“I’ll check into that,” said Lancaster. “But it strikes me as doubtful with all the chaos going on that the guy would be able to run down a tally sheet of targets.”
“Maybe it was chaotic for everybody else. But not him. He had the guns.”
“But still, Amos,” she said doubtfully.
“And the exit?” he asked, ignoring her last comment.
“We haven’t nailed that down yet.”
He studied her. “By the time the guy was finished shooting, how much time had passed?”
“The prelim time frame we pieced together is ten minutes, maybe a bit more.”
Decker glanced out a window. The front of the school was set far back from the road, within its own grounds. Across the street were residential properties.
“Nobody over there heard anything? Shots, screams?”
“Still canvassing. He might have used a suppressor.”
“Not on a shotgun he didn’t. But my point is, how does a guy in cammies, hood, and face shield with at least two different weapons, and one of them a long barrel, walk out of here and nobody eyeball him? For that matter, how did he walk in and no one see him?”
The air was starting to feel close again. Sweat sprouted on his forehead. He put a gloved hand out to the wall. If Lancaster noticed his distress, she said nothing.
“The video shows him entering on the rear side. There’s really nothing back there except the old Army base. He might have slipped in unseen. Maybe he hid in the Dumpster back there and popped out.”
Decker rubbed at his belly.
“You okay, Amos?”
“My diet is for shit. Did you check the Dumpster?”
“We checked everything and found nothing. We even checked the fence around the base. Nothing had been disturbed. And it’s so overgrown that there pro
bably would have been some indication of someone having come that way.”
“So he shot his way from the rear of the school to the front. Presumably he left that way. How did no one see him then? There are houses across the street. And cars going up and down the road.”
“Well, the homes directly across the street are empty because of foreclosures. And it’s a working-class neighborhood. There might not have been many people at the other homes at that time of the morning. And the school is set far enough back that the sounds might not have carried.”
“But presumably you had traffic along the street. And kids and teachers at the windows probably screaming their heads off. Cell phones hitting 911. Cruisers rolling. I was at Precinct Two when the guys started pouring out of the place. What is the time to the school from there by car? Fifteen minutes?”
“About that, yeah.”
“And even if nobody on the outside saw him leave, there had to be eyeballs at the school windows. Kids using phones as cameras. From what I remember, there’s not an exit in this building that’s not visible from some classroom window.”
“And you knew this because you, what, snuck out a lot?”
“All the time.”
“Well, you got me there. I went to high school in the next county. This is your turf, not mine.”
“And that still doesn’t cover his ingress. How did he walk in here and no one see him? Even if it was in the rear. There are windows overlooking it.”
“Yeah, but the second and third floors are unused.”
“But the first floor has windows looking out over the rear of the school.”
Lancaster could only shake her head.
“Has the school been searched?”
“It’s being searched right now.”
“And the teachers, admin, and students?”
“Evacuated to safety.”
“To safety?” said Decker, ignoring now the pains in his head and belly.
“We weren’t sure whether the shooter was still here, Amos. The first priority on something like this is to get the innocent to a safe place and secure the area.”
“Well, to state the obvious, if no one saw him leave, how do you know you also didn’t evacuate the shooter to a safe place?”
“No one was allowed to leave the area until we got descriptions of the shooter. The women were obviously above suspicion. All witnesses said it was a man. And there’s not one guy in the building who fit his description.”
“Not even the students? They’re growing kids pretty big these days.”
Miller let his hand go. “Why don’t you go over and join your ‘partner’? Good to see you two together again.”
Decker said nothing. He just turned and walked over to where Lancaster was waiting for him.
His opportunity for escape was now gone. And more than a part of him believed that Miller knew exactly what he was thinking when he’d been standing over by the door. And the police captain had decisively cut off his retreat.
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