Ginge said.  ‘I mean, what is she now – twenty-eight, twenty-nine?

‘Yeah, like
really
old.’ Ryan rolled his eyes, but it was clearly lost on Ginge.

‘So –  she's too old to be a 'babe'.  Does that then automatically make her a 'MILF'?’

Tommy smiled. ‘I suppose –
if
she was eleven or twelve when she had us.’

Every group invariably has their leader, and in this small after-school group it was probably Ryan Lorimar. Though not as vocal as Tommy, the others often looked to him for support. Possibly because he was the only one of them to have turned seventeen, if only by two months.

Tommy was Ryan’s closest friend. The inches he lost in height were added to his waistband, so Tommy felt he had to work harder to get noticed; which often meant picking edgy, risqué subjects or playing the clown. Ryan held out a palm.

‘I'm not sure that's how it works: her having to be old enough to be our moms. Just old enough to be
someone's
mom.’

Tommy was lost in thought for a moment. ‘Somehow seems unfair, though. She makes a play for us or succumbs to our charms...’ 

Ryan chuckled. 'Succumbs to our charms?' More like falls for our clumsy chat-up lines.’

Tommy conceded with a wry smile. ‘Yeah, whatever. She does that and gets found out – she loses her job.  We do that and score, nothing happens. It's just a bit of sport for us.’ He took a sip of latte, wiped away a foam moustache. ‘Doesn't seem right.’ 

Ryan shook his head, smiling.

Ginge was thoughtful, petulant. ‘I've never really forgiven her for giving me a B-grade on that Dred Scott thesis.  That was one hot piece I turned in.’

But Tommy's was distracted as a couple of girls from their school walked in. ‘Talking about 'hot pieces'...’

‘Not to mention more within our reach,’ Ryan said. ‘Or age range.’

Through the front window of the cafe, a black
Pontiac
pulled up across the road and a girl in a trench coat stepped out. But nobody at the table paid her any attention, all eyes were on the two hot girls heading their way.

One person who had paid attention to the girl and the Pontiac was the patrolman in the passenger seat of the squad car passing on the next cross street up.

   ‘Could that be the two-four-six we heard earlier?’

   The driver braked. They’d drifted past the point where he could get a clear view. He backed up and peered down the street.

Two hundred yards down, the girl was now halfway across the road from the black
Pontiac
. The description fitted: Trench coat. Straggly blonde hair. But the dispatch notice had said: ‘Armed with a shotgun and possibly dangerous.’ He couldn’t see that from where he was. 

‘Dunno. Not sure.’ They got a dozen false shooter alerts for every real one. Then he noticed the stilted gait in her walk. ‘But worth checking out, I suppose.’

He swung into the turn.

   ‘Hi girls. Howya doing?’

   Tommy greeted both girls as they approached, but his eyes rested more on Diana, a stacked, drop-dead gorgeous brunette. Only problem was, she knew it.

‘Hi guys. Good, thanks. Good.’ Diana in turn aimed her greeting at all three boys, but her eyes rested a second more on Ryan.

Though Ryan seemed distracted at that moment, his gaze drifting past Diana’s shoulder. Diana wasn’t used to that, not being the center of attention, and she half-turned to see what had drawn Ryan’s eye:

A non-descript blonde, straggly hair, eyes red-rimmed and bleary. A long black coat that fitted like a sack. Looked like a left-over Grunge rocker, she’d probably have made a good bag lady if she’d been forty years older.

But Ryan had seen something else in that moment: a strange apparition, half-angel, half dragon-demon, seeming to swirl within the girl. Misty at first, but starting to take shape, become clearer.

‘Are you going to Tina’s party next weekend?’ Tommy asked Diana. ‘Could be good.’

‘I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe...’

The rest was lost to Ryan, drowned out by a wild cacophony of voices, merging with the other voices and clatter in the cafe, the hiss of the espresso machine.

The mumbling voices rose until he could hear nothing else.

Tracy Fulton approached the Mocha Bocha counter. A twenty-something barista gave her a requisite smile.

‘Can I help you?’

‘Double-shot mocha looks good.’
Tracy
’s eyes didn’t shift for even a second to the display board behind. They stayed resolutely on the girl.

‘To have here or to go?’ The barista’s fingers hovered over the register.

‘Oh, to go... definitely to go.’

The shotgun swung up so swiftly from beneath the trench coat that the barista barely had time to change facial expression, let alone move.

Ryan saw the girl take the full blast in her chest, half-separating her head and shoulders from her torso, then the second shot hit the manager just behind as he turned and held a hand up.

   The rest of the cafe was suddenly in motion: people rushing for the exit, chairs and tables knocked aside or upturned.

   The shotgun was thrown down and a large silver gun taken out to down a mid-fifties couple halfway from their table to the door. Then as another middle-aged man was shot only a yard from the door, escaping suddenly didn’t seem such a good option.

   Panic scurrying for cover from the rest of the cafe, including Ryan’s table, which they quickly upended and dived behind.

The sharper panicked screams were the only thing to reach Ryan above the wild cacophony of mumbled voices. He peered out one side of the table edge, breathlessly assessing: they dare not raise up and draw her attention, but they were four tables away with several other people in between – so hopefully shouldn't be first on her hit list.

And thankfully she was still looking away from them, towards the man she'd just downed by the door and activity the far side. But Ryan could still see that demon-like apparition.

And at that moment, as if sensing it had been viewed, its head started to rotate Ryan's way.

Its eyes locked on his position. The girl, thankfully, was still looking away. But then, as if a message service ran between them, her head started to also turn his way.

The two cops heard the first shots as they got out the squad car, then another as they approached the cafe – so they already had their guns drawn.

   Four or five people down, as far as they could see. The trench-coat girl had just fired and taken out the corner of an upturned table as the first cop entered, and she looked about to fire again.

   ‘
Freeze
! Drop your weapon.’

   The girl swung her gun towards him, and he didn’t hesitate to fire – a square-on chest shot. But then his expression quickly dropped as he saw that it had only knocked her back a foot, and there was no visible blood.
Jeez
. You didn’t expect eighteen year olds to be wearing kevlar. 

   He fired again, but it went wild as her return shot hit him in the shoulder.

   His partner, catching on to what had happened, went for a lower shot that hit her in the thigh.

He was about to make sure with another couple of shots – but as she went down the Desert Eagle fell from her grip, skittering across the floor. 

He moved in, careful not to slip on the tile floor already slippery with blood, and trained his gun on her from only a yard away. Two more back-up cops burst in through the door at that instant. 

She wasn’t going anywhere.

THREE

Ellis Kendell arrived ten minutes after the main network vans. Just as make-up and hair was being tidied for the first newscasts.

Mid-forties, African-American, with twenty FBI years under his belt, he surveyed the scene with tired indifference.

   Tracy Fulton was already handcuffed in the back seat of a squad car, its lights flashing. And as the press of competing flash-lights from surrounding cameramen became too much, the squad car pulled away, fronted and tailed by two other squad cars. Their sirens wound up as they cut a swathe through the gathered crowd.

   Ellis sat in a black Econoline van, its windows tinted. Like every day for the past eight years, purely a silent witness. Unlike the other FBI agents milling freely among the people out front and inside the cafe, asking questions and taking notes, Ellis needed to stay invisible, a shadow.

   And so Ellis silently observed the scene ahead as he had scores of similar scenes every month.
Tired indifference
. But that didn’t make the thought that there might be another one out there any easier to take.

Five detectives were given the task of interviewing Mocha Bocha customers about what they might have seen, so Ryan, Tommy and Ginge had to wait fifteen minutes before a detective got round to them.

   The detective sat opposite them at a table at the back of the cafe. He quickly ascertained that Ginge hadn’t noticed the girl until she started shooting, but the other two boys had noticed her earlier.

   Tommy shrugged. ‘Only as she approached the counter, mind you. And only briefly – I didn’t pay much attention to her either until that first shot.’

   The detective turned to Ryan. ‘And you?’

   ‘I noticed her as soon as she walked in.’

   The detective started making his first notes. ‘And what was it that made you first notice her. Her trench coat, maybe?’

‘Yeah, partly that. But it was mainly her wild look, and something else too...’ Ryan broke off. It would sound odd, and he doubted the detective would understand.