Author: Dee Henderson
Category: Christian
Go to read content：https://onlinereadfreenovel.com/dee-henderson/page,18,63409-the_healer.html
“You’ll have it. I’m putting a priority on tracing the guns.”
Marcus saw Kate walk down the steps from the high school, her hands shoved in her pockets, her head bent. From behind the police tape came a chorus of reporters’ voices trying to get her to come over and answer questions. Kate ignored the reporters, spotted their group, and came to join them. He was relieved she’d finally stopped long enough to have her arm dressed properly. She met his gaze, and it was the beaten-up Kate he saw, the one who appeared when she felt she had failed and was struggling to get her perspective back. He’d talk to her later when he could get her away from this, but nothing would be able to take that weight off her. It was the price she paid for being a cop.
“We’ve got a problem. Where’s Rachel?” Kate asked.
Marcus turned and looked back toward the middle school. He spotted Rachel sitting on a bench beside Ann, deep in conversation. Adam was sitting on Stephen’s lap. While he watched, Nathan walked over to Rae and leaned against her knees. She boosted him onto her lap, hugging him. It looked like she had been able to turn the emotion and find that focus on work. It was good to see. “She’s over with Ann.”
“Jack.” Kate waved their brother over. “I need you to hear this.” She led the way to Rachel.
Adam’s eye had swollen with the tears and the black eye was coming in colorfully. Rachel accepted the new ice pack Cole brought them with a quiet thanks. She offered it to the boy, smiling at him, even as she wondered what Adam had really seen and heard this afternoon. He was already trying to protect his mom—Adam hadn’t mentioned to her that he had seen Greg in the hallway. And when Adam had first seen Nathan, Adam hugged his brother long enough Nathan started to squirm.
Adam was already showing the early signs of detachment. At his age his emotions wouldn’t be able to absorb the impact of his best friend’s death, so as a natural defense his mind shoved the details and the emotions of the experience to the side and cut them off until he was better able to cope.
Rachel reached over and brushed the hair back from his forehead. One of her tasks was to help him cope with what had happened. She could feel the desire to be holding a notebook and pen again and was relieved to find her own reaction to the incident wearing off. Her thoughts had been drifting, her concentration poor. Crying with Adam had probably saved her own sanity. She’d helped him from under the bleachers feeling heavy at heart but at least ready to engage in the work she spent her life training to do. To do that, she needed to find a lot more answers to what had really happened here.
Stephen helped the boy adjust the ice pack. “I know it’s cold. Just relax against it and it will get better.”
“Did you ever get a black eye?” Adam asked, his voice finally coming back to normal pitch.
“Several,” Stephen said, “most of them when Jack and I went after the basketball at the same moment.”
“Tim didn’t mean to give me this one.”
“Accidents happen. I spend my days at work helping people after accidents. I’m sorry about this, buddy. Tim was a good kid. The guys at the station liked him. We’re all going to miss him.”
Adam leaned back against Stephen, finding comfort.
“Rachel.”
She looked over and saw her family coming to meet them. Their expressions were enough to warn her. She hugged Nathan and shifted him to Ann. “I’ll be back in a moment.”
She looked at Cole and her hand motioned him to join her. They met her family at the sidewalk.
Kate looked around to make sure she would not be overheard and then around the group. “They’ve identified the second shooter. It’s Mark Rice.”
The news stunned the group. “Carol Iles’s son?” Lisa asked.
“A lady is murdered during the flood and today her son is in school with a gun. Anyone here want to speculate on the odds that this is a coincidence?”
Twenty-six
Rachel tucked the phone against her shoulder as she scrawled another note in her composition book and ducked beneath the yellow police tape. “Nora, I’ve got nine kids who were in the school cafeteria when Mark and Greg ran in. Who do we have that can talk to them tonight?”
She read off the names. They were trying to make sure everyone who had been caught in the path of the two boys had someone debrief them before they had to try to sleep tonight.
Rachel felt like she had been working this scene for days, but a glance at her watch showed that it had been just over three hours. Most of the parents and children had already left for home. Spectators from the community were beginning to disperse, leaving the scene to the investigators under the watch of the media.
Rachel had made Lisa’s car her temporary command center. She tugged out the rough sketch of the school buildings’ layout and penciled in the information on where the boy shot in the thigh had fallen. She had just spoken with the boy’s two friends. The fact that they had rushed back to help him was making it easier for them to adjust to what happened.
She was asking every student she spoke with three questions: “Where were you when the shooting started? What did you see? Who was around you?” From dozens of answers she was piecing together a mosaic. She underlined in red three names on her sketch. She hadn’t spoken with them yet, and from the information she had, they would have been standing next to a girl who had been one of those shot. That kind of grief—why her and not me?—would be hard to manage without someone to share it with who understood what it was like.
The goal of the first eight hours was to make sure the kids did not feel like they were alone to cope with the experience and to identify anyone who was at immediate risk. Teens who had already spent the hours since getting home calling friends to talk about what had happened were not the ones who had her worried. It was the teens who had just lost their best friends and were having trouble doing anything but crying who needed immediate intervention. Finding those kids among the hundreds at the middle and high schools wasn’t a simple task, for their instinct was to withdraw from people under the weight of that grief.
“Nora, I’m heading out now to start the hospital rounds. Would you ask the police chaplain to page me when he leaves Greg and Tim’s mom?” She wanted to have positive news about Marissa to take with her when she met Mrs. Sanford and hopefully got a chance to see Clare again. The boys’ father was flying today, the Boston to Chicago route, and someone was now at the airport to meet the return flight. The death of his sons was not something they wanted to tell him while he was in the air piloting a plane with two hundred passengers aboard. “I’ll check in again in an hour.”
She closed the phone. “Cole, I’m ready to go. At which hospitals are the kids?”
He was helping Jack pack up the last of the equipment Engine 81 had used in treating the injured. “Lutheran has three, Mercy has one, and General has two.”
“I need to be back here at nine. There’s a coordinators’ meeting at the church down the street.”
He glanced at his watch. “Not a problem.” He stowed the medical kit. “Jack, I’ve got the incident paperwork with me to finish up. Anything you need before I go?”
“We’re set, boss. They’ve released us. We’ll head back to the station.”
“Page me before you go off shift?”
“Will do.”
“Rachel, let’s take my car.” Cole pointed it out on the street. “Frank brought it over.”
She nodded and gathered up her growing collection of paperwork. The school counselor had brought her a recent yearbook and current class rosters.
“Need a hand?”
She passed Cole the folder of sketches she had collected. Most students found it easier to draw a sketch to show her where they had been and who had been near them, and she encouraged it. Anything with pen and paper and an analytical question to answer helped them start thinking like students again.
Cole held open the passenger door for her. And then she saw Gage. He was standing by the grassy knoll near the soccer field ove
rlooking the school grounds. He wasn’t working—he was simply standing there with his hands in his back pockets, watching the investigators. “Cole, go on ahead. I’ll catch a lift later.”
He had seen the man too. “There’s work here. I’ll wait.” Rachel reached for her notebook and a pen and picked up two cold sodas from the cooler one of the students had brought over to her an hour ago, one of the many gestures from students who wanted to do anything they could to help out.
Gage saw her coming but he didn’t speak, just watched as she joined him. She loved this man, and she had a good idea what was going on behind that solemn expression. She sat down on the grass beside where he stood and set aside the composition book. She opened one of the sodas.
He sat down without care for the dress slacks and grass stains and picked up the other soda. “I can’t handle kids killing kids.”
She let her silence be her agreement. They had already shared a sadness so overwhelming they needed no words to convey the depth of this new one. The weeks after Tabitha’s death and that of his unborn son had already plowed this ground. She rested her head against his shoulder for a moment and sighed. “Today was the stuff of nightmares.”
He rubbed her back.
“Where were you when you heard?” she finally asked.
“Doing the stuff in life that is irrelevant now. I was talking with the mayor’s press secretary about a rumor the mayor is going to try to move the parking for the new stadium. You?”
“Enjoying a rare day shopping with Jennifer. We stopped by the school on the way back so I could see Adam and Tim.”
She watched the fireman who was hosing down the areas where there were bloodstains. It was a fine balancing line. The men wanted to erase the physical evidence of the day and support students to give them time to heal. While at the same time they had to also slow down their own rush to forget and move on. She watched the man work and wondered what would erase her memories of the four deaths she had seen up close.
“I know you had to go in with Kate, but I wish you hadn’t.”
“I’m jumping when a door slams or a book drops.”
“Give yourself a lot of room in the midst of this to recover. You took it on the chin.”
“I hear an echo of my own advice coming back.”
He smiled. “So I actually listened over the last two years.” Gage nudged the sack beside him over to her. “I brought you some things.”
There was a clean shirt, a wrapped toothbrush, a small tube of toothpaste, and a hairbrush. Her emergency duffel bag was still at her apartment. She knew she wouldn’t be home for the next twenty-four hours, if not the next forty-eight. She’d been planning to hit the hospital gift shop if she could get there before it closed. Rachel hugged him.
“Call me early in the morning and let me know where you’re heading? I’ll bring you breakfast and the latest news update.”
“Deal.”
He nodded toward Cole. “Go on. I know the next twelve hours will be very hard. He’ll take good care of you.”
She studied her friend. “Will you be okay?”
“Will you?”
“Maybe in six months.”
He smiled. “Give me a couple years.”
She rubbed his arm and got to her feet. She left him there and crossed the field to join Cole.
He opened the car door for her again and then circled around to take the driver’s seat.
“Who do you want to see first?”
“Marissa.”
She flipped open the composition book and went back through what Janie had told her as Cole drove. She wanted to stay with Gage and grieve, but she couldn’t. Her job was now beginning in its most intense way.
She understood what was coming. Unexpected, sudden violence had frozen a moment in time. Now time would speed up. In the days to come the rush of events would overwhelm: the investigation, the media, the funerals, the reopening of the schools. An emotional roller coaster had begun: denial, anger, despair, and acceptance. How she and the other counselors approached this mattered, for others would take cues from them. And on a day when she most needed to be strong, she had never felt so weak.
Jesus, I treasure those words you proclaimed in Exodus, “I am the LORD your Healer. “ Remember us today. It is Your healing touch we now desperately need. There was comfort in her new faith. No matter how great the need, she was finally learning to lean against someone who could meet it in full. And on days such as this, that awareness was what kept her going.
“Is your system settled enough you could handle a bite to eat?” Cole asked.
“I’ll pass on food, but I’d love another drink.” Her voice was already hoarse.
Cole stopped on the way to the hospital and pulled into a drive-thru. He bought her a large iced tea and a small fry. “Try to eat something anyway. It’s going to be a long night.”
Rachel took a long drink. “Forget sleep tonight. Once the media plays this for twenty-four hours, I’m going to have two schools full of students struggling to adjust to what happened. What they didn’t see today, they’ll unfortunately have seen by tomorrow.”
She searched the radio stations to find one of the news stations so she could listen to how the local reporters were covering the shooting. “How are your guys handling it?”
“I was fortunate. Most of them only dealt with the injured. Once the lead guys saw Tim, they checked the locker room for injured and then sealed off the area.”
“How are you handling it?”
Cole looked over at her, then back at the road. “How about you?”
Rachel understood exactly what he meant. “Better a discussion for tomorrow?”
“I think so.”
She rubbed her forehead. “What are the odds you have aspirin available?”
“Try the glove box.”
She dug around for the packets. “You know, batteries go bad when they get hot.”
“Considering I tossed them in there two years ago, they’re already goners.”
She found the aspirin.
“Hand me two please. My headache is a bear too.”
She shook out two for him and passed him her drink.
“Eat some of these.” She offered the fries.
She pulled out another stack of blue cards and began marking the back with numbers. She had already handed out dozens. Her pager went off. She slipped it off and read the number, then immediately reached for her phone. “Marcus, how did the walk-through go?” She tucked the phone against her shoulder and reached for the composition book.
“There was a bullet in the chemistry lab room door. Someone was shooting at you, Rae, and you failed to mention it?”
She really didn’t want to know. “It must have been before I got there.” She’d tell herself that and hope it was true.
“Good. That was my update; the rest I’ll give you when I see you at nine,” Marcus said. “What do you have for me?”
She flipped back in her composition book to the summary pages. She scanned the information, trying to limit what she had learned to only what Marcus would need in order to resolve the shooting. “Tim was a kid who got picked on. That’s the consensus of the kids who knew him. There was genuine surprise when I asked if Tim ever talked about a gun or showed a fascination with guns. If he had any interest that way, it’s not showing among those who knew him. I’ll talk more with Adam about it tomorrow.”
She read her notes. “Did Tim have enemies? Yes and no. He was getting harassed by some freshman kids who were neighbors of his, but it was the you’re fat, have freckles, and you can’t even catch a ball type taunting. Tim would have been the one to retaliate to such taunting, ~3 but all I’ve got so far is the fact that he was looking forward to going to a private school next year.”
Rachel hated her final conclusion. “Marcus, for now I’m leaning toward Tim being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“The wrong place at the wrong time—how many obituaries do we see that should include t
hat statement?” Marcus asked grimly.
“I know,” Rachel replied, hearing and sharing the ache in his heart. A child had died and it looked to be an unfortunate chance.
“Regarding Mark Rice.” She turned to the center section of the book. “He’s the classic school shooter, Marcus. Cole already has him down as a budding arsonist who was a significant contributor to his parents’ divorce. The murder of his mom—well set aside the question of whether he had anything to do with that—it was a definite trigger in his life. I’ve got two teachers and the vice principal describing his behavior in the last month as unpredictable with a hair-trigger temper. A notebook in his backpack had doodles of dead people; he’s been talking to other kids about guns; and he’s angry at authorities and cops in particular. Guns appear to be a long-term fascination of his. Mark’s best friend is Chuck Holden. Three boys who knew Mark have volunteered that same name. The boys hung out together. Maybe he knows something or heard Mark say something.”
“I’ll get someone to track down Chuck,” Marcus promised.
“Good. Let me know what you find.”
“What do you have on Greg?”
Rachel read her notes and sighed. “Confusion. Kids are stunned at the idea of Greg shooting someone. He’s the one kids describe as law and order, follow the rules, right versus wrong. They joke about the fact that he was careful to round his time card at work down five minutes in favor of his boss. He’s a classic caretaker, Marcus. He looked after his brother and sister and got a job after his parents’ divorce so he could help pay his way to college. He’s an A student with an occasional B. For temperament most people say he’s patient, especially with his little sister Clare. If Greg knew Mark, it was in passing in the halls. They had no classes in common. They don’t appear to have friends in common.”
“Your best guess?” Marcus probed.
“I don’t like it.”
“Tell me anyway.”
Rachel chewed on the end of her pen. “Okay. I heard Greg shout at Mark inside the cafeteria. He was furious. Not just angry, but furious. Like Kate going after someone who caused her to lose a hostage type furious. Greg was out of control. Adam said he saw Greg at the middle school, that Greg had heard about Tim’s detention and come over to get his brother. Marcus, I’m thinking it’s something as simple as Greg was nearby when Tim was shot. For whatever reason Greg blamed Mark, and he took out after Mark to make him pay for it. The chase went from the middle school back to the high school and ended in the cafeteria with both Greg and Mark dead.”