Time Bomb

3

She looked down at her pad, realized she’d written nothing, and said, “Enough talk. What’s your plan?”

“The first step will be to establish rapport with the kids. And the teachers. Your introducing me and explaining who I am will help that. Second, I’ll focus on getting them to express their feelings about what happened- talking, playing, drawing.”

“Individually or in groups?”

“Groups. Class by class. It’s more efficient and more therapeutic- opening up will be easier if there’s peer support. I’ll also be looking for the high-risk kids- those who are especially high-strung, have had previous anxiety problems or experienced loss or an unusual amount of stress within the last year. Some of them may need one-on-one attention. The teachers can help by identifying them.”

“No problem,” she said. “I know most of them myself.”

“The other important thing- maybe the toughest- will be to convince parents not to keep their children out of school for extended periods.”

“What’s extended?”

“More than a day or two. The sooner they get back, the easier it will be for them to adjust.”

She sighed. “All right, we’ll get on it. What do you need in the way of equipment?”

“Nothing much. Some toys- blocks, figurines. Paper and pencil, clay, scissors, glue.”

“We’ve got all of that.”

“Will I need a translator?”

“No. Most of the kids- about ninety percent- are Latino but all of them understand English. We’ve worked hard at that. The rest are Asian, including some pretty recent immigrants, but we don’t have anyone on staff who speaks Cambodian or Vietnamese or Laotian or Tagalog or whatever, so they’ve come along pretty fast.”

“Ye olde melting pot.”

“Uh-uh, forbidden phrase,” she said. “The memo god commands us to use salad bowl.” She raised a finger and recited: “Every ingredient maintains its integrity, no matter how much you toss it around.”

We left her office and stepped out into the hall. Only one cop remained, patrolling idly.

She said, “Okay. Now what about your fee.”

I said, “We can talk about that later.”

“No. I want things straight from the beginning- for your sake. The School Board has to approve private consultants. That takes time, going through channels. If I put in a voucher without prior approval, they can use that as an excuse not to pay you.”

I said, “We can’t wait for approval. The key is to get to the kids as soon as possible.”

“I realize that, but I just want you to know what you’re dealing with. Also, even if we go through channels, there’re bound to be hassles getting you compensated. The Board will probably claim it has the resources to do the job itself; therefore there’s no justification for bringing in anyone from the outside.”

I nodded. “Same song and dance they pull with the parents of handicapped kids.”

“You’ve got it.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“I worry about everything. It’s my job,” she said. Most of the softness in her eyes had melted away.

I said, “It’s okay. Really.”

“You realize we’re talking potential freebie?”

“I realize. That’s fine.”

She looked at me. “Why are you doing this?”

“It’s what I went to school to learn how to do.”

There was distrust in her eyes. But she shrugged and said, “Who am I to look a gift horse?”

We walked toward the first classroom. A door at the end of the corridor swung open. A tight cluster of nine or ten people poured out and barreled in our direction.

At the group’s nucleus was a tall white-haired man in his sixties wearing a gray sharkskin suit that could have been purchased for Eisenhower’s victory party. His face was stringy and hawkish above a long, wattled neck- beak nose, white toothbrush mustache, pursed mouth, eyes buried in an angry squint. He kept up a vigorous pace, leading with his head, pumping his elbows like a speed-walker. His minions were whispering at him, but he didn’t seem to be listening. The group ignored us and blew by.

I said, “Looks like the esteemed assemblyman’s run out of words.”

She closed her eyes and exhaled. We continued walking.

I said, “What do you know about the sniper?”

“Just that he’s dead.”

“It’s a start.”

She turned sharply. “A start at what?”

“Dealing with the kids’ fears. The fact that he’s dead will help.”

“You’re going to get into gory details with them right away?”

“I’m going to be truthful with them. When they’re ready for it.”

She looked doubtful.

I said, “The key is for them to make some kind of sense out of a crazy situation. In order to do that they’ll need as much accurate information as possible. Facts. About the bad guy- presented at their level, as soon as possible. The mind abhors a vacuum. Without facts, they’ll fill their heads with fantasies of him that could be much worse than reality.”

“Just how much reality do you think they need to absorb?”

“Nothing gory. Basics. The sniper’s name, age, what he looks… looked like. It’s crucial that they see him as human. Destructible. Gone forever. Even with facts, some of the youngest ones will be incapable of understanding the permanence of his death- they’re not mature enough, developmentally. And some of the older ones may regress because of the trauma- temporarily ‘forget’ that dead people don’t come back to life. So they’re all vulnerable to fantasies of the bad guy returning. Of his coming back to get them again. Adult crime victims go through it- after the initial shock’s worn off. It can lead to nightmares, phobias, all kinds of post-traumatic reactions. In children the risk is higher because kids don’t draw a clear line between reality and fantasy. You can’t eliminate the risk of problems, but by dealing with misconceptions right away, you minimize it.”

I stopped. She was staring at me, grimly, the brown eyes unwavering.

“What I want,” I said, “is for them to understand that the bastard’s truly destroyed. That he’s not some supernatural bogeyman that’s going to keep haunting them.”

“Bastard” made her smile. “Okay. Just as long as it doesn’t end up scaring them more-” She stopped herself. “Sorry. You obviously know a heck of a lot more about this than I do. It’s just that they’ve been through so much for so long, I’ve gotten protective.”

“That’s okay,” I said. “Good to see someone caring.”

She ignored that. This one definitely didn’t like compliments.

“I don’t know a thing about the bastard,” she said. “No one saw him. We just heard the shots. Then there was a lot of panic- screaming and shoving. We were trying to stuff the kids back into the building, keeping their heads down. We ran as fast and as far away as we could, trying to make sure no one got trampled. No one even knew it was over until that guy Ahlward came out of the shed, waving his gun like a cowboy after the big draw. When I first saw him, it freaked me out- I thought he was the sniper. Then I recognized him- I’d seen him in Latch’s group. And he was smiling, telling us it was all over. We were safe.”

She shuddered. “Bye-bye, bogeyman.”

The lone patrolman had tilted his head toward our conversation. He was young, handsome, coal-black, perma-pressed.

I walked up to him and said, “Officer, what can you tell me about the sniper?”

“I’m not free to give out any information, sir.”

“I’m not a reporter,” I said. “I’m a psychologist called in by Detective Sturgis to work with the children.”

Unimpressed.

“It would be useful,” I said, “for me to have as many facts as possible. So I can help the kids.”

“I’m not free to discuss anything, sir.”

“Where’s Detective Sturgis?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

I returned to Linda Overstreet’s side.

She’d heard the exchange. “Bureaucracy,” she said. “I’ve come to believe it’s a biological urge.”

A door farther down the corridor opened, disgorging another group. This one revolved around a man in his early forties, mid-sized and chunky. He had a roundish, freckled face under an early-Beatles mop of gray-streaked dark hair which covered his brow. His clothes were formula junior-faculty: oatmeal-colored tweed sport coat, rumpled khaki pants, black-and-green plaid shirt, red knit tie. He wore round tortoise-shell eyeglasses, the kind the British health service used to give out for free. They rested atop a nose that would have done a French bulldog proud. The rest of his features were too small for his face- pinched, almost effeminate. I thought of old pictures I’d seen of him. Long-haired and bearded. The facial hair had made him look more seasoned, twenty years ago.

The academic image was enhanced by the people around him- young, bright-eyed, like students vying for the attention of a favorite professor. Each of them was final-exam solemn, but the group managed to radiate a boisterousness that was almost festive.

The round-faced man noticed us and stopped.

“Dr. Overstreet. How’s everyone doing?”

“As good as can be expected, Councilman Latch.”

He came over to us. The staffers hung back. With the exception of one bulky, blunt-faced, red-haired man about Latch’s age, none was older than twenty-five. A clean-cut bunch, dressed for success.

Latch said, “Is there anything I can do, Dr. Overstreet? For the kids? Or your staff?”

“How about calling out the National Guard for some protection?”

He flashed a brief, campaign-poster smile, then turned serious. “Anything a little less… martial?”

“Actually,” she said, “we could use some information.”

“What kind of information?”

“About the sniper. Who he was, his motivation. Dr. Delaware here will be working with the children. He needs to know as much as possible in order to answer their questions.”

He seemed to notice me for the first time, held out his hand and gripped mine hard. “Gordon Latch.”

“Alex Delaware.”

“Good to meet you, Alex. You’re a psychologist? Psychiatrist?”

“Psychologist.”

“From the School Board?”

Before I could answer, Linda said, “Dr. Delaware’s a private practitioner recommended by the police. He’s a specialist in childhood stress.”

Latch’s blue eyes focused behind his welfare specs. “Well, all power to you, and thanks for coming down on such short notice, Alex. It’s been a horror- unbelievable. Thank God it turned out the way it did.” He glanced back at his staffers, got nods from some of them. “What’s your game plan- vis-à-vis the kids?”

I gave him a brief rehash of what I’d told Linda.

He took a moment to digest it. “Sounds right on target,” he said. “I was involved in your field once upon a time- majored in psych up at Berkeley. Crisis counseling, community mental health, primary and secondary prevention. We had a place in Oakland. Trying to integrate mental patients back into the community. Back in the good old days when humanism wasn’t a dirty word.”

“So I’ve heard.” As had anyone who read the papers.

“Different times,” he said, sighing. “Gentler and kinder. What happened today just underscores how far we’ve drifted. Damn, what a tragedy!”

Linda said, “What can you tell us about the sniper, Councilman Latch?”

“Not much, I’m afraid. We don’t know much ourselves. The police have been awfully close-mouthed, as is their wont.”

She said, “Mr. Ahlward would know something. If he feels up to it, perhaps he could educate us.”

Latch looked over his shoulder again. “Bud? C’mere, please.”

The red-haired man raised pinkish eyebrows and stepped forward. He wore a brown suit, white shirt, solid brown knit tie, had the kind of overdeveloped upper body that makes custom tailoring a necessity. This suit was off the rack and hung on him like a tarp. His hands dangled loosely at his sides, big, pale, fuzzed with copper. His hair was tightly curled and he wore it close to his head. He had a fleshy, jutting jaw and lazy amber eyes that remained fixed on his boss.

“Councilman?” Up close he smelled of cigarette smoke.

“Bud, these good people want to know about the sniper. What can you tell them?”

“Nothing yet,” said Ahlward. He had a soft, boyish voice. “Sorry. Cops’ orders.” He zipped a finger across his mouth.

Latch said, “Nothing at all, Bud?”

“ATD was real clear on that, Councilman.”

Latch turned back to us. “Anti-Terrorist Division. You might recall them from a couple of years ago. The lovely fellows who were spending taxpayers’ money on surveilling innocent taxpayers? We’ve since gotten them to clean up their act, so I suppose we’ll have to let them do their thing, for the moment. And they were adamant about keeping things under wraps until they’re sure they’ve got the big picture. Bud’s on his way downtown right now to give a formal statement. If we’re all lucky, things’ll clear up soon after that.” To Ahlward: “Bud, soon as you get the green light vis-à-vis informational flow, make sure these good folks get anything they want. Immediately. Understood?”

“You bet,” said Ahlward.

Latch nodded. Ahlward returned to the group.

“Thank God for Bud,” said Latch, loud enough for the group to hear. Someone patted Ahlward on the back. The redheaded man appeared unmoved. Standing with the others but not one of them. A distant look had settled on his face- Zen placid, as if he’d projected himself to another place, another time. Not a hint that he’d spent his lunch hour shooting someone to death.

“Okay, my friends,” said Latch, taking a step backward. “It’s been a long day that shows no sign of ending. Dr. Overstreet, if you need anything, bypass the red tape and come straight to me. I mean it. Let’s get things on an even keel, once and for all. Dr. Delaware, sounds like the kids are in good hands, but you, too, feel free to get in touch if there’s anything I can do.”

He reached into his jacket, removed some business cards from a leather holder, and gave them to us. A two-handed grasp of Linda’s hand, then mine, and he was gone.

Linda crumpled the card. Her face had tightened.

I said, “What’s the matter?”

“Suddenly he’s Mr. Helpful,” she said, “but last spring, when the kids were being put through hell, I tried to get his help. Ocean Heights is part of his district, even though I’m sure he didn’t get too many votes here. I thought because of his reputation, all the civil rights stuff he used to be into, he’d come down, talk to the kids, show them someone with power was on their side. If for no other reason than to use it for public relations. I must have called his office half a dozen times. Not even a return call.”

“He came down today. To square off against Massengil.”

“Some kind of ulterior motive, no doubt. They’re all the same.” She blushed. “Listen to me. You must think I’m a foursquare ballbuster.”

“You might very well be,” I said, “but I’d have to study you under more optimal circumstances in order to be able to come to a conclusion vis-à-vis that issue.”

She opened her mouth, then broke into laughter. The cop down the hall pretended not to hear.

The classroom was large and bright and filled with an unaccustomed silence. Only the rain broke the quiet, sloshing against the windows in an insistent car-wash rhythm. Twenty pairs of eyes stared back at me.

I said, “I’m the kind of doctor who doesn’t give shots. I don’t look in kids’ eyes or ears, either.” Pause. “What I do is talk with kids and play with them. You guys like to play, don’t you?”

A few blinks.

“What kinds of games do you like to play?”

Silence.

“How about ball? Any of you like to play ball?”

Nods.

“Handball?”

An Asian boy with a soup-bowl haircut said, “Base-ball.”

“Baseball,” I said. “What position do you play?”

“Pitch. Soccer and football and basketball too.”

“Jumpin’ rope” said a girl.

“Pizza Party,” said the Asian boy.

“That’s a board game,” explained the teacher. A stylish black woman in her forties, she’d relinquished her desk to me with eagerness, pulled a chair into a corner, and sat, hands folded, like a punished student. “We have that here in class. We have lots of board games, don’t we, class?”

“I like to be mushrooms,” said the Asian boy.

“Peppers,” said another boy, small-boned, with long, wavy hair. “Hot peppers. Muy caliente!”

Giggles.

I said, “Okay. What other board games do you like to play?”

“Checkers.”

“Chutes and Ladders!”

“Checkers!”

“I already said that!”

“Chinese checkers!”

“You Chinese”

“No way. I’m Vietnamese!”

“Memory!”

“I like to play too,” I said. “Sometimes for fun and sometimes to help kids when they’re scared or worried.”

Return of silence. The teacher fidgeted.

“Something very scary happened today,” I said. “Right here in school.”

“Someone got killed,” said a dimpled girl with coffee-colored skin.

“Anna, we don’t know that,” said the teacher.

“Yes,” insisted the girl. “There was shooting. That means killing.”

I said, “You’ve heard shooting before.”

She nodded with vehemence. “Uh-huh. On my street. The gangbangers drive by and shoot into the houses. That means killing. My papa said so. One time we had a bullet hole in our garage. Like this.” She measured a space between thumb and forefinger.

“My street too,” said a crew-cut boy with an elfin face and bat ears. “A dude got killed. Dead. Boom boom boom. Inna face.”

The teacher looked ill.

A few of the boys began to pantomime shooting using their fingers for guns and half-rising out of their seats.

“Sounds scary,” I said.

A boy laughed and shot at a girl. She said, “Stop it! You’re stupid!”

The boy swore at her in Spanish.

“Ramon!” said the teacher. “Now you just settle down. Let’s all of us settle down, class.” Her glance at me said Where’d you get your degree?

I said, “It’s fun to play shooting, because it makes us feel strong. In charge- the boss over our lives. But when it really happens, when someone’s really shooting at us, it isn’t too funny, is it?”

Headshakes. The boys who’d laughed hardest suddenly looked the most frightened.

I said, “What do you guys understand about what happened today?”

“Some dude was shootin’ at us,” said the Asian boy.

“Tranh,” said the teacher. “We don’t know that.”

“Yeah, he was shootin’ at us, Miz Williams!”

“Yes, Tranh. He was shooting,” she said. “But we don’t know who he was shooting at. He could have been shooting into the air.” A look to me for confirmation.

“He was shooting at us,” insisted Tranh.

I said, “Do any of you know what happened to him?”

“He got shot?” said the girl named Anna.

“That’s right. He got shot and he’s dead. So he can’t hurt you. Can’t do anything to you.”

Silence as they appraised that.

The boy named Ramon said, “What about his friends, man?”

“What friends?”

“Like if he’s a homeboy and the other homeboys are gonna come back and shoot us again?”

“No reason to think he’s a homeboy,” I said.

“But what if he’s a stoner, man?” said Ramon. “Or a cholo.”

“Who is he?” asked another girl, chubby, with black Shirley Temple ringlets and a quiver in her voice.

Twenty faces, waiting.

I said, “I don’t know yet. No one does. But he’s gone. Forever. You’re safe from him.”

“We should kill him again!” said Ramon.

“Yeah! Kill him! Shoot him with a twenty-two!”

“With a Uzi!”

“Push his face inna pizza so he don’t breathe no more!”

“Push his face in ca-ca!”

The teacher started to say something. I stilled her with a glance. “How else could you hurt him?”

“Kill him!”

“Cut him up and feed him to Pancho- that’s my dog!”

“Shoot him, boom, inna balls!”

“Ay, los cojones!”

Laughter.

“Boom!”

“Cut him up and grind him up and feed him to my dog!”

“You don’t got no dog, Martha!”

“Do so! Got a real mean pit bull and he’ll eat you!”

I said, “Shoot him, stab him, push his face down. Sounds like you guys are really mad.”

“Yeah, man,” said Ramon. “What you think, man? He try to kill us, we gonna kill him back!”

“We can’t kill him,” said the chubby girl.

“Why’s that?” I said.

“Because he’s big. We’re just kids. We got no guns.”

“That’s dumb,” said Tranh. “We can’t kill him ’cause he’s already dead!”

“Kill him again!” shouted someone.

“Find out where he lives,” said Ramon, “and kill his fuckin’ house!”

The teacher said, “Language!”

The chubby girl didn’t look reassured. I said, “What’s the matter?”

“Actually,” she said, “we can’t do nothing. We’re kids. If people wanna be mean to us all the time, they can.”

“Honey, no one wants to be mean to you,” said the teacher.

The chubby girl looked at her.

“Everyone likes you, Cecelia,” said the teacher. “Every-one likes all of you.”

The chubby girl shook her head and began to cry.

By the time I finished, the rain had abated. I made a stop at Linda Overstreet’s office, but it was locked and no one answered my knock. As I left the building I saw Milo in the yard, near the cordoned storage shed. He was talking to a slim, dark-haired man in a well-cut blue suit. He noticed me and waved me over.

“Alex, this is Lieutenant Frisk, Anti-Terrorist Division. Lieutenant, Dr. Alex Delaware, the clinical psychologist who’ll be working with the kids.”

Frisk checked me over and said, “How’s it going, Doctor?” in a tone that let me know he didn’t much care.

“Fine.”

“Good to hear it.” He flashed a barrel cuff and consulted his Rolex. He was young and tan, the dark hair permed in a neat cap, and wore a mustache that had taken a long time to trim. The blue suit was expensive, the shirt Turnbull & Asser or a knockoff. The tie that bisected it was heavy silk patterned with dancing blue parallelograms on a background of deep burgundy. His eyes matched the parallelograms; they never stopped moving.

He turned to Milo and said, “I’ll let you know. After-noon, Doctor.” He walked away.

“Spiffy dresser,” I said. “Looks like a TV cop.”

“Young man on the way up,” said Milo. “Masters in public administration from S.C., good connections, D-Three by the age of thirty, promoted to loot three years later.”

“Is he taking over the case?”

“You just heard- he’ll let me know.”

We walked across the schoolyard.

“So,” he said, “how’d it really go?”

“Not bad, really. I managed to meet briefly with all the classes. Most of the kids seem to be reacting normally.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning lots of anxiety, some anger. It’s the anger I tried to harness- get them to feel more in control. I told the teachers to contact the parents and prepare them for possible appetite loss, sloop problems, psychosomatic stuff, clinginess, some school phobia. Some of the kids may need individual treatment, but a group approach should work for most of them. The important thing was getting to them quickly- you done good.”

He said, “What’d you think of Ms. Principal?”

“Feisty lady.”

“Texas lady,” he said. “Cop’s kid- daddy was a Ranger, brought his work home. She knows this scene by heart.”

“She didn’t mention any of that to me.”

“Why should she? With you she probably talked feelings.”

I said, “Her main feeling right now is anger. Plenty of it simmering beneath the surface. It’s been building since she got here- she’s been dealing with lots of crap and getting very little support. She tell you about the vandalism?”

He frowned. “Yeah. First I’d heard of it. The School Board reported it directly to downtown- it never went any further.”

“Bad P.R.?” I said.

“Perish the thought.”

“Sounds like the school’s been embroiled in politics since they brought the kids in. Think the sniping was political?”

“At this point, who knows?”

“Latch or Massengil have any theories? About being targets themselves?”

“I wouldn’t know,” he said. “Kenny Frisk and the ATD boys did all the interrogation. Hush-hush behind closed doors. Afterwards Kenny comes out and informs the rest of us peons that official policy is tight lips. All press re-leases to emanate from ATD. Informational infractions will be severely dealt with.”

I searched his face for signs of anger. All I saw was a big, white mask.

A few steps later he said, “Though with politicos, good luck keeping their lips from flapping.”

“So far Latch seems to be complying,” I said. “I ran into him in the hall as he was leaving. Tried to get some information from him and received zip.”

He turned his head and looked at me. “What kind of information?”

“Some sort of basic description of the sniper. Who he was. Anything tangible. The kids need to form an image of their enemy.” I repeated the rationale I’d given Linda and Gordon Latch. “They’re already asking questions, Milo. It would increase my effectiveness to be able to answer some of them.”

He said, “Just basics, huh? Who he was.”

I nodded. “Of course, any details you can tell me would be useful. Short of an ‘informational infraction.’ ”

He didn’t smile. “Details. Well, first thing I can tell you is that you’re operating on a false premise.”

“What’s that?”

“It wasn’t a he. It was a she.”