several classrooms where students were taking cover. He’d hunted them down as they sheltered behind the tables and shot them like rabbits, some of them at point-blank range, the barrel almost touching them.
As his weapon was blasting out molten lead, some students had attempted to run away down the corridor. Russell Rod had tried to get as many of them as possible. Not without a certain sadism, according to a maths teacher who had seen it all. He said Russell had aimed for the legs of the fleeing students and then gone and shot them point-blank, if possible in the face.
A massacre.
Russell had done everything to ensure that there would be as few witnesses as possible.
Then he had gone into the janitor’s closet. There was a gunshot, then silence. Several seconds had gone by before crying, groans and shouts of pain started up.
Lamar pushed the pile of reports to the side of the desk, putting a rubber stamp-holder on top of them so that they wouldn’t be displaced by a draught, and went next door to the nurse’s office.
The youth who had been found in the cupboard, one Chris DeRoy, lay on one of the four beds, wrapped in a silver survival blanket. He was brown-haired and brown-eyed, with freckles and a few spots. He was lying in his own filth, waiting for his parents to come with clean clothes. He was slowly recovering from his terrifying experience.
He had spoken to Lamar, in a very quiet voice. He’d seen Russell come up the stairs holding his submachine gun. He’d also had a clear view of a girl’s head exploding. So he’d thrown himself into the walk-in closet and tried to hide in a corner. He’d heard the unrelenting gunshots. Everyone was running around. At first he could hear yelling, but then everyone who wasn’t dead and hadn’t already fled outside understood that if they wanted to survive they would have to shut up in order not to attract the attention of the madman.
Minutes passed and then the door opened and Russell walked in.
He had recognised him. He was wearing what he always wore: combat trousers and a hooded sweatshirt with the name of a heavy-metal band on it.
Chris had seen him come in. He thought he’d heard him mutter something, but he hadn’t been able to make out what. Then Russell had taken his Uzi in one hand and pointed it at his head and fired. Half his head had been blown off and splattered over the opposite wall.
At that moment, the door, which closed automatically, had slammed shut and Chris had waited in the dark until the police arrived.
Lamar came over to his bedside.‘Your parents will be here in a minute. Are … are you sure you don’t want to go to the bathroom and clean yourself up?’ He hoped the youth would prefer to be undressed but clean under his survival blanket.
Chris shook his head.
‘All right then …’
Lamar was about to offer him a hot drink when the door opened to reveal a well-coiffed brown-haired middle-aged man, closely shaven and dressed in a three-piece suit. Newton Capparel.
‘Lamar!’ he exclaimed. ‘Give me the low-down; we only have a few minutes before the press conference. They’re getting impatient out there.’
Lamar folded his arms across his chest.
‘Are you taking over the case?’ he asked.
‘I prefer to say “coordinating”. It’s the big cheese who’s asked for me.’
Lamar nodded. Of course. Capparel was articulate, he knew how to handle journalists and he was more presentable than the hulking Lamar, approaching forty and still wearing an eighties anorak over his enormous shirts. At least today he had spared them his beige and brown striped woolly hat. He had forgotten it in his hurry this morning.
‘Lamar,’ Capparel went on, ‘you’ll have to come to the press conference as well, but … er … stand a little behind.’
Lamar guessed that he would be there to provide the local colour. He would be the token black face to satisfy political correctness.
‘Sure,’ he mumbled.
He turned to Chris. ‘Hang in there, buddy. Your parents are on their way.’
And then he left with Newton Capparel, who was already running over his spiel for the cameras.
The black mouths of the cameras were poised to swallow whatever they were offered and Lamar retreated into the shadows. He detested these corners of buildings flooded with light for filming, nests of microphones pointed up at your chin. After a few minutes the floodlights began to generate warmth despite the autumn wind ruffling everyone’s scarves. The effect was surreal, and Lamar found the whole scene disturbing. It was inappropriate and lacking in respect, he thought, whilst being aware that he was out of step with the modern world and its media needs.
Capparel’s ‘coordinating’ meant that he would benefit from everyone else’s work without lifting a finger. He would write the final report and take all the credit. Lamar was used to his methods, common to all the big shots in the NYPD, who had their eye on a political post in the medium or long term.
Shortly before eleven o’clock Lamar left the school to return to Precinct 13 on 21st Street in Lower Manhattan where he worked. He got out of his car and went to buy a cup of coffee before going in. He shared his office with one of the teams from the Manhattan homicide squad. As he went into the large room, he heard two men swapping notes and whispering over the file in front of them. The rest of the chairs were empty except for the one opposite Lamar’s. Doris Kennington. She was Lamar’s favourite work partner. As tiny as he was tall, she was a slim blonde, a bundle of nerves and muscle, a keen practitioner of combat sports and the only woman Lamar knew who never missed a single episode of Ultimate Fighting.
‘Aren’t you supposed to be working on the massacre in Harlem?’ she said in surprise.
‘Capparel has stolen the show.’
She raised an eyebrow in a gesture that spoke volumes about what she thought of Capparel.
‘Mrs Pathrow called from Bellevue Hospital,’ she reported, consulting her notes. ‘Her husband has just died, so the attempted murder charge has been changed to homicide and the DA wants to talk to you about it.’
Lamar nodded. ‘Is that it?’
‘Yes. Maddox and Rod have gone to the West Side. Someone found a body on an apartment balcony. A good start to the homicide day.’
Lamar quickly checked his emails then grabbed his famous woolly hat and went off to the DA’s office.
Doris watched him leave with his apologetic stride, his interminable arms hanging by his slim thighs, his orange anorak in one hand. Lamar was a phenomenon, as singular in appearance as he was sensitive inside. A giant who lived on his own and devoted himself to his investigations. Doris felt a pang to see him leave.
Her eyes went back to the TV, which was silently showing images of the high-school massacre on a loop.
East Harlem Academy was the starting point of a virus.
The source of an epidemic.
Evil was now spreading across the city.
Very
