A Good Kill

by John McMahon

  Before I left, I walked back into the casita. Mandelle was jotting down serial numbers. “That twenty-four hours on the gun trace,” I said to him. “Any way you can make it twelve?”

  “I’ll do my best,” he said, and I nodded in thanks, dialing up Remy as I walked back outside.

  An electric line ran across the yard and fed power to the backhouse. A red-tailed hawk sat on the cable, sagging the middle of it and staring at me.

  My partner picked up on the first ring, and I could tell that she was driving. “I saw the text,” she said. “Just running home for a quick shower.”

  I’d been up for twenty-three hours straight and was pretty ripe myself.

  “Listen, there’s a dog here, Rem,” I said. “Real nice pup. With your work in County with animals—anyone you could call to pick him up?”

  My partner had spent the last ninety days as a humane enforcement officer working in a temporary division that was formed after a dog-fighting scandal broke in May.

  “I could ring up one of my buddies,” she said. “But the place is overcrowded, P.T. Odds are, the dog’s gonna be euthanized within a couple days.”

  “See what you can do?” I asked, and she agreed.

  I filled up a water bowl, grabbed food for the dog, and found Abe inside. He dropped me at my house, and I walked right into a freezing-cold shower.

  No rest for the weary.

  No sleep when there’s a crime to be solved.

  5

  I got to the precinct by seven forty-five a.m. and grabbed a coffee from the kitchen, heading into the main conference room before anyone else showed.

  Someone had left a pink box of donuts there, and I flipped the top open. Two crullers and a jelly. The sugar had crystalized, signaling they were yesterday’s leftovers.

  Out the window, the sky was blue and windswept, but the banana palms in the grassy area outside were like statues, so the wind must’ve died overnight.

  Remy came in, dressed in black pants and a yellow blouse, her Glock in a shoulder holster under her jacket. Lately my partner had begun wearing contacts, but since she’d been up all night, she sported her old glasses, black-framed numbers that made her look bookish.

  Abe and Senza rolled in at the same time. The chief explained that he’d blocked off one hour, after which he would have a call with Mayor Stems, who wanted to know exactly where we stood.

  “To start.” Senza looked down at his notebook. “I asked Merle and Remy to build out a timeline last night—from the moment Harrington first showed up at the school. Then let’s hear about his background, his family, and the weapon. In forty-eight hours, the GBI’s gonna take possession of this case,” Senza said, referring to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. “So let’s get to the bottom and fast.”

  Merle Berry rolled in late and got a look from the chief. He grabbed a jelly donut with a square white napkin, and the grease stained through the paper before he could take his first bite.

  “I’ll start with an update on the school,” the chief said. “Falls Magnet is temporarily closed. We got the area cordoned off and a cruiser outside. So if you got a lead and need to be there, coordinate with Gattling and he’ll liaise with patrol.”

  “’Til when?” I asked.

  “Right now the mayor’s working that out with the school board,” the chief said. “They’re probably gonna reopen in ten days. They’re bringing in counselors. Planning a prayer service. An assembly.”

  I shook my head. I couldn’t believe this was happening in Mason Falls. But at the same time, it could’ve been worse. Much worse.

  “When the school reopens, we’ll be staffing two SROs,” Senza said. “Those are school resource officers. Essentially rookie patrolmen to oversee the new metal detectors in the morning and function as security during the day.”

  “How long does that go for?” Remy asked.

  “Throughout the school year at least,” Senza said. “The real end date depends on what we find out about Harrington. If people understand why he did this . . .”

  The chief’s voice faded, but we all got it. This crime was over. But the chief wanted a motive. And not just him. The community needed it too. A reason Jed Harrington came to Falls Magnet Middle School with a gun.

  Senza looked to Remy and Merle. “You two ready?”

  Remy plugged her laptop into an outlet, and an image flickered onto the conference room TV. A yearbook photo of a pasty-looking kid. Maybe eleven, with black hair and freckles.

  “At 1:44 p.m., Gavin Kinsey came onto campus,” Remy said. “Gavin’s a sixth grader, and was coming to school late from a dentist appointment.”

  “His mom or dad drove him?” Abe asked.

  “Neither.” Remy shook her head. “Mom dropped him off at the dentist, but then went to work. She set up one of those Uber services for kids. They brought him to school.”

  Merle jumped in. “We’ve all seen the one road leading in and out of campus. Gavin noticed a car behind the one he was being driven in. It was a Dodge Magnum station wagon. Black. This is the first reported moment that Jed Harrington is on campus.”

  “Did we talk to the Uber driver?” Abe asked.

  “Yeah, but she doesn’t remember a thing,” Merle said. “Dropped the kid off and moved on to her next ticket.”

  Merle looked to Remy, who clicked forward to a shot of Harrington’s station wagon, parked at the middle school.

  “Next moment we’re aware of,” Remy said. “Harrington exits his car.” She pointed at the screen, where an overhead map of the campus was projected. A red X appeared over the parking lot, and my partner walked over. Touched the TV.

  “He parked here,” she said. “He’s now on campus for three minutes. It’s 1:47.”

  “A mom who volunteers at the school passed Harrington,” Merle said, and Remy pointed at a second X.

  “He crossed the parking lot from here to there.” She motioned from west to east.

  “How’s Harrington acting?” I asked.

  “From Mom’s memory—normal,” Merle said. He glanced down at a jelly stain on his shirtsleeve, clearly not sure when it had left the donut and arrived on his cuff. “Mom didn’t think anything of it ’til his picture hit the news,” Merle continued.

  “How was he concealing the weapon?” Abe asked.

  This was a good question. A .38 Special was a revolver with a bulky profile. Tough to hide.

  “The mom saw no weapon,” Merle said. “So we reckon it was shoved in his waistband or at his back. Harrington was wearing an untucked flannel.”

  I looked at Remy and Merle’s diagram. Harrington had parked fairly close to the art class and was moving directly toward it. “Looks like he knows where he’s going.”

  “Merle and I thought the same thing,” Remy said without adding another word.

  This was the approach I’d taught her. When you’re building a timeline, your job is to itemize the facts. It’s everyone else’s job to theorize.

  “When’s he spotted next?” the chief asked, moving things along.

  “That’s where accounts vary depending on who you talk to,” Remy said. “But let’s walk through the most likely scenario.”

  “Around this time, a class ends if you’re in seventh or eighth grade,” Merle said. “It’s 1:50 p.m. The bell rings. Students move around. Harrington’s now been on campus for six minutes, and no gun has been pulled, from what we know. He’s just another adult walking.”

  Remy clicked on her computer, and a picture of a room came up. “This is a storage room attached to the art room,” she said. “It’s got a kiln. Some sort of small printing press. A cordless sander.”

  “Minor power tools,” Merle said. “Stuff the kids need adult supervision to work with.”

  Remy clicked again, and beside the same picture appeared a hand-drawn overhead diagram, showing two
doors entering this storage area.

  “There’s two ways into this storage room,” she said. “One is through an outdoor courtyard not far from the teacher’s lounge. That’s a locked door that only teachers have access to. The other is through the art room itself.”

  We all nodded, waiting for Remy and Merle to explain why their focus had shifted to this storage area.

  “Leaf Tanner was shot in this area,” Remy said. “There’s blood spatter on the east wall.”

  Remy touched the TV again. “So it looks like he was shot near the door that led in from the courtyard. Then he stumbled across the storage area and into the main art room, where P.T. first saw his body.”

  “So we’re assuming what?” I asked. “The science teacher came into the storage area from the courtyard?”

  “Hold that thought,” Merle said. “We’re going chronological. We’ll get back there.”

  Remy clicked forward, and another kid’s photo came up. Olive skin. Teenager, but a big frame. Could pass for eighteen as easy as fifteen.

  “Falls Magnet has a zero period early in the morning,” Remy said. “So if you’re an eighth grader and you go to that, you end up with a free period from two to three p.m. at the end of the day. Meet Easton Pappas.”

  “Easton goes to this zero period in the morning,” Merle said. “Which leaves the time between two and three p.m. as his free period. Like a couple other kids, he goes to the art room during that time.”

  “Kids paint in there,” Remy said. “Or sculpt. Whittle wood. There’s no class in there between two and three.”

  I studied the diagram as Remy continued.

  “Now it’s 1:54,” she said. “Harrington’s been on campus ten minutes, and here’s our next account of him. This Easton kid opens the door from the hallway to enter the art class. He looks across the art room and into the attached storage area. Sees Jed Harrington holding a .38 and Leaf Tanner on the ground. Already shot.”

  Abe raised his hand. “Wait—Easton opens the door from the courtyard into the storage room? I thought only teachers could do that.”

  “No,” Remy said. She walked us through her diagram again, explaining that there were two ways into the art room. The first was in from the hallway. This is how students got to class. The other was through the storage room.

  “This Easton kid opened the door from the hallway,” Remy said. “The main way kids go in for class.”

  “And what happened next?” Abe asked.

  “Easton sees a couple girls working on their canvases. But he also sees through the art room and into the attached storage area. He sees Harrington with the gun. Standing over Leaf Tanner.”

  “What’s Easton’s reaction?” I asked.

  “He lets go of the door and splits,” Merle said. “He’s the same kid who pulls the fire alarm a minute later.”

  “The three girls who got taken hostage,” Abe said. “How come they don’t see what this kid Easton sees? How come they don’t hear the gunshot?”

  “They’ve got earbuds in,” Merle said.

  “One of them had an early bootleg of the new Zac Brown album,” Remy explained. “They’re all plugged into the same phone and the volume is cranked while they paint.”

  “And Easton’s got a vantage point that the girls don’t have,” Merle added. “A straight view into the storage area from the hallway door.”

  Remy clicked back to her overhead drawing of the art room and how it was laid out, relative to the storage area. The table that the girls sat at was tucked around a corner, out of sight.

  “Sure,” I said. “But those girls must’ve come into the room at some point, just like Easton did. How come they didn’t see Harrington when they entered?”

  Remy nodded, seeing where I was going. “Yeah, so those girls were already inside, P.T. They had art class the period before, from one to two. So they’ve been in their same seats for almost an hour. Continuing on with their projects, heads down, and listening to music while they paint. It’s their free period too.”

  “So Easton opens the door,” Abe said. “Freaks outs and closes it. Runs the other way. Leaving the girls inside, who can’t see what he’s seen?”

  “Or even hear,” Merle said.

  “What happens next?” the chief asked.

  “Leaf Tanner gets up. Braces himself against the wall here.” Remy motioned at her diagram. “He backs into the classroom. The girls see Tanner stagger out, bleeding. Harrington with the gun. The art teacher shrieking.”

  “Tanner gets to where the smocks are hung,” Merle said. “Grabs them and collapses onto the floor.”

  Abe and I nodded then, understanding the sequence now.

  This was where I’d picked up things, from my vantage point atop the maintenance shed. By this point, it was about an hour later, and Leaf Tanner had bled out onto the smocks.

  “The thing we’re not clear on,” Merle said, “is how Harrington got into the storage area in the first place. None of the students saw him enter through the hallway door where Easton came in. Which means Harrington must’ve come in through the courtyard door. But that should’ve been locked.”

  “You talk to the art teacher?” Abe asked. “What’s her name?”

  “Kelly Borland,” Merle said, grabbing at his belt to hike up his slacks. “She’s a wreck. Can’t remember half this shit. She saw the gunman standing near Tanner. The rest is in pieces.”

  “In pieces how?” I asked.

  “Big holes of time she can’t recall,” Remy said. “She remembers trying to talk Harrington down. The girls screaming. Then she heard the shot, and he’s dead.”

  “She ever seen Jed Harrington before?”

  “No,” Remy answered.

  We all went quiet for a moment, processing the details.

  “So we’re figuring that the two men both came into the storage area from the exterior door that led in from the courtyard?” I asked.

  “Check,” Merle said. His face had grown puffier in the last year in that way that you see in guys in their fifties. Their necks expand to the maximum PSI, and the excess air moves to the cheeks.

  “Do all teachers have a master key to that door?” Abe asked.

  “They do,” Remy said.

  “So Harrington comes onto campus,” I said. “He spots a random teacher he doesn’t know. Forces him to open a random door. And shoots him. Is that likely?”

  “It’s what the facts bear out,” Merle said.

  This would scare the hell out of me if I was a parent or a school administrator. Because it meant that there was no reason this happened. A crazy man wandered onto a school campus. Shot the first man he saw. And now I understood why Mayor Stems and Chief Senza were so concerned.

  “What was the science teacher doing near the art storage room anyway?” Abe asked.

  “We don’t know,” Remy said. “Tanner had a free period at the same time.”

  “Were the art teacher and the science teacher friends?” I asked.

  “According to her, yes,” Remy said.

  “Were they more than friends?” Abe asked.

  “The two weren’t seeing each other,” Merle said. “We asked students, teachers, close friends.”

  The chief shifted in his seat, and Merle looked to Remy, who clicked forward.

  A picture of Leaf Tanner’s body came up. Not at the scene, but in the medical examiner’s office. Tanner’s chest was muscular and pale, laid out atop a steel gurney. He had a black goatee, and the same color hair, thick like a bath mat, on his chest.

  “You want to talk forensics?” Merle looked over.

  Abe stood up. “Sarah Raines is going to issue a report in an hour,” he said, referring to the medical examiner. “But there’s not much we don’t know from observation. C.O.D. is arterial bleeding from ballistic trauma. GSW with a .38 Smith & Wesson.”<
br />
  I reported what we knew of the weapon. As I spoke, Remy clicked forward to a picture of the .38 Special, laid out on the ground in the art room where Harrington had gone down.

  “Atlanta PD is working with ATF,” I said. “We already have confirmation that the .38 is Harrington’s weapon. Within the day we’ll know when and where he bought it. Also about his other guns.”

  “Ballistics come in yet?” Abe asked.

  “A half hour ago,” I said. “One bullet was fired. Five still in the gun, 158-grain lead round-nose. American Eagle brand.”

  “And no other ammo with him?” the chief asked.

  “Nope,” Merle said.

  “What about his car?” the chief asked.

  “We’re towing Harrington’s Dodge Magnum into the mod yard now,” Abe answered.

  The mechanical mod yard was the place where MFPD patrolmen brought their black and whites to get fixed or upgraded. It also served as an investigative area for crimes involving a vehicle.

  “We left the car at the school yesterday to have the bomb squad inspect it,” Merle said. “They gave us the okay to move it this morning, so we took it over to Carlos at six a.m. We’ll see if there’s anything relevant inside.”

  The chief ran a hand along his tie, tightening it at the knot. “What haven’t we touched on yet?”

  “Harrington’s got a sister,” Merle said. “Maryanne Liggins is her married name. Lives in Oklahoma and is arriving today. P.T. and Abe saw her clothes in the house, but it was only a handful of things. Harrington lived there by himself.”

  “Any open interviews we didn’t get to?” the chief asked.

  “Leaf Tanner was married,” Remy said. “His widow is coming in today. Also the oldest girl among the three hostages. An eighth grader named Allie D’Antone. Her parents didn’t want her talking to us yesterday. She’s agreed to come in now.”

  “I talked the family into that,” Senza said. “Allie’s a good girl and a friend of Avis. Her parents were just scared yesterday.”

  “We still need to go through police transmissions and 911 calls,” Remy said. “There were forty-one calls made by students as they ran out. We got through twenty-six so far.”