by Ninie Hammon
“Well, attention K-Mart shoppers…” he muttered softly.
He felt his arms pebble with gooseflesh and found that for a few moments he could only draw quick shallow breaths. Except for the sudden jarring of his pounding heart, he sat as frozen as Mount Rushmore. Just staring at it. He didn’t touch it, of course. This was evidence. But he did slip his cell phone out of his pocket and take a picture of it.
Harrison was standing in the shade of the oak tree, smoking a cigarette and talking on his cell phone, and Jack went back to his cruiser to sit. That would be his job for the next—who knows how long?—until the forensics guys showed up or someone was dispatched to relieve him. Somebody had to make sure no one set foot in that house, and that nothing that could be evidence was tampered with. He was that somebody.
He scooted the seat back and leaned his head on the headrest, and as soon as he stopped moving, post-adrenaline-high exhaustion washed over him. The public attributed the brevity of most hostage situations to the skill of the negotiation team, and those guys were top notch. But they had human anatomy working for them, too. The body was not designed to remain in intense fight-or-flight mode for more than a few minutes. Adrenaline fatigue—not lack of sleep or exertion—was what hammered soldiers in combat.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone, clicked on the last picture taken and sat looking at it, shaking his head in wonder.
* * * * * * *
Emily raced into the emergency room, her eyes wild, then saw Daniel and fell sobbing into his arms. When she did, a door somewhere in his soul slammed shut.
He couldn’t hold onto both images of his wife at the same time, two different realities.
Emily—his best friend, his wife, his lover and Andi’s mother.
And Emily committing adultery with Jeff Kendrick.
The two were mutually exclusive, and if he tried to embrace both of them at once, it would rip him apart at his core. So he put the unthinkable into a solid wood box, set it on a mental shelf in an empty room in his mind, then walked away and left it there, slammed the door behind him. Oh, sure, the corrosive evil inside that box would eat through the walls eventually. He knew that. One day, the reeking corruption would ooze out from under the door and begin to eat away at the rest of his mind. He’d deal with that when the time came.
Right now, he cradled his hysterical wife in his arms, smoothed her hair back out of her face and whispered, “shhh, Honey, shhh” as the two of them rocked back and forth.
She pulled back out of his arms and some part of him noted that her makeup hadn’t smeared. How could she cry like that and still look so beautiful?
“Where is she, Dan? I want to see her.” Her voice was garbled by her hiccupping sobs.
“You can’t. They—”
“I’m her mother and I want to see my little girl!” Emily’s eyes were wild, darting around like a frightened rabbit looking for some place to run. She was only barely holding onto her emotions enough to speak.
“You can’t—”
“You make them let me see my baby! Dan, please, only for a minute, a few seconds, I—”
“She’s in surgery, Em.”
Emily sagged, like she might fall, but didn’t.
“How long?”
“They didn’t say. We have to wait.”
Emily fell back into his arms, her sobbing less intense, more mournful. Then she pulled away to look at him as if a thought had just occurred to her.
“Did you see her? Before they took her into surgery, did you—?”
“I was at the school and Ben, you know the Ben who…he’s a paramedic and he let me ride in the helicopter—”
“How was she? Did you talk to her? What did she say?”
So much blood. He didn’t look down but he knew if he did he would see it there—Andi’s blood, maybe even still wet on his shoe.
“She was unconscious, but they only kept her in a treatment room for a little while, then wheeled her right into surgery, didn’t…whatever’s injured, they got to it quick.” He knew that was lame, but it was all he could think to say.
He could feel Emily trembling—so small, petite and fragile, her whole body was vibrating beneath his hands. They were standing together in the doorway of the surgery waiting room. He could hear voices, a crowd, in the emergency room waiting area down the hall, see hospital security staff standing at the door between it and the hallway, keeping people inside.
His congregation, of course. In a church of almost twenty-five thousand, hundreds of people would come running as soon as they heard. He knew they were jammed together in that waiting room. He could picture them standing in small groups, holding hands and praying.
Daniel hadn’t prayed. Hadn’t even occurred to him to pray. An errant synapse fired a thought about a sermon he’d preached once on how prayer should be a first response, not a last resort.
Yes. He needed to pray. He should do that.
Emily was crying more softly now and he held her tighter. His mind was jammed with a thousand thoughts and as empty as a dusty sarcophagus. Then the double doors, the doors, the ones Andi had disappeared into—how long ago?—pushed outward and a man stepped through them. His mask dangled on his chest by the strings tied behind his neck. He spotted them immediately and crossed the hallway to them.
“Mr. and Mrs—” He spotted Daniel’s clerical collar. “Reverend and Mrs. Burke? Miranda Burke’s parents?”
Daniel didn’t like the way he said that, something about the way he said that.
“Yes,” Emily cried. “I’m her mother. How is she? When can we see her?”
“She’s in the recovery room and I’ll let you go back to see her in a few minutes...”
Daniel sensed a horrible, unthinkable but coming and the doors to a thousand fears flew open in his mind.
“But her condition…she’s stable right now, though her injuries were extensive.” Then he launched into unintelligible doctor-speak, using terms Daniel didn’t understand, syllables strung together that somehow managed to sound like crackling flames.
“Speak English,” Daniel cried. “Just tell us she’s going to be all right.”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that, Reverend Burke. There was no way to repair the damage the bullet did. We did the best we could to stop the internal bleeding…temporarily. But your daughter’s organs will start to fail soon—a few hours, maybe. She’s in a coma and I don’t expect she’ll regain consciousness.”
Someone said “…a few hours…?” Maybe it was Daniel.
“She won’t live through the night. I’m sorry.”
Emily stopped crying so abruptly it was like the sound had suddenly been switched off a noisy television set. She gasped, or maybe Daniel did. He couldn’t tell which. His knees felt boneless and rubbery.
“I’ll take you back now so you can see her. We’ll keep everyone away, give you some privacy…to tell your little girl goodbye.”
CHAPTER 9
Didn’t nobody have to tell her. The knowing of it had been coming on her slowly and powerfully for a right smart while before Theresa saw Mary Waznuski’s face and soon’s she did, she knew for sure.
From her position behind the school, she and the children had listened to gunfire as crowds grew around them. The police had blocked off traffic somehow, but folks on foot was streaming down the street, far as they could go before officers forced them back. They was all kind of people, some merely folks driving by the barricades got out to see what was going on, folks lived near the school, frantic parents, grandparents, relatives. News travels fast in a town the size of Harrelton.
There was this one lady in particular, only a gawker, you could tell, and she was going on and on about how she’d heard they was a hundred kids dead, bodies laying everywhere, and was about to expound on what all them bodies looked like before Theresa elbowed her in the ribs.
“You’ll want to hush up about all that stuff now,” she said, using her chin to point out the wide-eyed trib
e of children she’d gathered up at the crossing. “No need you scarin’ them kids more’n they already is.”
But there was nothing to be done about the sincere parents, terrified and hysterical. They was gone do whatever they was gone do and wasn’t no good trying to keep them from upsetting the small tribe of children bunched up around her.
When the tall blond boy come back, he climbed a tree next to them and provided a blow-by-blow of the flurry of activity outside the third window from the end in the north hallway—that’d be Miss Lund’s room, but Theresa didn’t tell the children that for fear they knew somebody personal who was in that class.
The mama of the little red-haired girl who’d tried to lead an insurrection against the crossing guard an hour— a lifetime?—ago come running, looking wild-eyed and crazy, didn’t even see the youngster ’til she yelled, “Mommy!”
Then that poor woman fell all over the child, hugging her and kissing her, then holding her out so she could look in her face ’fore she crushed her back against her chest again. Didn’t none of Theresa’s tribe of children get unmanageable upset ’til then. Seein’ that put them in mind of their own parents, probably somewhere in the crowds encircling the school, looking for them, scared as this lady. And suddenly they realized how much they wanted they mommies and daddies, too, to hug them like this little girl’s mother and be tearfully grateful they wasn’t lying shot in the school.
They become a handful then, all wantin’ to go find their parents, the shock beginning to wear off so the scared could start leaking out of they little bodies in tears and hysterics. She held onto them all, though, ’til they started letting the other children out of the school building. Then she drew herself up tall in her crossing guard uniform and made her way through the crowd so she could set these younguns free with the others.
Police let her bring the children to the ever-growing crowd of escapees from the school and hand them off to teachers and officers who could match them up with their parents waiting wild-eyed in the crowd.
That’s when Theresa seen Mary Waznuski, the teacher’s aide from Miss Lund’s room. They was trying to rush her off to an ambulance, but the reporters were on her like sticky on taffy, shoving microphones in her face. She stood her ground then, make them quit shoving her toward the ambulance so’s she could tell the press what a hero that police officer was who come diving into the room and killed that monster right as he was about to start shooting children.
“He wasn’t the only hero, though,” she said. “If it hadn’t been—”
Then she seen Theresa and stopped. Didn’t say nothing else, merely looked at her. Seemed like she was about to cry, but Theresa couldn’t tell for sure with the world suddenly swimming in her own tears.
Theresa turned and walked away through the frantic/relieved/sobbing crowd, wasn’t going anywhere in particular ’cause there wasn’t nowhere to go. Found herself sitting on the merry-go-round, kind of swayin’ it back and forth.
He was gone then. Bishop was dead. He’d been in one of the two black bags they’d hauled out of the building on stretchers. She didn’t have to hear Mary Waznuski say it to know he’d died for them kids, give his life for ’em. And that was good, real good.
’Cept her Bishop was gone.
She put her face in her hands and tried to cry, like you want to throw up when you’s nauseated cause even though that’s awful, it feels better for a little while after. Gives you some relief. But Theresa’s hurt was too big right now to ’low her solace as simple and freeing as tears.
Some folks found her there later, the principal, Mrs. Maxwell, and a real kind policeman named Crocker. But she’d done crawled down inside herself by then, like a old, sick dog goes to find somewhere warm and quiet all by hisself to get well. Or to die.
* * * * * * *
Jack wasn’t at all sure what he was doing here. Maybe he shouldn’t have come. No, strike that, he definitely shouldn’t have come. He ought to go home.
He sat for a few more moments where he’d parked his cruiser in the lot of Jefferson Memorial Hospital. Then resolutely got out and walked toward the emergency entrance.
Fifty or sixty people were milling around, talking quietly among themselves outside the emergency room door and he soon realized that was because they couldn’t get into the building. The hallway beyond the door was packed, and so, presumably, was the emergency room waiting area which would be as far as any of these people would be allowed to go.
The little girl’s father was a minister. That’s what the captain had told him when Jack returned to the station after he handed off the shooter’s carriage-house residence to the forensics team. Said he was the pastor of that huge church on Market Street, the Hopeful Voice Church, or something like that. From the street, the building looked more like a sports arena than a church.
Most of his fellow officers were still at the school, probably would be for the rest of the night, keeping it cordoned off while the guys from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms went over it with magnifying glasses and tweezers. Jack was glad of that, didn’t want to make a scene putting his shield and gun on the major’s desk. He tried to get out of the building as fast as he could, but it wasn’t fast enough to avoid the sympathetic looks of the two secretaries, or the dispatcher’s murmured, “Sorry, Jack. It wasn’t your fault.” Of course, it was his fault. He pulled the trigger. He shot a kid!
Neither of the secretaries knew the child’s condition, said it hadn’t been released yet.
And he also wasn’t fast enough to avoid some huge, white news van that looked like a sperm whale in a fish tank sitting in the small parking lot beside the station. They were on him the second he stepped outside and was recognized, but he plowed through them, tossing out, “you need to direct that question to the captain,” and “I’m not allowed to talk about that now,” and “I can’t comment on an ongoing investigation,” like scattering feed to chickens as he made his way to his cruiser.
Mary Waznuski had made him a hero. He wouldn’t be one long, though, when the press found out that it was he—not the wild-eyed lunatic—who had shot the little girl. You shoot a civilian, let alone a child, and the press ate you alive. Cost of doing business. But the captain had not released that tidbit of information in his brief statement, and wouldn’t until ballistics confirmed that the bullet in the little girl had come from Jack’s gun.
The crowd in the hospital corridor parted for Jack like he was Moses with a staff as he made his way toward the emergency room door. He heard murmured “That’s him,” and “he’s the one who shot the guy,” but these people were too polite to fawn on him. He was sure nobody noticed he wore no badge on his uniform and carried no weapon. He made his way down the hallway the same way, with the sea of people parting in front of him.
When he reached the hospital security guards, they assumed he was there on official business and let him through wordlessly. He approached the nurse’s desk and had already decided he’d throw his official weight around if he had to in order to find out what he wanted to know.
“I’m Harrelton Police Sergeant Jack Carpenter and I’m here to check on the condition of Miranda Burke, the child who—”
“I’m sorry, but I’m not allowed to give out that information.”
Jack drew himself up to his full six feet four inches and spoke in a quiet, controlled voice. “Ma’am. That wasn’t a request. I’m investigating a school shooting. I’d like to speak to your supervisor.”
That rattled her.
“There’s another nurse’s station in the surgery wing where they operated on her,” she said, and pointed down the hallway to the left. “I’m not sure what they can tell you either, but…”
…but she was happy to pass the buck off to somebody else.
Jack went down the hallway the direction she pointed, then turned down another hall. And another. In minutes, he was hopelessly lost in the rabbit warren of hospital corridors. Personnel, doctors, orderlies hurried past him. Given directio
ns by an orderly that sent him to the boiler room and a candy striper that sent him to the cafeteria, he reached out and grabbed the next person who passed, a lab technician obviously late for something vitally important, like everybody else in the hall seemed to be.
“I’m here about Miranda Burke, the little girl who was shot,” he said, “and I need you to take me to someone who can tell me her condition.”
“Your best bet’d be somebody in surgery.” The young man pointed to double doors that opened off the end of the hallway below a sign: Recovery Room. “If anybody can tell you anything, it’d be them.”
Jack pushed on one of the double doors and stepped into a quiet hallway. Unlike the busy thoroughfare behind him, it was deserted, but he could hear voices from a room on the right. There was no door on the room, only a separating curtain, and it was pulled back. He walked quietly to the doorway and saw a couple inside, talking to a child, a little girl lying on a bed, hooked up to monitors and IV lines. Then he saw the man’s clerical collar. These were the Burkes. And Miranda.
He knew then he had to say something. He had to tell them he was sorry.
* * * *
Daniel stood on one side of the bed holding Andi’s left hand, Emily on the other side held her right. His eyes gobbled the child whole, looked at her with such intensity the very force of his gaze alone would keep her here, would not let her slip away from them. But he could hear the monitors, the beeps slower and slower.
NO!
Emily was singing her a lullaby, stroking her hair back out of her face, kissing her cheek every few words, but Daniel couldn’t force a sound out his parched throat. Images of the child flew through his mind in a whirlwind, too fast to really see any of them, like trying to examine the details of a single bird when a whole flock of them suddenly takes flight. In her pink newborn cap. Her hands buried up to the elbows in her first birthday cake. Snow angels. The warmth of her in his arms when he read her a bedtime story. The smell of her shampooed hair. The soft wetness of her kisses.
