All for One by Ryne Douglas Pearson Page A

That’s all.”
    Dooley’s brow furrowed. “You don’t have to like me. This isn’t about you.”
    “I have a lot invested in these children,” Mary responded. “If it’s about them, it’s about me.”
    The cool exchange passed as Dooley looked over the room. “They seem older than they should.”
    “Because they take care of themselves? Pick up their things? Detective Ashe, low expectations are the enemy of any child. They’re very capable if given the chance to succeed.”
    Dooley crossed his arms. “The drill. A chance for the less capable to succeed? With others pulling for them? You were one of the ones neither team wanted when you were little...right?”
    “You’re more in tune than I thought.”
    He snickered. “Thank you.”
    “Maybe you’ll learn even more tomorrow.”
    “No. Not tomorrow.”
    “We won’t be graced?”
    “I have some reading to do.”
    “One can never read enough,” Mary said as she stood. “It’s been...educational.”
    Dooley stepped back as she brushed past, a delicate hint of the perfume she wore charming him. He watched her go to where Elena Markworth sat, an emotional self exile wrapping the little girl like a familiar blanket, and kneel close. She talked softly to Elena, putting a hand to the back of the little girl’s neck, saying something that Dooley could not hear, but that elicited a meek nod.
    Instinct made him survey the other five. He recalled the pictures in the file, informal snapshots taken against the gray wall of some police interview room. Small, stony faces that could not hide the dread the moment had chiseled upon them. He compared the then with what he saw now.
    Joey. Paula Jean. Jeff. Michael. Bryce.
    Then was also now. The worry was there, in their eyes, and in the nervous twiddling of their thumbs.
    And who were they? Dooley asked himself. And who was Elena? Her mark had been left on the instrument of Guy Edmond’s demise, as had theirs. She was one of them.
    But she was also not. Not one of the junta. She was the outsider. The outsider who was inside. Invited or compelled?
    This was the one Joel had expected to talk. Dooley knew this without having to be told. And if he had expected her to talk...
    The final bell blared long and sharp, masking the clatter of twenty-odd sixth graders suddenly freed from invisible anchors. Mary finished with Elena and pointed to the assignment list on the far chalkboard. “States of matter tonight. Please remember.”
    Bodies trickled from the rows of desks, narrowing to a singular flow near the door and spilling down the stoop to a spreading wave behind the bungalows. Elena was second out the door, well ahead of the others.
    “She’s a troubled little girl,” Dooley commented when Mary was back at her desk. “Did she say anything?”
    “Detective Ashe, I am not on your side,” Mary declared. “You’ll have to find another informant.”
    She dropped into her chair and drew a stack of math papers onto her blotter, red pen hunting errors. When she cooled off a moment later and looked up the room was empty.
    *  *  *
    Joey, PJ, and Bryce were the first to round the corner to the ball field, eyes searching the crush pouring toward the main gate.
    “There she is,” Bryce said. He had picked Elena out, stuck behind a wall of fifth graders that, regardless of chronology, eclipsed her in every dimension.
    “Go talk to her,” Joey told PJ. Michael and Jeff came up as the suggestion was heeded.
    The vice president of room 18 sprang into a trot that put her alongside Elena in no time flat. PJ paced her in silence for a moment, then asked, “How are you?”
    Elena looked up at her friend and peeled away from the crowd, letting the masses pass while she slowed. PJ followed her lead. “I’m okay.”
    “We were worried about you yesterday.”
    “My parents kept me out.”
    “So everything is okay?” PJ glanced briefly back at the rest, then turned again to Elena. “Everything?”
    A circle of leaves