‘Okay, Dave, thank you. Try to stay safe,’ Gail advised. The camera focused on her concerned face. ‘In other news, a case of road rage led one driver to shoot another in Atlanta today … ’
Ellis Coody managed to extricate himself from the crowd, a few of his bubbas surrounding him, offering their sympathies and allegiance. They convened in the parking lot, leaning over the bed of his pickup truck, reaching into the giant Igloo cooler, digging into the ice, and popping open some Busch beers.
Coody Sr wiped the blood from his nose with the back of his hand, smearing a red trail across his cheek. It looked like war paint. ‘Thanks, boys,’ he said, addressing the group. ‘I ’ppreciate you bein’ here, showin’ your support. But, I’m goin’ to ask you to do me another favour. I got a friend in the Sheriff’s Office that tells me a car was stolen from the hospital up in Lakeland last night, and they think that teacher probably took it. It was a black Camaro SS. There ain’t a lot of places to go between Bartow and here, ’specially for someone what just got buckshot plucked outta their belly. I’m bettin’, iffen we got a buncha eyes lookin’ in the Lake Wales area, we could find a black Camaro. I’d sure like to find the bitch that put my boy in the hospital and turned him into a cripple. Anyone with me?’
A resounding, ‘Yeah, man,’ came from Coody’s loyal friends, and they climbed into their mud-splashed trucks, gun racks prominently displayed in the back windows. Each of them called some of their friends, who, in turn, called more of their friends. Within half an hour, there were a hundred sets of eyes from Kissimmee in the north to Sebring in the south and from Yeehaw Junction to the east, back to Plant City in the west, all looking for the woman called Erica Weisz driving a stolen black Camaro. The official Sheriff’s APB seemed like an afterthought.
Erica checked herself in the mirror – her new blonde hair was a startling change. She’d done a decent dye job, though the roots at the centre parting still showed dark, as did her eyebrows. But, it would do. She put on the jeans again and a loose-fitting, comfortable but nondescript blouse that would not draw attention, and a clean pair of Nikes. She just couldn’t get away from those running shoes. Just in case.
Picking up the new cell phone, she considered calling Moral, but she couldn’t get past the fact that he was the only person who could’ve known where she was. Could she trust him? This wasn’t the first time she’d had reason to doubt him.
The more she thought about it, the more she was convinced that the gunmen had not come to the school randomly. She kept asking herself: Why did that man ask my name? Would a crazed mass murderer do that?
She thought of the man as he’d confronted her class, removing his mask, an act in itself that said one of two things: no one here is getting out alive, or I’m not getting out of here alive. It was a look of finality. She remembered the look on the other, younger man’s face. It was not one of resignation like the older man. It was one of complete insanity, like the look in a mad dog’s eyes.
Erica’s mind swam incoherently, and she felt her eyes burn. A sign of fever, maybe? She felt her forehead with the back of her hand. It was warm. It would be a miracle if she didn’t get an infection from the abdominal wound. She knew she should be in a hospital with a steady infusion of IV antibiotics, but she didn’t feel safe there. She wondered: Was it all my imagination?
Digging into her purse, she found a notepad and wrote down some essentials she needed from the store. If she could wait until dark, when the roads and the stores were less busy, grab the few items she needed, and clean out the ‘B’ haven house, she could probably get out of the state by early morning. But then what? Where would she go? Was any place safe?
The notion that, if she could get to the main offices of the Department of Justice in Washington, perhaps she would be safe there. Get a new manager, a new location, a new start. But, she’d been in Washington before, and her ‘haven’ there had been compromised, too. Before that, in Las Vegas – when it all started – she had been surrounded by deputies, but, while they had kept her safe, she’d lost everything and everyone else.
Memories of that time slipped back into her mind like a shark creeping up from the depths while she floated on a volatile surface. She couldn’t believe it had been three years. Fatigue swept over her as she tried to fight off those horrible images, but, before long, she found herself curled into a foetal position on a bumpy couch, drifting off to sleep while scenes of blood-splashed walls filled her mind.
The sound of tyres crunching over the shell-rock drive startled her awake. She wasn’t sure how long she’d been asleep, but the light coming in the window had morphed into that salmon colour that is trademark to Florida sunsets. Her throat was so dry it felt like something was stuck in it, and it hurt to swallow. Her skin was hot and flushed, and she no longer doubted if she had a fever.
A car door slammed, and she sat up, her wounded side screaming at her for moving so fast. She managed to get up and hobble back to the room where she’d left her purse and the gun. She looked out the window of the living room where she had a view of the drive. There was a big, silver car behind the Camaro, but no one was inside.
Erica wobbled into the kitchen and looked out the window and into the backyard, but saw nothing. She remembered a small utility room in the back of the house, near the bedrooms, and rushed back to make sure the door was locked. When she got there, the door that led outside was open.
She knew she’d screwed up, even as she turned and found the man standing behind her. Her gun was at her side; his was aimed at her, the hammer pulled back ready to fire. He was saying something to her, but there was a persistent ringing in her ears, and her vision began to lose its focus. Her stomach reeled and began to empty itself, bile dripping from her slack mouth, the effort so strenuous she felt herself falling, striking her knees against the hard terrazzo floor, before coming to a rest against the side of a washing machine, its cold steel like ice against her face.
THIRTEEN
Thiery had met Sheriff Conroy, as well as a few other local police chiefs, at the makeshift command centre they had set up at the church. He collected the rest of the reports from the various agencies and thanked both of them for putting out the APB for Erica Weisz. He made a mental note that, if they were going to stay on the site past tomorrow, he would have them move in the Mobile Command Unit, or relocate to the Calusa County Sheriff’s Office headquarters so they would not intrude on the church more than they had. Thiery wasn’t thrilled with the idea of setting up a Unified Command System at the Sheriff’s Office, so he sent a quick text to the FDLE Logistics Department to locate the closest MCU available.
Conroy still seemed to have a chip on his shoulder, but he did share the information with Thiery about the stolen Camaro and the hospital’s security videos. Thiery had watched the security cam videos and seen a person he thought might have been the Weisz woman scurrying out in a white lab coat, as reported, but the camera angle did not extend into the parking lot, and the footage was grainy and not much help.
Thiery shared with them details of the meeting with the Dowling boy and also the news about the gunman asking the teacher her name. All agreed that was odd, perhaps unprecedented anecdotally, to say the least, in mass shootings.
After delegating a few more assignments and dismissing other departments less involved in the investigation, Thiery adjourned the meeting. He and Sheriff Conroy were parked next to each other.
‘I didn’t want to bring it up again in front of the others, Sheriff,’ Thiery addressed the man as they approached their respective vehicles, ‘but have you looked into the dispatch and arrival times reported by the communications office?’
Conroy looked up under the wide brim of his hat, his eyes flashing anger. ‘Yeah, I did.’
‘And?’
‘And it was a mistake. They still use the old cardpunch system. They get a call, punch a time clock, dispatch the call, punch another time clock. Units go en route, they punch another time clock. They had a new girl working
that morning, and she got behind in all the excitement and punched the cards late. That’s all,’ he ended, colour rising in his neck like a thermometer.
Thiery nodded his head. Hard to believe they still used an old cardpunch system, but they seemed a little behind the times around here, so Thiery accepted it. For now. ‘Thanks,’ he said.
Conroy said nothing, and they both got into their cars and motored away from the church; Conroy accelerating away in a huff while Thiery moved out slowly, accepting that he had a bunch of monotonous paperwork to wade through. He headed back to his hotel dolefully.
It was late in the afternoon, his room at the Sun Beam bathed in tangerine light, his eyes grainy from reading all the police and witness reports, when Thiery got the call from the governor.
‘You want to tell me how come I’m the last dumb-ass in the state of Florida to find out the teacher has disappeared?’ Croll spat through clenched teeth.
Thiery fought back a yawn. ‘You want me to call you every time something new pops up down here?’
There was silence for a moment then words so angered they could only come out one at a time.
‘No … Mr … Thiery … just … when … it … pertains … to … the … fucking … woman … that … the fucking President … of … the … United States … wants … to … meet.’
‘Sir, you sent me here to do a job … ’
‘Yeah, yeah. A job I guess I should have let Sheriff Conroy handle.’
‘It was one of your sheriff’s men who was watching her when she vanished.’
Silence.
Thiery began again. ‘Governor, this thing is turning out to be something more than we thought it was. It’s tragic enough it was another school shooting, but there seems to be more to it than that. Now, the media has blown it up into a gun control issue, and people are demonstrating in front of the school. You want to bring the President into that mix?’
‘It’s not what I want to do that matters, Thiery. It’s what he wants, and he has called me directly and told me he wants to meet this woman. His press secretary is arranging an event for next week that will be publicized internationally. You know he is trying to push a gun control bill through the Senate right now.’
‘I read the newspapers. I’m sure he’ll get some sympathetic ears because of the shooting. But, I’m not sure how it will help his agenda to have a teacher who probably saved dozens of lives by using a gun.’
‘So now, you want to help steer the President’s policies?’
‘Sir,’ Thiery said calmly, ‘I hear your concerns, and I can assure you I am doing the job I was sent here to do. But, before everyone decides who is the hero and who is the bad guy here, we should complete our investigation. You’d score major brownie points if you’d let the President know that. There’s something hinky going on here, and it would behove him to stay away from it right now, until we have some answers.’
‘Fine. Okay. Fine,’ the governor said, though Thiery guessed the man was far from ‘fine’ with anything. ‘I’ll tell the President that we need more time, but you get this clear, Thiery: you don’t make these play calls. We have a chance to get some national limelight on some of our concerns in Florida – low teacher salaries, shortage of police, rising crime rates – and we could blow it.’
Now, it was Thiery’s turn to get pissed. ‘I’ll be sure to keep that in mind when I’m talking to the families who lost a loved one.’ He paused to allow his words to sink in. ‘If there’s nothing else, sir, I’ve got a lot of work to do.’
The reply was a dial tone in his ear.
Thiery wasn’t sure why he had blown up at the governor. Maybe he was burned out. Maybe he just didn’t give a flip about the job, anymore. It had cost him a wife and took so much of his time away from his sons that, now that he could see ‘the light at the end of the tunnel,’ as the retirees referred to being near the end the career, it occurred to him that he’d missed the point. One has a job to support his family and, by doing so, form the bonds that keep them together. What did he have now?
He suddenly remembered that Dunham had said Frank Shadtz’s wife had come to claim his body. He wondered how that was going. He hadn’t heard back from Dunham since morning. He decided to give him a call.
‘Oh, hello Agent Thiery,’ said Dunham. ‘How’s it going for you?’
‘It’s going. I’ve gone through most of the reports. Talked to a few more witnesses. None was more helpful than the Dowling boy, though. Thanks for going over there with me. I think it made them feel more comfortable talking to me with your introduction. How did it go with the Shadtz woman?’
Dunham cleared his throat. ‘Well, better than my meeting with the county sheriff.’
‘Oh?’
‘Yeah. Sheriff Conroy isn’t being exactly cooperative. When I showed up, he was expecting you and asked where the – quote, ‘Governor’s boy,’ unquote – was. I told him you were busy interviewing a witness, and he gave me a look like I just said something bad about his mother. I’m fairly thick-skinned, but it’s pretty clear he resents me, and probably you, for taking lead over him.’
‘I know. I saw him at the command centre. He’ll have to get over it.’
‘I suppose, but did you know he and the governor go way back?’
‘I got a sense of that last night.’
‘Anyway, I did talk to Shadtz’s wife. Her name is Gloria. They have a son with some developmental problems and they are divorced, but it seems she was still carrying a torch for him. She’s pretty upset.’
‘Did she tell you anything useful?’
‘Not too much. Says he’s never done anything like this before, naturally, and that he was never a gun guy. Said he loves kids, so she can’t imagine why he would’ve come down here and suddenly decided to go shoot up an elementary school.’
‘Did she mention how he and Coody came to meet each other?’
‘She never heard of Coody before last night.’
‘I was afraid you might say that,’ Thiery replied. Another dead end. ‘Anything else?’
‘Oh, yeah. When I couldn’t get much help from the sheriff, I offered to take the lady to the coroner’s office, and she said okay. She’s really nice, and I could sense she wanted to tell me something. So, as we were driving, she asked me to pull over. She had an item to show me. So, I pulled over, and she reaches into her purse and pulls out a big fat envelope full of cash. She said Shadtz left it for her with a note that said he was sorry he wasn’t a better husband and the money might help with their son.’
‘How much was it?’
‘Fifty thousand dollars.’
‘Wow. That’s a lot of money for someone who was a part-time bouncer.’
‘That’s what I was thinking, too.’
‘She didn’t know where he got it?’
‘Not a clue.’
‘How about the coroner? Anything newsworthy there?’
‘You could say that. The coroner said he’d need a couple more days to complete the autopsy. Mrs Shadtz wasn’t too happy about it ’cause she’s got to get back to her kid in Chicago, so I asked him if there was anything he could do to speed things up. He asked if we wanted to have his brain studied, you know, like they do with some of the serial killers and mass murderers. I said that his wife still had the right to okay or deny that request. She said there was nothing wrong with his brain, it was his lungs that bothered him most.’
Thiery remembered the Dowling boy had mentioned something about how the gunman seemed to be having trouble breathing. Wheezing like asthma, Ricky had said. ‘What about his lungs?’ Thiery asked Dunham.
‘That’s what I asked,’ the Chief answered, ‘and you know what the coroner said? He said, his results weren’t conclusive, but, as a matter of protocol, he had done an initial autopsy to save the bullets for forensic evidence. He said, as part of the investigation protocols, he had to remove the bullets from the body. He took them out of Shadtz’s skull and, when he did, he found some lesions. He decided to
do a preliminary look and opened the chest cavity. While he had Shadtz’s chest open, he could see he had tumours all over in his lungs.’
‘What kind of tumours?’
‘Just a sec’, let me check my notes.’ Thiery heard pages flipping. ‘Here it is,’ Dunham continued. ‘He called it metastatic lung cancer. He was pretty forthright, and the widow seemed to be able to take it, so I asked, could that be cured? And the coroner said, no, it is fatal. Shadtz would’ve been dead within six to eight weeks.’
Thiery sat up, now, his mind racing.
Dunham went on. ‘Anyway, I took the lady for a coffee, and she said she needed a place to stay. I remembered you were staying at the Sun Beam and told her maybe she should stay there; maybe you’d like to talk to her. She said she would, and we left it at that. Did she come up there? She was driving a rental. It was a late model, white Mercury Milan if you’re looking for it.’
Thiery looked out the window. The parking lot was full, probably from all the media people in town, but he could see every car from his hotel room window. He spied the white Mercury.
‘Agent Thiery, are you still there?’
FOURTEEN
Moral watched her sleep. When he’d placed her in the bed, she felt light, as if she were withering away to nothing, and her skin was hot to the touch. Maybe if he just waited, she would die on her own. That would solve all of their problems; she could stop running, and he wouldn’t have to keep playing this deadly game.
Erica awoke to the sound of sniffling. She was fevered and her eyes burned, but she could make out the image of a man sitting in a chair next to her. It was Robert Moral. Trying to sit up, she found her hands had been secured to the bed’s headboard with handcuffs.
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