Memory Man

Schools should never be this quiet. That was Decker’s first thought as he walked down the hall next to Lancaster. His second thought was that this was the grimmest place he would ever visit.

He passed pictures on the wall of long-ago principals of Mansfield, including the man who had headed up the school when he was there. He glanced at rooms where he had sat in class, sometimes listening, sometimes taking notes, and sometimes sleeping while pretending to listen and take notes.

He forgot about the past when he saw the leg right at the juncture of two halls. It was a bare calf, which told Decker the body probably would be female.

As they made the turn, his deduction was confirmed. She was sprawled on the linoleum that looked old enough to have been there when Decker had trod these halls.

Photos and measurements had already been taken, and forensics gathered or nearly so, Lancaster had told him. The girl seemed posed, one hand out like she had been waving to a friend when someone had violently stolen the remainder of her life.

“Debbie Watson,” said Lancaster as Decker stared down at the girl. “Senior. Just turned eighteen. Her parents have been notified.”

Decker looked around. He had been working crime scenes for twenty years as a beat cop and then a detective. He should feel perfectly natural here looking for things he had looked for a thousand times before. But he did not feel natural. He felt like an outsider. He felt like all the air in the school was being sucked away from him.

He fought hard against this inner turmoil and said, “But they haven’t seen her?”

She shook her head. “You know the drill. Crime scene. No one gets in, including parents. Besides, why would they want to see her…like this?”

Decker had put on plastic booties and gloves Lancaster had given him. He knelt down next to Debbie Watson. As he did so his head started to spin. He cleared his throat and focused on her body.

She had taken what looked to be a round of buckshot full in the face. The result was she no longer had a face. He glanced at the wall behind her. It was splattered with bits of her. Books lay beside her; a notebook was soaked in blood. He looked down at a piece of paper that apparently had fallen out of a book. If these were the girl’s doodles she had been a good artist, thought Decker.

“You have the order of shootings yet?” he asked.

“From everything so far, it seems she might have been the first one killed.”

“Shooter’s entry?”

“This way.”

Lancaster led him a short distance away to what he recognized as the rear of the school. She pointed at the rack of doors. “They’re kept locked during the school day.” She pointed at a camera attached to the upper corner of a wall. “That camera gave us a nice view of the ingress.”

“Description?”

“I’ve got the image loaded on my laptop in the command center we set up in the library. But it was a big guy in full camouflage gear. Face completely obstructed by a mask and a face shield.”

“Belts and suspenders,” commented Decker. “Methodical.”

Lancaster continued, “We believe he walked in this way, turned the corner, encountered Debbie Watson, and shot her.”

“Wouldn’t there have been other people in the halls?”

“At that time of morning everyone was in their classes.”

“So why wasn’t Debbie?”

“She was going to the nurse’s office. She had an upset stomach. That’s according to the teacher who gave her permission to leave class.”

Decker looked around again. “Everyone was in class. So either the shooter was lucky or he knew the routine of the school.”

“That thought struck me too.”

“And after Debbie went down?”

“He went to the gym, killed Joe Kramer, the teacher there, reversed course, passed Debbie’s body, and headed toward the front of the school. By then the shots had alerted everyone, but people were more or less trapped in their classrooms. He shot one more student dead in a classroom. He went into a second classroom and opened fire. One more dead and one wounded, a teacher.”

“Andy Jackson? English? I heard it on the news.”

“Yes. Then he walked to the opposite corridor and entered another classroom. Another dead. Another classroom on the same corridor, a sixth person shot dead. He headed to the school office, where he shot and killed the assistant principal. He then shot and killed one more student in another classroom. All told we have eight dead. And Jackson’s in critical condition, so the death count could go up by one.”

“So six students and two adults?”

“Yes. And one critically wounded.”

“You said the shooter was dressed in cammies, mask, and face shield?”

“Right.”

“What else? Type of footwear?”

“The video shot is from the waist up. No one we interviewed noted his footwear. He was wearing gloves. Weapons were a shotgun and handgun. Ballistics guys are still searching and spreadsheeting all of it. A lot of the ordnance is still in the victims. When he used the handgun he fired multiple rounds into his victims.”

“To make sure they were dead,” said Decker. “Don’t really have that concern with a shotgun.”

“No, you don’t.”