Читать книгу A Shot of Trouble: A Cassidy Adventure Novel - Kelly Rysten - Страница 7

Chapter 1

I heard the shots echo down the hall. If anyone could recognize such an ominous sound it was me, but it was out of place. Nobody expected the sharp sound of a gun to shatter the quiet studies going on inside the classrooms.

I was giving a presentation to Mrs. Peabody’s third grade class. I was winding up my speech about getting lost in the woods and had given examples on how to prevent it. I’d just advised the class on what to do if they ever believed they were lost, and had handed out a little plastic safety whistle to each student. Teachers hated it when I handed out whistles. The kids always brought them out on the playground and disrupted the teacher’s signals for recess. Mrs. Peabody glared at me because recess was the next thing on the schedule. I asked the class for additional questions and a little girl dressed in purple raised her hand.

“Are you a policeman?”

“Sort of,” I answered her. “I went to police academy. I’m qualified to act as an officer as long as a senior officer accompanies me. But my real job is in search and rescue. I am a tracker and I find lost people. That’s one reason I don’t want you to get lost in the woods, or anywhere for that matter. Getting lost is scary and dangerous, especially if you don’t know what to do. That’s why I like to talk to kids like you, so you will know what to do. But normally I don’t do police work at all.”

This is when the shots began to get worrisome. I felt for the 9mm at my side and glanced towards Mrs. Peabody. She appeared to be as worried as I was. I looked to the hall.

“Excuse me,” I said. “Lock the classroom door behind me. I better check this out.”

Stepping into the hall I was met by agitated students rushing my direction. I walked upstream looking for the source of trouble. It wasn’t hard to find and what I saw stopped me cold in my tracks. A man about five-eight was stalking down the hallway. He had a paranoid look in his eye. When he saw someone he’d whip around, take aim and fire one round. He didn’t wait to see if the bullet hit. He just fired and kept walking, reading classroom numbers and teachers’ names on the doors. So much for not doing police work, I thought.

A door opened. “What the…” a teacher said.

“Get inside! Lock the door!” I yelled and the man turned, aimed.

Oh hell, this never works, I thought. I’m dead meat, but I have to try. I ducked into a doorway as a bullet went by, ricocheting off the metal doorjamb behind me. I drew my weapon, tentatively surveyed the scene, then stepped out, gun ready.

“Freeze! Police!” I yelled. “Drop your weapon and put your hands over your head!” It sounded like kids playing cops and robbers and it didn’t help that, even in uniform, I looked like a kid myself. Please freeze, please freeze, I thought frantically. The gunman didn’t freeze and I was getting cold feet. I’m not a cop, I’m not a cop, I thought. I heard a shot from another part of the school. This situation was getting worse by the second. Two shooters? There must be an agenda of some kind. I had to get over there but this guy was the immediate threat. This gunman was going to kill me. He brought his weapon around leaving me no choice. It was him or me, and if he got past me then it was also a wing full of kids. I aimed and fired in one quick stroke. If there had been any time to sit and cry, I would have. Hitting him was like killing a part of myself. I hated it. It was one of those reflex decisions, and although I was right, sometimes being right feels awfully wrong. I ran over to him with my gun still aimed. He was alive but fading fast. I jerked his gun out of his hand even though my training dictated that I wasn’t supposed to touch it. It was evidence, but I also couldn’t leave the weapon behind. A student could take it or the guy might not be as bad off as he appeared. I turned the man over and frisked him quickly. I jammed his gun in my pocket. The battle of the century roared to life inside my head. Leave this guy or stay? Every bit of training I had said I couldn’t count on this guy to stay incapacitated. Yet there was an able bodied shooter somewhere in the building. I took off running.

The other shooter wasn’t as aggressive. Or maybe the school had gotten wise and had gone into lockdown. I ran down a long hallway with adjoining wings leading off of it. The shooter was down the second wing and I skidded to a halt, hid behind the corner, then made my way from doorway to doorway down the corridor, stalking him until I could get within range. When I only had two classrooms between us, I finally stepped out.

“Freeze! Police!” I said again, this time with a little more authority. The man turned, his eyes narrowed as he spotted me with my gun leveled and ready for action. Then he fled towards the end of the hall and the glowing red exit sign. I couldn’t let him get away. Who knew what was on the other side of that door? He could bust through the doorway and into a group of kids so I aimed again and fired knowing I was going to lose my nerve pretty soon. It wasn’t in me to hurt people. Only my training allowed me to perform and think in such terms. Four years in the Marines, then police academy. I knew it had to be done. The man fell, then got up and pushed his way through the metal door. I chased him out the door and across a lawn, until I was forced to watch helplessly as he jumped into the passenger seat of a green SUV which roared off and laid rubber on its way out of the parking lot. The 9mm wouldn’t do much at this distance. I memorized most of the license plate number and, numb with fear, made my way to the office. I could hear the sirens from the squad cars closing in on the building. Kent Jacobsen was one of the first officers on the scene.

“Action’s over, but I need some help,” I told him. “Green Ford SUV heading east. There’s a driver and a passenger. At least one of them is armed and the passenger is wounded. I’ve got a suspect down.” My emotions were catching up with me. “Kent, I know I’m supposed to know what to do with him, but I don’t. I had to leave him to go after the other guy. But…”

He spoke to some other officers and they took off after the SUV. Then I led the way to my suspect. I didn’t know if I could look at him again. I knew it was important to get there as soon as possible, but I had to force my feet to keep going.

“Can you call Rusty?” I asked him. “I don’t think I can do this without Rusty.”

As we walked along Kent radioed a request for Rusty Michaels, and with relief I knew my personal backup was on his way. I reported to Jacobsen what had happened. I had to pass on as much information as possible because once reality caught up with duty and smacked me one I was going to be useless. Hopefully Rusty would be faster than reality because it lurked just around the bend. We turned the corner and I looked timidly down the hallway, half afraid the suspect was gone, half fearful he was dead. I let Jacobsen check the body. He felt for the pulse and stood.

“Good shot,” he said.

That wasn’t what I wanted to hear.

“You took on both guys? By yourself?” he asked.

“I didn’t have any choice. They didn’t know I was here. And what if I wasn’t? I had to do what I could. They acted like they were looking for someone, shooting people as they went. What’s the score?”

“One teacher down, two kids with minor wounds.”

“Is he…”

“Yep, he’s…”

“Am I in trouble? I didn’t have a senior officer. But I didn’t have any choice either.”

“You’ll be happy to note you’ll be taken off active duty until this gets investigated. Most cops think that’s a bad thing but you’re not most cops.”

“What do cops do when they aren’t on active duty?”

“They do desk work, go give talks at schools…”

“Oh, great.”

Suddenly the school was abuzz with activity, most of it police related. Fortunately, one of the staff’s goals was to return the school to normal as soon as possible, which meant I would be out of there as quickly as possible. Rusty caught up to me in the office, where we were trying to reconstruct the sequence of events to determine exactly what had happened. I showed them where the SUV had been parked and explained my brief five minutes of actual participation. I provided a description of the man who got away and the vehicle they drove. It was hard to believe that so much could happen in such a short period of time. I looked to Jacobsen, then to Schroeder who noticed Rusty standing near the doorway. He nodded in Rusty’s direction, granting me permission to finally leave. We walked through the front doors of the school and found ourselves in a forest of microphones. I followed Rusty as he pushed his way through the press.

“We heard there was a shooting at the school. Can you tell us what happened?”

“No comment,” Rusty said flatly.

I followed in his wake. When we got to the Explorer the crowd was still behind us. Rusty unlocked the door for me and I hopped in. Microphones were shoved up to the window.

“No comment,” Rusty repeated, as he climbed in the driver’s seat andclosed the door. “Don’t tell them anything. Let Schroeder handle it. He knows what can be said without jeopardizing the case. But I’m warning you, he’ll give you the credit you deserve and they’re going to come knocking.”

“The credit I deserve. Rusty, I just want to find a rock and hide under it. I didn’t ask to be involved in a school shooting. I just came to talk to a class of third graders. I wasn’t qualified to do what I was forced into.”

We drove in silence. It took me a while to get my bearings and when I realized he was taking me home my walls began crumbling. I had thought we would go to the station, but I was relieved to officially be off duty. It was a long drive home up into the hills outside of town, which gave me plenty of time to build up a good solid guilt trip for myself. Rusty pulled into the driveway and stopped. He glanced over and assessed my stress level. It was easy for him to tell. If I looked like I was ready to disappear into the seat then he knew he had a job ahead of him. This time I was still visible, my mind still actively running in circles reliving the day, trying not to dwell on the shooting but instead focusing on what could have happened. What if I hadn’t been there? It would have been even worse. I had to force myself to realize, it could have been much worse. But then I remembered my shot. I could feel the cold metal in my hands, the tension.

“Cass, babe, we’re home.”

I slid out of the Explorer and followed him into our home. I wanted out of the uniform. It was restrictive, stiff and a reminder of the day’s events I wanted to put behind me. After changing into shorts and a tank top I found Rusty waiting for me on the old brown couch in the den. I crawled onto his lap and held on for dear life. No matter which of us needed comforting, this couch had become our source, just sitting together wrapped in each other’s arms. This time both of us seemed to need it. I needed to put the shooting behind me and he, as a detective, had to put it in perspective. He knew how things could have gone. Just like me, he was thinking it could have been so much worse, except he was thinking of me and I was thinking about the students. I was also worried about the shooters. I needed to know what would happen because of the one that got away.

After we had been sitting together long enough to settle on a question the conversation started. “How close was it?” he asked.

“I wasn’t measuring. He was a lousy shot.”

“Cass…”

“You would have thought it was close. It wasn’t close enough to scare me. I was too busy trying to stop him. What’s the first step in finding the one that got away?”

“I feel sorry for anyone driving a green SUV. They’ll patrol the area looking for the vehicle. They’ll run the plates and pay a call on the owner. All the local hospitals will be checked. They’ll talk to school officials, and try to determine a motive. A lot goes into a case like this. And those are just the first steps. Any information they can gather will bring up more questions. You know how it goes.”

“They won’t give the case to you.”

“No, I expect it will go to Tom. He’d be a good choice.”

“The gunmen were looking for someone. When they shot at people it seemed to be to get them out of the way so they could keep up their search. They weren’t planning on having much opposition.”

“You seem to be taking this better.”

“It’s because of the kids. If it was just self-defense I’d be a basket case, but I had to do it for the kids. I still hate it. It’s still going to haunt me, but we’ll just deal with it. I’m more worried about the man who escaped. I’ve got lots of questions bouncing around in my head. Like, who was the brains behind all of this? Why did the SUV take off without the other guy? They couldn’t have known he was dead. Who were they looking for? It was almost like they wanted the school to be in lockdown, so they wouldn’t have as much to deal with. It was like they knew where they were going but then something went wrong. I don’t know why I’m thinking this way. It’s like the profiling I do when I track. I just kind of read it from their actions, but nothing really happened to make me come to any concrete conclusions. If I were investigating the case, I’d go to the office and see if any teachers or students had changed classrooms recently. If they had it would be unusual this late in the school year. It might point to who these guys were looking for. I’d also look at the record of school visitors. See if one person stands out as having visited an unusual number of times, or for odd reasons. I hate it when I get curious about something. I can’t seem to put it down. It grates on me and, right now, a few things just aren’t adding up.”

“Well put this down. If you need to do something about it talk to whoever gets the case. I don’t want you mixed up in this.”

I tried to put it down. I really did, but as the story hit the news on TV and the newspapers, word got around and everybody speculated about it, about the identity of the gunman who had escaped. As anger flared in the community about who would do such a thing, my mind started forming a plan. Although I wasn’t supposed to get involved, I decided to see Tom, the detective in charge of the investigation. We talked for an hour and he agreed my ideas were worth a try. Then he made a suggestion which took me by surprise.

“In my experience, people like being around dogs. They won’t open up to an officer on the school grounds but they will talk about anything while they are petting a dog. I think you and Carla Sandoval should take a dog over to the school and just patrol. When kids ask to pet the dog, let them. And while they are at it question them. Kids know everything and they aren’t afraid to talk. You can at least get a feel for how the school is coping after the shooting.”