Decker settled his large bulk next to Lancaster at a table in the middle of the local cops’ command center. Laptops were set up across the length of the table. Multiport outlets littered the floor connected to extension cords, and computers, printers, and scanners were plugged into them. People moved around with files, papers, electronic tablets, all bearing an air of quiet desperation, Decker noted. He also knew that many of the cops had kids in the school. Not that they needed any extra incentive to nail the shooter.
After Miller had called out his name, several suits and a couple of uniforms had recognized Decker and given him nods or grim looks, but none had spoken to him. He had not left the department under the best of circumstances, yet he doubted anyone really held it against him.
But he was here now, and so he might as well get to work.
He looked at Lancaster. “The video?”
Lancaster hit the requisite keys, and a few seconds later Decker was staring at the grainy footage.
“There’s the son of a bitch,” said Lancaster.
He glanced at the time stamp. “Eight-forty-one. When did classes start?”
“Eight-thirty sharp. Everyone needs to be in their class by then.”
“You said he came in through the rear doors? That’s where this image is from, right?”
“Yes.”
“Aren’t the exit doors kept locked?”
“They’re supposed to be. But they’re also not hard to jimmy open.”
“Did you find signs of forced entry?”
“Those doors haven’t been replaced since the seventies, Amos. They’re beat to hell. It was really impossible to tell if they’d been forced or not.”
She hit some more keys and zoomed in on the corridor. “Now we’ve identified this as the hall bleeding off...” She faltered. “Sorry, poor choice of words. As the hall coming off the ingress we’ve already identified. He would have made his turn, and that’s where he would have encountered Debbie Watson, say maybe a minute later.”
“So first shot at eight-forty-two or thereabouts, allowing one minute from the video stamp and him encountering Watson?”
“Pretty much. And shotgun blasts folks remember. In fact, a bunch of people looked at the time when they heard it. So eight-forty-two is a good number for the first shot.”
“Okay.” Decker thought about what his next question should be. It should have come automatically, but it didn’t. He was definitely rusty. He looked around at all the seasoned investigators toiling away. He used to be one of them. The fact was, he had checked out of his professional life as soon as he’d found his family dead. Actually, he might be, he had to admit, more of a hindrance here than a help.
He looked down at Lancaster, who was staring up at him, a sympathetic expression on her face.
“It’s like riding a bike, Amos,” she said, apparently reading the self-doubt on his face.
“Maybe not, Mary. I guess I’ll find out. But if I can’t carry my weight, I shouldn’t be here.”
She looked back at the screen. “Okay, the camera doesn’t have audio, so you can’t hear it. And there was no camera on the next hall.”
“Why not?”
“Why else? No money in the budget. We’re lucky to have any functioning cameras at all.”
He thought for a moment. “But they keep them up as a deterrent?”
“Right. Because people didn’t know they weren’t operational.”
“But our guy was able to avoid all of them except this one.”
“It really didn’t matter whether he did or not. He was completely covered, Amos. No way to recognize any feature.”
Decker slowly nodded, feeling once more slow and reactive in his mental process.
He looked back at the image on the screen. Hood and face shield. And the camera shot was reflecting off the glare from the shield. He edged closer to the screen, like a scent hound ferreting prey.
“There’s no direct hit even on his hooded face. He knew where the camera was and avoided it, even though he’s covered.”
“You think that’s important?” she asked.
“At this point in the investigation, there isn’t anything that’s not important.”
Lancaster nodded. “I think that was the second rule you ever taught me.”
“The first being to suspect everybody,” Decker added absently, his gaze still squarely on the shooter.
She said nothing to this and he finally looked at her.
“Like riding a bike, Amos. You were the best I’ve ever seen. I think you still can be.”
He looked away, not really feeling better from her praise, because his altered mind didn’t respond to that anymore either. “Can you run the feed all the way until he turns the corner?”
Lancaster did so, and then, at Decker’s request, did it three more times.
He finally sat back, lost in thought, his gaze still on the screen, though.
She stared over at him. “You see anything that hits you?”
“I see lots of things that hit me. But none more than a guy dressed like that, carrying weapons, who can apparently vanish into thin air.”
“I don’t believe in ghosts or magic.”
“I don’t either, Mary. But I do know one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“That this guy is not going to get away.”
She kept her gaze on him, her expression becoming concerned. “You sure you’re not talking about Leopold?”
He shrugged, his eyes seeming to stare at somewhere a million miles from here. “In a way, they’re all fucking Leopolds.”
Chapter 13
With Captain Miller’s blessing, Lancaster had arranged temporary credentials and an access badge for Decker. He had worked enough crime scenes to watch where he walked and not disturb or corrupt potential evidence. He looked over reports, studied the video some more, chatted briefly with department folks he knew, nodded to some he didn’t. While he was a long way from feeling comfortable working a crime scene again, he was starting to feel certain things coming back to him. His chief strength had always been observation. Looking around and seeing things, but not the way most people did. He had built convictions from small details that most overlooked, including, most significantly, the ones who had committed the crimes.
And he had observed a lot here so far, and not all of it connected to the shootings.
Principally he noted that the FBI was playing the usual peacock game. Strutting around and overwhelming everyone with their resources. But then again, he knew the police wouldn’t mind the help. The goal was the same. Get the guy who did this.
He fell back into the routine that he had employed in countless other investigations. He walked and observed and asked questions and read more reports. His travels took him around the entire perimeter of the school several times. He looked at it from every possible vantage point. Then he went back inside the school and looked out of every window in the place. It was the darkest moments before dawn broke. He had been here for hours. It felt like ten minutes, because he really hadn’t come up with anything. But that was okay. Miracles and epiphanies rarely happened in the middle of criminal investigations. If you wanted something like that you needed to turn on the TV. Results in the real world came from slow, dogged work, compiling facts and building conclusions and deductions based on those facts. And a little luck never hurt either.
A few minutes before dawn broke the transports were called up to start taking the bodies to the morgue. There was a loading dock in the rear of the school. The police had shielded it from view with a tarp and steel support poles. The vehicles drove one by one through a gap in this wall. Behind the tarp Decker knew the bodies were coming out, housed in black sturdy bags. The bodies had names but also numbers. They weren’t human beings anymore. They were pieces in a criminal investigation. Debbie Watson would be Vic-1. Her body had been the starting point in numbering everybody else who had fallen. Joe Kramer, the gym teacher, had been labeled Vic-2. And on the numbering went, down the list of dead.