Hard Return (2 page)

CHAPTER
2

It took the man Barbara Carey knew as Joe Till an average of one hour and forty-five minutes to drive from the horse farm north of Santa Ysabel to Gordon C. Tuttle High School on Forrest Avenue.

That included swapping vehicles.

He drove to his rented town house and parked the Dodge Ram in the closed two-car garage, swapping it out for a Ford Econoline. The town house was on a quiet street where everyone seemed to either work days or stay inside their townhomes—he’d never seen another soul here.

He kept another van at another town house on another street just like this one, only that town house was in Lake View Terrace.

He drove the six city blocks to the high school.

The school he was going to was located in a recently incorporated area east of LA called Torrent Valley. He made the trip five days a week.

Like most teenagers, seventeen-year-old Kristal Landry was a creature of habit. Her last class let out at three p.m. She walked out to her car parked by the chain-link fence facing the football field. She always parked in the same spot or one or two spots on either side, not far from a massive California pepper tree.

If he could trace her movements, so could someone else.

He watched through binoculars through a vertical metal flap at the back of his van as Kristal walked out to her car.

He knew how much the 2011 Toyota Yaris cost new. He would have chosen another car—larger and heavier—but making choices for Kristal was no longer his job. He wasn’t crazy about the color, either—“Yellow Jolt”—but young girls were attracted to bright colors. Yellow and red were accident colors. They also attracted attention. A pretty girl in a cute yellow car could be a draw for some kinds of people. But he had to leave it to Kristal and her mom.

He wasn’t crazy about Kristal’s boyfriend, either, the kid who was walking her to the car. He watched as they kissed. She gently pushed her hand down and against the kid’s crotch.

A slow burn started in his throat and flushed his face.

If she lived in his house, if
he
lived in his house, he would have had a serious talk with her. A very serious talk.

But Cyril Landry was on the outside. He could do nothing about his daughter’s behavior.

He couldn’t expose her to those who would still be looking. He doubted anyone was, but that was not a guarantee. He couldn’t be there to do his duty as a father because he would be putting her and his wife in danger, along with his brothers and sister. So Kristal would just have to figure it out. He would have forbidden her to have sex with that boy, Luke Brodsky, and she would have had no choice but to obey. But now he could only watch over her and hope she figured out that they needed to use birth control. Abstinence was preferable, but he’d prefer she use birth control rather than end up with a kid, which would tie her to Luke for a long time.

It was a helpless feeling to watch her through binocs and not be able to warn Kristal about all the things she would have to deal with. A kid without a father to protect her, at the most vulnerable time in her life—all those raging hormones. Trying to pick a college, and who knew what else? Her grades had never been good, and he’d found out that in middle school she had been bullied and she had been mortified when he’d rectified it by going to the bully’s parents.

His wife didn’t speak to him for a week.

That was the way it had always been, two against one, but he didn’t mind it so much. He knew they loved him. Cindi once said that he “exasperated” them both. That was the word she used. But she also understood that he would die for them. Left unsaid was the fact that he would kill for them, but Cindi knew that, too. They both knew he had stood watch over his family like the sentry on the ramparts.

But now his wife didn’t know if he was alive or dead.

The DOD told Cindi he was dead, so that was what she probably believed.

The two kids were getting hot and heavy, in broad daylight out by the car. The boy was leaning into Kristal, holding her against the Yaris. Their crotches almost rubbing. Tangled together.

Three in the afternoon.

Other kids walking to their cars.

So many kids, funneling into the parking lot.

He looked away.

Barbara Carey looked at her watch. She’d seen Joe Till drive his old truck off the property at exactly noon, as he did five days a week.

When she hired him, he’d told her he needed time off between noon and five p.m. on weekdays. He told her he would be back before evening feed. In exchange for this, he worked weekends. On weekends, he was available twenty-four seven, and could be there every day of the week
except
between noon and five p.m.

There wasn’t much to do with racehorses in the middle of the day. It was their siesta time and hers, so the strange arrangement worked out fine. She suspected he had another job to make ends meet. She knew as well as anyone that work on a horse farm didn’t pay a living wage.

He didn’t share that part of his private life with her, so this was purely conjecture on her part.

The other job was probably a condition of his probation. If he
was
on probation. That was the case with her brother Ben.
They
decided where you worked and when. She didn’t ask. You had a good worker in the racing business, you don’t ask too many questions.

Barbara knew she was falling for Joe Till. She’d lived a long time, through two marriages, one ending in young widowhood and the other in divorce. She was no fool. She had cautioned herself not to fall for him. Reminded herself she didn’t know him very well.

Very well? Hardly at all. Just that he was a good horseman. Okay, a
spectacular
horseman. And a good lover. A
spectacular
lover.

He was a good friend, too, as far as that went.

She trusted him for the most part, so she wouldn’t rock the boat. She didn’t
want
to rock the boat.

Barbara stuck to her guns on that all the way up until five o’clock in the afternoon, when the news filtered in.

CHAPTER
3

Three p.m.: thirty or more high school kids were strung out along the asphalt apron of the parking lot, ambling along, some in groups, some by themselves, talking, joking, grandstanding. Shoulders slouched, some of them sullen, some lonely, many of them thumbing their cell phones. Beeping to unlock their cars. Pretty girls. Handsome boys. The sunlight lying flat on the parking lot, shadows lengthening, smog burned off, deep blue sky, palm trees, bright green lawn.

Friday. Week over. Everyone happy to go home.

His daughter and her boyfriend making out against the yellow Yaris, oblivious.

Then:

Hard loud claps, rapid fire—

M-16
.

Kids in a group hitting the ground like dominoes, others stopping, turning, twisting, trying to run. Some wandering aimlessly, in shock.

Crawling.

Screaming.

A slender dark figure advancing through the lot, shooting at anything that moved. Reports in rapid succession—
bangbangbangbangbang
.

Landry saw his daughter duck down behind the engine block of the car—good. Her boyfriend crouched above her, covering her with his body, head, and arms. The shooter in black, body armor head to toe, shooting methodically, a gunslinger walking down the street. Casings raining behind him.

Detached.

Nonchalant.

Landry retrieved his rifle from the storage compartment of the Econoline, twisted the can on the barrel, loaded five subsonic rounds. One in the chamber. No time for the bipod.

The shooter dumping ammo, waving his rifle back and forth, creating a swath. Mowing down anything in his path. Now he was past Kristal’s car. If he turned back . . . Kids were running, screaming. Falling, drenched in blood. A blond girl crouched over her friend’s body—sheltering her. The shooter aimed—casually but in control—and the top of her head vaporized. She collapsed in a heap on top of her friend’s body. A boy running for cover was hit between the shoulder blades. He skated crazily for a moment in the blood of the two girls, before he fell.

The man with the rifle moved forward. Calm and methodical, picking his shots.

This is not your average school shooter
.

Kristal and Luke by the car. Luke frantically pushing Kristal under, trying to scuttle in behind, still covering her with his body—great kid.

Another terrifying burst.

Landry dragged a sandbag to the vertical flap in the van’s right back door. Sandbag in place, rifle on top: prone position, push the flap aside.

The way he was parked, the loophole didn’t true up with the target.
This won’t work
.

Contingencies
, none of them good. He could bash out the taillight with the butt of his rifle, but a van with a broken taillight would be noticeable. He looked around. The sound of gunfire, so far, had kept people inside. Anyone driving by might see the barrel but he’d have to take that chance.
Open the back doors
. Risky, but doable. He pushed open the right side first, not too far, then shoved on the right. There was a gap of about a foot and a half, enough so he could train the rifle and follow.

No time to worry if someone saw the barrel protruding from the van.

He had one good shot. After that, there might be an infinitesimal alteration in the rifle’s accuracy.
If
the barrel heated up too much. Betsy had a tendency to run hot, but otherwise, she was perfect. Nineteen times out of twenty, her performance was precise to the nth degree. But Landry knew he couldn’t take any chances.

The first shot had to be good. It would be. The shooter was no more than eighty-five feet away. Landry had made kill shots at a mile—and more.

It was his choice, how to take down the shooter, with less than a second to make it. Even with body armor, one shot to the outside torso would drop him. It wouldn’t kill him, but it would stop him. It would put him right down. A live shooter would help the investigation, and give Landry answers.

A shot to the head would make
sure
he was dead.

His
daughter
.

It would be the head shot.

He peered through the scope—

And saw the blood lighting on Luke’s back like a half dozen locusts.

The boy’s body went still.

Someone yelled. The shooter turned his head. His back to Kristal, who was now all the way under the car. The bad guy’s back to Landry, finger on the trigger, and he started shooting again, neck bent slightly forward. He wore a bulletproof vest, and a helmet, but he’d left the sweet spot open: where the base of the skull met the vertebrae.

Acquire the target
.

Breathe
.

Slow
squeeze on the trigger.

The shooter went down, dead before he hit the ground, his oblongata pulverized by a bullet moving at eight hundred feet per second. The vertebrae popped, shards of bone disintegrating in an instant. There wasn’t even a blurt from the assault rifle.

Like turning off a light switch.

Blood spread out from under him, shiny, dark, and black. Like crude oil.

The satisfaction of taking the shooter out was brief and followed by a tsunami of pain.

So many of them down.

Sirens. Landry pulled the doors shut and peered through the flap. People were coming out of the building, a little late. Like the Munchkins in Oz after the witch died. A rent-a-cop. School officials. The loudspeaker blaring. Dead and wounded.

The cops will be here in less than a minute
.

His daughter was crying. Slippery with the blood of her boyfriend. Screaming for help, strangling on her tears.

She was alive, but the boy, Luke, was dead.

That was how it always happened: the kid just gone.

Luke had been a good boy after all.

Landry wanted to hold her. Tell her he was alive and that he had watched over her as a good father should. He wanted to but he knew it would only bring danger to her and her mother.

He needed to go.

His van was parked across the street from the school in the side parking lot of an auto repair shop and nose-in to the back of a Chinese food place, so neither would be able to claim it. The Econoline was just one junker among many waiting for repair in the California sun.

Landry heard sirens, and two cop cars shot by on the street between his van and the school. People were already gathering in a knot near the automotive shop.

He rummaged through the toolbox, found the rat-tail file, twisted the silencer off Betsy, and dropped the file into the barrel. He placed the rifle loose in the compartment of the Econoline. He wanted it to rattle around a little.

A few stops and starts—and a turn or two—would suffice; the rat-tail would scratch new marks inside the barrel. If the police stopped him—if they confiscated the rifle and ran her through ballistics—they would have nothing to match it to.

He was about to drive out onto the side street, his usual entrance and egress, when he heard the shriek of brakes and a car bounce up onto the curb behind him, smashing into a light post. The car behind it stopped dead in the road, blocking both lanes. The driver tried to start the car but the engine flooded.

He heard the whoop of another cop car and saw two patrol units stopping dead behind the disabled car. His usual exit was blocked.

The only way out was covered by cameras surrounding the school. He knew the location of every security cam. If he turned left, there was no way to avoid them.

The area was already saturated with law enforcement; they would have already set up a perimeter.

Twenty-seven years in the life told him to turn into the teeth of the storm. So he turned left.