by Willow Rose
It was Shannon. I’d recognize that voice anywhere.
“Shannon!” I yelled and ran to her. I found her on the floor, kneeling next to a body on the ground. I lowered the gun. I was speechless.
It was Joe.
He was lying on the wooden floor, bleeding from the two gunshot wounds right in his heart. Shannon cried and looked up at me.
“He’s dead, Jack. Oh, my God. Joe has been shot!”
I couldn’t believe it. I grabbed Shannon by the shoulder. “Did you see anything? Did you see who shot him?”
“I was hiding like you told me to. Right behind the stage, when I heard the shot. I thought the shooter had entered this area and I was trying to get away when I saw him. I did see someone in a dark blue hoodie run out of here, but I don’t know if it was the shooter or not. I can’t believe it, Jack. Joe didn’t deserve this.”
She looked at me with desperation. I knew she had once loved the guy, just like I had once loved Arianna before she broke my heart.
“Who did this?” Shannon asked, holding a hand to cover her mouth. “Who would do such a terrible thing?”
“I don’t know. But we don’t know if he’s done yet. We need to get you out of here,” I said. “You and all the rest of the people. It’s not safe here.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
March 2015
The place was soon crawling with police and paramedics and I helped everyone get out from backstage. The scene outside on the festival grounds was like a warzone. People were walking around in a haze, their eyes wide and frantic, crying, looking for each other, asking everyone if they had seen their friends. Some were hurt and getting help from the paramedics. I held on to Shannon as I escorted her out. A paramedic asked her if she needed attention, but she told him she wasn’t hurt. We told him about Joe in the backstage area, and he ran to get a stretcher and some more paramedics to help. Shannon was questioned by one of my colleagues for a little while and told him her story before I escorted her to my car.
“Is everyone alright?” she asked me.
Her eyes were flickering in panic and sadness. Just like me, she simply couldn’t grasp what had taken place.
“Who…? Why…?” Then she started to cry.
I held her in my arms and told her it was all over now.
“I think I need to take you home,” I said.
She sniffled and nodded. I helped her get inside the car, then called Ron, who was by the entrance directing his crew, who were questioning the witnesses, then helping them get home.
“I’m taking Shannon home, then I’ll be back,” I said.
“Don’t take too long. We need all the hands we can get,” he said.
I hung up, then started the car and drove off. We drove through crowds of people simply standing in the parking lot, or in the street, talking and crying, asking the same question we all were.
Why?
A news chopper was already circling the scene, and reporters were trying to get through the entrance that had been blocked by the police as soon as they arrived. I hoped it had been before the shooter had managed to get out. I wanted this bastard, and I wanted him to fry for a lifetime.
“I changed my mind,” Shannon said, as we hit A1A towards South Cocoa Beach. None of us had spoken a single word since we left the park. I had turned the radio off, since they were all talking about it. On our way, every other car we met was a police car. The entire force was on their way there.
“About what?” I asked.
“I don’t want to go back to the condo and be all alone. I know you have to do your duty and help out at the scene, so I think I want to go to your parents’ place.”
“That’s a great idea,” I said. “My mom can take good care of you.”
“I keep seeing those images, Jack,” she said, when I parked the car in front of the motel. “There was a guy. He was right in front of me. I was shaking hands with the audience, like I always do during this song. I was looking at him and giving him a high-five, right when the shots were fired. I looked into his eyes, Jack. I was staring directly into his eyes when he died.”
I kissed her and looked into her eyes. I had no words left; nothing I could say would make her feel better. I chose to stay silent and simply kiss her and hold her tight. I was glad to leave her in the hands of my mother.
The kids were playing on the beach, so they didn’t notice us coming back. My mother had already heard about the shooting on the news from the TV constantly running in the bar of the motel.
“Oh, my God, I’m so glad you’re okay,” she exclaimed when we walked inside. She gave me a small slap across the face. “I called you a thousand times. You pick up when a worried momma calls, you hear me? You almost gave me a heart attack, seeing those things on the news and knowing you were both there. I’m an old woman, you know.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said, and let her kiss me like she used to when I was a child, holding my face with both her hands. I guessed she needed it.
Then she kissed Shannon.
“Oh, my sweet thing. It must have been terrible for you. They said it happened during your performance?”
Shannon nodded. She bit her lip. I could tell she was holding back her tears.
“I have to get back,” I said.
“You go and catch this bastard,” my mom said, grabbing Shannon’s hands in hers. “I’ll do what I do best.” She put her arm around Shannon’s shoulder. “Come with me, dear. I’ll make us all some hot chocolate.”
It was with a heavy heart that I left them, since all I really wanted right now was to be with my family. But duty called. At least it felt good to know all my loved ones were in safe hands.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
March 2015
“Okay, people. Now that we’re all here, let’s go through what we have and know.” Ron was holding a bagel in one hand and a coffee in the other. It was Monday, before noon, the day after what the media called the Shannon King-inspired shooting at Runaway Country. I had hardly slept all night, since we had been at the scene cleaning up, figuring out what had really taken place.
“Jack. You go first.”
“Alright,” I said. “We know multiple shots were fired into the crowd at Shannon King’s concert yesterday. As we have told the press, two were killed, seventeen hurt by the panic that erupted; one is still in critical condition. Both victims were male. Phillip Hagerty, forty-two, was a captain at Cocoa Beach Fire Department. He leaves behind a wife and two children, a boy and a girl. Second victim was Joe Harrison, thirty-nine, leaves behind a wife and a daughter. His wife was, as many of you know, since it has been all over the media last night and this morning, the singer Shannon King.”
There was a silence in the room, and I knew what they were all thinking. The media was relentless when it came to this kind of stuff and had already speculated about whether Shannon had him killed or had even killed him herself. I couldn’t believe the insensitivity. They were, after all, in a custody battle, the newspapers had been told by some of Joe’s friends. They made him out to be a saint and Shannon to be the bad guy, which made my blood boil. Shannon had made me promise to never tell the real truth. It never helped anyway, she told me. The press believed what they wanted to.
“Both victims were shot twice, directly into their hearts,” I continued.
“Someone knows how to shoot,” Beth said.
“Yes. Much unlike in the mass-shooting in the cinema in Boca Raton, where it seemed to be very uncontrolled,” I continued. “Which is strange, since I had a feeling they were connected, since the shooter sent emails to Shannon King before and after last time, as he did this time.”
“Did she receive an email yesterday too?” Ron asked.
I nodded and pulled the printout from my folder. “Yes.” I read it out loud for everyone in the room:
“‘Dear Shannon, I’m so sorry for what I have done, but I believe you must know by now, I only did what was necessary. Joe deserved to die and we both know it. I did you
a favor.’ And then, like all the other emails, it is signed AM.”
“What the hell is AM?” asked Duncan, another member of our homicide unit. Next to him sat his partner, Ann.
Richard, our researcher and computer expert, leaned over the desk. “As you might guess, it could be a lot of things. It might be the person’s initials, but that’s hardly realistic. Since the sender of the email goes to great lengths to hide the IP address, we hardly think he would be so stupid as to actually use his real initials. What first comes to mind is naturally AM versus PM. In that context AM stands for ante meridiem, which means before noon. But since the shooting in both cases were done in the afternoon, that’s not an angle I’m looking into anymore. It could also possibly be Artic Monkeys, the band who called their fifth album simply AM and is called AM by their fans. We do know this killer loves music, so maybe that’s an angle…”
“Anything else?” I asked, thinking it sounded all very far-fetched.
“Will.i.am?” he said and shrugged.
“Keep looking into it,” I said. “And keep trying to track the email.”
“I am,” Richard said. “So far, I have been led to India, through Indonesia, to Japan, and now I’m in Africa. Whoever is doing this knows how to cover their tracks in cyberspace. I’m also keeping an eye on social media. I’ve put a tracker out so I’ll be alerted as soon as anyone posts about the shootings in the coming days. There might be witnesses we haven’t talked to yet or people with knowledge they haven’t told the police.”
“Good. What else have we got?” asked Ron, as he finished his bagel.
“According to the techs, the shooter was located somewhere in the stage area when he fired the first two shots into the crowd, the same two shots that hit Phillip Hagerty in the heart and killed him instantly. By the angle, they believe he was actually on the stage when it happened. We’ll conduct interviews of the band members later today, but the initial questioning told us they didn’t see anyone on the stage with them. Neither did the singer Shannon King,” I said. “He must have crept up from behind.”
“So, the shooter had a backstage pass?” Beth said. “And, after shooting into the crowd, he ran backstage and killed Shannon King’s husband?” Beth paused and looked at me. “Soon to be ex-husband, sorry.”
“Exactly right,” I said. “How hard are those passes to get ahold of?”
Beth answered. “As far as I know, you can get access to the entire backstage area, if you have enough money.”
“Anything else?” Ron asked, as the silence lay upon us in the room again.
“We have multiple videos from the shooting taken with phones,” Duncan said. “Ann and I have been going through them. They don’t show the shooter’s face, though, since he’s wearing a hoodie and it’s too far away. But you can see a figure up on the stage on two of them, and then the sound of the gun going off twice. The rest is just screaming and panic.”
“Okay. Bummer,” Ron said.
As the meeting continued, I couldn’t stop thinking about Shannon and how hard this had to be for her. She was going to tell Angela about her father’s death this morning when my kids were at surf camp and she had her to herself. She knew the girl would see it on TV or hear about it from someone at some point, so she might as well get it done right away, even though she herself was still shaken pretty badly. It was an understatement to say I was worried about her. She was about to face a whole new media-storm of entirely new proportions. She didn’t need that. Her fragile mind certainly didn’t need that at all.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
March 2015
“What’s this?”
Stanley had managed to pull himself back into bed from the bathroom, when his guardian entered with another tray of food. The guardian stuck their nose in the air and sniffed.
“What is that I smell?”
Stanley shrugged and shook his head. “I don’t smell anything.”
“VOMIT!” the guardian screamed. “VOMIT. FILTHY DISGUSTING VOMIT!”
Stanley’s heart was racing. It had felt so good to relieve himself, and he had hoped to be able to hide it. His shin was throbbing from the effort of getting back to bed in time. He was afraid it was getting infected.
“Did you THROW UP?” the guardian yelled and almost dropped the tray of food in dismay.
Stanley cleared his throat. He could feel how his newfound hope was filling him with new energy. He had talked to someone on the other side of that wall. He wasn’t alone.
“I…I had to,” he said, fearing his guardian’s reaction. Last time he had ended up with a fire poker in his leg.
The guardian stormed to the bathroom and opened the toilet lid. “Did you waste all that good food?”
“I…I’m sorry. I couldn’t contain any more. It was just too much.”
“You didn’t like the food?”
“It wasn’t that I didn’t like it, but it was just too much,” he said. “You forced it inside of me.”
“So, it was a little too much, now was it?”
Stanley could tell his guardian was mocking him. It was impossible to talk reason to this mad person.
“Listen. I just really want to get my granddaughter and get back home,” he said with a deep sigh. “I don’t know what this is all about. But, don’t you think it’s about time to stop? My leg feels wrong. I think I need to get to a hospital.”
The guardian made a grimace. “Oh, you think you need to go to the hospital, do ya? Well, that’s a completely different matter, then.” The last word was followed by hollow laughter.
Stanley looked at the crazy person in front of him. How did someone become like this? How was this person free to walk around, obviously in need of help, endangering other people? How had no one stopped this person? How many like him had been abducted and kept in this house? What was the idea behind it all?
The guardian leaned over. “You think maybe little Timmy might have felt the same way when you beat him with that fire poker for showing up in your living room wearing his mother’s dress and shoes, huh? You know what I’m talking about. Don’t look so innocent. I’m talking about the time when you beat him senseless and he couldn’t walk for days. Yes, now you’re getting it. That’s right.”
Stanley stared at his guardian with wide-open eyes. His first response was—like it had always been in his life—anger. He blood was boiling. How did this…this character know about his son?
“What the hell…?”
His guardian let out some more loud laughter. Stanley imagined what it would feel like to kill this person, to simply place his hands around that broad neck and press till there were no more sounds coming out.
But, before he could react, the fire poker was brought out once again, swung high into the air, and poked through the thigh of his good leg.
“Now, EAT!” his guardian yelled, while snorting and panting in what Stanley could only assume was excitement. The poker was still in his leg when the food was shoveled into his mouth, drowning out his screaming.
Chapter Forty
March 2015
“I HAVE SOMETHING.”
Richard came to my desk and sat down. So far, it had been a bad day. I had interviewed all the band members, but none of them had seen the shooter. They had all been facing the crowd, and when panic broke out, they remembered nothing but chaos. I had tried to recreate the concert by drawing on the whiteboard, and with the help from a crime scene technician, had come to the conclusion that the shooter had to have been walking out on stage during the song, on the left side, behind the bass player from Shannon’s band. Mark, the bass player told me he had been playing along when he heard the shots coming from behind him. As soon as he saw the person in the crowd get shot, he had thrown himself to the ground, holding the bass over his head. He hadn’t dared to turn and look. He had screamed at everyone to get down. When I asked him if he had any idea where the shooter had come on stage, he had said that he was right behind him. It added up well with what the crime scene te
chs told me, and with the fact that the shooter afterwards sneaked out the back and shot Joe on the way out. The theory was that he was just shooting his way through the crowd, but I kept wondering why no more than two people were killed. It was odd, since the shooter had the possibility of killing a lot more. Maybe we had just lucked out. The fact was, the shooter had gotten out somehow right afterwards, and before we had managed to lock down the area. How or where he had found his way out, we still didn’t know. That was as far as we had gotten all day. I needed something to open up this case. I was nowhere near close to catching this guy.
“A witness tells me she saw the killer,” Richard said. “She posted in Wake-Up Cocoa Beach, a Facebook group for locals in Cocoa Beach.”
“I know the group,” I said.
“Alright. Here she is. I printed out her Facebook page. Her name is Barbara Robertson. She wrote in the group that she was up in the front when the shots were fired and that she was standing right next to Phillip Hagerty when he was shot. As a comment to someone else’s post, she writes that she is lucky to still be alive.”
“Barbara Robertson? Have we questioned her before?” I asked, thinking of the thousands of statements we had right after the incident that I had no idea how to sort through. I had asked Beth to go through them, but didn’t think she was even halfway.
“I tried to find her statement in the pile, but her name didn’t come up. I’m thinking she might have been one of those that got out of there before we started getting statements, when we still believed the killer was on the loose.”
I nodded. We had no idea how many had left while we were trying to get people to safety. My guess was it was at least a couple hundred. I couldn’t blame them. At that point, it was all about getting out of there. There had been forty thousand people present. There was no way we could have interviewed all of them. It was all a mess.
