Fifteen Coffins

by Tony J. Forder

  ‘The Bureau passed us a large file on Sokolov when he moved into the county,’ Benton told her. ‘If I’d printed it out it would’ve been an inch thick. The word on him is true, believe me. The guy is connected. He severed some ties back home, but as you know, these people never walk away completely. Moving across country removed some temptations, but this is a global business enterprise and the man doesn’t have to leave his palatial home in order to work.’

  ‘And his son?’

  ‘Never had cause to look him up. Came here with a clean record, and as far as I know it’s remained that way. I’d guess he would have access to guns, and if he’s anything like his father then he’s one to keep an eye on. As for the school shooting, I wouldn’t put him high on the list.’

  That matched Sydney’s line of thinking. As her thoughts drifted, one dropped through a slot and popped up right at the forefront of her mind. ‘Doc, the other day when we had our disagreement, you told me you had a witness. Somebody who had seen the Muller kid in that art room prior to the shooting. Was that true or were you shining me on? Because you seem awfully interested in this for someone who has a wit in their back pocket.’

  Benton shuffled on his chair and began to look uneasy. Colour crept into both cheeks. Sydney had seen that same reaction many times before, and knew right away that she had been right to second guess him.

  ‘It’s true enough as it stands,’ he said. ‘I do have a witness. Only, when I brought it up before, I neglected to mention how we already found his story unconvincing and had pretty much dismissed it. It was the school janitor, a guy by the name of Dave Tabbert. He claimed to have spotted Kevin through the art supplies room window shortly before the shooting began, and like I told you before he said the boy was carrying the bag. We were all pretty keen on getting his statement on record, but ultimately it didn’t tally with accounts we had from several other people of Tabbert being elsewhere both before and afterwards. The guy is an ex-army Ranger, who was never deployed abroad due to health reasons, so I’m thinking he was looking for some attention after all the action went down. Anyhow, when pressed as to why he would walk on by and not intervene when seeing a student in the wrong room all by himself, the guy first said he must have been wrong about the timing, and then pleaded confusion due to the trauma of the situation.’

  ‘So hardly the star witness you claimed him to be.’

  ‘Not so’s you’d notice.’

  At least he had the decency to look away shamefaced.

  Sydney nodded, narrowing her gaze. ‘That was very slippery of you, Benton Lowe.’

  ‘I agree. I wasn’t at my best and it was a low blow, for which I apologise.’

  She wondered if Tabbert was the same man who had guided her towards the parking space when she visited the school. After a moment, Sydney said, ‘Tell me what your gut says, Ben. You’ve agreed with me that Dexter Muller’s theory is both plausible and possible. But what does your heart tell you? And is it the same thing your head believes?’

  The pause this time was a long one. Eventually, Benton said, ‘How about I circle back around to that after we’ve watched the security footage? As things stand, I can’t commit either way. If we spot something significant in the video files then I may be able to provide a more precise answer for you.’

  Settling for that, Sydney rose and headed into the living room. She had already checked the TV and found a USB slot on the back. A couple of paces behind her, Benton slipped a thumb drive out of his trouser pocket and held it out to her. He apologised for continuing to sit on the fence, but reminded her that his stake in the outcome was immense.

  She took the drive from him with a smile. ‘I understand, Doc. I do. We come at this from different sides, but I’m pretty sure we both want the same thing in the end.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘The truth.’

  Moments later, the two of them sat watching the large flatscreen with its razor-sharp image. Sydney prepared to study the entire footage as opposed to the snippets she had seen online, and when settling back she shuddered as cold beads of sweat crept down her spine. The video had been watched by a vast number of people on numerous occasions, but so far each and every one of them had done so with a jaundiced eye, predisposed to believing it was Kevin Muller dressed in black and dispensing death and injury from the guns he pulled from the bag hanging on his left shoulder. It struck Sydney that, for the first time, somebody would be analysing it with the intention of proving the boy’s innocence.

  Sydney hoped Benton felt the same way, but as he had mentioned, he had so much more riding on it.

  They watched the footage three times in all, focussing on the figure’s movements and mannerisms. At the end of the third run-through, Benton turned to her and said, ‘I’m not seeing it, are you?’

  ‘You mean differences between the figure strolling through the corridors and the one outside?’ Sydney asked. She shook her head. ‘No, I’m not, either.’

  ‘We can examine the individual camera angles if you like, but I don’t think they’re going to tell us anything different.’

  Disappointed, Sydney agreed. Further doubt would have clouded her own mind had she not already secured further evidence of huge import and interest. The time was right to make her own confession.

  ‘Ben, before you arrived, I made a call to the coroner’s office.’

  He frowned. ‘You did? What for?’

  ‘Well, I got nowhere trying to obtain a copy of the case file, so I thought I would see if I could get hold of all the autopsy reports to see what they had to tell me.’

  She saw him stiffen. ‘Don’t you get annoyed with me, Ben. What was I supposed to do when neither you nor even my own agency will allow me access to the crime report?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know, Sydney. Why not play by the rules for a change? I take it you gave the coroner’s office your FBI number and mail address and they sent you everything you wanted?’

  ‘I did, and they did. And I’m glad of both, because there are a couple of things I want to discuss with you.’

  ‘Fruit from that poisonous tree isn’t going to wash, Sydney.’

  ‘It’s a discussion point, Ben. I’m not looking to use it as leverage in a court room. You want to sit there all stiff-necked or you want to hear me out?’

  For a moment he actually looked as if he was weighing up his options, and Sydney found herself wanting to throttle him. Eventually he relented with a mute shrug.

  Sydney dived right in before he had time to change his mind. ‘I noticed a specific word cropping up often when I read about the shooting. That word was “random”. Seemingly everybody who was interviewed used the term.’

  ‘That’s because it was random.’

  ‘Was it? You know, I’m not so certain. Hear me out and give me some room to both ask and answer one or two questions, lay things out for you. Okay?’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘And try using your open mind, Ben. It’s important.’

  He rolled his eyes and indicated she should get on with it.

  ‘I made some notes, and I discovered a few things I find inconsistent with the supposed random nature of the shootings. First of all, keep in mind the shooter had six weapons, each with a maximum of nine rounds. Fifty-four bullets in total. Thanks to newspaper reports which I went back through after reading the report, I know there were fifty-eight students and two teachers in total inside the first two classrooms. So my first question is, why did the shooter go into that third classroom? Why did he save rounds, use up more time, take greater risks by going into the third room, when he could comfortably have emptied all of his guns in those first two rooms?’

  She held up a hand to forestall Benton’s response. ‘We can revisit that, but I think it’s a curiosity to keep in mind. Anyhow, I think it’s obvious that the first student emerging from the classroom took him by surprise, so in that instance I’d consider his reaction to be an anomaly. Other than that, there’s an interesting pattern to the breakdow
n of shots. Our gunman encountered a teacher in each of the classes. He shot each of them once in the leg. A wounding shot. Deliberately so, I would think.

  ‘Five shots missed their targets completely. There were nine single shots, seven of which led only to woundings. Four students died after being shot twice, each of which were lower torso wounds which gravely impacted on vital organs or arteries, and one kid who was shot twice happened to survive. Finally, eight of the students in classrooms were each hit three times. What’s more, all eight were shot at least once in the face. The only other person to be shot in the face was the first victim who, as I said earlier, was the anomaly here.’

  Benton had remained silent throughout. When she was done talking, he allowed the silence to linger for a few seconds before saying, ‘You’ve certainly done your homework. I’ll have to take you at your word, because I’ve not seen those same figures anywhere.’

  Sydney flapped a sheet of paper at him. ‘Same coroner’s report was available to you, Ben. But then you were sure you knew what had happened that day, so why would you look?’ She smiled at him. ‘I’m not busting your balls, Doc. I get it. Why would you check those figures? I only did so because it’s all I had.’

  ‘So tell me what you think they mean?’

  Sydney gathered herself. The importance of what she was about to outline could not be overstated. ‘Okay. I’ll do that while I go over it in more detail. Remember I asked at the beginning why he entered three classrooms? Well, would it surprise you to learn that while two of the students shot in the face and three times altogether were in the first room, the others were spread out across the other two rooms? Remember, if we exclude victim number one because of the surprise element, a further fifty-one additional rounds were fired, forty-eight of which he aimed at other students. But he shot only eight of them three times. The gunman could easily have emptied all six weapons inside those first two rooms, but he didn’t.’

  ‘Okay,’ Benton said, breathing out steadily. ‘But you still haven’t said what you think any of that means, Sydney.’

  ‘What I think I’m saying, Ben, is that these shootings were not quite so random after all. Not all of them. What I think I’m saying is that the other shots were fired to hide the fact that several of these students were intentionally shot to kill. What’s more, if you’ve been listening closely and counting off inside your head, you’ll know that one of them who was shot three times and therefore in order to kill, actually survived.’

  Twenty-Seven

  It was immediately obvious to Sydney that temporary paralysis and a wheelchair were constant reminders to Nathan Rains of the day a fellow high school student ran amok with handguns.

  A young man with an uncertain future ahead of him, Rains sat alongside his mother in their living room. Mary Rains held on to her son’s hand like she never wanted to let go. Like she wished she never had, blaming herself for his current condition. They both insisted Sydney and Benton Lowe call the boy Nate, and as Mary said the name, she gave his fingers a squeeze as if to remind herself of his presence. She had already placed a tray containing four large glasses of iced tea on the centre of a pale wooden coffee table. Sydney was not thirsty, but had learned long ago never to reject a drink offered by an hospitable host.

  ‘I’d like to thank you for agreeing to meet with us at short notice,’ Benton said, peering at mother and son in turn. ‘I hope not to keep either of you too long.’

  ‘Of course,’ the woman said with the faintest of shrugs. ‘Anything to help.’

  Benton eased forward on the chair Mrs Rains had offered him. The house was typical of Moon Falls in that it was a single-storey structure clad in weather-treated wood, raised above the soil and boasting a wrap-around deck. The interior was less rustic, walls painted in pastel shades, with modern furniture and plain, hard-wearing fabrics. Neither armchair matched the sofa, but eclectic tastes were hardly unusual, either.

  ‘I don’t wish to stir up bad memories,’ he said, ‘but I do need to ask some questions which may prove to be painful to consider.’

  ‘That’s okay.’ This time Nathan answered for himself. ‘Ask away, Sheriff. I’ll answer anything I can.’

  The young man was clean and well-groomed, thick brown hair parted down the middle. He looked a lot like his mother. He wore stylish clothing, and Sydney’s impression was that he always did. Despite the gauze taped over the gunshot wound to his left cheek, he appeared to be comfortable, albeit in unfortunate circumstances. She and Ben had to keep in mind that if the gunman had shot Rains with deliberate intent to kill, there had to be a reason for it. One he might be keen to hide.

  Benton nodded. ‘Well, first of all I’m going to steer clear of the incident itself. Instead, I want to focus on something you may not have considered before. I also need to prepare you, because it’s not an easy thing to ask, so I already know it’ll be every bit as awful to hear. We good on that, Nate?’

  The young man nodded, though anxiety glimmered in his eyes.

  ‘Well, okay then. Tell me, son, can you think of any reason why Kevin Muller would have wanted you dead?’

  Rains frowned. Glanced at his mother before turning back to Benton and responding, ‘He opened up the moment he came into the classroom. Didn’t say a word, didn’t seem as if he was looking at anyone in particular. Just stepped inside and fired away. Could’ve been any of us who got hit.’

  ‘That is how we initially read the situation. There’s even a good chance that’s still the case. But eight of you boys were shot three times, Nate. You’re the only one to have survived taking three bullets. We asked ourselves why there was such a concentration of shots fired at the eight of you. One of the answers we have to consider is that the gunman’s intention wasn’t merely to shoot at you eight boys, but that he intended to kill all of you. Unlike those he shot once or twice.’

  The room was silent for a few moments. Then Mary Rains snapped her gaze away from the sheriff. ‘Can I ask why you’re here today, Sydney? Are you representing the FBI? Is there more to this than we thought?’

  ‘You know me?’ Sydney replied, touching a hand to her chest, fingers splayed.

  ‘Sure. We were at school together. Including high school.’

  ‘We were? I’m sorry, I don’t recall… hold on a moment, you’re not Mary Sandford as was, are you?’

  The woman smiled and nodded. Her entire face softened. ‘That’s me. I can’t believe you remember. We weren’t even in the same year, let alone in any of the same classes.’ She took a drink from her glass, looking pleased at having been recognised.

  ‘Oh, but I do. You were always one of the more popular girls at school, if I recall correctly.’

  ‘That’s kind of you to say so. I’m not sure I ever spoke to you outside of Moon Falls High. Of course, I heard you went on to become a police officer, then a detective up in our state capital, before joining the FBI. Word gets around. Los Angeles, was it?’

  Sydney shook her head. ‘San Diego.’

  ‘Ah. Gosh, I was so very sorry to hear about your father passing, Sydney. I read about it in the paper, and it mentioned you in the article. I assumed you would come back to the Falls and wondered whether I ought to try reaching out. In the end, I didn’t want to bother you. It’s not as if we hung around together or anything.’

  ‘It would have been no bother. But it’s kind of you to think of me.’

  ‘So is this why you’re still here?’ Mary Rains shot a glance at Lowe, who was waiting patiently, sipping his iced tea. ‘Or is Benton here part of the attraction? You two were so close at one time. We all thought wedding bells were on the cards for Moon Falls’ high school King and Queen.’

  This elicited a laugh from Sydney, though Benton remained impassive. ‘I’m not sure we were ever that, Mary. But to answer your question, I’m mostly here to run down my daddy’s business and settle his affairs.’

  ‘You selling the house?’

  ‘I am. I’ve already had an offer of the full asking price
. From Hank Stevensen.’

  Rains gave a nod of approval. ‘Ah, there is a fine and decent man. He’ll do right by your memories.’

  ‘That he will,’ Benton jumped in, flashing Sydney a look of surprise. ‘Anyhow, getting back to the matter in hand for a moment, any thoughts as to why the Muller boy targeted Nate here?’

  Sydney admired the way Benton ignored the earlier question as to her presence there with him. But by confusion written on their faces, neither Nate nor his mother had any clue why the boy had been selected.

  ‘I hardly knew Kevin,’ Nate said. ‘He wasn’t a friend or anything, but neither were we enemies. Never had a cross word with him as far as I can recall.’

  ‘How about anyone else? Who were your enemies, Nate?’

  ‘Why would my son have enemies at all?’ Mary Rains asked, her cheeks pinking.

  Benton gave an easy smile. ‘This may surprise you, Mary, but not many boys reach Nate’s age without getting on the wrong side of one or two other guys. That’s the way of the world, and no reflection at all on your son. Human nature is what it is, plain and simple.’

  Nate’s eyes clouded over. He drifted elsewhere for a few seconds. When he came back, Sydney thought he did so reluctantly.

  ‘I guess there are one or two boys my age who don’t care too much for what I believe in.’

  ‘And what is that, Nate?’ Sydney asked.

  ‘Gun control. Ironic, right, because I stood for that principle long before the shooting at my school. I made it my business to talk about the school shootings across the country, and gun crime rates overall. Even chose it as a subject for the debate team. I was clear that I believe the second amendment ought to be amended again, to make it more relevant for today’s times. That line about a well-armed militia obviously meant something back in the day, but not anymore. Dylan and Mitch are both pro-gun, so we clashed.’