School Days - By Robert B. Parker Page 0,16

said.

"Big 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 beheve."

"Successful," I said.

"Yeah."

"Rich," I said.

"Yep."

"Connected."

"You bet," DiBella said. "Very active in politics. Donates a lot of money to a lot of people."

"He a gun guy?" I said.

"Hell," 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.

"You think he's got something to do with this?"

"No idea," I said. "I'm just channel surfing. The guns bother me."

"Yeah," 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."

"And 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."

"If he's mechanical and he has time, he could probably figure it out," DiBella said.

"Probably, but to hit twenty out of thirty-seven shots.... " I said. "In a real shootout, not on the range, with a handgun..."

DiBella nodded.

"I been shooting most of my life," he said. "I'd take that."

"There anyplace around here people shoot?"

"Local cops use our range in Talbot," DiBella said.

"Public welcome?"

"No."

"Any place where a private citizen could shoot?"

"Pretty good deer and pheasant around here in season," DiBella said. "I think there's a couple of hunting clubs got private range licenses."

"Names?"

"I can get them," DiBella said. "We haven't been chasing this as hard as you are."

"Of course not," I said. "You got one guy red-handed, and the other guy confessed. You got a slam dunk, why not take it?"

"It's not like they didn't do it," DiBella said. "We'll send them to jail."

"If they go," I said, "maybe somebody else needs to go with them."

"I got no problem with that," DiBella said.

"So where did they get the guns, and how did they learn to use them?"

"I thought you were supposed to clear this kid," DiBella said.

"I take what the defense gives me," I said. "I go where I can go, see what I find."

Chapter 17

FROM THE WINDOW Of Hollis Grant's unimpressive office in an industrial park he'd built, you could see straight across the parking lot and observe the westbound lane of the Mass Pike. Hollis himself was only a little better-looking than his office. He was a strong-looking, overweight guy with not much hair and a lot of red face. He was wearing khaki pants and work boots and a white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows. The office was small and full of architectural drawings and spec books. There was a drawing table along one wall. The walls were done in plywood paneling. Hollis himself sat not at a desk but at an old table littered with papers, a calculator, two phones, a computer, and a big, clearplastic T square.

"I'm looking into that shooting your grandson was involved in," I said.

"Why?"

"Make sure everything is as it seems to be."

"So what do you want with me," he said.

"Do you know Jared Clark?" I said.

"Kid that was with Wendell? No, I never met him."

"You close with your grandson?"

"Hard to be close with Wendell. There was no father in his life. I tried to provide him some of that..." He shook his head. "But my daughter didn't want me to teach him any of the things I knew."

"Like what?" I said.

"Sports, business, tools, stuff that men might know."

"What did she want for him?"

He shook his head slowly.

"She wanted him to be her prepubescent toy forever."

"Difficult to achieve," I said.

"I tried to tell her he was going to grow up and would need to become a man. She said it didn't mean he had to be a man like me."

"What did she mean by that?" I said.

"You met her?" he said.

"I have."

"Miss Crunchy Granola. She was born in