Killer Curriculum

by Douglas Alexander

  Sarah looked up. “He looks awfully familiar, doesn’t he?”

  ***

  August was just leaving the Lucky Roll after making a quick detour when his cell began to ring. He started the car but left it in park. He looked at the screen. Old Man. “Ski,” Booker answered the call. “I have a feeling I know what you are going to say.”

  “That surprises the shit out of me because I don’t really know what I have,” the voice on the other end growled.

  “Did you have any luck following the murder weapon?”

  “Six sites in town that have been doing work that would require that specific tool. Three are the town maintenance department pouring new sidewalks,” Ski started.

  “Is that unusual?”

  “No, not at all. That much concrete you need to lay rebar, and the best way to cut it—”

  “Is with a portable bandsaw.” Booker finished for him.

  “You bet. I checked with my buddy at the town garage, and he knows all those guys. No bodies there, I’d guess. It seems pretty legit.”

  “And the others?” Booker watched half his options drop off the board, and he needed something to further back up the scenario that he was building in his head. Don’t jump to conclusions, he told himself. You’re hardly a student. Let the evidence come to you and then decipher what you have.

  “A company doing electrical work two weeks ago near the river, a contractor building those god-awful luxury apartments near the town center, and that volunteer group Safe Places just finished a new playground a few blocks from the college.”

  “Okay. Thanks, Ski.”

  “Wait, don’t you want me to check any of them out?” the old man asked.

  “No need. I have a suspicion where we should look next, but when I get you off the phone, I’m going to know for sure. Now quit talking my ear off.”

  “Are you kidding me? I don’t even like this stupid pocket phone! The only reason I carry it is because you said I had to. Probably giving me brain cancer and all the—”

  Used to the old man’s Luddite rants, Booker hung up. He started to slip the phone in his jacket but stopped and turned it back on. He scrolled through his contact list until he found Max. Sending you a list of a few construction sites. Do your magic. Priority. He texted to the student and then slid the phone home.

  Sighing, August leaned his head against the steering wheel. He closed his eyes and began to spread out all the facts his team had collected so far: the saw, the two victims, the stolen M.O., the profile, and all the new information that was coming into view. Slowly, he examined each clue and then began to visualize how the puzzle pieces fit together.

  Chapter 19- Sitting Ducks

  As Kara exited the high school with Detective Rime, she felt pretty pleased with herself. Not only had they gotten a clue that was sure to impress Booker, but they’d also moved past “kid and adult” and become more like co-workers. At the very least, she’s more like a mentor than a babysitter, Kara thought.

  And she’d avoided the secretary who’d made her life miserable for at least two out of her four high school years. The sky was clear and blue, the birds singing in the breeze, and everything seemed to take a positive turn. It was at that point that brick exploded behind their heads.

  Red dust and rocks filled Kara’s hair. A loud twang reverberated through her ears. She shuffled and fell to the ground. Wait she thought, did I trip or was I pushed down. Her head was swirling from the ringing in her ears and the impact on the pavement.

  Rolling over, she could see that she was behind her truck, with a knee placed on her back. “What the hell?” Kara began.

  “Stay down.” Sarah was above her with her gun drawn in her right hand, peering over the bed of the truck. The second shot rang out and Kara realized at that point they were being shot at! She didn’t feel afraid, surprisingly, but instead, a surreal feeling overtook her. It was like she was watching herself in a movie. Until she heard another shot and a tell-tale ding.

  Sarah ducked from the shot but was upended by the cheerleader, jumping to her feet.

  “Did they just shoot my truck?” Kara screamed and moved to circle the truck and check the damage.

  Sarah tackled her to the ground before she rounded the tailgate. “Are you out of your mind?” She shouted at the girl. “Someone is shooting at us, and you are concerned about the paint job on your truck?” The detective tried peeking around the tailgate. Another loud shot followed by the ding of a bullet hitting rear corner panel of the truck.

  Two security guards came running out of the front doors of the school. Both were in rumpled blue uniforms and black baseball caps.

  “Get down!” she commanded both of them. They dropped behind a retaining wall.

  “What can we do?” one of them yelled to her.

  Not a damn thing unless those pepper spray canisters have a long-range setting I don’t know about, Sarah thought, but bit her lip. They were trying to help. “Call 911!” she answered.

  “Already done! They’re on their way.”

  Kara used this distraction to squirm out from under Sarah and had slithered under the truck. She was able to see across the parking lot and was scanning for the shooter.

  One more shot cracked out, and Kara saw something on the knoll across the street from the school. Before she could alert the detective, sirens could be heard approaching and she saw movement dropping down behind the small hill.

  She was able to pull herself out from under the truck by the time three patrol cars came hurtling into the parking lot. As she got to her feet, she could see Sarah had holstered her weapon and was holding her badge up for the officers to identify. An older officer came straight to Sarah.

  “Sergeant Blue,” Sarah panted.

  “Detective,” he looked at the two security guards still huddled together behind the pony-wall. “What the hell happened here?”

  The detective clipped her badge back on her belt. “Shooter opened up on us as we left the high school.” She scanned the distance, shielding her eyes from the sun with one hand.

  “It was coming from over there.” Kara pointed to the grassy knoll. “I saw movement and then a silhouette moving away when the patrol cars got close.”

  “Are you okay?” Sarah asked, inspecting the cheerleader.

  “I’m fine,” Kara said, straightening her ponytail. Her hands were shaking, but Sergeant Blue nodded, seemingly impressed with the young girl’s poise, and then began barking orders to the other officers who scattered through the parking lot.

  He yelled to one, in particular, a young officer with dark hair. “Brandt!”

  The man’s head bobbed in the direction of the sergeant. “Head out to that hill across the street and section it off,” Blue said. “I don’t want anyone trouncing through evidence!”

  “I’ll head over there myself,” Sarah interjected.

  “Whoa, Detective.” The older man put his hand up. “As much as I’m sure you would like to, I can’t let you investigate this. The Captain would have all our heads. You were one of the targets. And a witness. I already radioed ahead. Detective Salazar is going to have to lead this one. Conflict of interest and all.”

  Crap, Sarah thought. She knew he was right. It didn’t make her any happier about it, though.

  Sarah and Kara spent the next hour being questioned and giving their statements to an officer and then again to Salazar when he arrived in all his wrinkled shirt and messy comb-over glory. “Damn Rime,” he said scratching the back of his head and looking around at bullet holes and destroyed brick from the walls. “You really know how to party.”

  “Yeah, I was getting bored with my murder investigation, so I thought ‘Why not have a shootout at the local high school?’ You know, just for shits and giggles.”

  Salazar realizing his statement warranted such a response, grunted. “Yeah, this is some real messed up stuff.” His voice became more serious. “This isn’t our day to day here in Berksville.”

  “Well, the obv
ious is always helpful, Salazar.” Captain Harrison walked up from behind the two detectives. “Detective Rime, didn’t you read the sign at the end of the parking lot? This is a gun free zone.”

  Sarah wasn’t sure if he was serious or not, until a slight grin at the corner of his mouth peaked through. “In my defense sir, I didn’t actually fire my weapon.” She grinned and waved off an EMT, who was trying to check her for injuries. He had been pestering her since the ambulance arrived to allow a quick check.

  “Well thank God for small mercies. At least no one was hurt,” he paused. “And at least it happened after hours. I don’t know what all happened here, but if the kids had been around, this could have turned into a school shooting, and…”

  He trailed off for a moment and his smile dropped at the thought. Sarah gave a shiver. One kid hurt, and the whole situation would escalate.

  After a long pause, Harrison seemed to throw off the thought, “As they say, a miss is as good as a mile, and at least your timing saved me a few mounds of paperwork.”

  Captain Harrison looked at Salazar. “You got this under control?”

  The unkempt detective nodded. “Yes, sir. I have Brandt up on the knoll over where that girl thinks the shots came from. And Sergeant Blue has the whole scene locked down.”

  As Salazar was reporting, a ruckus came from the police line. Since the police had shown up just after the shots, a crowd of neighborhood people had begun crowding the yellow tape around the parking lot. Shouting had erupted from one side, and a few officers were converging on that area. Suddenly, the officers jumped back, and August Booker came through swinging his cane side to side making a path through spectators and police alike. Before the officers could stop him he called over.

  “Captain, a little help here?”

  Harrison nodded at the uniformed officers and waved an approved hand at the professor. Dapper as always, Booker in an olive-colored three-piece suit, came through the line followed by Benjamin Tronski and a dark-haired woman with big shoulders and a senseless, distraught demeanor. “My baby!” The woman came running at Kara, who was sitting on her tailgate, protective of her truck’s rear panel being inspected at the sites of bullet holes by officers. The girl looked up in horror.

  “Mom? No,” Kara started to protest.

  The flustered woman pounced on her daughter, wrapping her solid arms around her daughter and squeezing as if Kara might slip out.

  “Mom, stop!” Kara said, sounding like every teenage girl in the last fifty years. “What are you doing here?”

  Dropping her child back onto the tailgate, Mrs. Allister transformed from concerned mama bear to angry inquisitor. “What do you mean ‘What am I doing here?’” She pointed her finger at the girl. “Kara Shirley Allister, I am your mother! I have a right to run all over this God-forsaken country if my daughter is being shot at!”

  Kara was clearly out of her element, which normally wouldn’t have impacted Sarah one bit, but they’d bonded back in the library. Moreover, she had been impressed at how well the kid kept a cool head while bullets were whizzing past both of them. And no one deserved to be hassled after a day like this.

  “Mrs. Allister,” she broke in, “I’m Detective Rime with the Berksville Police Department. We still have no evidence that people were shooting at your daughter specifically. Right now, we are looking for some disgruntled individual who is unhappy with the Berksville education system.” A lie, she thought, but not one that will get back to the press.

  “So, this doesn’t have anything to do with the nonsense that professor of hers has her doing?” Mrs. Allister spat the word “professor,” pointing at Booker, who was talking to Salazar and Captain Harrison a few yards away.

  Sarah vehemently shook her head. “There is absolutely no evidence of that ma’am.” Another lie. She tried not to look the woman directly in the eye. Why was lying to a mom so difficult? Sarah lied to criminals all the time.

  Kara’s mom looked apprehensively at her daughter, then at Sarah, then to the professor still engaged in conversation. Her stern gaze began to dissolve. “Well, I suppose Prof. Booker did call me right away. I should thank him, or I wouldn’t have known what happened.”

  “Oh, he did?” Kara asked, furrowing her eyebrows.

  “Yes, he did, young lady. Not that you would have been considerate enough to call home.”

  Kara lost her bravado and looked down at the ground. “I had just survived a shooting mom—”

  “Don’t give me any of that now, young lady. ‘Just survived a shooting.’ If I know you, you were more worried about that truck than your own safety. Probably ran right into the bullets like Clark Kent. No thought at all to the worry you cause your family.”

  Sarah hid a grin behind one hand. This woman was scarily accurate.

  Satisfied that her daughter was in one piece, Mrs. Allister stepped into the other conversation. “Mr. Booker, thank you for calling and letting me know what happened.”

  Booker looked cautiously at the mom who had been in a tirade just moments earlier. “Of course, Mrs. Allister. I wouldn’t have considered anything else.” He held his cane with both hands directly in front of him, shielding any possible outburst from the still agitated parent. None came.

  “Captain Harrison?” Mrs. Allister guessed, looking toward the man in charge. “Are you finished with my daughter, so I can take her home?”

  “Mom, I don’t need—” Kara was cut off by her mother’s sharp look.

  The police captain shrugged and nodded. “We have already taken her statement. We are going to have to take the truck—”

  “What?” Kara looked rattled for the first time.

  “Evidence. You understand? You can pick it up at the department as soon as it has been processed thoroughly.”

  Kara looked defeated, but her mother was at least pacified. She gave a quick snap of her hand at her daughter to signal let’s go and Kara begrudgingly followed, shoulders slumped. She looked back to Booker, her last hope at reprieve, but he just threw his hands up in a quiet signal of surrender. She looked for Sarah, but the detective had finally been cornered by the relentless medical staff. As Kara and Mrs. Allister got into the car, Booker was redirected by Ski.

  “Hey, Prof,” the old man called out, moving over to the group as quickly as he could. “I was over on the hill where the shooter was.” Ski stopped to catch his breath.

  “Do you need to smoke another pipe?” Sarah asked sarcastically.

  Ski narrowed his eyes in displeasure, but continued, “The shooter did a hell of a job covering their tracks.”

  By this time, Officer Brandt caught up to them to give his official account. “The old man’s right, Captain,” the young officer directed himself at his superior rather than Booker. “They dragged the area to remove any footprints or indentations they may have made from lying down.”

  Salazar, trying to play lead detective as the Captain had ordered, finally decided to join the investigation. “What makes you think he was lying down on the hill?” He squinted, the sun blinding out the top of the hill. Sweat was beading down his balding head and soaking the unbuttoned color of his shirt.

  Sarah, finally convincing the EMT that was pulling a blood pressure cuff from her arm that she was unscathed, pulled her jacket back over her t-shirt. “They would have had to be lying down to make a shot from that distance. It’s easily three-hundred yards from here.”

  “Closer to three-fifty,” Ski chimed in. “I paced it out on my way over to the site.”

  “Right,” Sarah continued. “At that range, they would have to be shooting from a prone position. Plus, when we did get a free look, neither Kara or I could see them sticking up over the knoll.”

  Salazar slumped against a patrol car, deflated. “So, you’re telling me, we got nothing?” He ran his hand across his comb-over.

  Booker was beginning to realize this was the detective’s nervous tick. He had watched the large Hispanic man had run a hand through the long-defeated hairline mor
e than half a dozen times since he arrived at the school.

  “Not exactly,” Ski reassured them. “Go ahead, Brandt, show ‘em what you found.”

  Unused to being the center of attention, Brandt looked at all of the faces staring at him and gulped. He looked at the Captain, and then at Ski, who gave him a look of assurance. Pulling a clear evidence bag out of his pocket, he laid it out flat in his hand to display the contents to the group. It was a semi-solid, brown and gray mush.

  Salazar snorted, “Hell of a job, kid. You found mud. Hey, we better call the Berksville Post right now and get a headline.” He dismissed the bag and began to turn.

  “Wait a second there, detective,” Ski stopped him. “To you, that might be just some mud. But I know exactly what that is.”

  He moved the evidence bag around in Brandt’s hand. “See that green stuff mixed in with the mud?” He pointed with a rough finger. That’s friggin’ algae.”

  Booker looked closely, so did Captain Harrison. They stared for a moment. Then, Harrison looked up. “Are you sure about that, Mr. Tronksi?” he asked.

  “Captain, I’d bet the house on it. I’ve been fishing the Iroquois River my whole life. And every hot summer, like this one, that river has an algae bloom. It’s filled with this shit.”

  Booker looked proud of his student and pleased with the turn of events. He pointed to Sarah. “As I’m sure Detective Rime knows, this discovery means that the shooting is, in fact, linked to our case.”

  Sarah looked blankly for a second and then understood his meaning. She walked over and snatched the notes out of Salazar’s hands. “That means I’m the lead detective on the investigation!” she practically crowed.

  The heavy middle-aged policeman looked pleadingly at Captain Harrison, but the commander shook his head. “She’s right, Daniel. Sorry. You get the next one.”