[Sam Archer 08.0] Last Breath

by Tom Barber

  Pulling to a halt, he checked the car’s GPS, picturing that angled boot in his head to try and keep his bearings.

  The street around him was eerily quiet.

  Although he knew trouble wasn’t far away.

  He could see smoke rising two blocks over, a building or car on fire, and could hear the sound of police sirens, but where he was right now seemed to be free of any trouble. However, he remembered from being on the line in some London riots a few years ago that one street would be getting torn apart while the one adjacent to it was quiet.

  He also remembered that could change in a heartbeat.

  Rioting was unpredictable, combustible and could erupt anywhere with terrifying speed. Shepherd’s voice echoed in his head.

  Get in and get out.

  Intending to do precisely that, he put the car back into gear and swung the wheel right, driving down a side street and checking the GPS again which was telling him he was only five blocks from where he was headed.

  However, just before he reached the road where he intended to turn right, two Metro squad cars roared past about a hundred yards in front of him, closely followed by a news truck, apparently heading in the same direction he was.

  ‘Shit,’ he hissed, swinging into a parallel street, still following the GPS route but a block down.

  It looked as if the police had a lead.

  FIVE

  ‘This is bullshit,’ Peralta said, sitting beside Font as they headed towards Wilson High. ‘The school shooting’s got nothing to do with our case. This is a complete waste of our time.’

  ‘What choice do we have, Rob?’ Font replied. ‘The man’s an ASAC.’

  ‘There are agents already handling it, and this is a completely different kind of incident,’ he vented. ‘He just wants us out of the way so he can take all the credit when they find Ledger. After all the freaking work we’ve put in.’

  Font shrugged, understanding his frustration but knowing there was nothing they could do about it. Peralta shook his head angrily as they made the final turn to the school. Due to its decentralised structure, there’d been a long history of competition and lack of co-operation between field offices in the FBI, sometimes with tragic consequences. Although this manhunt was clearly a collar the D.C Office wanted, Peralta was starting to realise Sorenson had only ordered them both to the capital in the first place to give an outward sign of co-operation, to show that Boston and D.C. were working together. In reality their case had been taken from them and Sorenson didn’t want them around, which meant they were now being sent out on a pointless field trip. However, Font was right; there was nothing they could do about it.

  Peralta’s window was open which meant they both heard the sound of emergency service vehicles before they arrived outside the school. He pulled up and parked, forced to leave his car some distance from the main entrance due to the mass of people and law-enforcement response vehicles. Climbing out of the car, Font started to move forward, but Peralta whistled at her; going to the back of the car, he opened the trunk and passed her a bulletproof vest.

  ‘No risks,’ he said; she nodded, both taking a moment to remove their jackets and strap the vests on. Slamming the trunk, the pair walked past several news trucks, a number of reporters giving updates from the scene as others interviewed shocked students.

  Moving through unnoticed, Peralta and Font reached some police tape and showed their badges before ducking under it. They approached the Metro Emergency Response Team Commander who was standing by his truck talking into a radio, finishing his conversation just as they reached him.

  ‘What’s the status?’ Font asked.

  ‘My team are just finishing up a sweep of the area,’ the Commander replied, looking at the FBI lettering on their vests then motioning with his hand towards the buildings around the school. ‘Nothing found so far. School’s clear of kids and faculty now. Bomb disposal are still checking the place. Some colleagues of yours are inside with the body.’

  ‘The body?’ Font asked. ‘Just one?’

  ‘Just one. Fourteen year old kid. Not the rifleman you guys are looking for.’

  The Commander paused, looking at the mass of Metro squad cars, news trucks and traumatised kids.

  ‘Goddamn, this could’ve been a hell of a lot worse. Over fifteen hundred students and faculty were on site when the shooting started.’

  ‘You think the shooter got cold feet?’ Peralta asked.

  ‘Not at all. Kids inside the library said he just burst in and started firing.’

  ‘So what stopped him?’ Font asked.

  ‘The guard. He was in the library too. They exchanged fire and the kid went down first. Guard took a round in the leg but the wound wasn’t fatal.’

  ‘Where is he?’ Peralta asked, looking around.

  ‘Over at GU Hospital getting stitched up.’

  Receiving a call from his team the ERT Commander turned away to answer it, Peralta and Font carrying on towards the school.

  Entering the main building and immediately seeing people ahead, they walked down the long ground floor corridor and found an FBI Forensics team with four Bureau detectives working inside what was obviously the library.

  The dead boy’s body was still lying against the wall as the scene continued to be carefully examined and photographed, numbered cards placed beside the shell casings and a black pistol against the wall.

  The mood among those present was sombre.

  A grey-haired agent saw them arrive and stood up to greet them. ‘Special Agent Devlin,’ he said, not shaking hands due to the latex glove he was wearing. ‘You two come from Hoover?’

  Peralta nodded. ‘We’re JTTF from Boston working the sniper manhunt case. ASAC Sorenson sent us over to see if there was any sort of connection.’

  ‘Wasted trip I’m afraid. This wasn’t a sniper. It was just this kid.’

  They looked down at the body; the teenager was wearing baggy shorts and a shirt that was at least one size too big, white gym socks and sneakers. He couldn’t have looked less like a killer, lying there in his oversized clothes, the faint gunpowder scent from the exchange of shots mixing with the smell of dried blood on the floor.

  ‘Who is he?’ Peralta asked, studying the dead boy.

  ‘Jeremy Somers. Student here at the school, fourteen years old.’

  ‘Background?’

  ‘Foster kid. Parents were around to start with, but they split and neither wanted him. Went through several homes. He’s lived with his current foster mother for the past two years.’

  ‘Notified?’ Font asked.

  Devlin nodded. ‘Some of our people just got to the house.’

  Checking over his shoulder, Peralta noticed a black circular camera mounted on the far wall of the library. Devlin saw where he was looking.

  ‘Cameras in here and the hallway aren’t working, but one of the kids outside was able to tell us what happened,’ he said. ‘Apparently they’d all just settled for last period when Somers burst in with the handgun.’

  Devlin positioned himself where Somers had been standing.

  ‘With more luck than the Irish, the guard was in here talking with the librarian. He saw the kid enter. Somers targeted him first and but snatched the shot, clipping the guy in the calf. Fired twice more but missed.’

  Peralta and Font looked over, seeing the bullet holes in the far wall. Beside them, Devlin took a step to the left, revealing a blood spatter and single hole in the plaster behind him.

  ‘Despite getting hit, the guard fired back and hit Somers in the chest once, putting him down. The shots were heard around the school and everyone on site either ran outside or hid. Librarian and one of the kids got the guard out of here and called 911 as soon as they made it outside.’

  ‘Guard’s name?’

  ‘Jeff Wade Cummings,’ Devlin read from his notepad. ‘Former student here. Played quarterback for the football team three years straight; star player.’

  ‘And now he works here as a guard?�
�

  ‘Got injured or something so he couldn’t turn pro. There are pictures of him in the corridor. Now he’s being hailed a hero again by everyone here. Guy deserves it; he saved a lot of lives.’

  Font glanced down at Somers’ body. ‘So was the motive? Evidence of bullying?’

  ‘Don’t know yet,’ Devlin replied. ‘Some of the older kids outside are being interviewed, but they’re pretty shaken up and aren’t making much sense. From what we can gather so far, he had a couple of friends but seemed to keep to himself most of the time.’

  ‘Did the shot kill him immediately?’ Font asked.

  ‘ERT found him alive.’

  ‘Did he talk? Say anything?’

  ‘Tried to apparently. Died before he could.’

  Peralta and Font both remained silent, looking around the library, seeing abandoned bags, laptops and pens, some lying on the floor where they’d obviously been knocked in the rush to leave the room.

  ‘Which class was this?’ Peralta asked after a few moments.

  ‘Last one of the year. Computer tech. Somers was a student.’

  Peralta and Font looked down at the dead boy again, a life cut short before it could properly begin.

  ‘Like I said, nothing to do with your sniper case.’

  ‘We already figured,’ Peralta said, glancing at Font. ‘Thanks anyway,’

  ‘Good luck with it.’

  With that, the Boston pair turned and left the room. As they walked back down the corridor, neither spoke, their footsteps echoing down the quiet hallway.

  ‘Hell of a way to end the school year,’ Font said, shaking her head.

  Peralta thought for a moment, then looked at her. ‘Sorenson didn’t say we had to go straight back to Hoover.’

  Font saw him glance past her and stopped walking. She turned to see what he was looking at and saw a trophy cabinet. Among the cups and silver plates there were several newspaper cuttings; one of them was a photo of a handsome dark-haired young man in pads and football gear being held aloft on team-mates’ shoulders, his arms in the air, his hair damp with sweat and a huge smile on his face.

  Last minute TD by Cummings wins State Bowl.

  ‘So that’s the guard,’ Peralta said, looking at the other cut-outs in the cabinet. ‘Devlin wasn’t exaggerating. Guy was a star. And if it wasn’t for him, we’d be dealing with a roomful of bodies back there. At least.’

  He paused for a moment, looking down the corridor, the dried blood visible on the floor where it had pooled out from Somers’ body.

  ‘Jeremy Somers walked into that library with a gun intending to kill people.’

  He glanced back at Font, who nodded, on the same page.

  ‘Let’s find out why.’

  SIX

  The last sighting of the sniper suspect had come from a gas station attendant in Ward 7 four hours ago. He’d been fixing a pump when he’d spotted a man in a baseball cap, jeans and t-shirt bent double and retching into the gutter across the street. Leaving his pump, the attendant had started to approach the guy to see if he was alright, but suddenly becoming aware of him, the sick man had taken off down a side street. He’d moved fast but that brief glimpse of the man’s face had been enough for the attendant to recognise him.

  He was the suspect whose image had been all over the news for the past twenty four hours.

  As soon as Metro PD and the FBI had confirmed the attendant’s story with the gas station’s CCTV, police roadblocks and checkpoints had been set up at every access point into Wards 7 and 8. Sniffer dogs working with clothing brought from the man’s apartment in New York had been deployed where the sighting had taken place, but so far were drawing a blank and since the gas station this morning, there hadn’t been another sighting of the man.

  Until just now.

  A call had come in from a Ukrainian woman who worked in the Buena Vista neighbourhood of Ward 7. She’d been hired by an elderly gentleman to clean his bookstore once a week, a relic of a shop in a residential neighbourhood, and despite the current trouble was determined not to miss her scheduled clean. She needed the money.

  Using her key, she’d opened up the store and headed for the counter where she placed her bag, ready to get out her cloths and cleaning products.

  Then she’d stopped dead.

  Just behind the counter, a man was lying on the floor, out cold. Alarmed, she’d moved forward to see if he was breathing, stepping over a metal box beside him to get a closer look

  Staring at him, she thought he looked familiar and then suddenly realised who he was.

  At the Hoover Building Command Post, Sorenson focused on the main screen, his team of analysts sitting silently as they watched the images transmitted from the helmet cameras worn by the FBI Hostage Rescue Team, giving the Command Post a real-time view of what was happening. HRT had sped across the neighbourhood as soon as the sighting had been reported and were now waiting around the corner from the bookstore, Bureau and ATF agents forming a barricade around the location.

  ‘House is surrounded, sir,’ an analyst said.

  ‘HRT, are you ready?’ Sorenson asked over the radio.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ their Commander replied.

  ‘Go!’

  Like Metro’s Emergency Response Team who were still at Wilson High, the FBI’s task force was dressed head to toe in high-tech body armour, helmets with cameras and were carrying assault rifles, two of their sharpshooters already set up on a couple of roofs overlooking the bookstore and covering the exit points.

  The squad’s truck pulled onto the street and stopped outside the bookstore, the task force moving out smoothly and quietly. Reaching the front door, the officers split either side, two of them running forward with a ram and swinging it against the lock, smashing the door back on the first try.

  Shouts of ‘Police!’ from the radio echoed around the Command Post as Sorenson and his team watched the officers breach the old bookstore.

  Holding his breath, Sorenson was seeing what the HRT sergeant was looking at as he approached the counter, edging around the other side, looking down the sights of his rifle.

  There was no-one there.

  However, there was something lying on the floor.

  It was an open rectangular box, food wrappers and an empty drink can lying beside it. As other officers continued to clear the location, Sorenson studied the transmission from the sergeant’s head-cam as he peered inside the box.

  Everyone in the Command Post watched in silence, seeing a disassembled rifle along with several boxes of rounds stored there.

  ‘Son of a bitch,’ Sorenson muttered. ‘It was him.’

  While members of the HRT team cleared the basement and ground floor, an officer kicked open the door to a 1st floor storeroom and cleared the place with his rifle, seeing nothing but an open window leading out to a twenty foot drop into the back yard as shouts of ‘Room clear!’ echoed around the building.

  Moving over to the window in the storeroom, the officer looked outside and swore just as another team-mate joined him.

  ‘He split. We missed him.’

  ‘The sighting came in nine minutes ago,’ the other man said. ‘He can’t have got far.’

  He looked out of the window.

  ‘He’s still around here somewhere.’

  Two streets south, a baseball cap pulled low over his face, the suspect forced open the back door to a house that looked unoccupied, no lights on and no car outside, and moved inside fast. An open packet of ground pepper in one hand and a pistol in his other, he scattered the pepper behind him, finishing on the doorstep then quickly secured the damaged door as best he could, turning and looking around him as he tried to recover his ragged breathing.

  Moving forward, he quickly checked the ground floor of the house; it didn’t take long. This place was clearly lived-in, but thankfully no-one appeared to be home. They’d probably left because of the rioting.

  Satisfied he was alone, the man moved over to a window in the front room and c
autiously checked the street, cursing quietly. He was furious with himself; he’d got careless and fallen asleep from exhaustion, a sudden noise waking him up.

  Getting to his feet, he was just in time to see a woman running out of the bookstore, locking the door after her before taking off.

  He knew then that she’d figured out who he was.

  Peering through the window, he was relieved to see there was no sign of officers on this street yet, but he knew it was only a matter of time. He’d intended to get further away from the bookstore but had only just managed to avoid being seen by a gang of masked-up rioters who’d suddenly appeared round the corner further down the street. Luckily for him, they’d been too preoccupied with smashing up an abandoned car they’d just spotted, but he’d been forced to find somewhere to hide fast and this house had been his closest option.

  The FBI would know he couldn’t have got far and would be setting up a hard perimeter around this immediate area before conducting door to door sweeps.

  He was trapped.

  Shaking slightly from the Red Bull he’d chugged before he took off, the suspect put the packet of pepper down, took his service pistol and pulled the top-slide to load a round, the sound of it snapping forward echoing around the empty room.

  Then he took the safety off, looking down at the gun in his hand. He tried to formulate some kind of plan, but his brain wouldn’t co-operate.

  He was tired, hungry, dehydrated and desperate.

  And alone.

  His head snapped up as he heard a noise and he moved to the window, checking outside again. There was no-one out there, but that wouldn’t be the case for long.

  Then he turned back and froze.

  He was looking at a Sig Sauer handgun, matching the one he was holding and which was aimed directly at him. Wondering if his exhaustion was making him hallucinate, the manhunt suspect stared in disbelief at the figure holding the weapon.

  ‘Sam?’ he said.

  Across the room, Archer looked down the sights of his pistol at the most wanted man on the East Coast.