The Competition - страница 14
“Obviously. But I won’t be able to do that until I get the bodies on the table, and I’d like to let the crime scene tech do his work before I move them-”
“Her work,” Bailey said, reading her cell phone. “It’s Dorian Struck.”
For the first time, I saw Dr. Shoe smile. “Excellent.”
What’d I say about the perfect match? The doctor strode off to finish his work in the library.
“The killers wore masks-” Bailey said.
“Why bother to hide your face if you’re planning to off yourself?”
Bailey nodded and stood up. “It all fits with Shoe’s theory. The principal is cuing up the surveillance footage for us. He’s got to have it ready by now.”
“Did he say what areas it covered?”
“Front entrance, back doors, cafeteria, the door to the gym, and one upstairs. He wasn’t sure what that one covered.”
“There were no surveillance cameras inside the gym?”
“No.”
It figured. We headed back to the main entrance and found Principal Campbell downstairs standing just inside the doors. His hands were clasped together so tightly I could see the whites of his knuckles from twenty paces. When Bailey asked if he was able to answer some questions, he nodded eagerly, but his ashen color worried me. He looked like a heart attack waiting to happen. Bailey started by asking how many shooters he saw. Now that the murder-suicide theory was effectively nixed, we couldn’t assume anything we’d heard was accurate; every detail had to be reexamined. Principal Campbell believed there were two shooters, but he couldn’t swear to it.
“I was sitting near the door of the gym when the shooting started, so I couldn’t see that much,” he said. “But as soon as I realized what was happening, I led as many students as I could out through the side door next to the cafeteria. It’s the closest exit to the street.”
His breathing quickened; I could practically see his blood pressure rise as he relived the horror of it. He was stuck in the memory and couldn’t get out. Eyes wet, he stammered, “I-I should’ve gone back in sooner. And Angela…my God, if it hadn’t been for her…covering them with her body…she was so brave-” He broke off and blinked back tears. “I-I don’t think she made it. Do you know?”
“I can check,” I said. “But Angela who?”
“The girls’ soccer coach. I heard she was pushing a bunch of kids out of the gym, but I haven’t seen her…”
I shook my head. “It’ll be a while before we know the status of everyone who was wounded, Mr. Campbell-”
“Dale. It’s Dale-”
“Dale. It’s over now. You did all you could. It’s time to take care of yourself. Have you been checked out by the EMTs yet?”
“I…uh-” His gaze dulled. “D-don’t worry about me, I’m fine. I’m okay.”
Obviously, appealing to his sense of self-preservation wasn’t going to cut it. “Look, the only thing we need from you right now is to show us how to view the surveillance footage. We’ll come back to you soon. And when we do, we’ll need you to be in shape because it’s going to be a detailed interview. If you land in the hospital, you’ll slow down the investigation. You wouldn’t want to do that, right?”
He nodded slowly.
“So you need to stay healthy for everyone’s sake. Let the paramedics give you a once-over, okay?”
He didn’t like the idea, but he finally capitulated. He took us to the room where the video monitor for the surveillance footage was kept, showed us how to scan the footage, and left.
“Let’s start with the cameras closest to the gym doors,” Bailey said.
Black-and-white images of the hallway just outside the gym doors jerked across the monitor. A woman holding a clipboard to her chest came into view. Her heels snicked loudly on the linoleum floor as she passed under the camera, then faded as she moved away. For another few seconds the screen showed an empty hallway, and I heard faint echoes of a voice speaking into a microphone-Principal Campbell, probably-then cheering, like waves breaking on a distant shore. It was another few seconds before I heard the screaming. At first, it sounded like any ordinary crowd watching a basketball game. Then I heard the flat