School Days

Chapter 3

DOWLING IS WEST of Boston. High-priced country with a village store and a green, and a lot of big shade trees that arch over the streets. As I drove along the main street, I passed a young girl with long blond hair and breeches and high boots, riding a bay mare along the side of the street, and eating an ice cream cone. It might have been pistachio. I pulled into the little lot in front of the village store and parked beside an unmarked State Police car and went in. There was a counter and display case opposite the door, and a few tables. In the back of the store were shelves, and along two sides were glass-front freezers. Two women in hats were at one table with coffee. A young couple who looked like J. Crew models were having ice cream at another table. Alone at a third table was a stubby little guy with thick hands and thick glasses, wearing a tan poplin suit and a light-blue tie. I took a wild stab.

"Sergeant DiBella?" I said.

He nodded. I sat down across from him at the table.

"Healy called me," he said. "I used to work for him."

There were a few crumbs on a paper plate in front of DiBella.

"Pie," I said.

"Strawberry rhubarb. Counter girl told me they make it themselves."

"I better have some," I said. "Don't want to offend them."

"Make it two," DiBella said.

The pie was all it should have been. DiBella ate his second piece just as if he hadn't eaten a first one. We both had coffee.

"I've read the press accounts," I said, "of the school shooting."

"They're always on the money," DiBella said.

"Sure," I said. "I just wanted to test you against them."

A couple of local girls came in wearing cropped T-shirts and low-slung shorts, showing a lot of postpubescent abdomen. We watched them buy some sort of iced coffee drinks.

"Be glad when that fad is over," DiBella said.

"I'll say."

"You got kids?" DiBella said.

"No."

"I got two daughters," he said.

"So you'll be really glad," I said.

The girls left.

"Healy says the Clark kid's grandmother hired you to get him off."

"I like to think of it as establish his innocence," I said.

DiBella shrugged.

"Grant fingered him," DiBella said. "He confessed. You got some heavy sledding."

"But nobody actually saw him in the school," I said.

"He was wearing the ski mask."

"So you only have Grant's word."

DiBella grinned. "And his," DiBella said. "'Course, he could be a lying sack of shit."

I nodded.

"Where'd they get the weapons?"

DiBella shook his head. "Don't know," he said.

"Not family weapons?"

"Nope, far as we can tell, neither family kept weapons." "So two seventeen-year-old kids in the deepest dark center of exurbia come up with four nines," I said.

"And extra magazines," DiBella said.

"Loaded?" I said.

"Yep."

"All the same guns?"

"No," DiBella said. "A Browning, a Colt, two Glocks."

"Same ammo," I said. "Different magazines."

DiBella nodded.

"The magazines and the guns were color-coded with Magic Marker," he said.

"Sounds like a plan," I said.

"Yeah. The thing is, they planned how to do it pretty good. But they didn't seem to have any plan for afterwards."

"You mean to get away," I said. DiBella nodded.

"They explain that?" I said.

DiBella smiled. "They don't explain shit," he said. "All they say is we done it, you don't need to know why."

"Or how the second kid got away with the cops around the building."

"My guess? He took off his mask and ditched his guns and ran out with the other kids early in the proceedings."

"Must have been a Chinese fire drill," I said.

"Especially before our guys showed up. When it was just the local cops."

"Did you get there?"

DiBella nodded.

"Me, everybody. I came in with the negotiation team. SWAT guys were already there. The bomb squad showed up a little after me. There were two or three local departments on the scene. Nobody in overall charge. One department didn't want to take orders from another department. None of them wanted to take orders from us. Took a while for the SWAT commander to get control of the thing. And when he did, we still didn't know who was in there, or how many. We didn't know if the place was rigged. We didn't know if they had hostages, or how many. We'd have shot somebody if we knew who to shoot. Kids were jumping out windows and running out fire doors."

"Who went in?"

"Hostage negotiator. Guy named Gabe Leonard. Everybody was milling around, trying to figure how to get in touch inside, and the bomb-squad guys were trying to figure how to tell if the place was rigged. I was trying to get a coherent story from anybody, a student or teacher who'd been inside and was now outside, and Gabe says, `fuck this,' and puts on a vest and walks in the front door."

`And nothing blew up," I said.

"Nothing," DiBella said.

We were out of coffee. I got up and got us two more cups.

"Gabe walks through the place, which is empty, like he's walking on hummingbird eggs. There's nobody else in there except the bodies, and finally the kid, in the president's office, with the door locked. They establish contact through the locked door and Gabe eventually gets the kid to answer the phone. Kid says he will, and Gabe calls out to us and one of the hostage guys calls the number and patches Gabe in, and they're in business. Gabe, and the kid, and us listening in."

"How'd he get him out," I said.

"I'll get you a transcript, but basically, he said, 'Be a standup guy. Whatever you were trying to prove, you need to finish it off by walking out straight up, not have us come in and drag out your corpse.' "

"And the kid says, 'You're right,' and he opens the door and comes out," DiBella said. "Takes off his ski mask. Gabe takes his guns, and they walk out together. Gabe said he wouldn't cuff him, and he didn't."

"Until he got outside," I said.

"Oh, sure, then the SWAT guys swarmed him and off he went."

"Film at eleven," I said.

"A lot of it," DiBella said.