part of him was on-screen—but she formed the impression he was agitated.
“It was the way he blurred,” she says, trying desperately to grasp whatever meaning had been imbedded in the image. “An angry blur, does that make sense?”
We all agree that it makes perfect sense. An angry blur, a frightened girl. Afraid, afraid, afraid. We’re all afraid, frightened out of our wits, and the sense of anxious dread exuding from the cops—state, local, and county—doesn’t do anything to allay our fears.
We’re waiting, all of us, cops and parents, for whatever comes next. Wrestling with the awful notion that the world as we know it, our little patch of it, may be coming to an end. That from this moment on our lives will be altered. Unbearable. I’m gritting my teeth so hard my jaw aches. All around me desperate parents are calling family and friends, and it occurs to me, with a body-wrenching pang of sorrow, that I have no one to call. Jed is gone. I have no siblings. My mom died in her late fifties of breast cancer. My father, twelve years her senior, passed a year later. My old New Jersey homies have no idea where I am these days and I have to keep it that way. And my new, local friends already know about the situation at the school because by now the whole village has heard about it. Indeed most of the population seems to be on-site, milling around the parking lot and athletic field in a state of shock and anxiety.
This can’t be happening. Bad things happen to good people, I know that, but do bad things keep happening? Isn’t it enough to lose a husband so young? What will I do if something happens to my precious boy?
I somehow force my eyes to focus on the school. Noah’s school. It looks so peaceful. A cheerful little elementary school, carefully constructed of cinder block and brick to keep our children safe. A typical, totally normal public school found anywhere in suburban or small-town America. The main building is one story with a flat roof and plenty of glass to make the classrooms airy and filled with light. The boxy, windowless gymnasium at one end, higher than the rest of the building.
The gymnasium is where the bad thing is happening. Men in various uniforms swarm around the base of the gym. A wiry, long-limbed deputy from the county sheriff’s department begins scaling the wall, inching up a drainpipe like a black spider. As he hunches and turns I catch the white letters emblazoned on his padded vest.
SWAT.
Oh my god.
“Haley?”
It’s my librarian friend Helen, crouching in the grass, reaching out to touch my tear-soaked chin, a look of sorrow and concern on her open face. Next thing, we’re hugging and it’s all I can do not to call her ‘mom,’ the sense of maternal concern is that strong.
“Easy now,” she says, trying to comfort me. “They’ll get them out. It will be okay, you’ll see.”
“You think?” I respond, trying to smile.
“I heard it was Roland Penny. He’s harmless, Haley. Roland would never hurt the children.”
“Who?”
“Roland Penny. Kids used to call him ‘roll of pennies.’ Local boy. The cops have pictures from inside. Cell phone images. They recognize him.”
I want to believe her, that everything will be okay, but something in me can’t. Something in me expects the worst.
“Someone got shot,” I say. “That’s what we heard.”
Helen nods. “They think it was poor Leo Gannett. He’s been chief for years and he’s got a long history with Roland Penny, from when Roland was a kid.”
Just listening to her, my heart starts to slow, approaching something like normal. “How do you know all this?”
Helen smiles, her eyes crinkling with affection. “My sister’s boy, Thomas. He’s with the State Police Emergency Response Team. That’s him over there by the ambulance. Isn’t he a handsome boy? Listen to me, Haley. They’ve got it under control. They know who they’re dealing with. That’s what Thomas says and I believe him.”
“They’re going to start shooting, aren’t they?”
More men with SWAT lettered on their backs, a whole team armed with deadly looking rifles is assembling near one of the emergency exit doors.
“Not unless they have to,” Helen assures me. “They know about all the children, Haley. They won’t risk hurting the kids.”
“What does he want, this crazy man? What does he want?”
Helen shakes her head and sighs.
10. Can You Help Me Occupate My Brain?
Nobody warned him about the smell. Pack a hundred and fifty little kids in a gymnasium, scare the pee out of them, and you get these nasty, eye-watering fumes. Roland has been to the old Yankee Stadium exactly once in his life, on a church-sponsored outing for troubled youths, and the stadium lavatories smelled a lot like this, overflowing with urine and puked-up beer. No beer stink today, so it could be worse. And if the little brats are weeping and wailing—and many of them are—he can’t hear a thing, thanks to the Black Sabbath tracks bruising his eardrums. Turns out to be a good idea, the iPod, providing a useful soundtrack to events that have been ever so carefully orchestrated. Helps him concentrate. Leave the earth to Satan and his knaves. Yeah. Go Ozzy.
As to the plan, so carefully conceived by The Voice, so far so good. The essential action, taking out the cue-ball cop, had proved even easier than Roland had imagined. He’s destroyed the man thousands of times in his imagination, sometimes roasting him alive, but this had been as simple as raising the weapon and applying the slightest pressure on the customized trigger. What with the music pumping through his earbuds, he never even heard the pop. And old cue ball went down like a puppet with cut strings. Roland was expecting him to be blown backward, like in the movies, but the reality was he simply dropped where he stood, dead before he hit the floor.
True, there was a disturbing amount of blood, but Roland managed not to obsess on that, and whipped the blue tarp out of his handy little cart, covering both the body and the blood, exactly as he had been instructed. Out of sight, out of mind. Besides, it felt really good, knowing his old nemesis was no longer in the world. And when he saw the stricken looks of shock and horror coming from all those little faces in the stands, and the teachers recoiling in fear, man, he got pumped. What I’m talkin’ about, dude! Carpe diem like the book said. Seize the day. Make it your own. Establish who you are and what you desire. Ignore all contrary voices, tune them out, find your inner voice and concentrate on what you want. Visualize it. Make it so.
And he’d done it, he’d made it so. Told the stubby little principal to take the chains and padlocks he’d provided. She had followed his command, chained the exit doors, and then when a glimpse of defiance flashed in her beady little eyes, he promptly cuffed her with the late cue ball’s own official cop cuffs and commanded that she sit down, shut up, or get tarped. After that she was compliant, didn’t have the courage to look him in the eye.
“Listen up, toadstools! Anybody moves, I open fire, okay? And when the clip is empty, I detonate the bomb! Did I mention the bomb? No? Well, I got a bomb. And it’s really cool. Fifty pounds of C-4, which is enough to turn you all into jelly beans!”
Roland is unaware that with the music blasting, he’s shouting in a way that makes him sound like a raving madman. A babbling, out-of-control psycho. But that makes him all the more effective. None of his captives doubt that he will kill again at the slightest provocation.
“So stay in your seats!” he shouts. “Don’t move! You want to use your phones, make a few calls, go ahead! Let ’em know I got it under control!”
He raises his other hand, showing off the Sony TV remote he has cleverly modified, guided by The Voice. “See this! It’s a detonator! Tell all your friends! Press this button, we all go boom!”
Roland and The Voice had debated the