He checked her email. Maybe she sent him something and he didn’t get it on his cell. But there was nothing.
He opened her recent document folder. And there it was at the top of the list—AltScene.doc with yesterday’s date.
Alt. Scene? Lexi, what are you thinking?
He double-clicked and the document filled the screen.
ALT. SCENE:
EXT. FRANK E. CAMPBELL FUNERAL CHAPEL, MADISON AVENUE AND 81ST STREET—DAY
PANDEMONIA PASSIONATA looks so pretty in her little black mourning dress as she waits patiently behind the police barricade at Ian Stewart’s memorial service. The mourners file slowly out of the chapel, but she ignores the little fish. She’s here for the Big One. This is Pandemonia’s moment. Redemption time.
Who the hell is Pandemonia Passionata?
He kept reading. Halfway through the scene, he stood up, and stormed off to his closet.
The Walther wasn’t there.
He flung the champagne glass against the wall.
“Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit!” he screamed, pounding his fist against the closet door.
It wasn’t anger. It was agony.
Chapter 60
THERE WERE AT least thirty cops on the scene and none of us saw the gun. But as soon as I heard the first shot, I had no doubt what we had on our hands. Active shooter—an individual actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a confined and populated area.
Our Counterterrorism Bureau issued a book on the subject. I’ve read it three times, and what stands out for me is this: Active-shooter attacks are dynamic events. Police response depends on the unique circumstances of the incident.
In other words, when the bullets start flying, we can’t tell you what’s going to happen. You’re on your own.
The first shot hit Shelley Trager. He stopped abruptly, his hands to his chest. A potted plant, one of two that stood in solemn repose on either side of the front door, broke his fall, and he slid to the ground, his face contorted in pain.
The crowd hemorrhaged in every direction, and that’s when I got my first look at the shooter. A woman in black. She was standing directly behind the metal barricade, right arm outstretched, gun pointed at the people caught in the front doorway of the funeral home.
Her? Ninety-six out of every hundred active shooters are men. Our heads had been wrapped around looking for a man.
My gun was out, and I bolted across Madison as she pulled the trigger a second time. She was not a pro. Her one-armed shooting stance was all wrong, and her hand kicked back when she took the shot. I have no idea who she was aiming at, but I watched as the bullet drilled through Henry Muhlenberg’s skull, exiting in a trail of blood, bones, and brains.
The crowd was in chaos. With the barricade trapping them on one side, and the funeral home on another, a handful of people ran north toward 82nd Street, but the bulk of them came running straight at me, heading for the opposite side of Madison. The shooter, who was less than ten feet from Spence and Kylie, turned her gun toward them.
I stopped, trying to line up a clean shot.
And then I went down hard.
A large man in a purple sweatshirt had broadsided me, kicked the gun out of my hand when I hit the ground, fell on top of me, and screamed, “I got him, I got him!”
I heard another shot, then another, then a third, as more wannabe-hero civilians piled on top of me.
I had counted five shots in all. And then nothing. Five seconds passed. Seven. Ten. The gunfire had stopped.
The Counterterrorism Bureau was right. Every active-shooter event is different. I had no idea what was going to happen, and now with my face pressed to the oil-streaked pavement, I had no idea how this one had ended.
Chapter 61
I COULD HEAR NYPD coming to my rescue. “Let him up, let him up. He’s a cop.”
“He has a gun,” the fat guy directly on top of me yelled back in a thick southern drawl.
“He’s a cop, you idiot. We all have guns. Now get off him.”
And then, from ten feet away, another voice—loud, official, conclusive. “She’s dead.”
Who’s dead?
I was at the bottom of a dogpile that must have been four or five guys high. I could feel the load getting lighter as the uniforms dragged them off one by one.
Finally, the 250-pound guy who brought me down, who turned out to be a high school football coach from Batesville, Mississippi, got up and reached out to help me.
“I’m sorry, Officer. It’s just that I saw you running toward a bunch of people with a gun…”
Who’s dead? WHO’S DEAD???
I stood up, got my bearings, and pushed my way to the front of the funeral home.
“You laying down on the job again?”
It was my partner, service pistol still in her hand, the hint of an inappropriate smile on her face, and, most important, not dead.