The Competition - страница 9

Annoyed, I yanked my arm away. “I’m authorized-”

“I know. By me.”

The familiar voice made me stop. I looked up and, for a brief moment, even smiled. “Hey.” I shouldn’t have been surprised. After all, Graden Hales was the lieutenant of Robbery-Homicide. I started to lean into him, then caught myself and stepped back.

Graden gave my arm a quick squeeze, then turned to the area inside the crime scene tape. “I just finished walking through the school,” he said. “I’ve seen bad, but nothing comes close to this.”

That was saying something. Graden hadn’t scored an early promotion to management by cozying up to the brass. He’d worked his way up through the ranks, serving in some of the most violent divisions in the city.

“How many?” I asked.

“We’ve counted twenty-seven dead so far, and those are just the ones who were pronounced at the scene. We don’t have an accurate count of the wounded yet, and may not for a few days. The local hospitals filled up fast. They’ve had to reach farther and farther out to find beds.”

Twenty-seven dead and counting. That made this one of the worst school shootings since…the thirty-three killed at Virginia Tech-but that was a university. As far as public school shootings went, it was worse than Columbine or Sandy Hook. Graden looked at me intently. “You sure you want to see this?”

No. I really wasn’t. “I have to.”

Graden signaled to Bailey, who’d been talking to one of the officers at the door.

“Lieutenant,” she said, when she’d joined us. Graden nodded. “I just got another update.” The tension in her voice told me it wasn’t a good one. “Hospital just pronounced two more.”

“Twenty-nine confirmed,” Graden said. “So far.”

Bailey’s cell phone buzzed on her hip. I didn’t want her to answer it. I didn’t want to hear about yet another dead child.

“Dorian’s on her way,” Bailey said. “Says nobody better be touching anything.”

Dorian Struck, aka “she who must be obeyed,” was the best criminalist and crime scene analyst in the business-and she knew it. She ruled her roost with an iron fist and woe to the fool who didn’t follow her orders.

“Then we’d better get moving,” Graden said. “I’ll walk you through in chronological order. They hit the gym first, so we’ll start there.”

Bailey and I followed as he skirted the crime scene tape and led us through the wide hallway that ran from the main entrance to the back of the school, where the gym was located. “How many shooters?” I asked. “Do you know yet?”

“We’re pretty sure there were just two.”

The fluorescent lighting penetrated every inch of the scene with cruel, sharp clarity. A body covered with a sheet lay in the hallway just outside the open door to the gym. As we drew near, the thick, metallic smell of blood grew overwhelming. I slowed to look around the stretch of hallway that led into the gym-and to push down the nausea that threatened to bubble up into my mouth. Blood was everywhere. There was a pool near the sheet-covered body, a fine spray on the walls and the doors just outside the gym. When we reached the entryway to the gym I saw numbered evidence cards that marked the killers’ path through the bleachers and across the floor to our left.

Graden stopped and pointed at them. “Keep to the far right and stay close.”

We fell in behind Graden, moving slowly, careful to stay away from the evidence markers and the cops, crime scene techs, and coroner investigators. As bad as the hallway had been, the scene in the gym was worse-much worse. Bodies-eleven by my count-were strewn like rag dolls across the bleachers, the aisle stairs, and the floor. The sight and the smell of the carnage made me swallow to keep from heaving. I forced myself to take it all in. The air still felt thick with panic, tears, and terror. What kind of monsters could have done this?

“The killers were students?” Bailey asked.

“That’s the theory at this point,” Graden replied.

We left the gym, and Graden stopped at the foot of the stairway that led to the second floor, where crime scene techs were taking measurements and dusting for prints.