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She could still run a six-minute mile and slip into a size 8, but thirty-one was fundamentally different from thirty.
‘A beautiful woman like you doesn’t need a job,’ Frank said. ‘You need a man.’ ‘Yeah? And after thirty seconds, what would I do?’
That was her life these days. No one was completely satisfied – not her boss, her husband, or her kids.
And she remembered thinking for the first time in a long time that she was glad Shep O’Grady was her husband. Their children needed him.
‘There are just three things to remember at a crime scene: Don’t touch a thing. Don’t touch a damn thing. Don’t touch a goddamn thing. Okay?’
An officer’s first priority when approaching any crime scene was to preserve human life. The second objective was to apprehend the perpetrator, if still in the vicinity, and secure the scene.
They were just children, for God’s sake. Just children.
No wedding band, but beautiful enough that you had to think some man would be sitting alone tonight, holding her picture with shaking hands while trying to forget the future that would never be. Christ.
Never to date, attend a prom, fall in love, get married, have children. To be alive until he was eighty or ninety years old, but never to live.
Frankly, Quincy would never, ever take a ride in a Volkswagen Bug, the vehicle of choice for many serial killers. He just wouldn’t do it.
Children were simply too hard for adults to understand or predict in the best of circumstances. Their coping skills were limited, they were a bundle of hormones, and they generally believed everything must happen now, today, immediately, with no thought of long-term consequences.
‘Serial killers, rapists, and child molesters,’ he said with a straight face, then added, ‘It makes for very pleasant dreams.’
‘Traffic accidents I can handle,’ she told him. ‘Drunken brawls, stabbings, even the occasional domestic incidents. But what went down in that school yesterday . . . How can you focus on something like that full-time? How can you keep from waking up screaming every night?’
What kind of society produces children who attack other children with assault rifles?
‘The shooting is about an individual. The aftermath is about a town.’
‘Maybe we should’ve gone with metal detectors.’ VanderZanden turned back toward the building. ‘After the Springfield shooting, Oregon educators were warned. But even then I thought of it as an issue for the high schools to address. We have kindergarten students here. I didn’t want them starting their educational experience passing through giant security stations and being patted down by armed guards. What kind of message would that send?’
You go into education, you fantasize about watching your students grow up, maybe even attending their wedding or admiring their firstborn child. You certainly don’t expect to give the eulogy at their funeral.
I wish we were the only place this had ever happened. Instead, we’re what? The eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth school to go through this? Dammit, we should’ve known better!’
I want us to move on, but I don’t want us to forget.
After a moment Shep took her plate and ate the pie himself. In times of crisis, he always gained an appetite while she lost hers.
‘Tragedies like this aren’t meant to make sense. Makes me wonder sometimes if each generation don’t need a war, simply to have a way to vent.’
‘I remember shooting up Germans and Koreans, but never our schools.’
‘Drug addictions and double amputees, that’s what you’re saying. Yeah, war works wonders for young men.’
Tragedies brought out the best in towns. But they could also bring out the worst.
Most working folks had already eaten, and most farmers would soon be in bed. Nothing like several thousand cows to ruin a town’s nightlife.
She hadn’t eaten all day, and she’d be damned before she was shamed by two men into eating salad.
And our legal system is based on the philosophy that we’d let a hundred guilty men go free before sending one innocent man away.
‘Man, I could not be a teacher,’ he said vehemently. ‘I see two to four homicides a week, nice fresh kills, and still the thought of what’s going on inside the classroom scares me to death.
‘Teachers should be used to it by now. When was the last time the PTA called for better parenting? It’s always the school’s fault.
Redneck assholes. There oughtta be an IQ requirement for owning a gun.’
‘I don’t do relationships. Have a strict policy against them. I figure if half of the American people are getting divorced, that’s good enough for me.’
‘Oh no. I don’t do children. They’re small, needy, easily destroyed. Let’s be honest. I’ve come a long way from my family history, but I’m still the child of an abusive alcoholic and we don’t make great parent material. For the Conners, the cycle ends here.’
