David Baldacci - Memory Man

“You have the order of shootings yet?” he asked.

“From everything so far, it seems she might have been the first one killed.”

“Shooter’s entry?”

“This way.”

Lancaster led him a short distance away to what he recognized as the rear of the school. She pointed at the rack of doors. “They’re kept locked during the school day.” She pointed at a camera attached to the upper corner of a wall. “That camera gave us a nice view of the ingress.”

“Description?”

“I’ve got the image loaded on my laptop in the command center we set up in the library. But it was a big guy in full camouflage gear. Face completely obstructed by a mask and a face shield.”

“Belts and suspenders,” commented Decker. “Methodical.”

Lancaster continued, “We believe he walked in this way, turned the corner, encountered Debbie Watson, and shot her.”

“Wouldn’t there have been other people in the halls?”

“At that time of morning everyone was in their classes.”

“So why wasn’t Debbie?”

“She was going to the nurse’s office. She had an upset stomach. That’s according to the teacher who gave her permission to leave class.”

Decker looked around again. “Everyone was in class. So either the shooter was lucky or he knew the routine of the school.”

“That thought struck me too.”

“And after Debbie went down?”

“He went to the gym, killed Joe Kramer, the teacher there, reversed course, passed Debbie’s body, and headed toward the front of the school. By then the shots had alerted everyone, but people were more or less trapped in their classrooms. He shot one more student dead in a classroom. He went into a second classroom and opened fire. One more dead and one wounded, a teacher.”

“Andy Jackson? English? I heard it on the news.”

“Yes. Then he walked to the opposite corridor and entered another classroom. Another dead. Another classroom on the same corridor, a sixth person shot dead. He headed to the school office, where he shot and killed the assistant principal. He then shot and killed one more student in another classroom. All told we have eight dead. And Jackson’s in critical condition, so the death count could go up by one.”

“So six students and two adults?”

“Yes. And one critically wounded.”

“You said the shooter was dressed in cammies, mask, and face shield?”

“Right.”

“What else? Type of footwear?”

“The video shot is from the waist up. No one we interviewed noted his footwear. He was wearing gloves. Weapons were a shotgun and handgun. Ballistics guys are still searching and spreadsheeting all of it. A lot of the ordnance is still in the victims. When he used the handgun he fired multiple rounds into his victims.”

“To make sure they were dead,” said Decker. “Don’t really have that concern with a shotgun.”

“No, you don’t.”

“So hood plus a face shield?”

She nodded.

“Concealment was important for him. He might have been afraid he would be recognized. You said big guy. How big?”

She pulled her notebook. “Our video shot framed him with a poster hanging on the wall. We did some measurements. We’re looking at a guy at least six-two with very broad shoulders. Like yours. Strong. Definitely male. Over two hundred pounds.”

“So he walks all over the school and we only get one video shot of him?”

“Maybe he knew where the cameras were and avoided them,” said Lancaster. “Maybe he’s been here before doing some recon for this massacre.”

“But in one instance he didn’t avoid the camera,” rejoined Decker.

“Why do you think? Inconsistency? Mistake?”

“Too early to tell, but if it was deliberate, we need to find out why.”

Lancaster wrote down some notes.

“You said he entered classrooms?”

She nodded.

“But only killed one person in each before heading on?”

“That’s right. Except he wounded the teacher in one of them.”

“These people have anything in common?”

“You think he might have been specifically targeting folks?”

“Can’t rule it out yet.”

“He’d have to know what classrooms they’d be in at that time of the morning.”

“And he might have found out somehow.”

“I’ll check into that,” said Lancaster. “But it strikes me as doubtful with all the chaos going on that the guy would be able to run down a tally sheet of targets.”

“Maybe it was chaotic for everybody else. But not him. He had the guns.”

“But still, Amos,” she said doubtfully.

“And the exit?” he asked, ignoring her last comment.

“We haven’t nailed that down yet.”

He studied her. “By the time the guy was finished shooting, how much time had passed?”

“The prelim time frame we pieced together is ten minutes, maybe a bit more.”

Decker glanced out a window. The front of the school was set far back from the road, within its own grounds. Across the street were residential properties.

“Nobody over there heard anything? Shots, screams?”

“Still canvassing. He might have used a suppressor.”

“Not on a shotgun he didn’t. But my point is, how does a guy in cammies, hood, and face shield with at least two different weapons, and one of them a long barrel, walk out of here and nobody eyeball him? For that matter, how did he walk in and no one see him?”

The air was starting to feel close again. Sweat sprouted on his forehead. He put a gloved hand out to the wall. If Lancaster noticed his distress, she said nothing.

“The video shows him entering on the rear side. There’s really nothing back there except the old Army base. He might have slipped in unseen. Maybe he hid in the Dumpster back there and popped out.”

Decker rubbed at his belly.

“You okay, Amos?”

“My diet is for shit. Did you check the Dumpster?”

“We checked everything and found nothing. We even checked the fence around the base. Nothing had been disturbed. And it’s so overgrown that there probably would have been some indication of someone having come that way.”

“So he shot his way from the rear of the school to the front. Presumably he left that way. How did no one see him then? There are houses across the street. And cars going up and down the road.”

“Well, the homes directly across the street are empty because of foreclosures. And it’s a working-class neighborhood. There might not have been many people at the other homes at that time of the morning. And the school is set far enough back that the sounds might not have carried.”

“But presumably you had traffic along the street. And kids and teachers at the windows probably screaming their heads off. Cell phones hitting 911. Cruisers rolling. I was at Precinct Two when the guys started pouring out of the place. What is the time to the school from there by car? Fifteen minutes?”

“About that, yeah.”

“And even if nobody on the outside saw him leave, there had to be eyeballs at the school windows. Kids using phones as cameras. From what I remember, there’s not an exit in this building that’s not visible from some classroom window.”

“And you knew this because you, what, snuck out a lot?”

“All the time.”

“Well, you got me there. I went to high school in the next county. This is your turf, not mine.”

“And that still doesn’t cover his ingress. How did he walk in here and no one see him? Even if it was in the rear. There are windows overlooking it.”

“Yeah, but the second and third floors are unused.”

“But the first floor has windows looking out over the rear of the school.”

Lancaster could only shake her head.