Nineteen Minutes Read online

  *

  Diana Leven, who had left her job as an assistant attorney general in Boston two years ago to join a department that was a little kinder and gentler, walked into the Sterling High gym and stopped beside the body of a boy who had fallen directly on the three-point line after being shot in the neck. The shoes of the crime scene techs squeaked on the shellacked floor as they took photographs and picked up shell casings, zipping them into plastic evidence bags. Directing them was Patrick Ducharme.

  Diana looked around at the sheer volume of evidence--clothing, guns, blood spatter, spent rounds, dropped bookbags, lost sneakers--and realized that she was not the only one with a massive job ahead of her. "What do you know so far?"

  "We think it's a sole shooter. He's in custody," Patrick said. "We don't know for sure whether anyone else was involved. The building's secure."

  "How many dead?"

  "Ten confirmed."

  Diana nodded. "Wounded?"

  "Don't know yet. We've got every ambulance in northern New Hampshire here."

  "What can I do?"

  Patrick turned to her. "Put on a show and get rid of the cameras."

  She started to walk off, but Patrick grabbed her arm. "You want me to talk to him?"

  "The shooter?"

  Patrick nodded.

  "It may be the only chance we have to get to him before he has a lawyer. If you think you can get away from here, do it." Diana hurried out of the gymnasium and downstairs, careful to skirt the work of the policemen and the medics. The minute she walked outside, the media attached themselves to her, their questions stinging like bees. How many victims? What are the names of the dead? Who is the shooter?

  Why?

  Diana took a deep breath and smoothed her dark hair back from her face. This was her least favorite part of the job--being the spokeswoman on camera. Although more vans would arrive as the day went on, right now it was only local New Hampshire media--affiliates for CBS and ABC and FOX. She might as well enjoy the hometown advantage while she could. "My name is Diana Leven, and I'm with the attorney general's office. We can't release any information now because there's an investigation still pending, but we promise to give you details as soon as we can. What I can tell you right now is that this morning, there was a school shooting at Sterling High. It's unclear as to who the perpetrator or perpetrators were. One person has been remanded into custody. There are no formal charges yet."

  A reporter pushed her way to the front of the pack. "How many kids are dead?"

  "We don't have that information yet."

  "How many were hit?"

  "We don't have that information yet," Diana repeated. "We'll keep you posted."

  "When are charges going to be filed?" another journalist shouted.

  "What can you tell the parents who want to know if their kids are okay?"

  Diana pressed her mouth into a firm line and prepared to run the gauntlet. "Thank you very much," she said, not an answer at all.

  *

  Lacy had to park six blocks away from the school; that's how crowded it had become. She took off at a dead run, holding the blankets that the local radio announcers had urged people to bring for the shock victims. I've already lost one son, she thought. I can't lose another.

  The last conversation she had had with Peter had been an argument. It was before he went to bed the previous night, before she'd been called into a delivery. I asked you to take out the trash, she had said. Yesterday. Don't you hear me when I talk to you, Peter?

  Peter had glanced up at her over his computer screen. What?

  What if that turned out to be the final exchange between them?

  Nothing Lacy had seen in nursing school or in her work at a hospital prepared her for the sight she faced when she turned the corner. She processed it in pieces: shattered glass, fire engines, smoke. Blood, sobbing, sirens. She dropped the blankets near an ambulance and swam into a sea of confusion, bobbing along with the other parents in the hope that she might catch her lost child drifting before being overwhelmed by the tide.

  There were children running across the muddy courtyard. None of them had coats on. Lacy watched one lucky mother find her daughter, and she scanned the crowd wildly, looking for Peter, aware that she didn't even know what he was wearing today.

  Snippets of sound floated toward her:

  . . . didn't see him . . .

  . . . Mr. McCabe got shot . . .

  . . . haven't found her yet . . .

  . . . I thought I'd never . . .

  . . . lost my cell phone when . . .

  . . . Peter Houghton was . . .

  Lacy spun around, her eyes focusing on the girl who was speaking--the one who'd been reunited with her mother. "Excuse me," Lacy said. "My son . . . I'm trying to find him. I heard you mention his name--Peter Houghton?"

  The girl's eyes rounded, and she sidled closer to her mother. "He's the one who's shooting."

  Everything around Lacy slowed--the pulse of the ambulances, the pace of the running students, the round sounds that fell from the lips of this girl. Maybe she had misheard.

  She glanced up at the girl again, and immediately wished she hadn't. The girl was sobbing. Over her shoulder her mother stared at Lacy with horror, and then carefully pivoted to shield her daughter from view, as if Lacy were a basilisk--as if her very stare could turn you to stone.

  There must be some mistake, please let there be a mistake, she thought, even as she looked around at the carnage and felt Peter's name swell like a sob in her throat.

  Woodenly, she approached the closest policeman. "I'm looking for my son," Lacy said.

  "Lady, you're not the only one. We're doing our best to--"

  Lacy took a deep breath, aware that from this moment on, everything would be different. "His name," she said, "is Peter Houghton."

  *

  Alex's high heel twisted in a crack in the sidewalk, and she went down hard on one knee. Struggling upright again, she grabbed at the arm of a mother who was running past her. "The names of the wounded . . . where are they?"

  "Posted at the hockey rink."

  Alex hurried across the street, which had been blocked off to cars and was now a triage area for the medical personnel loading students into ambulances. When her shoes slowed her down--they were designed for an indoor courthouse, not running around outside--she reached down and stepped out of them, running in her stockings down the wet pavement.

  The hockey rink, which was shared by both the Sterling High School team and the college players, was a five-minute walk from the school. Alex reached it in two minutes and found herself being pushed forward by a throng of parents all determined to see the handwritten lists that had been taped to the door panels, lists of the children who'd been taken to area hospitals. There was no indication of how badly they'd been hurt . . . or worse. Alex read the first three names: Whitaker Obermeyer. Kaitlyn Harvey. Matthew Royston.

  Matt?

  "No," a woman beside her said. She was petite, with the dark darting eyes of a bird and a froth of red hair. "No," she repeated, but this time, the tears had already begun.

  Alex stared at her, unable to offer comfort, out of fear that grief might be contagious. She was suddenly shoved hard from the left and found herself now standing in front of the list of wounded who'd been taken to Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center.

  Alexis, Emma.

  Horuka, Min.

  Pryce, Brady.

  Cormier, Josephine.

  Alex would have fallen if not for the press of anxious parents on either side of her. "Excuse me," she murmured, giving up her place to another frantic mother. She struggled through the growing crowd. "Excuse me," Alex said again, words that were no longer polite discourse, but a plea for absolution.

  *

  "Captain," a desk sergeant said as Patrick walked into the station, and he slid his eyes toward the woman who was waiting across the room, coiled tight with purpose. "That's her."

  Patrick turned. Peter Houghton's mother was t