Striker turned away and walked down the hall towards the security room. He had barely gotten ten steps when he heard the Deputy Chief barking orders at Felicia.
Striker ignored them. A sense of dark excitement flooded him as he wondered what evidence Ich had uncovered.
The security room was waiting.
Thirteen
Striker walked with Ich down to the school’s security room. As they passed one of the speakers from the PA system, a jittery voice made pleas for all students and teachers to gather in the gymnasium — the one place that had achieved lockdown.
The speaker crackled, then screeched with feedback. It irritated Striker. His hearing — all his senses — felt out of whack, one moment numbed, the next amplified. People’s voices were either too loud or muffled, the hall’s fluorescent bulbs were too bright or too dim, and everything around him smelled of fresh death.
He was drowning in it.
Felicia finally caught up, and they walked on. This was the exact same route they had taken when trying to locate and intercept the gunmen this morning, Striker noted. He looked around. He didn’t recall so many bodies. There looked to be a lot more than eleven. Already he had counted four. Each one was covered by an ordinary brown sheet.
Like little sandbags dropped here and there to stifle the flow of blood.
He wondered: had he had tunnel vision at the time of the shootings, or had these poor kids tried to escape and only made it this far? The latter seemed more realistic, but he didn’t know for sure. And the more he tried to recall the exact details of how everything had unfolded, the more blank spots he found in his memory.
He passed three more kids, each one covered by a spotted brown sheet. That made seven. The sight sickened him, and he wanted to look away.
But he would not do that.
Instead, he stared intently at every single one of the children he passed, taking the time to peel back the covers and see their faces. He took in the full horror of their expressions, the rictus of twisted emotions warping their features.
He took it all in, accepted the ugly truth. Embraced it. For it steeled his determination. He would remember these children forever, each and every one of them, in image and in feeling. And he would recall these images and feelings with vigour when he caught the twisted little fuck responsible for their slaughter.
‘Jacob,’ a voice said.
He looked up from the body of a child he was staring at in the hall — a young, brown-haired girl with skin that was slack and pale — and saw Felicia calling him into Principal Myers’s office. He took one last look at the girl, then gently brushed the hair from her eyes and covered her back up. He joined Felicia in the office.
The room smelled strongly of burning tobacco and menthol. Principal Myers was leaning on the window ledge in the corner of the room. Her unstable legs looked ready to buckle. Striker marched up to her; looked her over. Her face was like a hard-boiled egg: white, hard, ready to crack. Sweat had matted her hair to her face, and her eyes looked distant, unaware. The cigarette she was holding dangled precariously from her trembling fingertips.
‘Caroline,’ Striker started.
Nothing.
‘Caroline,’ he said, this time more sternly.
It brought her from her thoughts. ‘Oh Jesus Christ, my kids, my kids, my kids!’
Striker touched her arm, gave it a squeeze.
‘I need lists, Caroline. Start with the kids who are unhurt and sequestered in the gym. Make note of all who are accounted for. Then start a separate list of the dead. Constable Kolski’s already liaising with Fire and Ambulance. Just get him the pictures and he’ll make the confirmations. When we have those done, we’ll know who’s still missing.’
She nodded numbly. ‘Yes, yes… a list.’
‘I also need you to make note of all the deceased’s known connections — who they hung out with, what clubs they joined, what sports they played, who they hated, who hated them. I need all of it and I need it now.’
When Caroline didn’t immediately respond, Striker looked at Felicia. ‘Can you take care of this?’
‘Got it.’
He moved over to Ich, who was preoccupied with the computer terminals in the far corner of the room. ‘So what you got here, Ich? What’s so strange?’
Ich looked up from the keyboard, the soft blue glow of the computer screens turning his pale skin into an even sicklier colour. ‘It’s the school’s security system — it’s been disabled. Happened sometime before the shooting.’
Striker narrowed his eyes. ‘You mean turned off?’
‘No, I mean disabled.’
‘Explain it to me.’
Ich scratched his high cheekbones with both hands, as if he had a tic or maybe because Striker was annoying him. He licked his thin lips.
‘All the cameras are non-functional,’ he said patiently. ‘They were deactivated. As far as I can tell, it happened sometime early this morning.’ He hit a few keys, brought up the internal history logs and scanned the electronic pages. ‘Probably around eight o’clock. Seven minutes after, if the local log is correct.’
Computer lingo was foreign to Striker, but he got the gist of it. He turned back to Principal Myers, who hadn’t left the spot where she was standing, the embers of her menthol cigarette now reaching the filter.
‘Who has access to this?’
Her eyes blinked, she came back to life. ‘Well, just… just me. And Vice Principal Smith.’
‘Smith. Where is he?’
‘Uh, Cancun.’
‘How long?’
‘He’s been there a week. And will be a week more.’
Striker didn’t like the timing. He cursed. ‘No one else has access to the system? No one at all?’
The ash fell off the end of the Principal’s cigarette and landed on the toe of her shoe. She didn’t react. ‘Well, we do have some student helpers. There’s two of them, but they-’
‘Their names, Caroline.’ Striker took out his pen and notebook.
‘Nava Sanghera and Sherman Chan. But they’re good kids. Nava’s in the hospital right now, getting her appendix out. And there’s no way that Sherman would ever-’
Striker pointed his pen at Felicia. ‘Send someone to check on Nava, but see if you can find this Sherman kid yourself. Talk to him. See what he says. If you can’t locate him, at least get me his picture.’
Felicia stepped back as if he’d put her on the defensive. ‘I should stay here. On the investigation with you.’
‘You need to find Sherman. The fewer people involved here, the better. I need you to do it. And be quick.’
Her face reddened and she gave Striker a look, as if she was pissed at being directed. For a moment, he thought he was in for an argument, but then she turned back to Principal Myers.
‘Which hospital is Nava in, Caroline?’
‘Saint Paul’s, I think.’
Felicia wrote down the information in her notebook, then snapped it shut and jammed it into the inner pocket of her suit jacket. She left the room without saying another word, slamming the office door behind her.
Ich whistled softly. ‘Wow, your first day back, and just like old times.’
Striker didn’t respond. He watched Felicia through the office window as she stormed down the hall, turned the corner and then disappeared from view. What the hell was wrong now? Of all the places for them to argue, this was the worst. A goddam school shooting. He felt like going after her, but didn’t.
He struggled to let the thought go and turned his attention back to the series of flat-screen monitors that were arranged in three rows on the far wall. Each one of them showed nothing but an empty, sky-blue screen, except for the three monitors on the bottom-most row, which were turned off and completely black.
Striker looked down at Ich, who was still seated at the keyboard.