School Days by Robert B. Parker Page A

think what a terrible person my donor must have been.”
    â€œYou accept that he did it,” I said.
    â€œYes. My father and I have employed Mr. Taglio to see that his rights are protected. But he has committed an unspeakable crime, and he should go to jail and stay there.”
    â€œSo you don’t wish him to get off?” I said.
    â€œNo. We can only try to help him spend his time in a less unpleasant prison.”
    â€œLike the easiest room in hell,” I said.
    She didn’t say anything. She stroked the cat, and stared down the empty street, and shook her head a number of times.

16
    â€œH OW MANY ROUNDS were fired in the school?” I said.
    â€œBest count is thirty-seven.”
    â€œHow many missed?”
    â€œSeventeen,” DiBella said.
    â€œSo some folks got shot more than once.”
    â€œOne took four rounds,” he said.
    â€œAnything there?” I said.
    â€œNope, nothing we could find. Rounds came from two different guns, but whose and why four times? Don’t know. One of them might have shot him twice with each of his two guns,or two of them maybe shot him twice each with one of their own guns.”
    â€œWho got the four hits?” I said.
    â€œRuth Cort, Spanish teacher.”
    We were in his car. Pearl, against all regulations, was in the back. She leaned her head into the front and sniffed DiBella’s ear. He shook his head as if there were a fly in it.
    â€œAnybody spots me with a hound in the car,” he said, “I’ll be running radar traps on the Mass Pike again.”
    â€œClaim it was my wife,” I said, “and I’m insulted.”
    â€œSure,” DiBella said.
    We were cruising through Dowling with the air-conditioning on low and the windows up. In the cool silence, the thick, rural greenery and the white, exurban houses outside the tinted glass of the car windows looked like some sort of theme-park display. New England Land.
    â€œKnow anything about Hollis Grant?” I said.
    â€œWendell’s grandfather? Sure, everyone in this part of the state knows about him.”
    â€œTell me what you know,” I said.
    â€œBig developer in central and western Mass,” DiBella said. “Shopping malls. Civic centers. That kind of thing. He’s not much into residential, I don’t believe.”
    â€œSuccessful,” I said.
    â€œYeah.”
    â€œRich,” I said.
    â€œYep.”
    â€œConnected.”
    â€œYou bet,” DiBella said. “Very active in politics. Donates a lot of money to a lot of people.”
    â€œHe a gun guy?” I said.
    â€œHell,” DiBella said, “I don’t know.”
    DiBella pulled the car off the road and into an overlook area by a small river. The river dropped off some short falls and washed over some tumbled boulders, and made white water. The trees flourished near the river and stood high and thick above us. The moving water had a green tone to it. DiBella shifted in his seat a little and put his right arm over the back of the seat and patted Pearl.
    â€œYou think he’s got something to do with this?”
    â€œNo idea,” I said. “I’m just channel surfing. The guns bother me.”
    â€œYeah,” DiBella said. “Far as we can tell, there were no guns in either house, no shooters. Coming up with four nines is not all that easy for a couple of prep-school kids in Bethel County.”
    â€œAnd how to use them,” I said. “We maybe forget, because we’re used to guns. But you get a sixteen-, seventeen-year-old kid with no experience and no knowledge, give him a nine with an empty magazine and a box of bullets, and he’s going to have trouble loading the bullets into the magazine, and putting the magazine into the piece, and getting a round up in the chamber.”
    â€œIf he’s mechanical and he has time, he could probably figure it out,” DiBella said.
    â€œProbably, but to hit twenty