Hard Return

by J. Carson Black

  Jolie was qualified as an expert with the shotgun.

  A guy holding two big bags of money bulled his way out of the hole in the wall like a linebacker, dragging the bags along the sidewalk. Another figure dressed in black was bashing the ATM with a sledgehammer and trying to pull it from its moorings.

  The man dragging the two bags dropped them to the pavement and opened fire. Jolie took cover behind the engine block of her car. Even as she shot, she was formulating her explanation during the officer-involved-shooting hearing. She hit him square in the chest and he staggered back, bent forward, caught his breath, and put his hand on the trigger.

  He was wearing body armor.

  Shoot for the head.

  He walked in her direction, spraying bullets. Jolie realized this was very likely going to be her last day. But she also knew she didn’t have to be perfect—not with a twelve-gauge shotgun. Head-shot-head-shot-head-shot. She took her time and squeezed off another shot.

  It caught him under the chin of his balaclava. He seemed to take a little skip, almost a pirouette, kind of whimsical, chin tipping up, and with a blurt of automatic fire from his AK-47, he collapsed to the sidewalk—dead.

  At least she thought he was dead.

  Somebody was in the silver Mazda, the getaway car. He was nervous—she could see him change gears and angle out past a car parked along the curb, and the car almost died. Jolie shouted, “Police! Freeze! Get out of the car and do it now!”

  Abruptly, the car slewed in an arc in reverse, coming straight at her and on a direct trajectory with a man running across the street. She held her ground and shot through the back window.

  The car skewed sideways, missing the man by inches, then abruptly stopped accelerating and drifted.

  Pretty sure she hit him. She’d killed two people in a matter of seconds.

  She pictured her explanation during the officer-involved-shooting hearing—her mind running on two tracks.

  How many more were there?

  Three more people poured out of the hole in the side of the bank like insects. Two were well dressed and panicked; the other had an automatic weapon and he was using it. The shooter held one of the hostages by the arm and used her as a shield. He tripped on the curb and the woman stumbled, too, sitting down hard. The shooter managed to keep his feet but now he had no shield. He aimed at Jolie.

  Jolie had a good shot and she took it.

  Twelve-gauge shotgun.

  The guy collapsed in a heap.

  Were there more inside the bank? Was someone holed up in there with a hostage?

  She heard sirens, the big roaring engines of police cars—pedal to the metal. Brakes screaming, car doors flinging open. Shouting, “Police!”

  But it turned out there was no one to shout to. All three of the robbers were dead.

  Jolie’s first thought was: Now I’m in trouble.

  CHAPTER 10

  Luke Brodsky, 17: Luke was a free spirit who marched to his own drummer. His favorite song was Daft Punk’s “Get Lucky.” He was good at math, loved his little brother Chad and his girlfriend Kristal, but his passion was skateboarding. Some of his stunts defied gravity. Earlier this year, he placed in the Central Valley AM JAM in Riverbank (16–17 years of age) and planned to go on to the second leg of the competition. Luke was a hero who pushed Kristal under her car and covered her with his body. —“In Memoriam,” Special Section, the Los Angeles Times

  Landry sat at the desk by the window in his Las Vegas hotel room and looked up from his computer at the blue sky. Cars honked and he heard a bus slowing and stopping. One car’s thudding bass cut through the thin glass to reside in his gut. Eight dead. Six boys and two girls:

  Hunter Tomey

  Mike Morales

  Noah Cochran

  Danielle Perez

  James Schaffer

  Devin Patel

  Taylor Brennan

  Luke Brodsky

  Luke Brodsky.

  A good kid.

  For now, Landry set aside the eleven wounded. He could always add them back in later, if need be. But he didn’t think he would.

  The shooter was a pro. Landry had read between the lines. No ID. No credit cards. Apparently no fingerprint matches. A Chevy Tahoe that had been wiped down. The SA didn’t say, but Landry guessed the Tahoe was stolen. Or it could be that they had that information but were not releasing it. The shooter was in his late twenties, older than your average angry young male, and apparently in excellent condition. His teeth matched no dental charts. He had no Social, he had no driver’s license, he had no credit cards.

  Unless the SA had been lying. But Landry doubted that. Why would he?

  Even before their meeting of the minds over Montana and fishing, Keller’s first instinct would be to lessen the intrigue, not expand on it. His instinct would be to pretend the shooter was an average guy who’d “just snapped.”

  The “just snapped” theory was all over cable television. It was one of the few things they could say, because they had no real information. The TV pundits and cable hosts and experts had plenty of time to fill and very little to fill it with, except the shock, the horror, the stories of the dead and wounded. These Landry listened to, recorded, and made notations on. He wrote down every piece of information on the kids, including Kristal.

  Cindi had managed to keep Kristal from being interviewed; all the cameras got of their townhome in Torrent Valley was the entryway—tan stucco alcove, wooden door, the potted palm that always looked half-dead, and the concrete driveway. They were free to film that all they wanted, but a Navy SEAL’s wife knew better than to respond. She knew how to keep her silence, knew how not to engage.

  His wife had always been a good soldier.

  School was closed for the week at least. Cleanup of the parking lot was already under way. Landry had seen that parking lot probably twenty times on the cable channel shows and the nightly news. The blood-blotched asphalt, books and backpacks and other detritus lying on the ground, crime scene tape. The elm tree near the football field was festooned with streamers for “The Eight.” At its base was a shrine to the victims—teddy bears and candles and balloons. Just like every other massacre. Everything went the way it was expected to go. No surprises.

  Except for the coverage.

  Still, nothing on the shooter.

  They couldn’t identify him. In addition to that, the FBI wanted to keep the fact that he was a pro to themselves. Landry understood that. Why tip your hand?

  But it didn’t help him. All he had were the names of the kids. He knew that the shooter was a cipher and a pro, and he knew where to look for him. Where to look for his kind. But he had plenty of questions.

  Someone hired the shooter to kill students at random for some reason—just another school shooting. Which didn’t make sense. The people who shot up theaters and gatherings and schools wanted attention. They wanted the hands-on experience of killing people, because generally they were disturbed, angry individuals. They wouldn’t want someone else to do it for them.

  So why hire it done?

  To make it look like a massacre. To target one kid?

  One of the eight. One among many.

  Landry saw it like this. The school shooter would come in, make sure of his target, and shoot additional victims as cover. Because he was good—a trained, hired gun—he would have an escape plan. By the time the police arrived he would be gone. Problem solved.

  But he didn’t figure on Landry. He didn’t figure on another professional across the street, across four lanes of traffic. He didn’t figure that that professional would have a sniper rifle and was an expert marksman. He didn’t figure that his life would be over even before he hit the ground.

  Landry ran the tape of the shooting back through his mind.

  When did he first notice the man? Did he see him first? Or hear
him first?

  He closed his eyes. Shut out the muted traffic noise coming through the window. Sent himself back to the parking lot.

  He had been in countless firefights. Time always slowed. He saw it now, as if he were watching a television show. A threat here, a potential threat there. The moment the shooting started, he had clicked into combat mode.

  He replayed the scene. Kristal and Luke walking to the car. Luke’s arm around her shoulder, the two of them bumping hips as they moved. She was thumbing her phone. He was speaking into her ear as if he were telling her a secret. They stopped by the driver’s side of the car and made out. She reached down for his crotch . . .

  The other kids were walking out, too, at various rates of speed. Some peeling off to go to their cars. Some stopping to talk. Landry had zeroed in on Kristal and her boyfriend. He had concentrated on them. He didn’t like the intimate way they moved against each other.

  The background was filled with other kids. They were superfluous to him. But now he had to focus on them. He rummaged through his memory.

  One kid had called out to another. No—he’d whistled. Loud and harsh. Boys and girls walked down the patch of asphalt, breaking up to go to their cars. A car backed up and stopped as a knot of kids funneled past, then completed the arc backward. Changed gears, turned the wheels, and drove out. Music blaring; loud woofer thumps.

  The car was cruising to the exit when Landry first heard the sound of automatic gunfire, coming in bursts. It sounded like Iraq. Like Afghanistan.

  A kid slumped to the asphalt. Bullets ripping through him, kicking up the asphalt.

  The man in black walking through, coming from the direction of the entrance-slash-exit to the parking lot. He may have walked in through the gap where the kids could reach the sidewalk, or the open gate where the cars went through. Landry could see him in his mind’s eye, sauntering down between the two rows of cars, waving his rifle back and forth, aiming sometimes and other times just mowing them down indiscriminately. Bursts of automatic fire.

  Landry missed seeing it all. He estimated it had taken him a minute and ten seconds to assemble the rifle, and twenty seconds to assess the situation with the flap in the van door, push open one of the doors, and acquire the target.

  He did see Luke pushing Kristal under the car.

  But before that . . .

  A memory.

  The shooter had been aiming at a kid near the row of cars opposite Kristal’s car. Stepping toward that kid. Definitely aiming. Which could mean nothing, or it could mean everything. He’d shot the kid. Then he’d come back in the direction of Luke and Kristal.

  Hitting Luke.

  The next second, he turned slightly away, still shooting, and Landry put him down.

  So Landry had possible targets.

  The first kid, and the other kid near the car opposite Kristal’s car. And Luke.

  Three kids. It could be the shooter had intentionally gone after three kids. It was possible that Luke was one of them.

  Another thought shouldered its way into his skull.

  Maybe the shooter wasn’t aiming at Luke.

  Maybe Luke was just in the way.

  It could be he was aiming at Kristal.

  Landry punched in a number he almost never used. It was a secure number he’d set up two months ago, replacing five other numbers he’d used over the span of three years. He waited for the beep and left a message. The message was simple. “Hey, bro, how you doing? Give me a call when you get the chance.”

  Ten minutes later his brother Gary called back. Landry said, “Speak.”

  “It was you, right?”

  “I’m throwing this phone as soon as we’re done,” Landry said. “You know the drill. Speak.”

  “This was because of you. Am I right? Were you the one who killed him?”

  “Progress report?”

  “What do you expect? They’re shattered. Don’t tell me this is just a coincidence.”

  “There’s a fifty-fifty possibility that it was a coincidence.”

  “But you were there, right? You should have acted faster.”

  Landry said nothing. In truth he did blame himself. His motto was “Be prepared,” but he’d cut the wrong corner this time. He should have lined the van up to make sure the trajectory was right—just in case—but he’d eyeballed it instead. The flap in the van was too narrow to account for error. If he’d taken the time to do it right, if he had set a pen down on the pavement and lined it up with the pepper tree where Kristal usually parked, if he had marked the trajectory and lined the van up with the chalk line on the pavement, he wouldn’t have had to take the extra fifteen seconds to decide on Plan B, to open the back doors of the van and move the sandbags to set up.

  Gary said, “You do know about Cindi?”

  “What about Cindi?”

  “Her fiancé.”

  “Fiancé?”

  “Yeah, fiancé. Todd Barclay. He’s a comptroller for a finance company.”

  That was a blow to the gut. “The guy she was seeing? I thought that was more of a friendship.”

  Landry had seen Barclay once, from a distance. Balding, skinny with a paunch. White as a grub. Madras shorts and a limp T-shirt, boat shoes. If it was the eighties he’d be called a yuppie. They hadn’t seemed to be anything special to each other. He’d thought that maybe the guy lived in the neighborhood, or maybe had a kid Kristal’s age. He couldn’t imagine a weakling like that would interest Cindi. But now it was clear he hadn’t read between the lines. It was hard to get a good read on a situation, looking through high-powered binocs.

  Cindi was the love of his life. His best friend—and for a man like him, that was a big deal. In the back of his mind he had planned for their reunion. He had always planned on reuniting with his family.

  “It’s been almost three years,” Landry’s brother said.

  Your fault. That was what Gary was saying. But Landry knew that Cindi wouldn’t take a soft-looking comptroller over the husband she had lived with for eighteen years. They loved each other; there was no doubt about that. She just hadn’t been given the choice—yet. “What about the boy, Luke?”

  “Kristal is all torn up—why wouldn’t she be? The body hasn’t been released yet, so they can’t even plan the funeral.”

  Landry said, “That kid’s a hero.”

  “A lot of comfort that is.”

  Gary, his little brother, the one who always looked up to him, the only person on earth Landry trusted with his whereabouts—the only person who knew of his existence—was judging him. Landry almost said something, but his other motto was “Never apologize, never explain.” Their mother had drummed that into them at an early age.

  Gary said, “Who is that guy? Is this because of you? Because—”

  “It has nothing to do with me.”

  “You’re sure?”

  Landry wasn’t, so he changed the subject. “I want you to hire a bodyguard. You have the money.”

  “How do I—”

  “Not any guard. I’ll give you a list of names.” He rattled off three, and made sure that Gary was taking it down. “Tell whichever one you talk to he has to take the job. In my memory.”

  “In your memory,” Gary repeated. He sounded like he was eating an unpalatable vegetable.

  “Make sure you do it now.”

  “I’m on it.”

  Landry checked his watch. He had been on too long. “I have to go. Call you later.”

  He disconnected.

  CHAPTER 11

  Hunter Tomey, 17: Hunter was a star on the field, a wide receiver for the Tuttle Tigers. He received a football scholarship at UCLA, where he was accepted into the premed program. Hunter leaves behind a brother, James, 14, and a sister, Tanya, 13. Hunter was an honor student and Student Body President. His girlfriend, Alexis Borowic, says, “
He was always considerate of people. It didn’t matter who you were, a football player or a freshman. He made me a better person just being around him. —“In Memoriam,” Special Section, the Los Angeles Times

  Landry checked out of the Xanadu, turned the Mercury Marquis in at the rental car company, and walked five blocks to a used car lot where he bought a 2012 Ford Explorer with tinted windows, using another one of his names, Perry Groves. The Ford Explorer was a popular product—there were millions of them on the road. The vehicle was dark gray, a common color. On the way out of Vegas, he picked up his parcel from the post office—his sniper rifle, Betsy. He was on the road out of Vegas by three p.m.

  He stopped to eat dinner at a HomeTown Buffet in Victorville. Victorville was not far from Apple Valley, the home of Roy Rogers. Landry was a little young for Roy Rogers, but he’d seen a few reruns of the television show on their small TV in their trailer at the racetrack. He knew that Roy had his beloved palomino, Trigger, stuffed and mounted. Landry tried to picture what that would be like, but couldn’t. It seemed ghoulish to him. If Roy loved Trigger so much that he wanted to keep a stuffed version of him around, what about his wife, Dale? Would he do the same to her?

  It was a moot point. Dale outlived Roy. But the thought was macabre enough that it kept him occupied. Had he ever loved someone enough that he couldn’t bear to be parted from them even after death? Was there anyone he’d want to have stuffed so he could touch them or just look at them?

  Dead was dead. You couldn’t bring a person back, no matter how much you wanted to.

  He asked the waitress at the HomeTown Buffet about the Roy Rogers Museum.

  “It’s closed. They packed it up—lock, stock, and barrel.”

  “Where’d they move it to?”

  She brushed a lock of blond hair from her sweating brow. “I have no idea. They probably put everything in trunks and left ’em in a storage shed somewhere.”

  She didn’t seem too put out by the fact.