Free Acoustic Shadows by Patrick Kendrick Page A

of them thoroughly, in case something popped up.
    Thiery wondered again about the response time. According to the dispatch log,
Calusa County SWAT arrived at 8:42. The initial call came in at 8:26. A sixteen-minute response? Maybe that was normal for this area, but Dunham had arrived at 8:38. Technically, the Calusa County Sheriff Office was ‘outside the city limits’ but it was still in very close proximity to the school. How did a police chief from a neighbouring city several miles away beat a SWAT located a few blocks away? Maybe protocol had them meet at the main department before responding? Maybe they had to go there for their SWAT gear? In most cities, officers kept their response gear in the trunk, but it might be different here
. Thiery made a note to himself to audit the dispatch tapes and call times.
    Deadened by fatigue, Thiery wondered if he was making something of nothing.
Maybe the governor was right
, he thought. Maybe there wasn’t an investigation, other than to determine what triggered the two men to do the shooting. What was their common fuck up? Abused as children? Bullied in school? Too many violent video games? Could anyone ever really know what caused these –
what had they called them on the news?
– Human Tornadoes?
    Still, something bothered Thiery. Something that, every time he began to doze off, woke him like a new lover trying to sneak out of bed.
Why was a forty-one-year-old man hanging out with a nineteen-year-old kid?
How and where did they meet? And what about Erica Weisz? What was
her
story? How did she get a gun? Why would she chance taking a loaded weapon to school? And what gave her the wherewithal to aim and shoot it? Most people couldn’t do that, even once. She managed to do it twice. He made a note on his iPad to check with the school board’s human resources department to see if her employment background revealed anything.
    Thiery’s head slumped to one side. The reports and his ever-present iPad slipped from his hands as sleep overcame him. He welcomed the coming slumber and managed to slip off his loafers and slide his feet under the covers, though still dressed. The mattress was too soft for his liking, but felt like a mother’s embrace as the window-banger AC unit hummed a soft lullaby.
    His slumber lasted about one minute before his mind, as weary as it was, clicked back on, repeating the questions:
What did Frank Shadtz and David Coody have in common? A mature, adult man from out of town and a nineteen-year-old, pimple-faced, hayseed kid. How had they met and joined together with the common idea they should shoot up a school?
    ‘Shit,’ he said aloud, rolling out of bed, his head swimming. ‘Goddamnit, man! Turn it off,’ he admonished himself. He got up, went to the bathroom, and unwrapped a tiny bar of soap. He washed his face and rinsed, then looked at himself in the mirror, though he had to squat to do so. His brown eyes were bloodshot, his face salt-and-pepper-whiskered, and his hair greasy. Someone once told him he looked like George Clooney on steroids. Right then, he was closer to Mickey Rourke on a bender.
    He shuddered and looked at his watch: 5:15. He couldn’t talk to the dead Shadtz and doubted if Coody was out of the coma yet. Maybe he would never come out of it. He needed to talk to Erica Weisz and Sally Ravich, the adult survivors, as well as some of the children. It kept coming back to that. But, it was so frigging early, or late, or whatever and he was just too damned whipped.
    He went back to bed and drifted off. This time, he slept almost seventy minutes before his cell phone rang.
    Away from his father, Julio Esperanza was the man. No one would have ever guessed he cowered under the glare of his father’s gaze. Few people had seen what his Papa did to those who crossed him. Just the thought of his father’s displeasure turned Julio’s blood to ice.
    When he was eighteen, his father had told him to pack a bag; they were taking a trip out to