Free Hard Return by J. Carson Black Page B

10
Luke Brodsky, 17: Luke was a free spirit who marched to his own drummer. His favorite song was Daft Punk’s “Get Lucky.” He was good at math, loved his little brother Chad and his girlfriend Kristal, but his passion was skateboarding. Some of his stunts defied gravity. Earlier this year, he placed in the Central Valley AM JAM in Riverbank (16–17 years of age) and planned to go on to the second leg of the competition. Luke was a hero who pushed Kristal under her car and covered her with his body. —“In Memoriam,” Special Section, the Los Angeles Times
    Landry sat at the desk by the window in his Las Vegas hotel room and looked up from his computer at the blue sky. Cars honked and he heard a bus slowing and stopping. One car’s thudding bass cut through the thin glass to reside in his gut. Eight dead. Six boys and two girls:
    Hunter Tomey
    Mike Morales
    Noah Cochran
    Danielle Perez
    James Schaffer
    Devin Patel
    Taylor Brennan
    Luke Brodsky

    Luke Brodsky.
    A good kid .
    For now, Landry set aside the eleven wounded. He could always add them back in later, if need be. But he didn’t think he would.
    The shooter was a pro. Landry had read between the lines. No ID. No credit cards. Apparently no fingerprint matches. A Chevy Tahoe that had been wiped down. The SA didn’t say, but Landry guessed the Tahoe was stolen. Or it could be that they had that information but were not releasing it. The shooter was in his late twenties, older than your average angry young male, and apparently in excellent condition. His teeth matched no dental charts. He had no Social, he had no driver’s license, he had no credit cards.
    Unless the SA had been lying. But Landry doubted that. Why would he?
    Even before their meeting of the minds over Montana and fishing, Keller’s first instinct would be to lessen the intrigue, not expand on it. His instinct would be to pretend the shooter was an average guy who’d “just snapped.”
    The “just snapped” theory was all over cable television. It was one of the few things they could say, because they had no real information. The TV pundits and cable hosts and experts had plenty of time to fill and very little to fill it with, except the shock, the horror, the stories of the dead and wounded. These Landry listened to, recorded, and made notations on. He wrote down every piece of information on the kids, including Kristal.
    Cindi had managed to keep Kristal from being interviewed; all the cameras got of their townhome in Torrent Valley was the entryway—tan stucco alcove, wooden door, the potted palm that always looked half-dead, and the concrete driveway. They were free to film that all they wanted, but a Navy SEAL’s wife knew better than to respond. She knew how to keep her silence, knew how not to engage .
    His wife had always been a good soldier.
    School was closed for the week at least. Cleanup of the parking lot was already under way. Landry had seen that parking lot probably twenty times on the cable channel shows and the nightly news. The blood-blotched asphalt, books and backpacks and other detritus lying on the ground, crime scene tape. The elm tree near the football field was festooned with streamers for “The Eight.” At its base was a shrine to the victims—teddy bears and candles and balloons. Just like every other massacre. Everything went the way it was expected to go. No surprises.
    Except for the coverage.
    Still , nothing on the shooter.
    They couldn’t identify him. In addition to that, the FBI wanted to keep the fact that he was a pro to themselves. Landry understood that. Why tip your hand?
    But it didn’t help him. All he had were the names of the kids. He knew that the shooter was a cipher and a pro, and he knew where to look for him. Where to look for his kind. But he had plenty of questions.
    Someone hired the shooter to kill students at random for some reason—just another school shooting. Which didn’t make sense. The people who shot up theaters and