Final orders, p.30
Final Orders, page 30
part #5 of Hazard and Somerset: Arrows in the Hand Series
Somers picked up on the second ring. “Babe, today’s a mess. Somebody just blew up a mailbox on Market Street—” Somers’s voice shifted as he spoke away from the phone, saying, “What do you mean Yarmark got a flat? Ok, send Nichols and Carlson over there.” When his voice came back, it sounded a little more worn. “Can it wait—”
“Did anyone look at the hotel security footage to follow Loretta’s movements?”
“Yeah, of course. A couple of officers reviewed the footage from the cameras outside the hotel. Nobody followed her, Ree. They watched enough hours to make their eyes bleed.”
“Not outside.” The words were practically a gallop. “Inside, John. Did anybody watch the footage inside? I’m not talking about verifying Ayelet’s alibi. I’m talking about before then, when Loretta left.”
“No, but—” Confusion warred with defensiveness in Somers’s tone, and it was clear that he made an effort before he spoke again. “Ok, I see your point. But nothing happened to her in the hotel, Ree. You can see her leave on the footage; she’s fine. And nobody followed her. So what did we miss?”
“I don’t know. I don’t even know if you did miss something. But I want to take a look. Do you have the recordings from inside, or did you just—”
“The hotel gave us, Christ, I don’t know, seventy-two hours’ worth around the time of death, every camera in the building. It’s all in the cloud.”
“Great. Can I—”
“I’ll send you a link; hold on.” The sound of movement came, and then keys clacking. “All right. You now have access as an independent contractor to the Wahredua PD.” Another voice spoke, and Somers’s voice was clipped as he said, “Ree, I’ve got to go. They think there’s a shooter at Eldon High School.”
“Go,” Hazard said, and the call disconnected.
He made his way upstairs, paused at the pile of clothes and shoes he’d tossed up here earlier, and threw them in the general direction of the appropriate bedrooms. Then, in the office, he powered up their computer. The link from Somers was waiting in his email. When he clicked it, he was pleasantly surprised to see that his husband had included the time stamp for Loretta’s departure from the hotel.
Hazard opened the files, getting a sense for the layout of the cameras and what would be available to him. He decided to focus his initial effort on two areas: the lobby, and the hotel bar. There were other egress points, but in theory, they were secure and only accessible to guests. If he didn’t turn anything up on his first try, he’d have to expand. And, of course, there was the obvious problem of not knowing what he was looking for. He couldn’t do anything about that, though, so he settled in to work.
He started with a camera mounted high in the lobby; it gave a good, broad view of the room, and the color and definition were surprisingly good. Hazard scrubbed through the footage until he reached an hour before Loretta’s departure. Then he let it play at one and a half times the normal playback. It was faster than he would have liked, watching faces zip across the screen, but it didn’t feel like cutting corners. He tried to remind himself that he had time, but the forty minutes still felt like an eternity.
Loretta passed through the lobby right on cue, and she exited the building without any apparent interaction.
“So much for that,” Hazard said as he loaded the next camera’s footage.
This time, he watched diners and drinkers and bartenders and wait staff zoom back and forth through the hotel bar. After another forty minutes, though, he’d reached the end of the footage immediately before Loretta’s departure. Nothing; or, at least, nothing relevant to his investigation.
He sat back and tried to think. He could switch over to the other cameras, the ones that covered other entrances and exits, and hope that he had better luck somewhere else. Or he could—what? Try random cameras? There weren’t any cameras on the guest floors, but maybe the elevators?
He decided to try to work backward along the route he imagined Loretta had taken, following her from the lobby back to the elevator, in case she had encountered someone along the way. Or in case someone had been waiting for her, watching her. He grabbed the mouse and scrubbed backward, telling himself he’d watch it one more time, just in case.
He dragged the slider too far, putting himself well before the hour of footage he had already watched. He swore, started to drag the slider forward, and then stopped. On the screen, Evan Pawloski was staring back at him. The boy looked directly into the camera, hood up and shoulders hunched, and then turned to make his way across the hotel bar. He stopped halfway, glancing back and forth—the kind of furtive looks that, even more than the hoodie in May, would have made him stand out. A woman brushed past him, Evan angled his body to let her pass, and then his gaze snapped back to follow her.
Hazard stared at the screen as the seconds continued to trickle forward. Then he paused the recording and scrubbed backward. This time, he was watching as Evan entered the room. The boy looked around, glancing directly at the security camera, before he started walking again. Then he stopped. The woman brushed past him, he angled his body, and then his whole posture changed—he forgot about making himself smaller, he forgot about trying to skulk, and he stared after the woman.
Why?
Hazard tried to identify her, but the clothes meant nothing to him: jeans, a sweatshirt, a ball cap. She looked young, full figured, and something about the way she squeezed past Evan suggested a desire not to draw attention—she looked like she tried to make herself as small as possible. He watched the clip again, and this time, he let it play forward. The woman continued past Evan and took a seat at the far end of the bar, glancing toward the opening that connected to the lobby. She was too far from the camera for Hazard to make out anything more than an occasional glimpse of her profile; she was trying hard to keep anyone from seeing her. Evan stared at her for a moment longer, and then he reversed course. Then he recognized the familiar movements of staff and patrons, and he realized he was watching footage he’d already seen.
Two questions. At least two. Why had Evan been in the Arcadia an hour before Loretta left? And who had he seen in the bar? He thought he had an idea, but he needed confirmation.
Hazard picked up his phone, found the number in his notes for the investigation, and placed the call. Evan didn’t have a customized voicemail; a synthesized voice read back the number to him, and then there was a beep.
“Pick up,” Hazard said. “I know you were in the Arcadia.”
He disconnected and sent the same message in a text. Composition bubbles appeared, and then they disappeared. Hazard waited until the phone’s screen timed out. Then he unlocked it and typed, I’ve got you on camera. Call me right now.
A message came through a moment later: Final.
Then I’m calling the police.
No wait.
The phone rang thirty seconds later. Evan’s voice was raspy from the recent trauma, and the call had an echoing quality that suggested tile, possibly a bathroom. “I’m in the middle of my pre-calc final.”
“Why are you back in school? I assumed you’d have some kind of medical leave.”
“I do. I’m at home, but I don’t want to do these classes over the summer, so I’m taking the final online.”
“What were you doing in the Arcadia?”
“I don’t know—”
“Too late for that. What were you doing?”
The silence had a caged quality. “Look, I thought I’d, I don’t know, do something.”
“Do something?”
“You know how it is. I thought I’d, I don’t know, get into a fight with her. Or something. An argument, I mean. So people would know, you know? That I’m not a fag.”
“So you went to her hotel?”
“Yeah. She was always talking about how she was this bad bitch, right? How she’d face down anyone anywhere? Fine, I thought. Fine. Let’s see if she’s as tough as she says she is.”
“And?”
“And—man, I don’t know—”
“What happened?”
“I saw Kirsta in the bar!”
Outside, a lawnmower kicked to life.
“What?” Hazard asked.
“I went into the bar; I thought maybe she’d be there, that’s where I’d start. But then she wasn’t there. And Kirsta literally walked into me. I mean, she touched my shoulder. At first, I was, I don’t know, in shock. I couldn’t believe it was her—Mommy’s good little girl, in a bar. I mean, I dated her, and I knew how freaky she was, and I still couldn’t believe it. I forgot about Ms. Ames; I didn’t care about that anymore. Here she was, the girl who ruined my fucking life, and she was in a bar, and she was obviously trying to pass as an adult, and I thought this is it. This is payback.”
“What happened then?”
“I waited. This other woman showed up. She bought Kirsta a drink. You better believe I got a picture of that. And then they kissed, and I got a picture of that too. That bitch, that fucking bitch who told everyone I was a queer, she was lezzing out at a bar, in public.”
“Did you recognize the woman she was with?”
“Oh, yeah. It was Ms. Ames’s daughter. The one who was at Ms. Ames’s talk.”
“What did you do then?”
“Nothing.”
“Bullshit.”
“I didn’t!” Evan protested. “Kirsta left. She must have told that lady she was going to the bathroom or something because it looked really casual. But she didn’t come back, and then that lady got pissed, and she started drinking a lot, and I decided to go home.”
“Where were the restrooms?”
“I don’t know.”
“In the bar?”
“No, she had to go out to the lobby.”
And Hazard could see it then in his mind: a woman in a ball cap sitting at the bar, watching the opening to the lobby. Kirsta had played it cool. Incredibly cool. She had been watching. Waiting. She hadn’t turned or stared or followed Loretta with her eyes. But then, Hazard realized, she hadn’t needed to. She’d known where Loretta was going because she’d set the trap. All she needed was confirmation that Loretta had left the building. Then, when a safe amount of time had elapsed, she’d excused herself, and she’d gotten in a car and gone after Loretta.
There were holes in his theory; Hazard knew that. Kirsta couldn’t have covered every possible exit, and she risked that Loretta might have left the hotel another way. And the timeline seemed strange. Loretta would have arrived at Okashka first, and Kirsta would have come later. But he could feel the bones of it, and they felt solid.
“Send me those pictures,” Hazard said.
Evan’s silence lasted a beat too long. “Ok.”
“Evan, what did you do?”
The lawnmower seemed louder now.
“Evan,” Hazard barked.
“I sent them to Mrs. Sturgis!” The words exploded out of the boy. “I told that stupid cunt that—that I was going to tell everyone about Kirsta if she didn’t do what I told her. She ruined my life, and now I was going to ruin hers.”
“What did you want her to do?”
“I don’t know.” Evan sounded embarrassed. “I didn’t have any good ideas. I told her I wanted her to tell everyone she lied about me, you know, and that guy, and then I said money, but…”
“Good Christ,” Hazard muttered. “What did she say?”
“She ignored me. Then, when I tried again, she said if I thought she’d ruined my life already, wait until she really tried to mess things up. Something like that.” The silence that followed sounded suspended; Hazard recognized a teenager trying to hold something back.
“Evan, what did you do?”
“She wasn’t doing what I told her! So, I sent that picture to Kirsta and told her that if she didn’t convince her mom to tell everyone that they’d lied about me—”
Hazard’s phone buzzed. He pulled it away from his ear and saw a notification from Instagram. Without thinking about it, he pulled the phone closer again. Then his brain processed the rest of what he’d seen: the notification had been from his most recent follow, the Wildcat Tea account. Someone had posted something.
Evan’s voice was still buzzing in his ear.
Hazard tapped the notification. Instagram opened. The most recent post appeared.
It was a picture of a girl, her face blurred. She was holding a hunting rifle. The words at the bottom said, Last day of school for pedophiles.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
MAY 22
FRIDAY
10:48 AM
ON THE DRIVE OVER to the high school, Hazard called 911.
“But I just sent Norman and Gross to that mailbox that exploded in Smithfield,” Andrea Ehlers, who was on dispatch that day, said.
“Send somebody else!” Hazard shouted into the phone. “This girl is threatening a school shooting!”
“There isn’t anybody else!” Ehlers screamed back at him. “They’re all at Eldon!”
“Then get out of your fucking chair and do it yourself!”
Hazard disconnected and called his husband. When it went to voicemail, he disconnected and placed the call again. They didn’t live far from the high school, and he was driving recklessly, his body’s response to the threat making it hard to gauge his surroundings. He felt lost. And he felt like he’d been driving forever.
“Sorry,” Somers said. “This has been a waste of time; nobody knows who called in the threat—”
“It was Kirsta.”
“What?”
“It was Kirsta. All of it. She called in the shooting at Eldon to get the police out of town, and she set off explosions to keep the remaining officers busy.” And then Hazard filled in the rest. He had to slam on the brakes halfway through a stop sign he’d missed; a mother in a minivan gave him a death stare as she continued through the intersection. Hazard ignored bleating horns as he hit the accelerator again. “John, her real target is the school. I’m going to call the sheriff’s department—”
“They’re here.”
“What?”
“They’re here, Ree. Active shooter at a school. All hands on deck. Engels might have a couple of deputies dicking around, but—Ree, Jesus Christ, Colt.”
“I know.”
“Is he—”
“I don’t know. He’s not answering. Find somebody, John. Get somebody over to the school!”
“I’ll call Principal Wieberdink, have her evacuate—”
Even with adrenaline tunneling his vision, Hazard could make out the throngs of students and staff pouring out of the school as he reached the parking lot. “Too late. Shit’s already happening.”
“Ree, wait for—”
“Hurry,” Hazard said and disconnected.
The mob flooded the parking lot, so he abandoned the van on the shoulder of the road, his keys still in the ignition, and ran. The holstered Blackhawk dug into his hip and thigh, and it threw off his gait slightly, but the real challenge was navigating the screaming, milling chaos. One girl had been knocked down, and although a friend was trying to buffer her, every time she tried to rise, the students rushing past knocked her back down again. White-haired Mrs. Alcorn, who had taught Family and Consumer Science since it was called Home Economics, was blowing a whistle and waving a rally flag. At the school’s front doors, Principal Wieberdink had wedged herself into the vestibule and was directing students outside. All those fucking drills, Hazard thought. All the fucking practice. And it goes right out the fucking window.
He used his shoulders and elbows to force a path through the crowd. One big boy, who had to play defense for the Wildcats, must have perceived Hazard as a threat because he threw a punch. Hazard grabbed the boy by the arm and yanked him forward, using his own momentum against him, and the boy stumbled and landed on his knees. He shouted as the crowd trampled him, but the flood of students was thinning; he’d be fine. By the time Hazard reached the front door, an Indian girl on crutches was being helped out by a white boy in a baseball jersey; the boy was crying, but his voice was steady as he said, “Good job, Amira, you’re almost there.”
Principal Wieberdink waited until they had passed her before she started into the building, but Hazard had reached her by then, and he grabbed her arm.
“Stay out here.”
She twisted, trying to get free of his grip. “Mr. Hazard, let me go—”
“There’s nothing you can do in there. The police are going to be slow getting here. You need to move these students away from the building; she could come out here and start shooting again.”
“I’ll radio my assistant principal and the hall monitor; they’ll get everyone moving into the neighborhood.”
“I want you to—”
“Mr. Hazard, let go of me. I am responsible for these students, and I am going to make sure everyone is out of this building.”
Hazard released her, and she ran inside, already speaking into her radio.
He jogged after her. They passed the abandoned reception desk. They followed the hall past the commons. The school looked like what it was: the aftermath of a combat zone. A backpack hung from the stair rails by one strap; the other strap dangled loosely, torn, Hazard guessed, in a student’s panicked attempts to get free. A WET FLOOR sign lay flat on the linoleum. Geometry worksheets had drifted and banked against one corner of an intersection. Light twisted along brass and glass, old trophies and dusty cases. The air smelled like the commercial deep fryers, a hint of what Hazard’s months with a teenage son told him was probably mozzarella sticks. And, like something bitter under his tongue, the tang of gunpowder. The only sound was their steps slapping the vinyl flooring.
When they went around the next corner, Hazard stopped. The school resource officer, Liz Kirkman, lay on the ground, motionless. Her back was to them, and the lower part of her shirt and the full length of her trousers were soaked in blood. Shot in the thigh, Hazard assessed as he crouched next to her. A dark bruise marked the side of her head. And then knocked unconscious. Because, he realized, today was about eradicating pedophiles. Mommy’s little soldier on a holy war. Kirkman had just gotten in the way. Joyce Sturgis and parents like her had been weaponizing their children in the culture wars for a long time; Kirsta had simply taken that weaponization to its logical end.
