One Breath Away Read Online Free PDF Page A

my radio stops me short.
    It’s Randall Diehl, our dispatcher. “You need to go over to the
school right now. We’ve got a lockdown.”
    Maria’s school. Damn. Stuart was right.
    “What’s up?” I ask. Since I’ve lived here there have only been
two lockdowns at the school, a kindergarten through twelfth-grade building. One
of the last of its kind. At the end of this school year Broken Branch’s only
school would be closed down; too expensive and outdated to maintain, the
superintendent and school board voted to consolidate with three other nearby
towns. In the future, Maria’s school district would be known as
Dalsing-Conway-Bohr-Broken Branch Consolidated Schools.
    The first lockdown I was involved with was two years ago when
two inmates from the Anamosa State Penitentiary escaped and were thought to be
in our area. They weren’t. The second time was when two misguided high schoolers
called in a fake bomb threat. They hadn’t studied for their finals and thought
this would cleverly get them out of the tests. It most certainly did that. And
got them kicked out of school.
    “We got a possible intruder in the school. Just head on over
there,” Randall says impatiently, which was not like him at all. “The chief will
meet you and he’ll fill you in. Communication is a mess. The 9-1-1 lines are
jammed with calls from students, teachers, frantic parents.”
    “Will do,” I tell him, and flip on my windshield wipers to
clear away the snow. Interesting, Chief McKinney already at the scene. I check
the clock. Just after noon. Probably just a misunderstanding, a prank by some
kids to kick off spring vacation. Maria will be sad she missed all the
excitement.
    I turn the squad car around and head up Hickory Street toward
the school and am grateful to have something to occupy my time besides the
thought of spending four whole days without Maria, which makes me feel empty, as
if my insides have been hollowed out. Tim always said he couldn’t ever imagine
me as a kid. The few pictures that I had of myself as a child showed me as a
serious, unsmiling creature with unkempt hair, wearing a pair of my brother
Travis’s old jeans.
    “Did you ever have any fun?” Tim teased when he first saw the
photos.
    “I had fun,” I protested, though that was pretty much a lie. My
childhood consisted of taking care of my parents, who, for reasons still
unknown, were completely defeated by life, and trying to stay out of the way of
my volatile brother. When Tim and I had Maria I was determined to make her
childhood as carefree and joy-filled as mine wasn’t. I think we did a pretty
good job of this, at least until the divorce, and even then Tim and I did our
best to protect Maria. We didn’t argue in front of her, we didn’t bad-mouth each
other, but she knew. How could she not? Even if we didn’t make a big spectacle
out of the end of our marriage, she had to have seen my red, swollen eyes, Tim’s
tight, forced laughter.
    In minutes I pull up to the school and find Chief McKinney
already there along with Aaron Gritz—curious, because he isn’t on duty
today—trying to keep a small, angry-looking group away from the school’s
entrance. Chief McKinney’s deep baritone fills the air. “Go on back to your cars
or you are all going to freeze standing out here. We need to find out exactly
what’s going on and we can’t do that if we have to concern ourselves with—”
    A woman steps forward, waving her cell phone, and in a
trembling voice interrupts the chief. “My son just called me from inside and he
said there was a man with a gun. Can’t you get them out of there?”
    “Based on the information we have,” Chief McKinney says
patiently, “we’ve determined that the best response is to contain the area and
not send officers into the school at this time.”
    “But my seventh grader called and said there were two men,”
another woman speaks up.
    A man in a dress shirt and tie, no coat, rushes forward. “I
heard