Hard Return

by J. Carson Black

  Of course not. The FBI would hold that piece of information back. Knowledge was power, and knowledge that other people didn’t have was more power.

  A lot was made about his body armor and helmet. He fit right in with the last few (cowardly) mass shooters, and this seemed to please the cable-channel talking heads to no end. It allowed them to be their own experts.

  They had official experts, too. Plenty of them. Some were good (although the information they had was sketchy and they couldn’t reveal much due to the ongoing nature of the investigation), and others were just spouting hot air. There was endless speculation, punctuated by more photos of the parking lot now that it was night, traffic cones, cops in fluorescent green vests, flares, and crime scene tape. Very dramatic. Finally, the sheriff of Los Angeles County held a press conference. He appeared grave and used plenty of words but no specifics.

  The coverage continued on in an endless loop, interviews on the street with bystanders and teachers and the school principal and parents whose kids were still alive, and solemn dirge music taking them into commercial breaks.

  Landry lay on the bed, still in his shorts and shirt, bathed in the blue light of the television, and that was how he fell asleep.

  The next morning was the same—no progress at all.

  He went down to the coffee shop for a cheap breakfast. He knew where the cameras were likely to be and avoided them. He wore his new tarpon shirt, the ponytail, the wire-rimmed glasses. They didn’t call it a coffee shop these days, although that was what it was. It was called the Amazon Room. The food was good, though. The link sausages were especially good, and he ordered an extra helping.

  By midafternoon there were names. Luke Brodsky was one of eight dead: six boys and two girls. Landry divided his time between the television and the Internet. The aggregate site The Huffington Post seemed to have the latest. But the latest was just more of the same—except for the names of the kids who were killed.

  Nothing on the gunman, except for speculation.

  He was referred to as a “school shooter,” and the news channel hosts, with nothing better to do, started jumping to conclusions. They talked to psychiatrists to fill up time. The shooter’s age went from twenty-two to eighteen to “unknown.” By now the authorities would know exactly how old he was and who he was and probably what his parents did for a living and where he went wrong as a child.

  But there was nothing. No age, no description, no name, no reason for his disaffection, no trauma from his childhood, no failed grades in school, no bullying, no abandonment by his parents, no Mensa IQ, no girlfriend who spurned him—nothing. The talking heads didn’t cite statistics, but to Landry’s ears they were thinking of this guy as a typical school shooter. A kid, fifteen to twenty-two, maybe. But even then, they tiptoed up to the edge and didn’t say it outright.

  A full fifteen hours later, the killer was still a cipher.

  When Landry was a kid he read a lot. His life had been nomadic—his family had moved from racetrack to racetrack, from race meet to race meet, and when not doing his chores, he spent a lot of time in the fifth-wheel trailer watching TV and reading. One summer he read every Sherlock Holmes story he could get his hands on.

  One of them was called “Silver Blaze.” He’d liked it because there were horses and dogs in it, and because he liked Sherlock Holmes and wanted to grow up to be like him. In the story, the clue wasn’t something that happened. It was something that didn’t happen: the dog that didn’t bark in the nighttime.

  Watching the news, Landry reflected that this shooting was becoming a lot like a dog that didn’t bark in the nighttime.

  The kids who had been killed had been identified. The kids who had been wounded, too. There was even an animated re-creation of the shooting. How the shooter proceeded through the parking lot, whom he shot. Lots of trajectories.

  The instant hero, Brendan Hillhouse, had been dropped from the story.

  Some of the talking heads began to speculate about the shooter. He was dead, right? But they didn’t go beyond saying the investigation was continuing and they were certain the shooter would soon be identified.

  Except he wasn’t.

  They covered it well, but Landry knew the experts were confused. You could see it on their faces, in the hesitation in their voices: they were playing for time. Landry could see the thought bubbles over their heads: They had the killer, right? He was lying on a slab in the morgue. Why couldn’t the authorities give him a name?

  It was obvious to Landry that the talking heads on television had never run into this before. There had always been an answer, even if it was slow in coming. Yet this time, there was nothing. No name. No description. No stats. No update on that part of the investigation at all.

  Other stories—an aviation mishap in Brazil, a terrorist act in Mumbai, a disgraced congressman resigning from office—started to take over.

  Landry knew what that meant.

  Somebody had shut them down.

  CHAPTER 6

  Landry kept the “Do Not Disturb” sign on his door. He ordered room service for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and stayed inside the room with the TV turned to one of the news channels, reading about the shooting on the Internet, and compiling his list of the dead and wounded.

  In most of these shootings, he knew, there was no rhyme or reason as to who was shot and who escaped injury. Generally, the shooter just wanted to shoot as many people as he could. Who was shot depended on a number of factors. The victims closest to the shooter were the easiest targets. If someone tried to run, that might catch his attention and he would shoot them. Or maybe he’d seek out the ones who tried to hide. The point was to kill as many people as possible. As to how the shooter accomplished his goal: no telling what was in his mind. No predicting what he would do.

  Mostly, though, they picked a place and just shot at what was in front of them.

  From what Landry himself had observed, the guy decided to walk through the parking lot spraying kids with bullets.

  Eight high school kids died in the shooting. Their names had just now been released. There was a secondary list somewhere—the eleven who were wounded—but that list had not been disclosed and might never be.

  All but one of the wounded had been released from the hospital as of today. The last boy was in critical condition; it was possible he wouldn’t make it. In which case Landry would have to adjust his list to ten.

  Landry got off the chair and went to the window. He looked down at the Strip below. The sun on the pavement, the cars, the tourists, the palm trees, the endless line of high-rises. Suddenly, his lunch threatened to come up.

  He was bombarded with images of his daughter. The moment he first saw her as a baby, blue eyes staring up at him from that puny, solemn face. Riding the trike they bought her for her third birthday. The poster she’d painted in first grade. All the way up to the teenager who worshipped celebrities like Brienne Cross, the teenager who was sullen and embarrassed to be seen with her parents and yet still looked to them for security and sometimes validation. She had snippy friends who dressed like whores and boyfriends who ran the gamut from clueless to lecherous, and of course she had her iPhone.

  Landry had observed that half the time Kristal and Luke walked out to their cars, they were going at it not with each other, but on their phones.

  It was in the fall that she hooked up with Luke. The boy who might or might not have already slept with her but who had definitely saved her life.

  And Landry had killed the man who’d killed Luke.

  It had felt good at the time, but now he wished he hadn’t.

  It had been a split-second decision. He’d chosen the head shot—and that was on him. If he’d shot center mass, he would have gotten the same result: the guy would have gone down. The bullet would have stopped him instantly. Even with the body armor, the impact would have dropped him.

 
; No telling when the shooter would be able to get up again, but Landry guessed it wouldn’t have been in time to evade the cops. They would have got him. They would have been able to interrogate him and get answers.

  But Landry had chosen to kill him instead. He’d done it because while the cops probably would be there within two to three minutes, it wasn’t a done deal.

  If they had been delayed, the guy would have started shooting again. And the person closest to him, the person right in the line of fire, had been Kristal.

  CHAPTER 7

  Barbara Carey walked along the side of the two-lane highway, the night air cool on her bare arms and face. The road stretched out before her toward the horizon, black against the indigo night sky.

  A halo of light flared briefly on the horizon and disappeared.

  A car’s headlights.

  She was not far from the farm and had no idea why she was walking along the highway, which traversed the low hills near Santa Ysabel.

  Another flare, and her heart throttled up like a racing engine. The light was closer, and this time she saw two pinpoints. Headlights.

  She looked around. No place to hide. Moonlight spotlighted her. There were pastures but few trees, and the outbuildings of the nearest ranch were at least a mile away.

  The car topped another hill, the headlights pinning her in place—

  And she awoke with a gasp.

  Her heart thumping hard.

  She turned on the light. Looked at the bed she had up until yesterday shared with Joe Till.

  She’d watched the news yesterday evening and well into the night.

  A massacre at Gordon C. Tuttle High—nineteen kids shot.

  She knew it was Joe Till.

  He’d never given her any indication of violence up until yesterday. Yesterday morning, when he’d refused to go to Santa Anita, when he ran his finger along her jaw, he’d frightened her. That was when she got the image of the headlights in the dark. An image so strong, she knew she was in danger.

  She’d known there was something off about him. Something wrong.

  His strange schedule. Five hours in the middle of the day, every weekday. She’d suspected he was on probation, or worse, parole.

  There was that one time—she was so ashamed!—that one time she’d followed him. She had stayed well behind. He’d taken the freeway north, and she’d followed him, until she thought better of it and finally ditched—her other employee had called to say one of the mares had colicked. And so she’d turned back. But by the time she did, she was almost to LA.

  Now she sat up in her empty bed. Half past eight! She’d overslept. She could hear the horses nickering for their breakfast. It was Eddie’s day off. And Joe Till was gone.

  She’d had the dream twice now. The lonely road, the headlights coming.

  That will teach you to read In Cold Blood. She seriously needed to stop reading books like that. And cut out the scary movies, too.

  But she worked with horses. She understood that there was more to the world than just logic. There was instinct. She had saved herself several times from getting trampled or bitten or thrown or kicked, because she respected that sixth sense.

  And now she’d experienced that feeling of doom, the feeling that something evil was on the road. It manifested itself that way, in her dreams. Someone in a car, someone coming for her. To kidnap her? To rape and murder her?

  A friend of hers in middle school had disappeared one day. She’d been walking three short blocks back to her house from a Circle K. They found her body in a field months later. Barb would never forget that. How evil could just come up on you like that.

  She knew that Joe Till went to LA every weekday. She knew whatever it was he did, he kept it secret.

  As attracted as she was to him, as much as she’d hoped he was the one, now the thought of him returning terrified her.

  Barbara had always been intuitive. She’d always known things. And right now she knew that Joe Till had lied to her. She’d mapped it out, how long it took him to go and to come back. Five days a week. Such a strange schedule. It had worked on her, the idea that he needed that large section of time in the middle of every day. She’d worried it like a dog with a bone. Why five days a week?

  He wouldn’t say.

  She had started to fall for him. But something—a sixth sense—had warned her.

  Like yesterday morning—was it only yesterday? When he’d run his fingers along her jaw.

  For one terrifying moment, she’d pictured him choking the life out of her.

  She got out of bed.

  She should tell someone. Maybe it was ridiculous, but she felt the need to tell someone. What if he had been involved in the shooting? And she said nothing! The downside was this, though: who’d believe her? Her brother Ben. He’d been in the armed forces. She knew as sure as the sun rose and set, Joe Till had been in the armed forces, too.

  She texted Ben.

  He didn’t answer.

  She called her other brother, although that was more for moral support than anything else. But Justin didn’t answer, and neither did his wife, Marcella.

  Kind of a relief. Maybe she was blowing this all out of proportion.

  Joe Till was a good horseman. She knew he must have worked with racehorses, because he knew so much. He didn’t talk about what he knew, but she could tell. So on an impulse she called Charlie Baines, who was the guy who manned the horsemen’s gate at Santa Anita.

  “How you doing?” he asked, his usual jovial self.

  “Great. I’m sending up some horses in a few days, just wanted to give you a heads-up.”

  Her heart beating fast.

  “We’ll be looking for them. You need more stalls? Because we can’t—”

  “No, no. Just the ones we already have.” She swallowed. “Everything’s good.” She never was a good liar. “I’m thinking of sending Joe Till.”

  Silence. Then, “Who?”

  “Joe Till? You don’t know him?”

  Her mouth was so dry!

  “Don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure.”

  “Oh.” The air blew out of her sails and suddenly she wanted to get off the phone. “Okay.”

  “You know the rules. He’s gonna have to apply for a license.”

  She nodded, although he couldn’t see her. “I know. Well, I guess we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.” She hung up.

  Joe Till had never been to Santa Anita. He never claimed he had. But she’d been sure that he was avoiding Santa Anita for some reason. Then it came to her:

  Fingerprints.

  He would be licensed if he worked at any racetrack in the state. Any racetrack in the country. He would have been fingerprinted. So maybe he was scared of being found out. Afraid of his criminal past, if there was one.

  He must have a criminal history. That’s how he came to work on her farm for less than minimum wage.

  She turned on the television—wall-to-wall coverage of the school shooting.

  They were showing pictures of the kids who were killed. Describing them. Who they were, what they were interested in, the kind of people they were growing up to be.

  Like Danielle Perez, a cheerleader. But not just a cheerleader. She planned to be a doctor. She was such a pretty girl. She had a mole above her lip, like a beauty mark.

  She had a dog named Tippy.

  Barbara couldn’t believe Joe Till would shoot all those kids. Why would he?

  But then she thought of him lying next to her in bed.

  His fingers trailing over her throat.

  The strength in those fingers, the idea suddenly coming to her that he could snap her neck in a moment. Why would she think that? Why would that even occur to her?

  It should never have occurred to her.

  This was not just her imagination. />
  The way he had run his fingers along her breastbone. The way she tried to picture his face now and couldn’t. Couldn’t get a grip on what he looked like.

  She looked up the mileage between here and Torrent Valley, California.

  Expected to be wrong about it.

  But the mileage only muddied the waters. An hour and fifty minutes up, an hour and fifty minutes back. And some time in between.

  Maybe that was time enough to shoot up the school. Maybe he went there every day because he had an obsession—he planned to kill those kids. That’s what killers did. They planned their crimes, blocked it out the way they wanted it to go. Fantasized.

  Although he didn’t seem like a fantasizer. He was more of a nuts-and-bolts person—straightforward.

  But what did her mother always say? Still waters run deep. Till was gone for around five hours every day of the week. Five days a week. Schools were only open on weekdays. Maybe he watched the high school students leaving school. Why would he do that if he weren’t planning something?

  And yesterday, the day those children were shot?

  He didn’t come home.

  He was gone. As her brother Justin, who had been an MP in the military and was now a cop in civilian life, would say, “He’s in the wind.”

  Only he wasn’t in the wind.

  She knew in her heart he was in a cold-storage locker at the medical examiner’s office.

  Barbara thought about something else: the one time she wanted her groom Mario to take a picture of them together, Joe had said no.

  He didn’t say any of the things that most people would say: “I hate the way I look” or “I just don’t like to have my picture taken.” He said flat out: “Don’t take a picture of me.”

  He was serious when he said it.

  What she’d done next was willful. She’d wanted to share him with her friends. For one thing, she thought that finally she’d met a real man. A man who was gentle, smart, considerate, but still male. She had always been the kind who had gone for boys, really, the kind who seemed to want a boss or a mother figure to tell them what to do. But Joe Till was his own person. He appreciated her, he made her feel good about herself, but he didn’t look to her for his own validation. He didn’t need her . . . permission, for anything. Their relationship (she’d thought) was healthy. Adult. No one was the mommy and no one was the daddy. Respectful.