by Rich Foster
“Listen up!” shouted Egan. The crowd became silent. “One man has been shot in the church. He is dead. Please stay well clear of the church, it is wired with explosives. Patience is the answer at this time.”
“Yea, and how many more are you going to let the son-of-a-bitch kill?” a voice called from the safety of darkness.
“Hopefully none. I want you to all go home so we don’t end up with everyone in the church being killed. At this time the gunman has made no demands and has not responded to our attempts to contact him. Now, please disburse. If you try to cross the perimeter you will be arrested.”
More questions were shouted. Ignoring them, he rejoined Gaines. “Get another monitor and a cable splitter. I want Rowley to have a feed of this. Tell him to come over here, too.”
Rowley hopped down from the truck bed. Gaines pointed to the monitor. “Goodman has moved the detonator a couple of times, but mostly it’s been on the right part of the altar table. Can you calculate the shift and move your sight over slightly?”
“Sure with the visual.”
“Well Goodman’s taken one hostage out. He is running out of volunteers. If I decide he’s going for the detonator, I’ll say fire. I want you to shoot through the door, as many and as fast as you can crank them out.”
“That could get very, very ugly.”
Gaines nodded. “I know, but it’s my call.”
Rowley went back to his sniper’s nest.
Gaines turned his attention back to the monitor and the inside of the church. “What’s up, Pat?”
“Goodman’s holding at five. But, nobody else has gone forward. Leeds came to a little bit ago. You can see him sitting on the floor at the end of the first aisle.”
Inside the sanctuary Kevin and Jenny had spent the past hour whispering. Jenny was certain God would want them to stand up for their faith. Kevin was reluctant, he had hopes for their lives, but Jenny was determined to trust God. She said, “God will never fail nor forsake you.” Kevin said, where you go, I will go. Together they stood up.
A sense of desperate and guilty relief moved through the church. Goodman was demanding five and now he had his volunteers. Everyone wondered; would he let the other people go? Kevin and Jenny walked forward hand in hand. Both blanched when they saw Elijah James body on the floor. The front of the church reeked. Forcing themselves to move forward, they knelt on the altar steps.
Goodman bellowed. “Only five! You hypocrites. If there is a God, he should damn you all to hell!” Heads dipped in shame. “When I let you go, I want you to file out one row at a time, down the center aisle, starting from the back. If any one of you cowards tries to run, I’ll blow us all to hell!”
Robert shoved the 9mm into his belt, picked up the detonator, and tucked it under his arm. He dropped a key from his pocket at Leeds’s feet. Spitting in the same direction, he said, “The cops will have pulled the outer bar off the doors by now. Go lead your sheep, Reverend!”
Leeds picked up the key and stumbled down the aisle toward the doors.
On the monitor they saw him approach and disappear from the camera angle. Over the speaker Goodman’s voice barked orders. “Go on Reverend. You first. Open the doors and lead your flock out into the wilderness!”
Leeds looked back at the altar. Goodman held his gaze with dead eyes. Behind him the gold cross, hanging on the nave wall, condemned him. Lester turned his back on the cross. He opened the door.
“Rowley,” Gaines said into his microphone, “get ready!”
From the parking lot the police saw the inner doors swing open. Light spilled out in a yellow rectangle into the foyer. Leeds was momentarily silhouetted before people rose and began flowing through the doorway. They moved orderly as far as the foyer doors where it became a mad rush into the night.
Some parents headed for the nursery steps but a deputy was there to tell them their children were safe outside. Other deputies hustled the hostages toward the far side of the lot, away from the church.
Rowley looked through his scope. Goodman moved in and out of the sight but his hand rested on the detonator handle. Rowley depressed his shoulder mike.
“He’s moving too much. I could drop him, but unless he sets that detonator down, it’s a hell of a risk.”
“Hold!” came Gaines’s terse answer.
Three quarters of the people were out and still there wasn’t a clear shot at Goodman. On the monitor Gaines saw the aisle in the front half of the church was clear except for one woman. Calley Haskell, whose children she sent out with the others, now stayed behind, pleading for Ruthie.
“Let my baby go, please!” Tears covered her face. She fell on her knees and begged. “Oh God please don’t do this?” Her hands were clutched together as if praying to Goodman and not to God. Ruthie, who Desmond held, began to cry, “Mommy! Mommy! I want my mommy!”
Goodman moved to the end of the altar. Blocked by the doorjambs, his body passed out of Rowley’s line of sight. He set the detonator down and pulled the nine-millimeter from his belt.
“For the love of God, don’t!” cried Calley.
“What God and what love?” he sneered. He aimed at the small girl. Desmond twisted, turning her away, shielding her with his body. “Jesus is coming for you Ruthie,” he whispered in the girl’s ear. The gun roared and Desmond’s head snapped back and he went limp. Ruthie tumbled loose. She began to scramble away.
Calley screamed “No!” and an eternal second later Goodman’s second shot slammed into Ruthie’s back and came out her chest. It tumbled her down the aisle.
“God No!” Calley shrieked hysterically.
“Go! Go! Go!” Gaines ordered, even as he sprinted for the church doors.
Calley lunged forward up the aisle toward her daughter. Kevin and Jenny, who were saying the 23rd Psalm, turned away, hoping to find shelter in the side aisles. Goodman took a step in their direction. He aimed at Jenny’s back. The gun kicked and she slammed into Kevin. Her deadweight made him stumble and fall. On all fours he stared at Jenny beside him, his eyes gaped like a deer jacked a car’s headlights. Robert aimed at the center of Kevin’s head his finger squeezed the trigger.
Outside, Rowley crouched on the truck bed. Adrenaline streamed through him. He saw Goodman’s chest move into his scope. Robert leaned forward as he went to fire at Kevin.
Rolley fired fast hoping to save someone. The bullet whined over the heads of the deputies rushing the church. His shot missed the heart. The bullet tore through the Goodman’s shoulder. It slammed him backward, which sent his own shot wide. Kevin saw a flash of white light before going down.
Sheriff deputies swarmed toward the podium of the church. Calley was soaked in blood, as she clutched Ruthie. Using her hand, she desperately, tried to stem the flow of blood pumping from her daughter’s chest. Gaines pointed at her as he sped past. A deputy stopped beside her and pulled her toward the back of the church
The sheriff continued forward to the stage. Goodman lay on his back against the wall of the choir loft. The shotgun and detonator lay on the altar. The nine-mill was a safe distance from his hand. Gaines held him in his gun sight. Robert gave a sardonic grin.
“The avenging angle of the Lord! Go on, kill me!”
Gaines eyed him with disgust. “I’d shoot a mad dog, because it needs mercy, but you deserve judgment!”
Paramedics poured into the church. Desmond and Elijah James were past helping. They worked on Ruthie to staunch the flow of blood, trying to maintain her blood pressure with artificial plasma. Bloody bubbles formed as she breathed into the respirator mask. The medic kept clearing the mask. They loaded her into an ambulance. The siren began screaming as they sped away into the night.
A half hour later she was on the operating table at St. Catherine’s. She died while the doctors were splitting her chest open.
Kevin bled profusely from the side of his head. The nine-millimeter bullet had shallowly creased his skull. They applied compression to it. He was strapped to a gurney, put on a
respirator, and taken away.
Jenny moaned in pain as the medics worked on her. The bullet severed the spine and tore through her chest, clipping the side of the aorta. Three of the four layers were torn. The medics had no way of knowing that. Frantically they worked to stop the bleeding. Her blood pressure steadily dropped on the monitor. Pressure cuffs were put on her legs to keep it up. She was quickly ready for transport. They loaded her in the waiting ambulance, a web of tubes and leads already attached to her.
The third siren screamed, a plaintive cry in the night. The ambulance raced through Red Lake. Two miles from St. Catherine’s Hospital the wall of Jenny’s aorta let go. Nothing visually changed about her, but the EKG monitor went flat and the BP dropped to zero. In four seconds, Jenny was dead.
The medic tapped the driver’s shoulder. When the man glanced back, the medic shook his head. The driver silenced the siren. A block from St. Catherine’s the ambulance stopped for a traffic light. There was no need to hurry.
Chapter Eleven
Kevin Daniels saw a bright light. It evolved not into an angel but a fluorescent ceiling fixture. His head throbbed. A face appeared. It kept slipping into two. By willpower he could shape it back into one. He turned his head. Goofy and Mickey Mouse were at the side of his bed. This perplexed his muddled mind until he realized it was the pattern on the nurse’s scrubs.
“You were shot”, a dreamy, far away, voice said. You have been sedated, so you might float in and out.”
“What about Jenny?” he murmured, sleepily.
“I don’t know. I’ll find out.” The nurse lied. She faded like a mirage. Kevin drifted off.
Several hours later he awoke. Jenny’s father and mother, one a hardscrabble logger, the other a red knuckled house cleaner, sat in the visitor chairs. When they looked up, he saw their eyes, red rimmed and swollen.
Then it came back to him. The shots. People dying. Jenny falling at his feet. Tears welled up in his eyes. He knew their tears were not for him.
“Did she…? He began.
Earl Langston, slowly, shook his head side to side. Kevin felt sick. He looked away from his in-laws and stared at the wall opposite his bed. Tears rolled silently down his cheeks. He lay there motionless and silent.
After half an hour, Earl Langston came to his bedside. His father-in-law briefly rested a calloused hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry, son.”
First his parents, now Jenny, he thought. A nurse came in to check on him. She pulled the curtain back that divided the room.
“Why is that there?” he asked pointing to a crucifix hanging on the far wall.
“This is St. Catherine’s, we’re a Catholic hospital. All of our rooms have one.”
Kevin turned his face in the opposite direction. Silently brooding, he stared out the window.
In the psychiatric ward, Helen Payton was calm and lucid, though medicated with tranquillizers. She proved to be a resilient old woman. It seemed likely she would recover. Already she was verbalizing her animosity for Goodman and admitted her abject fear the night before. Undoubtedly, she would have residual anxieties and suffer nightmares, but her defenses were rapidly reconstituting themselves.
Across the hall, behind a locked door, a deputy guarded Robert Goodman who lay handcuffed to the rails of his bed. Rolley’s bullet passed cleanly through the shoulder. During the night the doctors operated to repair torn ligaments and suture muscle tissue. The pain medications left him feeling good as he lay drifting in and out of sleep.
When he was awake, he would smile as he glibly recalled his revenge on the New Life Church. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, he thought. But as the hours passed vengeance was not as sweet as it might be. He wanted a drink. He wanted a cigarette. He wanted that feeling of being powerful and in control. But the bastards at the hospital wouldn’t let him see the television or have a newspaper.
He was feeling empty again. Angry resentment stirred. “I should have blown the whole church,” he thought.
In the East Wing, Calley Haskell was held for observation. She was heavily sedated on Valium. It failed to eradicate the overwhelming pain and loss, while only muddling her ability to express it. Her child was dead. Her husband was dead. Maybe God was dead? The thoughts drifted by in a confused sequence. She saw Ruthie die again, and again, and again. The image played mercilessly through her mind. She whimpered under the drug-induced haze as the horrific dance resumed.
At the county morgue the clerk filled out paperwork. He worked with death everyday; but the bodies in the next room gave him a gut sense of his own mortality. Recalling Goodman, a shudder of fear passed through him as he thought, it could have been him. Life suddenly seemed outside his control. And again he trembled.
In the vault of the morgue, Ruthie Haskell, Desmond Jones, Elijah James, and Jenny Daniels filled four refrigerated drawers. The night before, their life spilled out with the blood that flowed onto the floor of the church. Their humanity dissipated like a vapor.
The Kellners, side by side in death, filled two other drawers. Only hours before, they lived in a large house on the lake, now they occupied what was little more than a meat locker.
Later that afternoon the coroner would begin the first autopsy. He would remove and measure the organs. He would plot the course of each bullet through the body. The damage caused would be clinically noted. The specific cause of death would be listed in medical terminology.
And yet the change that death brought would remain elusive. The pain, left behind by their passing, would not be recorded. Not only were these lives destroyed, but others were bent, twisted, or destroyed as well. Life had changed in an instant.
Tuesday morning the doctors were ready to discharge Calley from the hospital. There was little else they could do for her. Besides, she lacked insurance. Though she was an employee of the hospital, she was still on probation and had not yet qualified for benefits. The hospital needed to keep their losses to a minimum. Sister Anne came to Calley’s room.
“Is there someone I can call? You’ll need a ride home,” she said.
Calley tried to think of someone, but failed. She and Jason once socialized with other families, but after he died the invitations became significantly fewer. Without a mate she was a fifth wheel. Women unconsciously avoided her, owing to a feral instinct that an attractive, single, female might be a threat to their marriage.
Between working and being a single mom she had little free time. She had drifted apart from families she once saw regularly. The people she worked with at the hospital lived in Red Lake. She never developed any close ties there. For the first time since Jason died, she realized she had no close friends.
“There must be someone?” Sister Anne persisted.
Calley thought of people she knew at the church. But immediately felt the bitterness of Ruthie’s death, recalling them fleeing to safety.
“Who is watching your children?” The question struck past her reverie and the soft haze of the Valium. Calley remembered Will Farron speaking to her.
“I think the Farrons took them in,” she said.
*
On Sunday night, after the killings, families clustered together. Sarah, Jacob, and Caleb Haskell were vaguely passed off, from family to family. No one wanted to take charge. Caleb kept asking for his mommy and Sarah asked for Ruthie. People told them to be patient and wait.
Quickly, families left for home fleeing the fear and death they hoped to leave behind. As a member of the church board, Will Farron felt obligated to stay. He watched as the police did their work. The crowd thinned out. He realized that the Haskell kids were the only children left. Mrs. Deitz lingered keeping an eye on them. She approached Will.
“Mr. Farron?” she addressed everyone by their last name. “What about the Haskell children?”
Will looked around hoping to find a family who might take them in.
“You couldn’t possibly take them in…” he began.
But, Mrs. Deitz was already shaking her head no.
“I really couldn’t, I’m afraid I am much to old to have small children in the house.”
“Jessica”, he said, calling to his wife who was waiting in their car. “You’d better take these kids to our house.” Reluctantly, she gathered them up and took them to her home.
At the Farron house they asked for their mother. Jessica promised that she would soon be with them. When they asked about Ruthie she lied and said she was at the hospital with their mother. Jessica was afraid of the scene that might ensue if she told the truth. Besides, she told herself, what do children know about death? Then she guiltily recalled that their father died less than a year ago. Some children knew far more of death than was fair.
The Farron’s never wanted children. Jessica felt inept at being mom. The next morning she called around to the families in the church who had children, but she found it impossible to find someone who was able or willing to take them in. There was an unspoken fear that tragedy might be contagious and that the Haskell’s could be carriers.
No one had the audacity to voice the words, but silently, many blamed the tragedy on their father. Jason was the one who bought the bus; he was the one who drove it. If the accident had not occurred then none of this would have happened. He became the emotional scapegoat for the church members lack of moral courage.
Jessica did the best she could. To her surprise she found unexpected pleasure in her small venture into parenting.
Sister Anne called. Will agreed to pickup Calley. While he went to the hospital, Jessica drove the children to their own house. Fortunately Sarah, the eldest daughter, knew where the key was hidden.
As he drove to Red Lake, Will felt relieved the children and their difficult questions would be out of his house. He dreaded the possibility of being dragged further into Calley Haskell’s life. Surely she had relatives somewhere, he thought? Shame nagged at him as he guiltily recalled Ruthie Haskell, happily running up the aisle, eager to go see her daddy and Jesus.