Читать книгу Acoustic Shadows - Patrick Kendrick, Patrick Kendrick - Страница 12

Thiery gathered officers from the various departments that had responded to the scene and questioned their involvement. Answers ranged from, ‘we arrived and responded as a tactical SWAT unit’, from the Calusa County Sheriff’s Office, to, ‘by the time we got here, it was all over and we just helped with traffic’, from the Lake Wales Police Department. They all met in the offices of the parish hall at the church as parents and teachers from the school began to filter out and make their way home. It would serve as a temporary command post until a mobile unit was brought in.

There were numerous departments involved, plus the school board sent their internal police. Thiery delegated assignments to each department, based on their involvement, and dismissed those representatives from departments with little to no involvement. He requested reports from all in attendance, then asked Chief Dunham to head the interviews with the families of survivors and victims. Though he didn’t say it aloud, he felt Dunham had a natural compassion that made people more comfortable talking to him. Dunham nodded his head graciously and accepted the assignment.

Thiery asked Sheriff Conroy to have his department do the most extensive reports, the scene diagrams and initial entry reports, and to follow up with the county dispatch system to get an accurate account of any calls they received, the times they came in, were dispatched, units arrived, et cetera.

Conroy almost sneered as he said, ‘that’s what I was going to do anyway.’

Thiery was in no mood for his callousness. ‘Good, Sheriff Conroy, then you’re probably as concerned as I am about the reports I’m hearing on the response to the school.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ asked Conroy, pushing himself off the wall he’d been leaning against.

Thiery’s jaw muscles flexed as he pondered the quandary of calling out the local sheriff in front of his peers, or swallowing his own pride and looking weak in front of the same group. He was about to say something not very nice when Logan stepped in.

‘I think what Agent Thiery was saying is, it’s very late, and we all know what we have to do.’

All eyes turned toward her. She’d come into the meeting later than the others and had stayed hidden in the back of the room until now.

‘Hi, I’m Agent Sara Logan, with the FBI. Agent Thiery asked me to follow up on the guns used in this morning’s incident, and I’ve accepted that assignment. So, if any of you have questions or comments regarding the subject, please don’t hesitate to contact me.’

Thiery nodded. ‘Thanks, Agent Logan. Which reminds me, I need to ask you all to get with your administrative staff and, when your officers have completed their reports with whatever system you use, have them send them to me in a PDF format, okay? And, before we leave tonight, I need to get everyone’s contact information on a piece of paper we can duplicate and share with each other.’

‘I, uh, already have that, sir,’ said Dunham. He stood up, no taller than anyone’s shoulders in the room, walked to the front, handed a copy to Thiery, then began handing them to other officers.

‘Thanks, Chief,’ said Thiery, nodding his gratitude.

Fatigue permeated the room like a Port-O-Potty air freshener. The combined scents of gun oil, leather, Kevlar, and sweaty bodies covered in polyester uniforms wafted about. Thiery could hear stomachs growling and watched officers rubbing tired, red eyes. Most of them had been there for fifteen hours, or more.

‘Okay, people,’ said Thiery, ‘let’s wrap it up for tonight. You have my number. Please call if you think of anything pertinent. I’ll touch base with all of you tomorrow. Try to have a good night, and get some rest.’

Everyone filed out of the room and headed to their cars. Thiery saw Logan talking to Conroy off to the side and paused, then decided to keep moving. At that point, he didn’t want to talk to either one of them.

It was three o’clock in the morning at the tiny Sun Beam Motel, a clean but dated motor court that offered HBO, free Wi-Fi, a swimming pool, and close proximity to Legoland. After settling in, Thiery called his sons. Both lived in California: one in the Navy, twenty-one-year-old Leif, stationed in San Diego; the other, Owen, a twenty-three-year-old firefighter in San Francisco. After seeing the devastation at the school, Thiery ached to tell them he loved them.

Neither answered their phone. He tried not to take it personally. He wondered if they’d heard about the shooting, wherever they were. It would be midnight in California. They were both young and probably partying. Maybe they were both on shift at work.

He had felt a distance develop as they had grown up with him, their only parent. It was difficult to be both loving caregiver and disciplinarian, and he’d wished he had someone to tag team with. He believed, at times, they blamed him for their mother leaving them so young. They were there, in the house, when some of his co-workers, FDLE agents, stopped by, from time to time, to ask him more questions about her disappearance. She had packed a few items – enough for a weekend away – then vanished.

For a while, Thiery was the primary ‘person of interest’ in her disappearance. Newspapers printed the story of the cop whose wife was missing, and it had created problems for his sons at school. It was no secret to anyone that surviving spouses were the first suspect in missing or murdered partners. He felt people thought he was guilty of something and the burden weighed heavily on him.

When Adrienne hadn’t returned after a few weeks, Thiery’s initial reaction was to assume the worst: she had left him, but something bad had happened along the way. Following that instinct, he’d gone to New York, where his wife had grown up in Brooklyn, the daughter of Albanian immigrants. Though he hadn’t spoken to Edona Manjola since he and Adrienne were married – Adrienne’s mother had never cared for him, for reasons he didn’t understand – he located her apartment, but it was empty.

He learned Adrienne’s mother was dead. When he made further inquiries, neighbours told him that, a few weeks earlier, she had killed herself by leaping from the building. The suicide reinforced his notion that something had happened to Adrienne, but a check with every hospital in New York, and even the coroner’s office, turned up nothing. With no other living relatives, Thiery hit a dead end.

After she’d been gone for over two years, after Thiery had spent every waking moment trying to find her, and then hired several private detectives to continue the search, he was no longer a suspect. He was just alone. Case closed. There was no formal announcement as to his innocence, any more than there had been that he was a suspect. The case, like his wife, just faded away. After seven years, he finally had her declared deceased, allowing him to collect a small life insurance policy she’d carried. He’d placed the funds in an account for his sons’ college savings.

He often wondered if he should have remarried, but that wasn’t something he was going to do just to have a built-in babysitter. In any case, it was too late, now. His sons were who they were, and, to them, he was who he was. All the regret in the world wouldn’t change that.

By four o’clock, Thiery was in bed, poring over reports he’d gathered from the Sebring and Lake Wales Police Departments, as well as the Calusa County Sheriff’s Office, whose SWAT had yielded the most reports.

The reports from the departments who’d arrived first on the scene, Sebring PD and the School Board police, stated in dry, legal terms how and what they did to secure the building, set up a command post, and assist in the evacuation that was underway when they arrived. The Sheriff’s SWAT team recorded the team’s entry at 8:42 a.m., immediately followed by the discovery of both the victims’ and perpetrators’ bodies.

The Fire Rescue reports comprised brief medical statements that included patient treatment – four treated for wounds and six more for chest pain, shock, or trouble breathing – and recorded which hospitals the patients were transported to. There were reports from each forensic team that entered the building and dealt with each of the bodies, the location, nearby weapons, bullet casing trajectory, and various gun blasts. All in all, the local law enforcement agencies had done an outstanding job, doing what they were supposed to do. The problem was that reports were just that: reports. Facts, times, data. There were no leads in them that would take the investigation to a point of conclusion. It was all paperwork formality, but, as lead investigator, he had to read every one of them thoroughly, in case something popped up.

Thiery wondered again about the response time. According to the dispatch log, Calusa County SWAT arrived at 8:42. The initial call came in at 8:26. A sixteen-minute response? Maybe that was normal for this area, but Dunham had arrived at 8:38. Technically, the Calusa County Sheriff Office was ‘outside the city limits’ but it was still in very close proximity to the school. How did a police chief from a neighbouring city several miles away beat a SWAT located a few blocks away? Maybe protocol had them meet at the main department before responding? Maybe they had to go there for their SWAT gear? In most cities, officers kept their response gear in the trunk, but it might be different here. Thiery made a note to himself to audit the dispatch tapes and call times.

Deadened by fatigue, Thiery wondered if he was making something of nothing. Maybe the governor was right, he thought. Maybe there wasn’t an investigation, other than to determine what triggered the two men to do the shooting. What was their common fuck up? Abused as children? Bullied in school? Too many violent video games? Could anyone ever really know what caused these – what had they called them on the news? – Human Tornadoes?

Still, something bothered Thiery. Something that, every time he began to doze off, woke him like a new lover trying to sneak out of bed. Why was a forty-one-year-old man hanging out with a nineteen-year-old kid? How and where did they meet? And what about Erica Weisz? What was her story? How did she get a gun? Why would she chance taking a loaded weapon to school? And what gave her the wherewithal to aim and shoot it? Most people couldn’t do that, even once. She managed to do it twice. He made a note on his iPad to check with the school board’s human resources department to see if her employment background revealed anything.

Thiery’s head slumped to one side. The reports and his ever-present iPad slipped from his hands as sleep overcame him. He welcomed the coming slumber and managed to slip off his loafers and slide his feet under the covers, though still dressed. The mattress was too soft for his liking, but felt like a mother’s embrace as the window-banger AC unit hummed a soft lullaby.

His slumber lasted about one minute before his mind, as weary as it was, clicked back on, repeating the questions: What did Frank Shadtz and David Coody have in common? A mature, adult man from out of town and a nineteen-year-old, pimple-faced, hayseed kid. How had they met and joined together with the common idea they should shoot up a school?

‘Shit,’ he said aloud, rolling out of bed, his head swimming. ‘Goddamnit, man! Turn it off,’ he admonished himself. He got up, went to the bathroom, and unwrapped a tiny bar of soap. He washed his face and rinsed, then looked at himself in the mirror, though he had to squat to do so. His brown eyes were bloodshot, his face salt-and-pepper-whiskered, and his hair greasy. Someone once told him he looked like George Clooney on steroids. Right then, he was closer to Mickey Rourke on a bender.

He shuddered and looked at his watch: 5:15. He couldn’t talk to the dead Shadtz and doubted if Coody was out of the coma yet. Maybe he would never come out of it. He needed to talk to Erica Weisz and Sally Ravich, the adult survivors, as well as some of the children. It kept coming back to that. But, it was so frigging early, or late, or whatever and he was just too damned whipped.

He went back to bed and drifted off. This time, he slept almost seventy minutes before his cell phone rang.

Away from his father, Julio Esperanza was the man. No one would have ever guessed he cowered under the glare of his father’s gaze. Few people had seen what his Papa did to those who crossed him. Just the thought of his father’s displeasure turned Julio’s blood to ice.

When he was eighteen, his father had told him to pack a bag; they were taking a trip out to the ocean. Just the two of them. They drove from Ciudad Juarez, a city his father literally owned, all the way out to the coast in his fancy new American car, a Lincoln Continental.

They travelled to a small town called Puerto Penasco where Emilio owned a rather large beach house neither Julio nor his mother had known about. There, the father told the son he was now a man, and he allowed him to drink his very fine, aged tequila. Julio had never felt so close to his father, sipping the golden liquor on the warm sand overlooking the blue ocean. He felt as though they were buddies for the first time in his life.

One morning, Emilio told his son he had friends coming from Tijuana. They were bringing Julio presents in honour of his birthday, because they respected Don Emilio. The men arrived, oddly, driving two beat-up vans. One man got out of his van and, grinning, went to the back and opened the side door. A half-dozen perspiring but beautiful women emerged from the back, as if a genie’s bottle had tipped over and spilled its lovely contents: blondes, brunettes, even a redhead who looked like the American movie star, Ann-Margret. They wore lots of make-up, and low-cut blouses that pushed their breasts up into nice, plump, fleshy pillows. A couple of them wore fishnet stockings. Julio almost drooled looking at them and found himself becoming both excited and a little nervous.

The sun was setting, casting a warm, welcoming, orange glow over the ladies and the idyllic beach setting. Emilio told the women to go inside the house and freshen up. They walked close to Julio. He could smell their perfume and their sweaty sex. A couple of the mujeres winked at him. One brushed by him, slowed, and dragged her hand across his still hairless chest, letting her fingers linger on his nipple and giving it a little twist. Goose bumps broke out all over his body and an erection grew, noticeably, in his swim trunks. The men laughed good-naturedly.

From the other van, two more men got out. Both of them had automatic rifles and pistols and stayed near their van. No one got out of the back.

Julio was not frightened, or even surprised. He had seen the men who worked for his father carry guns before. In fact, most of his father’s ‘friends’ had one in a belt or shoulder holster, under their jackets. He knew his father’s businesses made lots of money, so it made sense these men armed themselves, particularly in Mexico, where kidnapping and murder were very common.

‘Go in the house, Julio,’ his father ordered. ‘The girls are sweet. They will take care of you.’ Julio grinned as if he’d just given him the best present in the world. No one had to tell him twice. He was ready to bust.

For the next couple of hours, Julio lost his virginity to a variety of willing women – all pros – using a variety of positions, angles, and tricks that aroused and satisfied him over and over again, until he thought he would die from exertion. They had gathered in the bedrooms upstairs, showered, and played until everyone worked up a voracious appetite. A few of the women had gone downstairs – tired of the insatiable needs of the boy toy – and helped Emilio cook a grand dinner for everyone there. They gorged themselves on paella and homemade sangria.

After dinner, Emilio told the women to clean up the dishes. He and the men were going outside for a walk and a cigar. Julio was exhausted, but his father insisted he come along.

‘The initiation of your manhood is not complete,’ he said. Julio grinned wearily and tagged along behind his father and the other men.

They strolled down the drive and approached the van the other men still guarded. Julio had forgotten about it and wondered what was inside that was so important as to keep these men out here while the others had enjoyed such a sumptuous meal and the company of the ladies.

Emilio nodded to the men and told them to get some dinner. They nodded back, gratefully, and one of them said, ‘The tools you need are in the front.’ Emilio said, ‘Bueno,’ then went to the back of the van and opened the doors.

Inside, hidden in the shadows, were three men, all bound, their hands behind their backs. Bandanas wrapped tightly around their eyes. Sweat-soaked clothing stuck to them like a second skin. Emilio reached in, grabbed one of the men by his arm, and guided him out, telling him to watch his step as he climbed out of the van.

Julio grew uncomfortable now, but said nothing. A warm wind came off the ocean like the breath of a killer whispering in his ear and he felt sweat form in his scalp, then trickle down and hang on his chin for a moment. When it fell, he thought he could hear it hit the ground.

Emilio went to the front of the van and looked around in the cab. He came back brandishing a machete. He approached Julio and put his hand on his shoulder.

‘These men stole money from me.’ he said, gesturing with the blade. ‘When I tried to get it back, they threatened me and my family. We cannot allow this. Do you understand, son?’

Julio nodded, but a lump of fear grew in his throat, and he could not swallow, though he desperately needed to.

Emilio pushed the blindfolded man to his knees, his once pressed, linen suit, dishevelled and filthy as a beggar’s. The man began to cry and plead for his life. The other men inside the van began to whimper like puppies in a sack that was weighted down for the river.

Emilio brought Julio over to stand with him and said, ‘Watch what I do to men who try to hurt me.’

He brought the machete up and to the side as if he were shouldering a baseball bat. When he brought it back down, it struck with a wet, meaty sound, and stopped hard against the man’s neck bones. Blood spurted and sprayed Emilio and Julio. Emilio tugged at the blade and dislodged it from the man’s cervical spine. The man began to convulse and fell forward. Before he hit the ground, Emilio swung the blade again, catching it in the wound from the first swing. This time, it went clean through. The man’s head came off, hitting the ground with a thud.

Julio stood transfixed, his mouth wide, lips quivering. He could see the man’s face and watched his mouth open and close, like a fish gasping on a hot, dry deck. He turned and retched into the grass, his legs shaking under him like saplings caught in a hurricane.

Emilio pulled another man from the van. The man sobbed and made promises and excuses, but it was as if Emilio could no longer hear him. He pushed him to the ground near the body of the first man, then turned to Julio.

‘It’s your turn, Julio. You must help kill our enemies.’

Julio shook his head. ‘No, Papa, I cannot do this.’

Emilio reached over and slapped him. The blow hit him in the ear and made it ring so loud he could barely hear what else his father was saying. But he heard enough. ‘If you don’t do this,’ Don Emilio declared, ‘one of these men will shoot you. Do you understand?’

Julio nodded, tears streaming from his eyes. How had this happened? One moment, he was happy and sated, full of wine and women. Now, his father was threatening him and he was being forced to murder a man he did not know, and in this most brutal way.

‘Stop crying,’ said Emilio. ‘You won’t be able to see what you’re doing.’ He placed the sticky handle of the machete into Julio’s hand.

Julio looked at the blade, shining black in the moonlit night. Before he had gone downstairs for dinner, he had made love with the red-haired whore and, as they lay there in post-coital bliss, he had noticed his phallus, still shining from their sex. This is what he thought of as he looked at the blood-slicked blade: a wet, throbbing phallus. In one afternoon, his father had introduced him to the utmost pleasure in life, and now mixed that gift with the most horrible deed any human could perform. This incongruent mix would haunt him for the rest of his life – he knew that, even then – but was powerless to stop it. Thirty years later – and four failed marriages due to domestic assault – proved there are forbidden elements of mankind that should never be revealed to a young, impressionable mind.

Julio held the blade out as he’d seen his father do, his hand shaking so much he thought he’d drop it. But, he didn’t. He swung it down and struck the second man, hitting him in the shoulder, down to the bone. The scream covered Julio’s arms in goose bumps.

‘Again!’ said Emilio. ‘Quickly.’

Julio did as he was ordered. The blade flashed again, this time finding the man’s neck, but hardly going through. The man tried to stand and run, but one of Emilio’s men stuck out his leg and tripped him. As the man rolled on the ground, the bandana covering his eyes came off, and he looked up at Julio, his eyes pleading, blood streaming from his neck.

Emilio came over and squatted next to the man. He pointed at the man’s throat with his index finger. ‘Right across here, Julio,’ he said, as if teaching his son how to cut firewood. Julio brought the blade down again. And again. It took several chops through bone and sinew to completely sever the man’s head.

Julio turned, fell to his knees, and vomited. When he was able to stand up, one of the men assisted him and handed him a bottle of tequila. Julio took it and rinsed his mouth, then took another swallow that burned all the way down and filled his head with fire.

They had pulled the last man out of the van and placed him on his knees in the condemned man’s position. He sobbed quietly.

Emilio looked at Julio and said, ‘Again.’

Julio teetered over; sure he could neither raise the blade again, nor swing it hard enough to do what had to be done. But, the look on his father’s face, the sneer, the disgust of having such a weak offspring, was so apparent, he did not have to hear the words. He found an anger inside himself, let it rise to a boil, and placed himself behind the man. This time, he raised the blade above his own head with both hands and, when he came back down, arcing it to the side, he put his weight into the swing. The blade was getting dull now and once again, it did not go all the way through. But, as the man fell to his side, Julio dislodged the blade, and without being coaxed this time, he swung it down again and again, until the man’s head rolled off.

Emilio nodded to the other men and, without words, they took chainsaws from the van and cranked them up.

Julio wondered why they had not used the chainsaws in the first place then realized it was probably because his father wanted him to ‘work’ through his emergence as a killer. Now, he felt the transformation within himself and knew at that very moment he would never be the same. But, he would also never be like his father.

One of his father’s men – a man whom Julio had heard being referred to as El Monstruo, The Monster – dismembered the bodies with the chainsaw and placed them in black plastic bags. He was a frightening presence, as wide as he was tall. His eyes were as black and lifeless as a shark’s, set into acne-scarred skin. His other facial features were blunted and slightly out of place, as if the sculptor who moulded him left him in the kiln too long. His mouth hung open as if his nose did not take in air. As toad-like as he looked, his hands moved quickly with saw and blade; an efficient and experienced butcher. Once in bags, the parts were then placed into wooden shipping containers that, Julio later learned, to his horror, were shipped back to the dead men’s families.

Emilio put his arm around his son’s shoulders, grinning as if his son had just scored the final goal at the World Cup, and said, ‘Okay. Now, you are a man. Let’s get cleaned up. Those lusty whores in the house want more of you, I’m sure.’ He beamed proudly as he said this, but Julio did not. Sex was absolutely the last thing on his mind at that moment.