I relaxed my grip. As I felt my fingers slip from the kid’s arm I knew I’d probably added a pretty good bruise to his night of trauma. “You did great. Thank you. Now I want you to run outside and tell Miss Bass exactly what you told me. Make sure nobody comes back in.”
His head bobbed up and down gratefully. “Where are you going?”
I looked back down the corridor. “To get Annie and Mr. Bence.”
I moved down the cinder-block corridor toward the double fire doors. Behind me I heard the exit door open and slam shut again. A niggling, doubting voice in my head whispered three words in the space between fire alarm clangs.
Last one out.
I answered the voice by telling it to go fuck itself.
The doors parted before me, and I was reminded of saloon doors in an old Western. Through them was another forty feet of cinder-block walls that sank into darkness as they entered the part of the school where the power had been cut. I ran toward the darkness, the soles of my shoes cracking off the linoleum and bouncing back to me off the walls.
Then I heard another noise, coming from up ahead. Sharper than the cracks of my footsteps. Louder than the clang of the fire bell. A sound that I knew better than my own heartbeat.
And then I heard it again.
77
7:15 p.m.
It took only until the first intersection for Banner to realize she’d made a bad choice of vehicle. The Bureau Sedan had simply been the nearest available car after she’d picked up Blake’s voice mail. Only as she slowed for the red light and started slamming the horn with the heel of her hand did she realize she should have had one of the uniformed cops drive her in a black-and-white.
Wardell’s going after Annie. He’s at the school
.
Blake’s words were so clear in her head it was as though it were being relayed through the car’s speakers on a loop. She nosed out into the intersection, giving oncoming cars space to swerve, if not stop completely, then pushed through the gap. She yanked the wheel right to duck in front of a braking taxicab, ripping the left side of her car across its bumper. She was in luck. Nothing caught. The car rocked on its tires a little and fishtailed as she came through the intersection and back onto the road west.
A clear patch of road emerged with half a block to go before the next set of red lights. Banner realized that she hadn’t taken the time to tell anybody else about the new threat, about Wardell being at Annie’s school. As far as she knew, the only people who were aware of it were herself and Blake. Which was exactly what Wardell wanted, of course.
She would call Donaldson from the school, as soon as she knew Annie was all right. Right now she needed a quick response. She took her eyes off the road to hit 911, jamming the phone in the crook of her neck and raising her right hand again, poised to start pummeling the horn. Then the traffic light ahead flicked to yellow and she put the hand back on the wheel and the gas pedal back on the floor.
“Nine-one-one emerg—”
Banner cut across the operator. “This is Special Agent Elaine Banner,
FBI
, with the Chicago field office. I have just received credible information that Caleb Wardell has been sighted in the Barkley Elementary School on North Western Avenue.”
There was a pause, and Banner knew exactly what was coming next.
“Could you repeat that information?”
“Barkley Elementary. Wardell. Now. Get some fucking cars down there.”
She cut the call off and let the phone drop. The next red light turned green again. Another break. She made herself focus on the lights. They stopped her from thinking about Annie.
The next intersection was a hundred yards ahead, the light switching from green to yellow. Beyond was the on-ramp for I-90. She leaned on the horn and kept the gas pedal down.
Don’t think; just drive.
78
7:22 p.m.
The corridor dipped into darkness, but beyond the point the lights were extinguished there was still enough backlight to see where I was going. I ran toward the sound of the gunshots, knowing I’d failed. The corridor hit a T junction. Straight ahead were the doors to the main gym. They were the same wood and glass doors that I’d encountered throughout the school, but the little windows were covered on the inside with red curtains.
I hesitated at the doors, glanced left and right along the new length of corridor. There was another set of doors to the left, a flight of stairs to the right. The stairs would probably lead to the stage. I thought about taking the time to climb the stairs and enter the hall from a less obvious direction. After a moment I discounted the idea: A direct entrance was riskier, but it would save precious seconds. Depending on what I found behind the door, those seconds could mean the difference between life and death.
There was no prospect of sneaking in, so I just barged through the doors, ducking and rolling to my left, coming up on my heels. From three o’clock and a little above me—the level of the stage, at a guess—I heard a female scream and the sound of a door slamming shut. The slam echoed in the vast stillness. As it dissipated, I became aware of another sound: small and wet and insignificant in the space. I recognized it. It was the sound somebody’s breathing makes when they’re hurt very badly—the sound that suggests the breathing isn’t going to continue for much longer.
Almost unconsciously, I held my breath and walked in the direction of the sound. The pupils of my eyes had dilated all the way, just enough to make out the shapes of overturned chairs and avoid them. It was useless to worry about whether Wardell was watching me through a scope with a night sight. There was nothing I could do about it. In any case, I didn’t think he’d settle for such an easy kill—or at least I hoped not.
The edge of the stage was five feet off the ground and marked with white fluorescent tape, making it stand out like a beacon. I put a hand out and touched the line of tape. The raspy breathing had reduced in volume and frequency to the point where I could barely discern it from the silence. I put both arms on the stage and hauled myself up. By the time I’d gotten to my feet, the breathing had stopped entirely, replaced by a long, rattling wheeze.
Hesitating briefly, I took my phone out and tapped it to activate the flashlight. The illumination cast a bright, narrow beam a few feet in front of me. I moved it around a little and located a foot in a leather shoe. I angled up and found it attached to a leg, and then a body, and finally a bloody face. There was a bullet hole in the forehead, the diameter of the wound and the powder burns telling me the weapon had been a handgun at point-blank range. The death rattle petered out as the flashlight beam passed over the eyes of the dead man. A tall man, balding and in his late forties. His comfortable slip-on shoes and V-neck sweater marked him out as a quasi-off-duty teacher. Mr. Bence, most likely. I swept the beam around, highlighting frustratingly small patches of the stage at a time. I hoped I would find nothing, but I’d heard two shots. I knew there was at least one more body to locate on this stage.
I walked forward slowly and closed my eyes as the beam caught first a pool of red and then curls of dark hair on the boards. The framed picture of Annie from Banner’s apartment flashed in front of my eyes. I followed the dark hair and found another head, facing away from me. Gently, I reached out and felt for a pulse in the neck. Finding nothing, I moved my fingers below the jaw and gently moved it so I could see the face. The eyes were closed as though sleeping. The bullet hole was in the right temple this time.
It wasn’t Annie.
7:24 p.m.
The body that lay before me was a good deal older. A petite woman in her midtwenties. Maybe another teacher, maybe a parent. But not Annie.
Not yet.
I sprang to my feet. The kid outside had said Wardell had Banner’s daughter. Two shots fired, two more bodies on my conscience. But it meant Wardell had spared Annie for the moment. She was his ace in the hole—he knew the building would be surrounded, knew nobody would enter right away if he had hostages. Nobody but me or Banner.
I closed my eyes and replayed the scream and the slamming door I’d heard on entering the hall, lined it up with my current position and scrabbled across the stage to get there, colliding with a couple of upturned pieces of stage furniture on the way. I found a brick wall, moved my palms around it until I found a metal door with a push bar. The door creaked open and dim light returned. I was in another cinder-block-walled corridor. This one had small plastic skylights that let in dirty streetlight.
The stage door exited adjacent a blank wall, so there was only one way to go. I gripped my gun and ran along the corridor until I reached another door. The clanging fire alarm grew louder as I approached another wall-mounted bell. I pulled the door open and found a stairwell. Which direction? Experience said up. Wardell liked high ground. I stopped and listened between the clangs of the bell.
Ring riiiiiiiiiing.
Ring riiiiiiiiiing.
Ring riiiiiiiiiing.
There. I heard the sound of someone crying out, suddenly cut off, as though somebody had clamped a hand over their mouth. The cry had lasted a heartbeat longer than the end of the last pulse of the bell. It had come from below.
80
7:31 p.m.
“I’m sorry, ma’am. I can’t let you go in there.”
Banner produced her badge. “I’m
FBI
. It’s Special Agent Banner, not ma’am. And you’re not going to stop me.” Banner’s sharp tone was directed at herself as much as the young officer blocking her way to the front entrance of the school. If she’d been thinking, she’d have realized that this was the downside of summoning backup. Regulations, procedure. Due process.
Law enforcement had been stretched to breaking point across the city for election night. Officers from across the state and farther afield had been drafted in to cover the identified danger zones, the highest-profile areas where it was thought Wardell might choose to strike. Unsurprisingly, nobody had thought to include a small elementary school on that list, and so the full response was taking a while to mobilize. There were only three police cars, and the half-dozen cops were manfully dealing with the task of herding the crowds to the opposite side of the street so a perimeter could be established when reinforcements arrived. That left this one officer as the only thing standing between Banner and the school, and to her surprise and irritation, he wasn’t getting out of her way.
“I’m sorry, Agent Banner.
FBI
or not, nobody’s going in there. We’ve got reports of an armed suspect who’s taken some hostages. Ain’t nobody going in there until we get a negotiator down here.”
Banner put her badge away, looking around the scene. Still only those half-dozen first responders, though she could hear approaching sirens from multiple different directions. Within a minute, maybe less, there’d be a whole lot more obstacles in her way than this one cop.
“My kid’s in there,” she said simply.
The cop glanced at the school entrance, turned back to her. He shook his head in sympathy, spreading his hands. “Ma’am . . .” he began, forgetting her earlier admonishment and falling back on a half-assed recollection of whatever crowd control course he’d attended at the academy. He didn’t look like a guy who was comfortable with thinking for himself, or making exceptions to the rules.
The sirens were getting closer. Banner put a hand on his shoulder and said, “You’re going to have to shoot me.”
The cop looked like she’d slapped him.
“Now hold on . . .”
Banner walked quickly past him, up the steps, and pushed the door open. She glanced back and saw that the cop wasn’t even watching her. He was too busy looking around to see if anyone had seen him fail to stop her getting past.
81
7:33 p.m.
Wardell had dragged the brat down three short flights of stairs. The last flight had been a narrow steel stairway that had brought them down to the basement level—the boiler room, he guessed. The space was wide and low-ceilinged. Though it spread virtually open plan across the old building’s footprint, it was cluttered with thick pipes and abandoned crates and storage lockers. Steel uprights supported the ceiling, evenly spaced out. The power was on down here, but the illuminations were few and far between. Grimy fluorescent tubes unevenly spaced along the wall emitting little more than candlelight.
Wardell was pleased that the brat was presenting no major difficulties so far. After he’d shot the two teachers on the stage, she’d screamed at first, but then she’d gone quiet. Almost eerily quiet. He guessed she was in shock. Even so, he kept his right hand over her mouth as he put the gun down on top of a tall packing crate and reached for Whitford’s cell phone. Time was of the essence. He didn’t know how many of the escapees from the hall would realize exactly what was going on. That meant he couldn’t be sure anybody knew that he was holding hostages. Part of him relished the idea of a last stand against an entire
SWAT
team. In time, it would probably come to that. But for the moment, he certainly didn’t want just anybody barging in here. When he thought about the opportunity gone forever—all those people in that crowd—he felt it like acid burning through his guts.
He slotted the battery back in and switched the phone on, then dialed 911. The beeps of the phone seemed to rouse the girl from her state of shock. She began to squirm again and Wardell tightened his grip.
A male operator answered the call with the standard greeting, and Wardell said, “You record all of these, right?”
“This call is being recorded, yes, sir. What is the nature of your emergency?”
Wardell laughed. “Better men than you have tried to work that one out, partner. This is Caleb Wardell. No, this is not a hoax. I know you’re probably going to have to get people to check this out, so I’ll be brief and to the point. I’m at Barkley Elementary School. I’m armed and I have three hostages: a man, a woman, and a little girl. I’ll kill them all unless I get what I want.”