‘Yes, sir. I’m to take the lead in the school shooting investigation.’
‘That’s right. Jim says you’re the best man for it.’
Thiery glanced at Bullock, who simply raised his eyebrows.
‘I’ll do my best, sir. But, can I ask why you want our department to handle this?’
Croll looked at Thiery as if it was obvious. ‘We’re consolidating our efforts. Trying to increase our efficiency; something I’ve been asking all of our departments to do. Frankly, there are so many departments on scene down there now, they’re tripping over each other. You caught the police chief from Podunk, right?’
Thiery had seen the small town chief on the news, felt bad for him, but there was no way he was going to knock another cop just to cater to a politician. He asked, ‘What about ATF or the FBI? One of my associates in Lakeland said the young shooter, what’s his name? Coody? Said he’d heard the kid had his apartment booby-trapped.’
‘As a matter of fact, the FBI has sent an agent from their WMD office in Miami. A woman named Sara Logan. Know her?’
Thiery took a long breath, let it out slow. He knew her well, though it had been a few years since he’d seen her. He knew her personally. ‘We’ve worked together on some cases.’
‘Problems?’ asked Croll, noting Thiery’s sudden uneasiness.
‘No,’ he replied.
Croll stared at him now, his lidless eyes like a gecko’s. ‘If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were trying to get out of this assignment, Agent Thiery.’ His smile was a painful grimace.
Thiery returned his stare. ‘Not at all, sir. I just don’t want to get knee deep, then have the case pulled from me by the Feds. Besides, they seem to have resources we don’t, anymore.’
Croll forced a laugh. ‘You believe this guy, Jim? I thought you’d be thrilled to take part. We need a hero to rise out of this, fellas, and frankly, the FDLE could use one, too.’
‘I’m flattered and very interested, sir. It’s just … it’s going to be a huge case. Complicated. If we’re going to follow the Feds’ lead, I’d rather it be up front and avoid a hostile takeover, or turf war. That’s all.’
Bullock spoke up. ‘I think that’s all he’s trying to say. Right, Justin?’
‘That’s all I did say,’ said Thiery.
Croll stopped smiling. ‘Well, okay. When you’re in the position to make those kinds of decisions, maybe you can go that way. For now, you’re the man, the SAS, the Special Agent Supervisor. Our man. Pull this thing together so Florida doesn’t continue to look like a bunch of morons who can’t even vote right. Do the job you’re supposed to be so good at, capiche?’
Thiery nodded, but said nothing.
Bullock’s face turned red. If he weren’t so close to retirement, he’d tell the governor to go fuck himself. He had no right talking to one of his men like that, especially Thiery, a solid cop who’d raised two boys by himself after his wife walked out on him ten years ago.
‘I’ll be in Washington,’ he said blandly.
Croll looked at him as if trying to remember if he’d given him permission to leave the state, his eyebrow arched.
‘For the National Police Commissioner’s meeting?’ Bullock asked.
‘Of course,’ said Croll, then turned back to Thiery. ‘You want to fly down with me, Agent Thiery?’ Like he was offering a gift.
‘I should probably drive down. If I’m taking lead, I’ll need my car to get around.’
‘Nonsense. Fly with me. I’ve got a limo picking me up. It’ll be the fastest way. If you need a car, you can check out a cruiser at your Orlando office, right?’
Thiery’s jaw muscles flexed. ‘Sure,’ he said.
In a penthouse suite at the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas, eighty-year-old Emilio Esperanza watched the live coverage of the shooting at the Florida elementary school on one of the three big screen TVs. Another TV was set to the stock market, the sound turned off; banners of numbers flowing across the bottom of the screen reflecting in Esperanza’s eyes. The last TV was showing an old black-and-white gangster film. Esperanza picked a speck of tobacco from an unfiltered cigarette off his lip with his bony, blue fingers, and flaked it to the floor, then reached over and turned up the oxygen that ran into his nostrils via a plastic nasal cannula.
‘You should have a nurse doing that for you, Papa,’ said his son Julio, himself over fifty years old. His thick hair looked like a coiffed chrome helmet on his head. Tanned skin. Teeth like polished porcelain chips. His collar button was open on his starched, maroon shirt, Rat Pack-style, under his tailored, bone-coloured, linen suit.
The old man’s eyes slid over to his son’s like those of a Komodo dragon eyeing its prey. He raised his wrinkled upper lip as if to spit.
‘That didn’t work out too well last time, did it?’
Julio cast his eyes to the ground. One way or the other, it would all be over soon. He wished he had the balls to strangle the old man himself, save them both a lot of trouble. But he didn’t.
‘Time for you to do something, Julio.’
‘Sure, Papa. Anything.’
‘Get that fucking marshal on the phone, numero uno. And, dos, get your little posse together and get down to Florida. This thing stops now.’
Erica Weisz lay in a private room in Lakeland Regional Hospital dreaming of fire. She saw only bright orange light and felt searing heat all around her, at once welcoming her and, conversely, pushing her back with its intensity. Then it was gone, as if sucked into a vacuum, taking her life with it, but leaving her body and an all-encompassing emptiness as cold as any Arctic region on earth.
She woke up sweating, strands of hair stuck to her face, tears streaming down her cheeks. A feeling of post-operative nausea and dizziness enveloped her. She sat up with great difficulty and felt pain in her side and lower abdomen. The room spun to a stop, and she was able to see her surroundings in the late afternoon light that filtered through the window: an aseptic hospital room painted a vague green, an uncomfortable-looking vinyl chair for visitors, her chrome-railed bed with unwrinkled sheets as if laid over a corpse.
Her mouth was dry. A small folding table next to the bed held a yellow plastic pitcher of ice water, a clear cup, and a plastic straw. She peeled the paper off the straw, stuck it directly into the pitcher, and drank deeply. She looked at the IV in her arm and up to the bag that fed it. Lactated ringers in a one-litre bag, piggybacked with a half-litre of normal saline, a red tag on the bag that read Amoxicillin on its side. Both were dripping at KVO (‘keep vein open’) rate. She reached down with one hand and pinched the skin on the back of the other hand. It made a small fleshy tent that lingered for a few seconds before slowly laying back down. She was extremely dehydrated. She glanced up again and saw an empty plastic IV bag, its insides coated with blood. Must be pretty bad if they had to give her blood, too. She reached up and turned the drip rate up on the bag of ringers, and forced herself to drink more water.
She wondered if she’d said anything while under anaesthesia and wondered how long she’d been out. What happened to the red-haired man after I shot him? Was he dead? She recalled the urgent jerk of her body as the buckshot caught her in the side and spun her around. She remembered the look of surprise as she fired and caught him in the neck.
Fear crept through her as she thought there might have been other gunmen and that some of the children – those precious