Shelter in Place (Page 13)

“They’re dead. I’m glad they’re dead. JJ Hobart.”

“Oh my God.”

“Kent Whitehall and Devon Paulson were in the mall. JJ was in the theater.”

“He killed Tish. I saw them in school almost every day. They killed Tish.”

“And Trent. He’s dead. Tiffany’s hurt bad. I saw her mom last night. Tiffany’s. JJ shot her. She might have brain damage and her face … I only heard a little. I don’t know how bad she is.”

“I knew JJ especially was mean, stupid mean sometimes, but…” Mi’s bruised eyes spilled over with tears again. “I’m the one who picked that movie. I wanted to see that movie especially, and now Tish is dead.”

“It’s not your fault. It’s not my fault I went to the bathroom and wasn’t there. But it feels like it. It really feels like it. But it’s their fault, Mi. I hate them. I’ll hate them forever.”

“I’m so tired,” Mi murmured as her eyes closed. “Don’t go.”

“I’ll be right outside,” Simone said after the nurse came to the door and signaled her time was up. “I won’t go.”

* * *

Once or twice in the past Reed had had very interesting dreams about getting Angie naked. Now, after recurring nightmares of hiding beside her dead body, he sat in the back row of the Methodist church for her funeral.

He’d nearly talked himself out of coming. They hadn’t really been friends. He hadn’t really known her. Like, he hadn’t known her parents were divorced or that she’d played the flute or had a brother in the Marine Corps.

Maybe he’d have learned those things if they’d gone to the movies or grabbed a pizza or taken a walk on the beach. But they hadn’t.

Now he felt lost and guilty and stupid, sitting there while people who had known her, loved her, cried.

But he’d had to come. He’d probably been the last person—who was not a customer—to have an actual conversation with her. He’d spent those terrifying minutes hiding a little boy in her kiosk with her body right … there.

He’d had her blood on his shoes, his pants.

So he sat through the prayers, the weeping, the heartbreaking eulogies in a suit too tight in the shoulders. His mother had told him when he’d come home for the summer to get a new suit, and he’d ignored the idea as a waste of money.

As usual, his mother was right.

Thinking about his suit made him feel disrespectful. So he thought about the three faces he’d seen again and again on the news.

Younger than he was, all of them, and one of them had killed Angie.

Not Hobart, he remembered. He’d been in the theater, and the cop—Officer McVee—killed him. The reports said Hobart had worked in the theater. They said he’d been the ringleader.

But either Whitehall or Paulson had killed Angie.

They looked normal in the pictures on TV and in the papers, on the Internet.

But they hadn’t been normal.

The one he’d seen—still saw in nightmares—all geared up in Kevlar, laughing as he shot a man in the head, hadn’t been normal.

He knew more about them now, the three who’d killed a girl he’d liked during their eight-minute slaughter. Hobart had lived with his father after an ugly divorce. His younger sister lived with the mother. The father, an avid gun collector, taught his children to hunt, to shoot.

Whitehall had lived with his mother, stepfather, half brother, and stepsister. His father, currently unemployed, had a couple of arrests: drunk and disorderly, driving under the influence. Whitehall—the neighbors said—kept to himself and had some drug issues.

Paulson appeared to be a model student. Good grades, no trouble, solid home life, only child. He’d been a Boy Scout—and had a sports shooting merit badge. He’d been a junior member of the USA Shooting organization, with an eye toward the Olympics.

His father had competed for the USA in Sydney in 2000, and Athens in 2004.

People who knew Paulson said they’d noticed a change (hindsight) maybe six months ago when he’d seemed to become more closed in.

That would be about the time the girl he liked decided she liked someone else better, and he’d hooked up with Hobart.

About the time the three who’d become mass murderers began to feed each other’s internal rage.

They’d documented it, so the reports claimed, on computer files the authorities were still studying. Reed, in turn, studied the reports, dug into speculation on the Internet, watched news broadcasts, talked endlessly with Chaz and others.

As much as he wanted to know, just know why, he expected it would take forever for it all to come out. If then.

As he saw it, from the pieces he put together from the reports, the gossip, the conversations, Hobart hated everybody. His mother, his teachers, his coworkers. He hated blacks and Jews and gays, but mostly just hated. And he liked to kill things.

Whitehall hated his life, wanted to be somebody, and believed everything and everyone worked against him. He’d gotten a summer job—at the mall—and had been fired within two weeks. For showing up high, a former coworker claimed, when he showed up at all.

Paulson hated his luck. He’d concluded he’d done everything right all his life, but still lost his girl, and wasn’t quite as good as his father at anything. He’d decided it was time to be bad.

They’d targeted the mall for impact, and Hobart took the theater because he wanted to destroy the place that expected him to work for a living.

Rumors claimed they’d done three dry runs, timing them, refining them. They’d planned to regroup at Abercrombie & Fitch, barricade themselves inside, taking hostages as bargaining chips, and taking out as many cops as possible.

Whitehall and Paulson nearly made it, but they’d taken an oath. If one of them fell, they all fell.

When Hobart didn’t show, and with the cops closing in, Whitehall and Paulson—according to witnesses—bumped fists, shouted, “Fuck yeah!” and turned their weapons on each other.

Maybe some of it was true. Maybe even most. But Reed expected more and more would come out. They’d do a book, probably a freaking TV movie.

He wished to hell they wouldn’t.

He came back to the moment when people started to stand, and felt a wave of shame that he’d been inside his own head instead of paying attention.

He got to his feet, waiting while the pallbearers carried Angie out. He couldn’t imagine her inside that box, didn’t want to imagine her there. Her family filed out, grouped tight together as if holding each other up.

He saw a couple people he knew now—Angie’s friend Misty, some others who worked at the mall. It shouldn’t have surprised him to see Rosie. He’d sat with her the day before at Justin the busboy’s funeral.

He knew Rosie had spent the last few days at funerals or in hospital rooms.

He hung back, let her go on her way. Probably to another memorial, or to visit one of the injured, maybe to take food to someone who’d suffered a loss or was recovering at home.

That was Rosie.

The opposite of the three who’d killed.

When he stepped out of the church, he walked into a perfect summer afternoon. The sun shined out of a blue, blue sky dotted with soft white clouds. Grass grew summer green. A squirrel darted up a tree.

It didn’t seem real.

He saw reporters across the street, shooting video or taking photographs. He wanted to despise them for it, but wasn’t he clinging to every word they reported, every photo they published?