“Yeah. They’re loading her in the ambulance now. Not sure what I should do. I want to go with her, but feel like I’m needed here.”
“You have to stay,” Kim says in the background. “I’m okay. Really.”
“You probably should go with her after you hear what I have to say.”
“What? What is it?”
“Ace was shot and killed,” I say. “I’m so sorry. I just wanted her to hear it from you instead of a stranger or on TV.”
“Oh, God, no, John,” she says. “Are you sure?”
In the background I can hear Kim saying, “What is it? What happened? Is John all right?”
“I’m very sorry. I know he was your friend too. I’ve got to go. I’ll call and check on you both when I can.”
“Just be careful, John.”
When I end the call, I see that Glenn is having the deputy escort the next class out instead of going with us to the library.
“Ready?” I ask.
Glenn nods and we walk in the opposite direction as the deputy and students, toward the nearest library entrance.
By the time we enter the library through the still-locked door frame, glass crunching under our shoes as we do, SWAT is completing its sweep.
“All clear,” one of the officers says.
“Y’all can come out now,” another adds.
Slowly, the students begin to crawl out from beneath desks and tables, the librarian slowly rising from behind the counter.
“Anyone hurt?” Glenn asks.
One of the SWAT guys emerges from the TV production room with Zach Griffith.
“I didn’t know you were back there, Zach,” the librarian says in surprise. “You were in there the entire time?”
He nods. “Yes, ma’am.”
A student on the far side of the library near a shelf of bullet-riddled books says, “Slow Stevie got shot. He needs help.”
Another student says, “Somebody help Slow Stevie.”
The SWAT leader radios for a deputy and EMTs.
“Anyone else injured?” Glenn asks.
“Mason is,” one of the girls says.
Everyone glances at her and then at Mason Nickols not far from her.
“I’m fine,” he says.
“You’re bleeding,” she says.
“It’s just a scratch.”
The librarian says, “When did you come in here?”
“You’re shot,” the girl says.
“Just as all of it started,” he says. “Y’all were already hiding. I came in to check out a book and just dove under a desk. Didn’t know what else to do.”
I look at Mason closely. He’s wearing all black—pants, shirt, boots. But no duster and no mask.
Two EMTs and a deputy arrive.
As the EMTs examine Stevie and Mason, I motion for the deputy and tell him that Mason is a suspect and to keep a close eye on him.
I then step over to take a closer look at Mason’s wound.
The EMT has cut the sleeve of his shirt and exposed a gunshot wound in the inside of his left arm.
“You’re very lucky,” she says. “Just a few inches over and it would’ve hit your heart.”
“Don’t have one,” he says. “’Sides, a few inches the other way and it wouldn’t’ve hit me at all.”
“When did you get hit?” I ask. “Where were you?”
He shrugs. “Not sure. Either running in here or when I was cowering under the desk with the rest of the cowards.”
“Where is Dakota?” I ask. “Thought y’all were inseparable?”
“You thought wrong. And I don’t know. Not even sure if he came to school today.”
My phone vibrates. I pull it out and see that it’s Anna.
I step away, answer it, ask her to hold for a second, and tell the deputy to stay with Mason and let the doctors know we need detailed notes on his injuries and the slug for ballistics.
“Hey,” I say into the phone.
“You okay? Kids are posting video clips of the shooting all over social media.”
“I’m fine, but we’re still in the middle of it. Can I call you back as soon as we finish evacuating the school and—”
“Of course. Sorry. Just be careful. Come home to us safely tonight.”
“Promise,” I say. “I love you.”
“Love you more,” she says.
Before I can get out my usual response of “Not possible” she is gone.
I remind the SWAT team that in addition to searching for a shooter we’re looking for weapons, discarded clothing, and a mask also, then Glenn and I meet another deputy and two new EMTs in the hallway and head around to the back exit and the massacre I saw there when running toward Derek Burrell.
298
Everyone is looking for someone or something to blame. As long as it’s not them or something they’re in favor of. They like guns, they blame video games or movies or music. They blame bullies and the parents and legal and illegal drugs. They blame the media. They blame their political opponent. But have you ever heard anyone stand up and say we’re all to blame? We’ve all built this country where this happens. All of us. We all contribute to it. And it only happens here.
The blood-splattered carnage of the back hallway exit is even worse than I had been able to take in as I ran by earlier.
Shocking. Horrific. Unsettling. As visually appalling as any scene dreamed up by the most demented of torture porn directors.
Blood-soaked bullet holes pock the walls. Red Rorschach against white cinderblock.
Acoustic ceiling tiles hanging from warped frames.
Bodies on the floor in an expanding pool of blood, its outer edges tacky and dark. Pile of kids partially obscuring the bloody Pottersville Pirate.
After we identify ourselves, we can perceive movement in the pile of what we thought were all dead bodies.
The first person to stand is Dakota Emanuel. Wet blood drips from his right cheek and raised hands. Like Mason and not unlike the shooter, he’s in all black.
“We pretended to be dead,” he says.
“Are you hit?” one of the EMTs asks.
He shakes his head.
Others begin to stand, slowly, hesitantly, like Dakota their hands raised.
I start to ask why their hands are raised and realize I’m pointing my gun in their direction.
I quickly lower it, but not too far in case the shooter is hidden among the bloody bodies.
Eventually, all the bodies but three are upright. Of them, four are wounded, their open gunshot holes contributing to the bloodbath they’ve all just been lying in.
Many within the pitiful group stand before us shaking, crying, whimpering, moaning. All of them, with the possible exception of Dakota, in shock.
Among the three bodies remaining, unmoving, unresponsive on the floor, are two male students—the twin foster kids named Hayden and Hunter Dupree—and Janna Todd, the art teacher and sometime barmaid with the big breasts. All three of them are deceased.
“We tried to get out,” one of the girls not crying says. “But the door was locked.”
“When we turned around the gunman was there. Just started shooting at us.”
“Is the door normally locked?” I ask.
“It’s not locked, it’s zip-tied,” one of the guys in the back says. “Fucker didn’t want any of us escaping.”
“Or anyone coming in to help us.”
“I can’t believe Miss Janna is dead,” a female student says. “And poor Hayden and Hunter, as if their lives weren’t bad enough. I mean, fuck.”
“Where did you come from, Dakota?” the same guy from the back asks.
“You weren’t with them?” I ask.
He gives me a sinister smile without warmth or humor, merely annoyance and mild amusement at being caught.
Shaking his head, he says, “I’m . . . I wasn’t in their class. I came up after it had all happened. I had planned to sneak out of the building, but when I saw the doors were locked, I laid
down with them and pretended to be dead.”
“What class were you in?” I ask. “How’d you get out?”
“Algebra. Ms. Candace. I was running late. Was headed to class when all this shit started.”
“So you really weren’t in class,” I say.
“Not technically, no. I was headed to it. Almost in it. Almost but not quite.”
“Did you see the shooter?” I ask. “Any of you?”
“Just before he shot us,” one of the girls says. “He was like something out of a movie.”
“I never saw him,” Dakota says. “But I heard the hell out of him. Sounded like he has a real big gun. Very impressive the way he was spraying his loads all over the place.”
“We only saw him a second before he started shooting,” one of the large, athletic-looking boys says. “But when I saw him my first thought was it was either Mason or Dakota.”
Dakota laughs. “Guess we shoulda shot you first.”
“That’s not funny,” one of the girls says. “Not in the least bit funny.”
“Chill, man, fuck,” Dakota says. “I’s just playin. I got shot at like the rest of you. Shit, Mason did too. Hell, he got shot.”
“How do you know that?” I ask.
He hesitates. “I . . . I heard him scream as he ran into the library. I just assumed.”
The outspoken girl who told Dakota he wasn’t funny glances down at Janna Todd and the two students. “Can we get away from the . . . dead bodies on the floor? Can we please get out of here?”
“Sorry,” I say. “Of course. Deputy Lancaster is going to escort you out of the building. Stay with him and close together.”
“But you haven’t caught the shooter yet,” Dakota says, his voice full of insincere feeling. “What if he gets us?”
“You’ll be safe,” I say.
“You can’t know that,” he says. “I’m scared.”
“If you’d rather stay here . . .” I say.
“Fuck that.”
“You can stay with me,” I say. “I have more questions for you anyway.”
“I’ll take my chances with the shooter,” he says.
“Then I’ll catch you later,” I say.
“Okay,” Lancaster says. “Let’s go.”
As he begins to lead them away, another deputy runs up from the other direction.
“Sheriff,” he says. “Got something you need to see.”
299
Killing was both easier and more difficult than I thought it would be. And in different ways than I expected.
The deputy leads us over to a set of lockers along the northeast wall.
All around us, the shredded school is busy with activity.
In the wispy, dwindling smoke, deputies are escorting classes out of the building, EMTs are working on and transporting the wounded, and the SWAT team is conducting a thorough, methodical sweep.
There hasn’t been any more gunfire since Derek went down, and only one explosion since then—none in the last several minutes.
The deputy’s name is Markson. He’s young and tall and has skin the color of hot chocolate.
“I was on my way to get the next class,” he is saying, “when I passed this slightly open locker. I could see something hanging out. I’m not sure what I thought it was and I know I probably should’ve just left it for forensics or the bomb squad, but . . . I paused for a minute and looked at all the lockers. Only two in this section don’t have locks on them and those are the only two slightly open with something hanging out of them.”
I study the bank of lockers as he tells his story.
“I know I shouldn’t’ve opened them with all the . . . explosives going off and without gloves on, but . . . I couldn’t help myself. I had to know and . . . look what I found.”
He swings open the first locker door and steps aside for us to see.
A white mask lies atop a pile of black clothes, including gloves and a duster. Behind them an AR-15 style rifle leans against the back corner. In contrast to the attire worn by other school shooters, the black gloves here are not fingerless.
“You were right,” Glenn says. “He’s just walking around looking like any other student right now.”
“Not just one of them,” Markson says, opening the other locker.
The same white mask on the same pile of black clothes, but instead of a rifle this locker holds a handgun—a 9mm Luger.
“There were two,” Glenn says. “And we’ll never find them now. They’re probably already out of the building, mixed in with all the other kids. This is just . . . what a nightmare.”
I withdraw a pair of latex gloves from my pocket and snap them on. Very carefully I begin to search through the items.
“No boots,” I say. “In either locker. We need to get out front and see which students are wearing black paramilitary-style boots.”
300
I heard a Russian video game maker created a first-person shooter game that takes place in a high school and that they market it and sell it in the US, where we have school shootings, not in Russia where they don’t. That’s fucked up. A video game where you can actually be a school shooter shooting at other students. Don’t tell me our enemies don’t love it that we’re killing each other—doing their job for them.
Students stumble out of the front doors and down the covered walkway like a huge herd of cows coming through a cattle chute into a livestock sale.
Dazed, their stunned, thousand-yard stares not unlike those of war veterans or terrorist attack survivors.
Parents waiting behind barriers, worried expressions on their searching faces.
Cop cars everywhere.
Students and teachers and parents and law enforcement and EMTs all frantically moving about like angry ants scattered around a toppled ant bed.
Media trucks and vans in the side field, more arriving every moment, reporters in front of cameras pointing at a soon-to-be-infamous high school where nothing will ever be the same.
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 has 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’al
l 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 boy, 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.”
True Crime Fiction Page 117