The other boy raised his arm. There was a gun in his hand. Lucas made a face, wrinkling his nose.
‘Oh, man …’
The next second the impact of the bullets flung his body backwards so violently he ended up embedded in the bay window.
His blood began to flow down the outside of the glass.
A dozen dark-red rivulets dripped to the ground.
And the shots continued to ring out.
8.34 a.m. Fourteen people were dead.
Twenty-one were wounded, some permanently.
Hundreds would be scarred for ever by what they had seen.
Outside, the world was waking up.
To start another day.
Lamar Gallineo was nervous.
He was driving his old Pontiac up Third Avenue towards Harlem, and the coffee he had just picked up threatened to spill all over the dashboard.
Lamar was hunched over, too tall to sit comfortably in a normal car. He was slightly over six foot seven.
His height had made it difficult for him to join the police department. Nothing about him was standard, and that was a bad thing.
After studying law, he had wanted to join the NYPD at the highest possible level, as a detective. Which was another bad thing. Since he was black. Or African-American as everyone was supposed to say nowadays.
At the time, the old-timers in the NYPD administration still thought that six-foot-seven black men should be playing basketball, not working as police detectives.
Twelve years on, Lamar carried his badge proudly.
Even better, he worked for the central homicide squad of the NYPD. A few brilliant flashes of intuition meant that he had been put in charge of several significant cases, which he had solved without making waves. He had rapidly climbed through the ranks. Now he was a lieutenant. The new politics of affirmative action had helped him; he was under no illusion about that. But so much the better, he thought. You had to take your chances where you could find them.
He’d got used to many things over his twelve years. Bad racist jokes from his partners. Long gruelling hours that had destroyed his private life. Decomposing corpses.
But he had never been able to get the hang of driving fast in Manhattan.
His head was bent over the steering wheel in order not to brush against the roof of the car. He was frowning, trying to anticipate the path of the vehicles that might cut him up. The Pontiac’s flashing light turned silently, without the siren – Lamar detested the idea of sirens always blaring in the city, saying it put crime and accidents at the forefront of everyone’s minds – while he tried to navigate his way through heavy traffic.
He’d been called out on an emergency.
A mass shooting, they’d said.
It was the cops of the 25th precinct who’d contacted him. An unidentified individual had opened fire in the middle of a high school, less than half an hour earlier. Homicide. Harlem. A sensitive situation. This was the kind of tragic scenario that called for Lamar Gallineo.
The sky was barely light when he arrived in front of the school, which was cordoned off with yellow police tape and bathed in the red and blue of the emergency lights. Two police officers immediately came over to meet him as TV vans drew up with a screeching of tyres outside the building.
‘Over here, Detective, come inside,’ said the first officer, who was squeezed into a uniform that could barely contain his impressive paunch. ‘The most seriously injured have been taken away in ambulances, the rest are being treated in the classrooms. We’ve started taking witness statements.’
‘Are you sure the shooter isn’t still in there?’ demanded Lamar in his deep baritone.
‘We know where he is,’ replied the second police officer sharply.
Lamar frowned, surprised not to see more activity. If the gunman was still in the building, they would have to organise a complete evacuation, and a SWAT team would first have to seal off all the exits.
‘Is that it?’ pursued Lamar. ‘You know where he is – what does that mean? Is he still here?’
‘Yes. We’ve been told he went into a room on the first floor and didn’t come out again.’
‘How can you be sure? Is there a camera trained on the door?’
Lamar was hurrying now, more and more anxious at the thought that an armed psychopath might be holed up in a high school still full of students.
‘It’s a janitor’s closet and it only opens from the outside,’ explained the officer. ‘And witnesses say they saw the shooter go inside. Then it went quiet for a minute or two before the gun was fired again, and then it was over.’
They’d arrived at the school entrance where firefighters and paramedics were going in and out of the swing doors.
‘Have you been inside to take a look?’ asked Lamar, one hand on the door.
The two officers exchanged a brief embarrassed look. ‘No,’ replied the man with the large belly. ‘We thought we’d better wait for you.’
Lamar pursed his lips. ‘I see.’
He reached for his weapon and entered the building. He heard moaning and crying.
There were dozens of figures in the hall, sitting on the floor, lying down or huddled up receiving medical attention or answering the questions of the six or so police officers who had responded to the emergency call.
Lamar made for the large wooden staircase opposite the entrance.
The landing on the way up to the first floor was used for displaying student notices. A crimson sun about three feet in diameter had exploded over the area. Its core consisted of little particles of molten brain that now stuck to the board, and its rays were made of blood, glistening in the harsh light. The linoleum was also streaked with swirls of blood that stretched towards the stairs where pools stagnated, dripping softly.
A beige blanket covered a body. A hand was sticking out.
A hand with short stubby fingers and several rings. And varnished nails.
Lamar stepped over the body, his Walther P99 at the ready, the two police officers at his heels. They climbed the remaining stairs and found themselves in a long corridor with classrooms leading off it.
There was a lot of blood all over the floor, and panicked teenagers and teachers had skated in it, spreading macabre flower patterns as far as the stairs.
Lamar immediately noticed the three bodies. Two boys and an adult.
Most of their body fluids pooled around them, still warm.
The black man looked at them compassionately without for a moment being distracted from his main objective.
One of the officers crept cautiously towards an unmarked wooden door. He pointed his gun at the lock.
‘The janitor assured us that there’s no way out,’ he murmured. ‘There’s no door handle on the other side; it’s just a closet.’
The two officers took up position on either side of the door.
There was a sweetish odour, a mixture of iron and the smell you get in a butcher’s shop – the smell of blood – combined with the sharp whiff of gunshot. How many cartridges must have been fired to make the corridor smell like that? wondered Lamar.
The detective hesitated. He could still call out a SWAT team for backup. He didn’t have to go in there all on his own.