Time Bomb by Jonathan Kellerman Read Free Book Online

showed.
Really
make a jerk out of him. Then the shooting started and took the edge off their little drama.”
    “One of the kids told me it sounded like war,” I said.
    “How would he know?”
    “She. From Cambodia.”
    “Oh. Tell you one thing, old Holly was no pro-warrior. The rifle was a Remington Seven-hundred Classic. Bolt action, scoped. Nine pounds, stripped—one of the heavier ones they make, lots of kick. Not a girl’s gun. You just don’t pick up something like that, go boom, and hope to hit your target.”
    “Even with the scope?”
    “Sighting and aiming wouldn’t have been the problem, Alex. Holding
on
to the damned thing would be. According to the license she weighed under a hundred and twenty. And she hadn’t gained anything since applying for it. I saw the body—skinny, no muscle on her. Unless she had plenty of practice, she might as well have brought a cannon to shoot mice. Women succeed in the shooting game, they get up nice and close, use a comfortable little handgun. Not that a handgun would have been of much use in a sniping situation.”
    “The license also said corrective lenses. Was she wearing her glasses?”
    “Yup. Took a bullet in one of them, glass went right into the eye socket. Like shrapnel.”
    “How many shots did she get off before Ahlward stormed the shed?”
    “Looks like three out of six rounds—though to listen to the teachers and kids, she had a machine gun; it was a regular blitz. But panic’ll do that, magnify things. And some of what they heard was probably Ahlward shooting
her
—he put eight right in her.”
    “There’s your pro,” I said, remembering the redheaded man’s calm. “Ex-cop?”
    “Nope. Frisk said some kind of ex-military commando.”
    “Hard-ass type for a guy like Latch to employ.”
    “Not if Latch is a pragmatist. It’s like that old bumper sticker that used to be on half the lockers at the academy: ‘Mugged? Call a hippie.’ Latch may spout the love
-
and-compassion line, but when it comes to saving his ass he ain’t gonna hire Cesar Chavez.”
    “How’d Ahlward get into the shed?”
    “Same back door Burden used. She left it unlocked—I told you she was no pro. He ran around the back, waltzed right in, and pow.”
    I thought again of the face on the driver’s license. Superimposed a mesh of blood and glass over the dull face.
    “What is it?” said Milo.
    “Nothing.”
    “My, my, my. You feel
bad
for her, don’t you?”
    “Not really.”
    “Not
really
?” He clucked his tongue. “Jesus, Alex, you turning mushy on me? I thought by now I’d raised your consciousness.”
    I said, “The whole thing’s pathetic, Milo. A girl, holed up with a rifle she couldn’t handle—God knows what’s going through her head.”
    “So?”
    “So I guess it just would have been nicer for the bad guy to be badder.”
    He put his fork down and stared at me. “Oh, she could have been plenty
bad
. No thanks to
her
she wasn’t real
bad
. Just imagine a couple of lucky shots—couple of those cute little kids catching rifle slugs in—”
    “Okay,” I said, “I get the point.”
    “Good,” he said, crumpling his napkin. “Get it and keep it. Situation like this, got to keep the old priorities straight. Now, how about some dessert?”

5
    I got home by eight, picked up calls, did paperwork and chores, then spent half an hour with a new acquisition: a cross-country skiing machine. A genuine implement of torture that left me a sopping ball of sweat. In the shower I kept thinking about terrified children and evil babysitters. So much for aerobic cleansing.
    At nine I watched the news on one of the local stations. The shooting at Nathan Hale was the lead story: file clips of weeping kids followed by the official LAPD statement delivered by Lieutenant Kenneth Frisk. The ATD man was articulate and at ease with the cameras as he sidestepped questions; his designer duds and mustache, prop-room photogenic. New-age cop. Lots of style, very