Merrill spins around and looks at her. “Our?”
She nods. “Yes. Our. Our school. Our community. Our. What did you think I meant?”
“Whose class were you in during the shooting?” I ask.
“I was in Ms. Abanes’s,” Sierra says.
“I was next door in Ms. Harper’s,” DeShawn says. “Why?”
“And neither of your classroom doors were locked?” I ask.
They both shake their heads. “Ms. Abanes sort of panicked and was too scared to step out into the hallway to lock the door.”
“Same for Ms. Harper,” DeShawn says.
I think back to the video again.
“And the shooter came to the door but didn’t come in?”
“Came to the door,” DeShawn says, “turned the handle, even opened it a little, but then pulled it closed and moved away.”
“Same for ours,” Sierra says.
“Okay,” I say. “Thanks.”
“Are you okay?” DeShawn asks. “You don’t look so—”
But I’m already moving Merrill and Anna away from them, farther down the fence and away from the crowd again.
“It wasn’t random,” I say. “The shooter could’ve gone into those classrooms but didn’t. It wasn’t a random rampage shooting. The victims were chosen for a reason. It was a cold, calculated, purposeful, and premeditated execution made to look like a school rampage shooting. It was done when it was done for a reason. The cameras that were taken out were specific and intentional. There’s a reason why one of the outfits was spotless and one of the guns was barely used. There was only one shooter.”
“Who?” Anna asks.
“Kim,” I say. “Come on. She has Johanna.”
“What?” Merrill says. “You sure?”
I nod as we begin to move toward the exit again. “When the first explosions went off the shooter wasn’t even in the hallway yet. The security cameras confirm that. The bombs were on timers to take out the cameras. I think she put the first few up when she helped Tyrese and the others search for explosives that morning. It was probably her idea for them to do it. Instead of searching for bombs she was planting them. There was a level of sophistication and maturity that this attack had that other school shootings haven’t. Her explosions worked perfectly. Even the ones she intended not to explode. That’s never happened before. In all other school shootings, beginning with Columbine, most of the explosives didn’t work. She planted several that she never intended to explode so it looked like kids were behind it, but the ones she meant to detonate did so with precision—and for the primary purpose of concealing her identity. After the first few explode, she goes up ostensibly to confront the shooter but actually quickly puts on the outfit and grabs the gun. With the cameras in that area out and the school on lockdown there’s no one to see her. She wears a mask to hide her true identity and a hat and the duster collar up to hide her ponytail. And she deviated from the fingerless gloves to full gloves to ensure she didn’t leave any prints. I thought the killers had done that to keep from getting caught so they could do it again, but it was actually just her way of hiding her identity—both by concealing her hands and not leaving any prints.”
We have joined the slow-moving crowd near the exit, our progress halting to a near standstill. I continue to talk to them softly, the noise of the crowd and Chase’s music ensuring no one can overhear me.
“She zip-ties the back doors and goes immediately to Ace’s classroom and kills him—that was her first priority,” I continue. “She then shoots randomly—at the library doors, the hallway walls, and makes a show of checking the classroom doors on that side of the hallway where the cameras were still on, but she didn’t go into the classrooms that weren’t locked. She was stalking Janna Todd and Jayden and Hunter Dupree. She did the shooting when she did because it was the only time Ace and Janna would be in the main building. The rest of the day Ace was in the gym and Janna was in the art building. She left the notes for Chip to find and had us all working to prevent a school shooting to help cover what she was really doing. She knew how Chip would react. She waited until a day when he was filling in for her to leave the notes. She was using all of us as witnesses to a school shooting. She wears black boots as part of her uniform. She sewed the school shooter uniform together and made a slit up the back and put velcro on it so she could get it on and off quickly.”
“Why the two uniforms?” Merrill asks.
“To make it look like two shooters were involved, just like at Columbine, but also because she needed a second gun—a handgun she could use to shoot herself. She couldn’t use the rifle for that. She shoots Janna and the twins, then takes off her costume and sticks it in the locker with the rifle. Then removes the handgun, fires it a few times, then shoots herself.”
“Then Derek steps out in the hallway with his shotgun and . . .” Anna says.
“It’s no wonder he was confused. No wonder the shooters just disappeared. No wonder he shoots at her. And she returns fire knowing he’s just out there to help. She doesn’t shoot him.”
“No,” Anna says, “she sent you around there to do that.”
“Why?” Merrill says. “Why the fuck she do all this?”
“Jealousy. Rage. Retribution. Punishment. She was exacting her revenge on her unfaithful lover and his conquests. My guess is if he had just been having an affair with Janna she wouldn’t have done all this. By the way, I’m not convinced he was having an affair with Janna—I just meant in her mind. But I think it was the twins that drove her over the edge. Think about all the rumors of teachers having sex with students and what D-Bop and others said about the troubled twins. Kim made a big deal about Ace being impotent because she was trying to hide the fact that her boyfriend was a pederast. At the baseball game that first night up on the video riser, Zach Griffith referred to Ace as Sandusky. If she turns him in, she suffers the ridicule and embarrassment and inevitable questions about her involvement or what she knew or why she couldn’t satisfy her man. No, her pride couldn’t allow that. And she wasn’t going to be used and abused by men the way her crazy mom always had been. She’s a cop. She’s going to take the bad guy out and make sure his crimes are never more than rumors and suspicions. She had the twins buy the gun she killed them with. They thought it was to take out their abuser, which it did, but then she killed them to cover it all up. I don’t know. That’s all conjecture. I may be wrong about some of the whys but the evidence says she did it. She’s the only one who could have. And right now we have to get our daughter away from her without letting her know we know.”
“Then we need to slow our roll and not come in so hot on her,” Merrill says. “Maybe even split up.”
321
Sometimes I think we’re all just fucked and there’s nothing we can do about it. I mean goddamn it’s not hard to come to that conclusion, is it? I know it doesn’t have to be this way, but somehow we just keep not changing a thing, not a single fuckin’ thing.
“Thank y’all for watching them,” Anna says as we walk up.
We find Reggie and Kim and the girls under the partial shade of three random pine trees in the front corner of the overflow parking field for the football stadium.
Reggie is bouncing Taylor on her hip and singing to her while Kim is squatting down next to Johanna playing some sort of hand slapping game.
People are swarming all around us, making their way to their vehicles.
“Happy to help,” Reggie says. “Is everything okay?”
“We just got word that Derek Burrell died,” Anna says.
“Oh no,” Reggie says.
“Oh John,” Kim says. “I’m so sorry to hear— Why are you looking at me like that?”
She slides her hand into her huge purse.
“Like what?” I say. “I’m just upset.”
Anna and I both step toward her to grab Johanna but Kim snatches her back.
Johanna lets out a little yelp and turns to look at Kim with a confused expression.
Shi
t! We should have discussed who was going to do what so one of us could’ve distracted her while the other got Johanna.
She is now holding Johanna’s little hand so tight that the color has drained from it. Johanna is attempting to jerk it away from her and telling her to Let go!
“John, come take a little walk with me and Johanna,” Kim says.
I step over to her.
She leans in and whispers to me, “I have a pipe bomb in my purse, so unless you want to introduce your daughter to Derek and apologize to him in person today, do exactly what I tell you to.”
I nod, realizing that, like me and the other law enforcement officers at the event, she wouldn’t have been subject to being searched and it would be expected that her gun would set off the metal detector anyway.
“Reassure your daughter and tell them to back off,” she says.
I do.
“Okay, now walk me to my car.”
We start walking.
“Don’t keep snatching your hand,” I say to Johanna. “Just relax it and walk with Kim to her car. Everything’s going to be okay.”
“Okay, Daddy,” she says, and complies.
To Kim I say, “Will you release a little of the pressure on her hand? She’s not going to try to get away.”
She nods and seems to.
“Can we talk?” I ask.
“About?”
“What a bad, sick man Ace was,” I say. “How you stopped him from abusing any other kids.”
“Don’t try to play me, John,” she says. “Okay? All you bastards are bad—deep down. You gonna tell me you’re not, you drunk fuck.”
“Why didn’t you warn me that Derek wasn’t the shooter?” I say.
“How was I supposed to do that? Without letting you know I was . . . I didn’t send you around there to kill him. I figured you’d see each other and realize what was going on.”
I wonder if that’s true or if she was hoping I’d eliminate a potential witness who could potentially raise questions about the disappearance of the mysterious shooters.
“Was Ace sleeping with the twins?”
“He was fuckin’ fuckin’ foster kids for fuck sake. But that’s what predators do. They pick out the most vulnerable and they take them down and they hold them there and they do whatever the fuck they want to to them.”
“Did you have them buy the rifle from D-Bop?” I ask.
“Told them we were gonna take the sick bastard out,” she says.
“Why didn’t you put them on your suspect list?”
She shrugs. “Started to, but . . . didn’t want them looked at too closely."
“I understand why you did what you did,” I say. “Everyone will. But if you hurt Johanna—”
“I’ll be a child killer just like you, won’t I?” she says. “You killed a fuckin’ kid, John. A good, decent kid too. Not one of these little punks who walks around here like they’d blow up the world if they could. A gentle, kind kid. How you gonna live with that?”
I shake my head. “Not sure I’m going to be able to.”
“Sorry,” she says. “I really do feel bad for you both. Wish I could take that part back.”
“You can—in a way,” I say. “Let me take my little girl. I won’t try to stop you. Just let me take her back to safety.”
“There is no safety in this world,” she says. “There’s no such thing.”
All around us there are people leaving the memorial service completely oblivious to what Kim is doing.
“Please,” I say. “There can be for her. I will keep her safe. I promise. I’ll keep her away from the Bowmans of the world.”
“You were always so decent to me,” she says. “Even back in school when all the other boys were such cocky little asses.”
“I still can be,” I say. “I can help you. I can be here for you if you’ll let me.”
“If I’d’ve had a boyfriend like you . . . Instead I get fuckers like that piece of . . . How many of my mother’s boyfriends do you think had a go at me over the years? Just like Ace did those poor boys. I know they were evil, slutty motherfuckers but . . . they didn’t start out that way. I didn’t plan on killing them . . . but I could tell they knew it was me. I could see it in their lascivious little eyes and sick, twisted smiles. I lost it. That’s the only time I did.”
I think about how much worse that back hallway was than any other part of the school.
“They smiled like they had something over me,” she says. “Like they not only owned my man but now they owned me.”
“Please,” I say. “Let us go. Turn yourself in. I swear to you that I will do everything I can to help you. LeAnn and I both will, you know that. We won’t abandon you.”
“I abandoned me,” she says. “A long time ago.”
“Kimmy, please.”
She looks at me, some softness flickering in her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she says.
She lets go of Johanna’s hand and keeps walking.
“Goodbye, John,” she says. “Good luck living with . . . Good luck.”
I reach down and scoop Johanna up and hug her to me as I rush away in the opposite direction.
Glancing back I see Kim quickly get into her car, close the door, and reach in to her handbag.
When I turn back around, Anna, Reggie, and Merrill are standing there. Giving Johanna to Anna, I turn back and start running toward the car, yelling as I do, “Get back. Get away from that car. Get down. NOW.”
People begin to scramble away from her car and it seems as if she pauses an extra moment to let them.
“Kimmy,” I say as I reach the car. “Please don’t do this.”
She looks up at me through the driver’s window. “Back away, John. I don’t want you getting—”
“See?” I say. “You don’t want me or any of these other people hurt. There is good in you. Please don’t kill yourself.”
“Good?” she asks, her voice wavering, her expression pained. “I’ve got good in me? I murdered that poor woman, Janna—because I was jealous of her. Because I thought she was sleeping with Ace, but I should’ve known better. He liked little boys, not grown women. And the truth is somewhere deep down inside I did know. But I killed her anyway. I just lost it. I was jealous of the time and attention he gave her and I . . . I don’t deserve to live, John. But you do, so back away from the car right now. I’m detonating this bomb—and it’s not a little one—in three . . . two . . .”
I can tell she means it.
I take a few quick steps, then dive and roll and feel the blast.
The loud bang of the explosion, windows being blown out, glass raining down on asphalt around me, smoke billowing out of the car, fire burning inside, burning what’s left of my classmate’s lifeless body.
322
When I came to admit that I was powerless over—well, everything—and that my life had become unmanageable, I took my first step toward having a better life. And it wasn’t something I did just once, but over and over again.
It’s a few days later.
I’m parked across the street from the old Episcopal Church in Pottersville.
On the seat next to me is a copy of the complaint I was served earlier today notifying me that Derek Burrell’s family is suing me for the wrongful death of their son.
I’ve spent a lot of time thinking over the past few days. I’ve done little else. Thinking about our world and my future and a million trillion other things. I’ve thought about how I’m going to take D-Bop off the street again—even as I’ve wondered who the second set of kids were he sold the other rifle to. I’ve thought about all the victims, all the survivors, all the damage done. I’ve thought about my girls and how to best protect them. I’ve thought about how much pain people are in and what can be done about it. But mostly I’ve thought about the kid I killed.
I have just come from officiating Kim’s funeral, where much of our graduating class got to hear one child killer eulogize another.
In addition to contain
ing ample evidence against her, Kim’s home revealed the sad, lonely life of a troubled woman who felt passed by and picked over, disrespected and wronged.
Following the interment, with Merrill keeping watch for his family, I visited Derek’s graveside, kneeling down next to the fresh earth and funeral flowers to tell him how sorry I was for what I had done and to ask his forgiveness.
Anna and Merrill and Reggie and LeAnn and Dad and nearly everyone I know keep telling me the same thing—it was just a horrible accident, that Derek is Kim’s victim not mine, that he shot first, and on and on, but nothing can mitigate the guilt and sorrow and remorse I feel.
When I had climbed up off my knees, which still had light, sandy North Florida soil on them, LeAnn was waiting for me.
“You did a good job with her funeral,” she says. “No one could’ve done it better. You’re good at what you do—both things you do.”
I hug her.
“How could I have missed all the signs?” she says. “Looking back now I can see them so clearly—the way she was with men, her relationship with her crazy mother and her many boyfriends, the juvenile way she was with Ace, their lack of sex or anything serious and on and on and on—but I didn’t see it, didn’t put it together in the way I should have. I’m a licensed mental health counselor for fuck sake.”
“The two people we often have the hardest time seeing clearly,” I say. “Ourselves and those closest to us. You were a good friend to her. She was lucky to—”
“I failed her,” she says. “And by doing so failed the school, the students . . . none of this would’ve happened if I had just done my damn job.”
“The mental health of the school resource officer is not the responsibility of the guidance counselor.”
“She was my closest friend. I was—”
She breaks down and begins to cry.
I hug her again.
“I miss her murderous ass so fuckin’ much,” she says. “I still can’t believe she . . . that she . . . that any of this happened.”
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