Raven and the Cowboy: A Loveswept Historical Romance (38 page)

She wrapped one arm around the bleeding Trace, the other around Rickie. Janine still hung onto her waist, wailing hysterically.

In the distance, sirens shrilled. “The police are coming,” she told the children, struggling to herd them inside. “The police will be here, and we’ll be safe.”

“The car come by,” Rickie said, frowning studiously. “The car shot. Hit the man.”

Trace touched his own cheek, then regarded his bloodied glove impassively. He nodded. “The car shot. Hit the man.”

A drive-by shooting. Here—in front of our own school, in front of these poor children
, Laura thought.
The world’s gone crazy. The world’s mad
.

Somehow, Laura maneuvered her little brood inside the school. Shelley Simmons, the speech therapist, had collapsed onto the hall floor and leaned against a wall, holding one of the younger children, his face hidden against her chest. Both wept uncontrollably.

“I’ve called nine-one-one,” Mrs. Marcuse, the school’s director, said, struggling to exert control. “The police will be here. An ambulance will be here.” She held up her hands as if beseeching them for peace, but there was none.

Jilly, the oldest student, crouched in a corner, hugging herself, her expression full of terror. She covered her eyes with her hands, as if she could block out what she had witnessed.

Oh, my God, that they should see this
—Laura thought, still in shock—
that children should see such a thing
.

Fanny Mayberry, the cook, appeared, staring at the chaos without comprehension. Herschel had William’s thin body stretched on the floor, and was using his own jacket as a compress to stop the bleeding of the boy’s arm.

“Fanny, take Janine,” Laura said, trying to thrust the clinging girl to the other woman. “There’s been a drive-by shooting. Trace is hurt, too.”

“My Lord, my Lord,” Fanny said, folding Janine in her arms. “What a world! You come to Fanny, honey, you be fine.”

Laura knelt before Trace. She snatched off her muffler and dabbed it against his cheek. “Does it hurt?” she asked.

He ignored her question. He frowned at the door. “Car shot thirty times,” he said, jutting his lower lip out petulantly. “Hit the man nineteen. The man didn’t finish the walk. Got to finish the walk.”

“He can’t finish his walk. Trace, look at me. Tell me if you’re hit any place else. Do you hurt anywhere else?”

Stolid, he didn’t answer. He stared at the door instead, and Laura thought that maybe the wound in his cheek was only superficial. She kept her muffler pressed against it, willing her hand not to shake.

“I saw the license,” Rickie said quietly. “It was MPZ one oh four eight one nine.”

Trace nodded. “MPZ one oh four eight one nine. The man should finish the walk.”

The hall was overwarm, almost stifling, but Laura suddenly went cold. Once more a peculiar silence enclosed her, blocking the riot of sound.

“What?” She clutched Trace’s jacket by the lapel. “Say that to me again.”

He frowned more irritably. “MPZ one oh four eight one nine. The man should finish the walk.”

Her heart beat painfully hard as she turned to Rickie. “You saw the license number?”

“MPZ one oh four eight one nine,” he said.

My God
, she thought with a rush of adrenaline.
They both got the license number. Of course. Of course
.

The knowledge gave her a numbed comfort. The police would be pleased. They would find the monster who had gunned down the kindly, dignified, harmless old man, wounded the woman on the sidewalk, hurt William and Trace. They would catch the gunman, lock him away, make the world safe again.

But when the police came, they were not pleased.

“N
ow calm down, calm down,” ordered the officer in charge. His name was Detective Valentine, and Valentine was an unlikely name for him. He was a tall, disheveled, heavy man who needed a shave and gave off an aura of sweat and cynicism. He had gathered them in the school cafeteria.

But few of the children calmed down, and Shelley Simmons still could not stop crying. When an officer tried to comfort her, she slapped at him and cried harder because he wore a gun. The medics should have given her a sedative, but in the confusion, nobody had thought of it.

The woman on the sidewalk had been critically wounded, and the bone in William’s upper arm had been nicked. Both the woman and the child had been strapped onto gurneys and loaded into ambulances that sped screaming away. The school had been bedlam.

Trace’s cheek had been cleaned and patched, and now Laura sat beside him, trying to keep him from scratching at his bandage. He muttered to himself, his dark brows drawn together. Rickie sat on Laura’s other side, humming.

“Listen!” ordered Valentine, eyeing his weepy audience with disgust. “Did anybody see the whole thing? Just answer me that.”

Nobody replied. Janine set up a fresh wail, and Herschel leaned his elbows on the table and put his face in his hands.

“I
said
,” Valentine repeated, his lip curling, “did
anybody
see the whole thing?”

Laura waited, her heart hammering, to see if any of the other adults had witnessed the shooting, but nobody spoke.

“We did,” she said so quietly nobody seemed to hear her. “We did,” she said again. She had her arm around Trace, the better to restrain him from scratching at his cheek.

Trace didn’t want to be touched and tried to squirm free. His brother stared impassively at the detective and kept humming.

Valentine had dark, bulging eyes that reminded Laura of a bulldog’s. He trained them on her with no friendliness. “All three of you?”

“Yes.” She nodded. “They got the license number. They saw the gunman clearly.”

The room suddenly became quieter. Valentine stared at Trace and Rickie. They ignored him. Trace muttered. Rickie hummed.

“They seem calm enough,” Valentine said, almost grudgingly. “Will they talk?”

“Yes. I—think so.”

He nodded. He looked askance at Janine blubbering in Fanny’s embrace, at Jilly huddled in the farthest corner, at Shelley Simmons still openly weeping.

“Where can we talk?” Valentine’s voice wasn’t kind.

“In my office. Down the hall,” Laura said. “Room One-E.”

“Room One-E,” said Rickie.

“Room One-E,” Trace repeated, trying to shake off Laura’s hand.

One of the children, Fergus, began to make a strange, mournful yipping noise. “I want my room!” Fergus cried. “I want my bed! My room! My bed!” He yelped again, more stridently and unhappily than before.

Valentine sighed. “Let’s go to One-E,” he said. Weariness mingled with contempt in his voice. “Eagan, take over here. Oliphant, come with me.”

He and Oliphant, a slim young black officer in uniform, accompanied Laura and the twins to her office. Trace muttered, frustrated that he couldn’t scratch at his bandage. Rickie kept humming.

Laura’s office was small but cheerfully decorated. Looking down from the walls were framed posters of Mr. Spock of
Star Trek
, Ariel the Little Mermaid, and Simba the Lion King. In the corner stood a small work table with a child’s colorful, simple puzzle on it. Four shelves were crammed with books, both adults’ and children’s.

Tacked on one bulletin board were children’s drawings and snapshots of the students and staff. On another bulletin board, student charts displayed gold stars. Some charts had many gold stars. Some had few.

Valentine lumbered to Laura’s desk and, without asking, sat down heavily in her chair. She didn’t like that. The uniformed officer, Oliphant, pushed aside a pile of her papers and sat on the corner of her desk. She didn’t like that, either.

Both men stared at her. Valentine raised his hand and made a beckoning motion, as if coaxing her to respond quickly and without nonsense. “You?” He nodded at Laura. “Who are you? What’s your job here?”

“I’m Laura Stoner. I’m a teacher.”

“Age? Address?”

She told him she was twenty-eight and gave him her address, which was in a neighborhood far more modest than the school’s. With an air of industry, Oliphant wrote the information on a notepad.

“How long you worked here?” Valentine asked. He picked up her appointment book and flipped through it idly. His presumption irritated her.

“We can do a puzzle,” Trace said suddenly. He spoke so loudly that it startled Oliphant, who darted him a questioning look.

“We can do a puzzle,” Rickie agreed. He had begun to fidget. She held both boys by the hand, and both were squirmy.

“Stand there,” she told them firmly. “Be still. You can do a puzzle in ten minutes.”

Both immediately looked at their watches. Rickie nodded, a bit sullenly. Trace continued to try to pick at his bandage.

“Don’t touch your bandage, Trace,” she said, just as firmly. “Look,” she said to Valentine, “can you hurry? They’re restless. And upset.”

“Let ’em do the puzzle,” Valentine said without smiling. “And you—you can sit.” He nodded at the chair opposite the desk as if it were his office, and he was giving her permission to use her own furniture. He apparently found something of interest in her appointment book. He stared at the page, nodding idly.

Laura, shaken as she was, felt a stab of anger. She had intended to help the police, not be patronized by them. She held herself straighter.

“They’ll do their puzzle when I tell them they can,” she said evenly. “I don’t want to sit—you’re in my chair. I’ll stand. And please put down my appointment book. You’re not here to investigate
me
.”

Valentine, unsmiling, only raised a brow. Oliphant slipped her a noncommittal glance. “He asked you how long you’ve worked here, Miss Stoner,” Oliphant said in a velvety voice. “You didn’t answer.”

“Three years.”

“Before that?” Valentine said. He glanced at a few more pages in the appointment book, then made a show of setting it back on her desk, but not in its original place.

“Before that I was getting my master’s at Columbia,” she said. “And before that I taught public school. And before that I was in college at Penn State. And before that high school in New Castle, Pennsylvania. And before
that
, junior high in New Castle. And before that grade school in New—”

“All right,” Valentine said, cutting her off. “Now, I got to question you. One at a time. The kids first. I don’t want any allegation they were coached. So leave and wait outside the door—”

“That isn’t possible,” Laura said. “They won’t talk without me here.”

Valentine stared morosely at the twins. He tented his fingers on the desktop. He attempted a fatherly smile, but it seemed merely sarcastic. “What are your names, boys?”

Neither looked at him, and neither answered.

Valentine leaned toward them, still trying to smile. “What are your names, boys?” he repeated.

Trace stared at the floor. Rickie squinted at the ceiling.

“They’re upset, and they won’t talk to strangers,” Laura said. She was right, and she knew it. “Ask them whatever you have to. I won’t coach them. And I haven’t.”

“This isn’t regular procedure—Miss Stoner.”

“This isn’t a regular day for us—Detective Valentine.”

He sat back in her chair. He still wore his hat, brim pulled down, and his overcoat, unbuttoned. He took off the hat and set it on her stack of papers. His hair was thinning and slicked tight to his scalp. It gleamed, as if oiled or dirty. “What are their names?” he asked tonelessly.

“Tell the man your name, Trace.”

Trace glanced at his watch, stared at the floor, and said, “My name is Trace Francis Fletcher. I’m eight years old. I go to Stephenson School. I live there.” He gave his address and telephone number.

“
Very
good, Trace,” Laura said, smiling. “Now you, Rickie.”

Rickie continued to study the ceiling with narrowed eyes. “My name is Richard Mark Fletcher. Call me Rickie. I’m eight years old. I go to Stephenson School. I live there.”

He gave his address and telephone number in the same singsong voice that Trace had used.

Oliphant stole another glimpse at the boys. His expression had grown guarded, measuring.

Valentine, who clearly didn’t understand children, gave them another small, false smile. He put his elbows on the table and folded his hands together. “Now, boys, suppose you tell me what you saw this afternoon on the playground. Can you tell me what you saw? If you do a good job, I’ll have Officer Oliphant here buy you some ice cream.”

“Ice cream?” Trace said, his voice shrill. “Ice cream!”

“No, Trace,” Laura said calmly, “you can’t have ice cream. You can have juice. Tell what you saw. Tell what happened to the man with the cane.”

Trace frowned harder. Laura repeated her instructions. Trace took a deep breath. He cast an unfriendly glance at Oliphant but still did not look at Valentine. “The man turned the corner. The man took one hundred and twenty-nine steps. The man fell down.”

Valentine pursed his lips and stared at Trace with dissatisfaction. “What is this—a hundred twenty-nine steps?”

“They’re interested in numbers,” Laura said and pressed on, choosing her words carefully. “Trace, tell what you heard when the man fell.”

“Shots,” Trace answered without hesitation. “Thirty shots.”

“Tell what the shots did,” Laura said.

“Now, wait,” Valentine said, irritably, “you’re prompting him—”

“Nineteen shots hit the man.”

Oliphant looked up again. “That’s flukey, man. He got hit about twenty times, all right. How he know that?”

“Trace,” Laura said quietly. “Tell me where the shots came from.”

“The car,” he answered. “The car was big. The car was blue. The car said ‘Cadillac.’ The car said ‘de Ville.’ ”

“Now—wait a minute,” Valentine interrupted. “What’d he say? We got all kinds of conflicting witnesses on that car. Is he
sure
? Is he one of those kids that knows cars—?”

Oliphant’s face had gone taut. “Jesus,” he said under his breath.

“Trace,” Laura said. “You said you saw a license number. Tell me the number.”

“Now, wait a minute—a license number?” Valentine asked, skepticism in his bulldog eyes. “He’s just a kid—”