The Competition - [7]

Finally, the kid-I mean officer-we’d spoken to came back. Without a word, he lifted the tape. As we ducked under, he said, “Sergeant said for you both to get on some booties and gloves before you go in.”

We nodded and started toward the main entrance. Behind us, voices shouted out, “Rachel! Rachel Knight! Bailey Keller!” Stunned, I turned and found myself staring into the black lens of a video camera. Behind the camera, reporters were leaning over the tape, holding out microphones. A female reporter in a red suit asked, “What can you tell us?” A heavyset male behind her called out, “Do you have a body count?”

Nice thing to say in front of all those families. Assholes. Luckily for them, I’d left my gun in Bailey’s car. Bailey saw the look in my eye and grabbed me by the arm. “Zip it, Knight-you don’t need to star in tonight’s headlines.”

I forced myself to turn back and move up the front steps. As Bailey and I went over to the boxes that held the booties and gloves, I heard shouts of recognition bounce through the crowd of reporters.

“Hey, aren’t those the two that did the Ian Powers case?” Another called out, “Yeah, that’s the prosecutor!”

Bailey and I had been in the center of the spotlight last year when I handled a high-profile trial involving the murders of Hayley Antonovich, daughter of world-famous director Russell Antonovich, and her boyfriend, Brian Maher. But that’d been almost a year ago. I’d thought-hoped-everyone would forget what Bailey and I looked like. So much for that.

We pulled on gloves and booties and made our way inside. I’ve been to a lot of crime scenes. Never have I seen the kind of grim, bruised expressions I saw on the faces of the cops, techs, and paramedics in that school. Even before we reached the area where students had fallen, I could smell the sweat, the panic, the blood. We walked down the main hallway and got as far as the principal’s office before we hit more yellow crime scene tape. I looked past it and saw jackets, shoes, backpacks, and purses strewn up and down the hallway; garbage cans lay on their sides, spilling out wrappers, torn notebook pages, and empty soda cans. Farther down, I saw paramedics working urgently over a body. I started to move forward to get a closer look, but a steely grip circled my arm and pulled me back.

Annoyed, I yanked my arm away. “I’m authorized-”

“I know. By me.”

The familiar voice made me stop. I looked up and, for a brief moment, even smiled. “Hey.” I shouldn’t have been surprised. After all, Graden Hales was the lieutenant of Robbery-Homicide. I started to lean into him, then caught myself and stepped back.

Graden gave my arm a quick squeeze, then turned to the area inside the crime scene tape. “I just finished walking through the school,” he said. “I’ve seen bad, but nothing comes close to this.”

That was saying something. Graden hadn’t scored an early promotion to management by cozying up to the brass. He’d worked his way up through the ranks, serving in some of the most violent divisions in the city.

“How many?” I asked.

“We’ve counted twenty-seven dead so far, and those are just the ones who were pronounced at the scene. We don’t have an accurate count of the wounded yet, and may not for a few days. The local hospitals filled up fast. They’ve had to reach farther and farther out to find beds.”

Twenty-seven dead and counting. That made this one of the worst school shootings since…the thirty-three killed at Virginia Tech-but that was a university. As far as public school shootings went, it was worse than Columbine or Sandy Hook. Graden looked at me intently. “You sure you want to see this?”

No. I really wasn’t. “I have to.”

Graden signaled to Bailey, who’d been talking to one of the officers at the door.

“Lieutenant,” she said, when she’d joined us. Graden nodded. “I just got another update.” The tension in her voice told me it wasn’t a good one. “Hospital just pronounced two more.”

“Twenty-nine confirmed,” Graden said. “So far.”

4

Bailey’s cell phone buzzed on her hip. I didn’t want her to answer it. I didn’t want to hear about yet another dead child.

“Dorian’s on her way,” Bailey said. “Says nobody better be touching anything.”

Dorian Struck, aka “she who must be obeyed,” was the best criminalist and crime scene analyst in the business-and she knew it. She ruled her roost with an iron fist and woe to the fool who didn’t follow her orders.

“Then we’d better get moving,” Graden said. “I’ll walk you through in chronological order. They hit the gym first, so we’ll start there.”

Bailey and I followed as he skirted the crime scene tape and led us through the wide hallway that ran from the main entrance to the back of the school, where the gym was located. “How many shooters?” I asked. “Do you know yet?”

“We’re pretty sure there were just two.”

The fluorescent lighting penetrated every inch of the scene with cruel, sharp clarity. A body covered with a sheet lay in the hallway just outside the open door to the gym. As we drew near, the thick, metallic smell of blood grew overwhelming. I slowed to look around the stretch of hallway that led into the gym-and to push down the nausea that threatened to bubble up into my mouth. Blood was everywhere. There was a pool near the sheet-covered body, a fine spray on the walls and the doors just outside the gym. When we reached the entryway to the gym I saw numbered evidence cards that marked the killers’ path through the bleachers and across the floor to our left.