The Competition - страница 8

A sobbing couple hovered over a gurney that was being loaded into one of the ambulances. The woman called out in a quavering voice, “Don’t worry, baby, you’re going to be okay! We’ll be right behind you!” The paramedic slammed the rear door shut and jumped in, then the ambulance flew down the street, siren screaming.

Bailey and I stopped just outside the tape that had been placed around the perimeter of the school and she flashed her badge at the nearest officer, a wiry guy who seemed almost young enough to have been a student himself.

“I’ll have to check with the sergeant before I let you in,” he told Bailey. He glanced over at me. “But she’ll have to wait. I’ve got strict orders: no civilians allowed.”

“I’m not a civilian,” I said, irritated. I pulled out my badge and held it up. “I’m a deputy district attorney-”

The officer studied my badge, then shook his head. “I’m sorry, ma’am, orders are not to let-”

“She’s on the case,” Bailey interjected.

He gave me a skeptical look. “I’ll get the sergeant.” The officer started to go, then turned back and pointed at me. “But wait here till I get back.”

I watched him walk away. “What, did he think I was going to rush the line?”

“It’s the glint of madness in your eyes, Knight. Screws you every time.”

“You’re not funny, Keller.”

“I wasn’t kidding.”

We waited in silence as we watched the scene in front of the school. A line of police officers held back the surging crowd that was getting louder and more desperate by the minute. Keening cries mixed with voices grown hoarse from pain and frustration. A man shouted, “I just want some goddamn information!” That sparked a wave of cries from the others. “Please, we just need to know!” and “Can’t you tell us something?” and “It’s our kids, for Christ’s sake!” I could see by the expressions on the officers’ faces that they felt the parents’ pain but there was nothing they could do. In this chaos, it would take time to get accurate information. And the truth was, nothing short of seeing their children alive and unharmed was going to reassure these parents.

Finally, the kid-I mean officer-we’d spoken to came back. Without a word, he lifted the tape. As we ducked under, he said, “Sergeant said for you both to get on some booties and gloves before you go in.”

We nodded and started toward the main entrance. Behind us, voices shouted out, “Rachel! Rachel Knight! Bailey Keller!” Stunned, I turned and found myself staring into the black lens of a video camera. Behind the camera, reporters were leaning over the tape, holding out microphones. A female reporter in a red suit asked, “What can you tell us?” A heavyset male behind her called out, “Do you have a body count?”

Nice thing to say in front of all those families. Assholes. Luckily for them, I’d left my gun in Bailey’s car. Bailey saw the look in my eye and grabbed me by the arm. “Zip it, Knight-you don’t need to star in tonight’s headlines.”

I forced myself to turn back and move up the front steps. As Bailey and I went over to the boxes that held the booties and gloves, I heard shouts of recognition bounce through the crowd of reporters.

“Hey, aren’t those the two that did the Ian Powers case?” Another called out, “Yeah, that’s the prosecutor!”

Bailey and I had been in the center of the spotlight last year when I handled a high-profile trial involving the murders of Hayley Antonovich, daughter of world-famous director Russell Antonovich, and her boyfriend, Brian Maher. But that’d been almost a year ago. I’d thought-hoped-everyone would forget what Bailey and I looked like. So much for that.

We pulled on gloves and booties and made our way inside. I’ve been to a lot of crime scenes. Never have I seen the kind of grim, bruised expressions I saw on the faces of the cops, techs, and paramedics in that school. Even before we reached the area where students had fallen, I could smell the sweat, the panic, the blood. We walked down the main hallway and got as far as the principal’s office before we hit more yellow crime scene tape. I looked past it and saw jackets, shoes, backpacks, and purses strewn up and down the hallway; garbage cans lay on their sides, spilling out wrappers, torn notebook pages, and empty soda cans. Farther down, I saw paramedics working urgently over a body. I started to move forward to get a closer look, but a steely grip circled my arm and pulled me back.