Time Bomb

The entrance to Ocean Heights was marked by the death of that boast: a newly surfaced avenue bisected by a median of grass and shaded by magnolias so precisely matched in contour and size they could have been cloned from the same germ cell. The street sign said ESPERANZA DRIVE. Beneath it was another sign: white, blue-bordered, discreet, proclaiming Ocean Heights a guarded community.

The rain took on power and spattered against my windshield. A half mile later the police command post came into view: sawhorse barriers blocking the street, a domino spread of black-and-white squad cars, a battalion of yellow-slickered policemen projecting the guilty-till-proven-i

I parked and got out. The downpour hit me like a cold shower as I made my way toward the barricade.

I heard a woman cry out, “Mi nino!” Her words were echoed by the others. A chorus of protests rose and mingled with the hiss of the rain.

“Just a short while longer, ladies,” said a baby-faced cop, struggling to appear unmoved.

One of the women called out something in Spanish. Her tone was abusive. The young cop flinched and looked over at the officer next to him- older, thickset, gray-mustached. Catatonic-still.

The young cop turned back to the women. “Just hold on now,” he said, suddenly angry.

“Mi nino!”

Gray Mustache still hadn’t moved but his eyes had settled on me as I approached. A third cop said, “Man coming up.”

When I was within spitting distance, Gray Mustache gave a straight-arm salute, showing me the lines on his palm. Up close, his face was wet and puffy, laced with veins, and chafed the color of rare steak.

“No further, sir.”

“I’m here to see Detective Sturgis.”

The mention of Milo ’s name narrowed his eyes. He looked me up and down.

“Name.”

“Alex Delaware.”

He cocked his head at one of the other patrolmen, who came over and stood guard at the barrier. Then he went to one of the black-and-whites, got in, and talked into the radio. A few minutes later he came back, asked to see some ID, scrutinized my driver’s license, and stared at me a while longer before saying “Go ahead.”

I got back into the Seville and pulled forward. Two cops had cleared a car-sized space between the sawhorses. The Hispanic women surged toward it, automatically, like water down a drain, but were stopped by a shifting line of blue. Some of the women began to cry.

Gray Mustache was waving me through. I pulled up alongside of him, opened my window, and said, “Any reason they can’t go see their children?”

“Go ahead, sir.”

I drove on, braving a gantlet of accusing eyes.

Nathan Hale Elementary School was eight more blocks up Esperanza- a blacktop and flesh-stucco flashback to the images I’d just seen on the tube. Three empty school buses were parked at the curb, along with paramedics’ vans and a few straggling press vehicles. The main building was sprawling and gray-roofed, skirted by a waist-high hedge of podocarpus. The front door was pumpkin-orange. Two cops guarded it from behind a cordon of yellow crime-scene tape. More palm-salutes, dirty looks, and radio checks before the chain-link gate to the school grounds was unlocked and I was directed around to the back.

As I made my way I noticed another tape cordon, wrapped around a small shedlike structure with wire-mesh windows, about seventy feet from the main building. Over the door was a sign: EQUIPMENT. Crime-scene techs kneeled and stooped, measuring, scraping, snapping pictures, getting drenched for their efforts. Beyond them the rain-blackened schoolyard stretched like scorched desert, vacant except for the distant galvanized geometry of a jungle gym. A single female reporter in a red raincoat shared her umbrella with a tall young officer. What was passing between them seemed more flirtation than information transfer. They paused as I walked by just long enough to decide I was neither newsworthy nor dangerous.

The back doors were tinted double-glass above three concrete steps. They swung open and Milo stepped out, wearing a quilted olive-drab car coat over the plaid sport jacket. All those layers- and the weight he’d put on substituting food for booze- made him look huge, bearish. He didn’t notice me, was staring at the ground, ru

I said, “Hello,” and he looked up sharply, as if rudely awakened. Then his green eyes switched on like traffic lights and he came down the stairs. The car coat had large wooden barrel-shaped buttons dangling from loops. They bobbed as he moved. His tie was gray rayon, water-spotted-black. It hung askew over his belly.

I offered him my umbrella. It didn’t cover much of him. “Any problems getting through?”

“No,” I said, “but a bunch of mothers are having a problem. You guys could use some sensitivity training. Consider that my initial consultation.”

The anger in my voice surprised both of us. He frowned, his pale face deathly in the shade of the umbrella, the pockmarks on his cheeks standing out like pinholes in paper.

He looked around, spotted the cop chatting up the reporter, and waved. When the cop didn’t respond, he cursed and lumbered away, shoulders hunched, like an offensive tackle moving in for the crush.

A moment later the patrolman was sprinting out of the yard, flushed and chastened.

Milo returned, panting. “Done. The mommies are on their way, police escort and all.”

“The perquisites of power.”

“Yeah. Just call me Generalissimo.”

We began walking back toward the building.

“How many kids are involved?” I said.

“Couple of hundred, kindergarten through sixth grade. We had them all in the gym, paramedics checking for shock or injuries- thank God, nothing. The teachers took them back to their classrooms, trying to do what they can until you give them a plan.”

“I thought the school system had people to deal with crises.”

“According to the principal, this particular school has trouble getting help from the school system. Naturally, I thought of you.”

We reached the steps, where we were sheltered by an overhang. Mile stopped and placed a heavy hand on my shoulder. “Thanks for coming down, Alex. It’s a goddam mess. I figured no one would do a better job than you. I don’t know what your schedule’s like or if they’ll be able to pay you, but if you can at least get them started on the right foot…” He cleared his throat and rubbed his face again.

I said, “Tell me what happened.”

“Looks like the suspect got onto the school grounds before school opened, either by scaling or walking through- couple of the gates were left unlocked- proceeded into the storage shed, which had a dinky lock on it, and stayed there.”

“No one uses the shed?”

He shook his head. “Empty. Used to be for athletic equipment. They keep all that stuff in the main building now. Suspect was settled in there until a little after noon, when the kids came pouring out for recess. Latch and Massengil and their people showed up by twelve-thirty and that’s when the shooting started. Teachers began shoving the kids back in the building, but it was a real mob scene. Mass hysteria. Everyone falling over everyone else.”

I glanced back at the storage shed. “TV said no one was hurt.”