Free Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult

were chipped where bullets had pierced or grazed them. A vending machine-glass shattered, bottles pierced-dribbled Sprite and Coke and Dasani onto the linoleum floor. One of the crime techs was photographing evidence: abandoned bookbags and purses and textbooks. He snapped each item close-up, then at a distance with a little yellow tented evidence marker to record its placement in relation to the rest of the scene. Another officer examined blood-spatter patterns. A third and a fourth were pointing to a spot in the upper right corner of the ceiling. “Captain,” one of them said, “looks like we’ve got a video.”
    “Where’s the recorder?”
    The officer shrugged. “Principal’s office?”
    “Go find out,” Patrick said.
    He walked down the main aisle of the cafeteria. It looked, at first glance, like a science fiction movie: everyone had been in the middle of eating and chatting and joking around with friends, and then in the blink of an eye, all the humans were abducted by aliens, leaving only the artifacts behind. What would an anthropologist say about the student body of Sterling High, based on the Wonder-bread sandwiches scarred by only one bite; the tub of Cherry Bomb lip gloss with a fingerprint still skimming the surface; the salt-and-pepper composition notebooks filled with study sheets on Aztec civilization and margin notes about the current one: I luv Zach S!!! Mr. Keifer is a Nazi!!!
    Patrick’s knee bumped one of the tables, and a loose handful of grapes scattered like gasps. One bounced against the shoulder of a boy slumped over his binder, his blood soaking into the college-ruled paper. The boy’s hand still held tight to his eyeglasses. Had he been cleaning them when Peter Houghton arrived for his rampage? Had he taken them off because he didn’t want to see?
    Patrick stepped over the bodies of two girls who lay sprawled on the floor like mirror twins, their miniskirts hiked high on their thighs and their eyes still open. Walking into the kitchen area, he surveyed the troughs of graying peas and carrots and the runny slop of chicken pot pie; the explosion of salt and pepper packets that dotted the floor like confetti. The shiny metallic helmets of the Yoplait yogurts-strawberry and mixed berry and key lime and peach-which were still miraculously aligned in four neat rows near the cash register, an unflinching, tiny army. One worn plastic tray, with a dish of Jell-O and a napkin on it, waiting to be served the rest of the meal.
    Suddenly, Patrick heard a noise. Could he have been wrong-could they all have missed a second shooter? Could his team be canvassing the school for survivors…and still be at risk themselves?
    He drew his gun and crept into the bowels of the kitchen, past racks with monstrous cans of tomato sauce and green beans and processed nacho cheese, past massive rolls of plastic wrap and Sysco tinfoil, to the refrigerated room where meats and produce were stored. Patrick kicked open the door, and cold air spilled over his legs. “Freeze,” he yelled, and for the briefest moment, before he remembered everything else, he nearly smiled.
    A middle-aged Latina lunch lady, wearing a hair net that crawled over her forehead like a spiderweb, inched out from behind a rack of prepackaged bags of salad mix. Her hands were raised; she was shivering. “No me tire,” she sobbed.
    Patrick lowered his weapon and took off his jacket, sliding it over the woman’s shoulders. “It’s over,” he soothed, although he knew this was not really true. For him, for Peter Houghton, for all of Sterling…it was only just beginning.
    “Let me get this straight, Mrs. Calloway,” Alex said. “You are charged with driving recklessly and causing serious bodily injury while reaching down to aid a fish?”
    The defendant, a fifty-four-year-old woman sporting a bad perm and an even worse pantsuit, nodded. “That’s correct, Your Honor.”
    Alex leaned her elbows on the bench. “I’ve got to hear