Chapter Thirteen I: The Substitute Driver
The school bus arrived at the corner eleven minutes later than usual on Monday.
Ben had already called the transportation office twice when the yellow vehicle turned onto Alder Street.
The driver was a woman he had never seen before.
She stopped too far from the curb, opened the folding door, and looked at the children as though she were counting unfamiliar faces.
Ben’s daughter, Maisie, stepped forward with her backpack bouncing against her shoulders.
The woman raised a hand and asked her to wait.
“Is this the Oakview route?” Ben asked.
“That’s what they gave me,
” the driver said.
She held up a route sheet with the name of a school printed at the top.
Ben recognized the school, but the stop locations had been altered.
The list directed children to gather beside the narrow public footpath behind Lena’s house.
That path had been closed after the cord and metal stake were found.
Ben told the driver she could not use the location.
“I have a sheet from dispatch,” she replied.
“And I have a daughter standing next to me,” Ben said.
The driver pulled the parking brake and called her supervisor instead of arguing.
Lena was walking back from the bakery when she noticed the bus blocking the corner.
She approached from the sidewalk and kept clear of the open door.
Ben showed her the route sheet through the window.
Lena read the altered stop and felt her stomach tighten.
The listed address was not a school bus stop at all.
It was the location Celia had repeatedly described as dangerous.
“Who requested this change?” Lena asked.
The driver pointed to a notation beside the stop.
The request had been entered as a temporary safety adjustment by a neighborhood contact.
No name appeared on the paper.
Lena asked the driver whether she could take a photograph.
The driver declined because the sheet contained student information.
Lena accepted the refusal and asked the dispatcher to preserve the original routing instructions.
The driver passed her the phone after explaining that the person on the sidewalk had relevant information.
“This is Lena Ortiz,” she said.
“The proposed stop is adjacent to an active police investigation involving a deliberately created hazard.”
The dispatcher went silent for a moment.
“Nobody told us that,” he said.
“Then you need to know before the bus moves.”
He instructed the driver to use the original corner and promised to investigate the change.
Maisie climbed aboard only after Ben checked the bus number against the school’s morning message.
The driver thanked him for speaking up.
Ben watched the bus depart and turned toward Lena.
“She has moved from scaring adults to moving children around,” he said.
“We don’t know who submitted it yet,” Lena replied.
“You think it was her.”
“I think someone gave a transportation office a reason to change a route without checking whether the new location was safe.”
Ben looked at the empty street.
“That’s a longer way of saying the same thing.”
“It’s a way of making sure we accuse the right person.”
Lena walked home without buying the coffee she had intended to carry back.
The situation had acquired a new urgency that no committee meeting could settle.
