Bloodshed (John Jordan Mysteries Book 19)

by Michael Lister

  Flashing lights of emergency vehicles strobing the scene, their effectiveness greatly diminished by the morning sun, like a club when someone turns the house lights on.

  Several of us scurrying through the crowd, searching the shoes of students, bumping into the already traumatized kids because we’re looking down.

  A deputy at the door, pulling aside kids with black boots on like a zealous TSA agent, Tyrese beside him identifying them, making a list to go with the pictures he’s taking.

  As we search the shoes of the student and faculty exodus taking place, it occurs to me that just because witnesses described the shooter as having black boots on doesn’t mean he couldn’t be wearing dark shoes.

  I radio the others. “Don’t just check for boots, but any dark shoe—especially those that could be mistaken for boots. Also, don’t just focus on our suspects. Look at everyone closely and carefully.”

  Scanning the footwear all around me, I move with the herd—mostly in the same direction, but at a slower pace.

  All around me all the feet have one thing in common—they are moving.

  For as far as I can see all the feet I can see are moving—except for two pair.

  In the distance, just at the end of the covered walkway, two pairs of feet are not only not moving, they are facing the wrong direction.

  Like a tree in the middle of a stream, the two pairs of unmoving feet facing the wrong direction make the flow of fleeing students divert around them.

  As I get closer I can see that one pair of feet have on black paramilitary style boots like the ones we’re looking for, while the other had on no shoes at all, only socks.

  Long before I look up for confirmation I know who the feet belong to, know who is facing the traumatized crowd, taking in the dazed and devastated children whose lives will never be the same again.

  Everyone else is putting as much distance between them and the scene of the crime as they can—everyone except Mason Nickols and Dakota Emanuel.

  “What’re y’all doing?” I ask as I reach them.

  “Question is,” Mason says. “What’re y’all doing? Y’all look like bloodhounds, all running around with your heads down like you’re sniffing the ground.”

  “Why aren’t you two moving?” I ask. “Exiting the area.”

  “Just wanted to see everyone’s faces,” Dakota says.

  “Who comes out on a stretcher,” Mason says. “Who doesn’t come out at all.”

  “That’s sweet,” I say, then looking at Dakota, “Where are your shoes?”

  “Must have come off when I was running for my life,” he says. “Not sure. I wasn’t thinking too much about my shoes.”

  “What kind were you wearing?”

  He hesitates. “Huh? What kind of shoes?” He shrugs. “I don’t know, just some old boots.”

  “Black?” I ask.

  “Yeah, why? D’you find ’em?”

  “We will.”

  “Well, don’t worry about returning them,” he says. “So much blood in that back hallway, I’m sure they look like the fuckin’ brogans Michael Myers wears.”

  Mason smiles and shakes his head. “Dude, can you imagine if Michael Myers was in fuckin’ high school during the age of rampage?”

  “Oh boi, that would be si-ick,” Dakota says. “Carnage City, bitches.”

  “Someone needs to do one of these with a knife,” Mason says.

  “Sure as shit do.”

  A knowing look passes between them like Next time.

  “Have y’all caught the shooter yet?” Mason asks.

  “We heard he got away,” Dakota says. “That he upped Eric and Dylan’s game so he could do it again.”

  “We’re very close,” I say. “Some of us closer than others.”

  Mason’s mouth contorts into a cold, creepy smile. “Well, good luck with that,” he says. “Sounds like you’re going to need it. Guess we’ll be goin’ now . . .’less you have some reason we shouldn’t.”

  “Yeah,” Dakota says. “You wanna deputize us or somethin’? We could blow this bitch wide open.”

  “You’ve done enough for today,” I say. “We’ll be in touch soon.”

  “No need,” Mason says. “He tol’ you he doesn’t want the boots back.”

  As they slowly step away, taking it all in one more time before they do, DeShawn and Sierra rush up to me.

  “Have you seen Ms. LeAnn and Ms. Kim?” Sierra asks. “They didn’t get . . . did they?”

  “We can’t find them anywhere.” DeShawn says.

  “They’re at the hospital,” I say.

  “Oh no,” Sierra says. “Are they going to be okay?”

  I nod. “They’ll be fine.”

  “Is this what y’all wanted our help with?” DeShawn asks.

  “Still can’t believe it happened,” Sierra says. “Wish we could’a helped prevent it.”

  “We might can still help,” DeShawn says. “Y’all haven’t caught them yet, have you?”

  “Do y’all know anything that could be helpful?” I ask.

  They shrug. “I’m sure we do. We just don’t know what it is yet. We need to know more about what happened to know for sure.”

  “If you think of anything,” I say. “Let Mr. Monroe or Ms. Miller or Ms. Dunne know.”

  They are unsatisfied with this response, but as I move off to examine more shoes and try to locate the other suspects I try not to be too broken up about it.

  I haven’t gotten far before I see Dad and Merrill walking up the circular drive toward me.

  39

  Most school shooters show signs of clinical depression and other psychological issues, but schools don’t have enough mental health counselors to pick up on such signs, let alone do something about them.

  “You okay?” Dad asks.

  I nod.

  “How can we help?”

  I look around to see who might be close enough to us to hear. “Let’s step over here for a minute.”

  They follow me to a spot a few feet away from the throng.

  I give them a brief rundown of what has happened and where we’re at.

  “Is Kimmy going to be okay?” Dad asks.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “Have no idea of her condition or how she’s doing. Hoping LeAnn will let us know when she knows.”

  “So the shooter’s somewhere out here with everybody else?” Merrill says. “We need to be searching for black boots, that right?”

  I tell them about shooting Derek Burrell.

  “Oh, Son, I’m so sorry,” Dad says. “That’s . . . Are you okay?”

  I shake my head.

  “What condition is the kid in?” Merrill asks.

  “Don’t know that either,” I say.

  “All you did was return fire,” Dad says. “He was shooting at Kimmy and you.”

  “I shot a kid,” I say. “But I can’t even think about that right now. Right now all I’m thinking about is that I’m about to be taken off this, put on administrative leave while my use of deadly force is investigated. Hugh Glenn hasn’t mentioned it yet—probably doesn’t even know to do it, but as soon as FDLE arrives I’ll be sidelined. I’d like to get as much done before then as possible. I really want to know which of these sick, twisted little psychos put Derek and me in that position to begin with.”

  “My money’s on the two fringe fuckers you’s talkin’ to when we pulled up,” Merrill says.

  I nod. “It’s a good bet. They definitely get voted most likely to Columbine in my yearbook, but we need to look at all our suspects and anyone we may have missed.”

  They nod.

  “We can help look for them, see what kind of shoes they’re wearing, and get a good read on them,” Dad says. “Think we remember all of them from Friday.”

  “If y’all could do that, I’d like to go look at the security camera footage,” I say.

  “Go,” Merrill says. “We got this.”

  “Thanks.”

  I rush back toward the building
, grabbing Tyrese as I do.

  “Can you help me look at the security camera footage?” I ask.

  “Yeah,” he says, walking next to me in the opposite direction as everyone else. “Of course. There’s just not much of it. Not just ’cause it all happened so fast, but the bombs blew out a lot of the feeds.” He shakes his head. “Still can’t believe this happened. Still don’t know how it could have—especially the explosives. Know how y’all searched the school before it opened on Friday? We did the same thing this morning. How the hell’d we miss that many bombs?”

  “Maybe you didn’t,” I say. “Maybe he brought them in when he came in this morning.”

  “Guess he had to,” he says. “There were just so many and they were so spread out.”

  “Not really,” I say. “All but two or three were in the same area in the hallway where he was. He could’ve planted the others just before or just after first bell.”

  He nods. “Make sense. Maybe the cameras caught him doing it.”

  As we near the entrance, we pass Tristan Ward and Denise Royal, two of the very last students to exit the building.

  “Can you believe this?” Tristan says, an undeniable excitement in his voice. “I was telling Denise this is a prime example of life imitating art. I’m sure people will blame my play, say I inspired all this, but . . .”

  “They’re not going to silence our voices,” Denise adds. “Art is too important to be . . .” she searches for something profound but comes up short “. . . silenced.”

  “Actually,” I say, “this was a prime example of life imitating life. Columbine, not your play, is the inspiration and pattern here.”

  “But surely—”

  “Where have y’all been?” I ask. “Why so late getting out of the building?”

  “We were in the process of moving props and lighting from the main stage in the commons back out to the art building.”

  That really doesn’t answer my question.

  “Where were you during the shooting?” I ask.

  “On our way back from the art building to get another load?” Denise says.

  “Where exactly?” I ask, glancing at their shoes.

  They both have on black boots and though neither are paramilitary style they both could be mistaken for them pretty easily. Especially as they moved by during a stressful and intense situation.

  “Not sure exactly,” she says. “I guess just about to come back into the main building.”

  “Through which door?” I ask.

  “The back door out by the art building.”

  “Couldn’t have been,” I say. “The shooter zip tied it so it wouldn’t open.”

  “Oh, well, then, I guess we were already back inside the main building.”

  “We were already backstage,” Tristan says. “Behind the curtain. Remember?”

  “Oh yeah,” she says. “That’s right.”

  “So you were backstage during the entire shooting?” I ask.

  “Yeah,” he says.

  She nods her agreement.

  “And exited the building from there?” I ask.

  “Yeah,” Tristan says. “Why?”

  “Because that would have put you in the commons, closer to this main exit than virtually all the other students, and would have meant that you would be among the first to exit the building, not the last.”

  “Oh,” Denise says and looks to Tristan for help. “Well . . .”

  “We stayed where we were until an officer came and told us to leave, they were evacuating the building. We had just been on the stage making art about this very type of incident and now it was happening . . . We wanted to linger at that intersection where life and art meet as long as we could.”

  A member of the SWAT team opens the one of the front doors and motions us over.

  “We’ve got to go,” I say. “We’ll talk to you again soon, get your official statements then.”

  Tristan says, “My play is my statement. There is nothing else to be said.”

  “Oh,” I say, “there’s plenty left to be said—about your play and your movements during the shooting, but we’ll get to that a little later.”

  40

  We could stop school shootings in America right now if we really wanted to. And we wouldn’t have to violate anyone’s civil rights to do it. But we’re not willing to spend the money and effort required to do it. Mostly the money. Don’t kid yourself, we care more about money than we do kids. Especially the old rich bastards buying most of the elections and many of the politicians. They may care about their kids—though even that’s in doubt—but they sure as shit don’t care about your poor public school children and you’re a fool if you think they do.

  “We finished evacuating the building,” the SWAT leader says. “We’re still doing our sweep and we need to get a bomb squad in here as soon as possible, but everybody’s out. Every living person anyway.”

  “Great,” I say. “Thank you.”

  “Have you seen Sheriff Glenn?” he asks.

  “Not in the last little while,” I say as Tyrese shakes his head.

  “Wanted to give him a report but we can’t find him and he’s not answering his radio.”

  “I’ll locate him after we review the security camera footage and let him know,” I say.

  Tyrese and I continue into and through the main office and into the first room to the right which serves as a kind of catchall that includes the principal designee’s desk and the security monitor.

  The security monitor is a huge TV mounted to the wall, seventy inches or more, filled with the images of the security camera feeds.

  Divided into small blocks showing single-camera feeds, the monitor displays rows, six high and eight across, of scenes from the school, many of which are now blank.

  In some of the images the school looks normal. In others it appears to have suffered a terrorist attack. In most of the frames nothing is happening. In a few the SWAT team can be seen continuing their sweep of the building.

  Tyrese shakes his head as he looks at his school. “I still can’t believe any of this is real,” he says. “And under my watch. I really loved being the principal here.”

  “And you will again,” I say.

  “No way they let me keep my job after this,” he says. “It was tenuous to begin with. Now . . . the first black principal will be blamed for the first school shooting.”

  “We’ll make sure everyone knows all that you did,” I say. “How hard you worked to prevent it. It’ll work out.”

  He nods, but I can tell he’s resigned to the reality of life in a small town in the Deep South where racism is rampant and nigger rolls as easily off the tongues of a certain type of self-identified white patriotic Christians as Jesus.

  “Anyway . . .” he says with a sigh, “I can make any single image the size of the full screen by double-clicking on it.”

  “Cool,” I say. “We’ll definitely need to do that. For now, though, let's just scan all of them.”

  “How far back do you want to go?” he asks.

  I think about it. As much as I’d like to watch the entire weekend, I don’t have the time right now. Someone would have to eventually, but I don’t have the time right now—and wouldn’t even if I wasn’t about to be asked to leave.

  “Let’s start at five this morning,” I say. “Can you speed it up until we see someone?”

  “Sure. Why don’t I watch the ones on this side and you watch the ones on that side?

  “Sounds good,” I say. “Stop it if you see anything at all. Even a shadow.”

  “Will do.”

  I pull out my phone, open the camera, switch it to video, and start recording. Holding it back and in between us, I attempt to record the entire monitor, getting all the feeds at once.

  We quickly scan the footage, him looking at the left side feeds, me the right, beginning at five this morning and going until about twenty after six when the group Tyrese mentioned before begins to search the building. The group
of teachers and administrators is mostly made up of those who helped us on Friday—without the law enforcement officers and includes Ace Bowman.

  Tyrese says, “This was his sometime office. ’Course he had three. Rarely used this one, but . . . Can’t believe he was just here helping us and now he’s . . . gone. This was just like a half-hour before he was killed.”

  It is surreal to see him and know that he’s now lying dead on his classroom floor some fifty feet away from where we stand right now.

  Before the staff began searching the school, there was no one else on the footage—not a single soul, not a janitor, not another teacher, not a student sneaking in to plant pipe bombs.

  Following the uneventful search of the school by the group, no one else is seen on the camera feeds until the groups of people begin arriving to start the school day—lunch ladies to cook and serve breakfast, energetic early bird teachers, the first busloads of children, the younger teens who can’t drive insisting on getting dropped off early for extra time with friends.

  During this time, there is a lot of movement and activity in the parking lots and main office and the commons, but very little where the shooting took place—only the random teacher opening and entering his or her classroom a few minutes early instead of stopping by the teachers’ lounge.

  Not in any of it is there anything suspicious. No one goes near the places where the bombs would explode less than half an hour later.

  We continue to watch as the commons fills and then empties again as the first bell rings and the sleepy student body mass migrates up to the lockers, classrooms, and library.

  Even in this there is nothing suspicious, nothing that makes us pause or rewind the footage.

  And then just minutes after filling, the hallways are empty again.

  Classroom doors closed, teachers and students safely tucked away inside.

  A couple of stragglers arriving late to class. A couple of students checking out of class to rush to the restroom. None of them doing anything remotely resembling planting a bomb or preparing for a rampage shooting.