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are hearing.”
    “Okay.”
    “What else do you have?” asked Sheriff Hanks.
    “The caller’s sentence structure might indicate a lack
of formal education, except for one thing.”    
    “What’s the exception?”
    “He said the bomb would go off at nine o’clock sharp,”
said Deputy Steele.  “That specific wording doesn’t jibe with the rest of his
words.  Nine o’clock sharp is more the type of phrase a businessman or an
educated person would use.”
    “Maybe he heard it on a television detective show.
Lots of dumb criminals get their ideas from the boob tube.”
    “Maybe.  The more I listen to the tape, the less I
believe it is high school kids we’re looking for.”
    “An older friend of a high school kid?”
    “Maybe.”
    “We have got to start somewhere.  We should focus on
these kids and see if we can make a connection.”
    “Give me five names and let’s get started,” said the
sheriff.  “There is going to be a lot of heat from parents and the school board
to solve this thing pronto.”
    “I know.  Fifty or sixty parents came and got their
kids in the hour I was at the school.  Quite a few more called the principal’s
office and said they were on their way to pick up their kids.  This put quite a
scare into a lot of families.”
    “Sheriff!  Sheriff!”
    The panic in Helen’s strained voice sent a chill
through Zeb’s bones.  The shrillness of Helen’s statement had a life and death
quality to it.
    “It’s another bomb threat.  It sounds like the same
man.”
    Sheriff Hanks picked up his phone.  All he heard was
static, a loud click and the hum of dial tone.
    “Shit!  Goddamn it!”
    “The grade school.  This time the man said he planted
a bomb in the grade school--in the boiler room.  It’s set to go off at one!”
    “This is insane.  We’re dealing with the lives of
little children here.  Helen, call the school. Have them get everyone out. 
Now!  Kate, call Josh Diamond at the gun shop.  Have him take his dogs there on
the double.  I’ll call Delbert on the radio on my way up there and have him
meet us.”
    Zeb’s mind did a triple take as it flipped through a
catalogue of haunting memories of the grotesque octopus of a boiler in the basement
of the grade school building.  As a child he had helped his father deliver coal
to fire the furnace.  As a member of the school board he had led the charge
recommending conversion to a gas boiler.  Only last week he had called the
school to tell them the old coal chute window was open.  It was odd he had
noticed it at all.  What had caught his eye was a stray cat scampering out the
backlit window.  It would be nothing for someone to push the window all the way
open, slip in and plant a bomb next to the gas furnace. 
    Zeb was only eight when his first glimpse of the
basement monster caused him to lose weeks of sleep and struggle with dozens of
nightmares.  In his youthful, imaginative dreamscape he had envisioned the
furnace as a cross between a fire-breathing dragon and a demonic octopus.
Nipping at his heels, it had chased young Zeb into a friendless, dead-end
alley.  Flames rising from the depths of the beast’s belly had shot searing
spears of heat licking at his face.  The machine’s pipes had become wildly
gyrating arms with suctioned tentacles whose only desire seemed to be to snatch
little Zeb and carry him off to the fires of hell and eternal damnation.  The
memory sent shudders through his spine.
    “Deputy Steele, take the emergency patrol car.  It has
our best first aid equipment.  Helen, call the fire department.  Tell them to
get up there immediately.”
    A quick call to Deputy Funke assured Zeb his team
would be at full strength when looking for the bomb.
    For the second time in half a day the sheriff was
overcome with a gut wrenching angst.  Luckily he caught another break.  The
kids had finished eating lunch and were outside playing. Teachers were quickly
hustling them to a vacant