Thrill Kill (24 page)

“There were things in that cabinet more dangerous than the gun,” Whitt said. “Susan’s diary, where she described my affair with Lisa in detail and my use of escorts. Her last entry talked about taking her own life. If Travis read it . . .”

Sinclair wanted to slam him against the wall, first for lying to him, and second to knock every ounce of truth out of him. But he took a deep breath. “What else?”

“Journals that my therapist told me to write.” Whitt looked down at his wingtips. “About my feelings and my struggles with . . . you know.”

“Your struggles with sex addiction?” Sinclair said.

Whitt nodded.

“Sinclair!” Braddock yelled from the other side of the room, where she was crouched inside a closet.

Sinclair crossed the room and looked over Braddock’s shoulder: a dozen empty black-powder containers and empty ammunition boxes labeled
7.62x39
—the rifle cartridge designed for the Russian and Chinese AK-47 and SKS rifles.

Sinclair’s phone rang. It was Uppy. “We located Travis Whitt’s cell phone. It shows at an address on Thornhill Drive, not far from his father’s house. Get a pen and I’ll give you the numbers.”

Sinclair reached in his pocket as Uppy continued, “We just brought the address up in the mapping program. It’s a school by the name of Caldecott Academy.”

“We found bomb-making materials and empty boxes of ammo,” Sinclair said to Uppy. “They’re planning a school massacre. Get your SWAT people and every agent you can muster there.”

Sinclair hung up before Uppy could respond. He turned to Buckner’s police trainee. “Detain Whitt and secure this room. No one touches anything until an OPD command officer tells you different.”

The kid’s eyes lit up. “Yes, sir.”

“Let’s go,” Sinclair yelled to Braddock and Buckner as he sprinted up the stairs, taking them two at a time.

As Sinclair rushed out the front door, he looked over his shoulder to see Braddock and Buckner on his heels. He yelled to Buckner, “You know the fastest way to the school?”

“It’s my beat, I should.”

“Lead the way,” Sinclair said as he jumped in his Crown Vic and cranked the engine.

Buckner spun a U-turn and sped up Skyline Boulevard. Braddock fastened her seat belt and reached for the radio microphone as Sinclair took off after the black-and-white SUV. Buckner and Sinclair had both been around long enough to know they didn’t want to alert the suspects they were coming. Straight-line distance, the school was only a mile away, twice as far via the
winding mountain roads, so neither turned on their sirens—not that there was any traffic ahead of them to clear.

“Thirteen-Adam-Five, code thirty-three,” Braddock said into the mic.

“You have the air, Thirteen-Adam-Five,” the dispatcher replied.

“We’re responding to Caldecott Academy on Thornhill with the FTO half of One-John-Thirteen on a possible school shooting in progress.”

The dispatcher echoed the information for all units, “Thirteen-Adam-Five and half of One-John-Thirteen are responding to a possible school shooting in progress at the Caldecott Academy on Thornhill Drive. Any further details, Thirteen-Adam-Five?”

Buckner made a sharp left onto Elverton Drive, the Police Interceptor Utility taking the corner without a hint of body sway while Sinclair’s big sedan fishtailed on the wet road at the same speed. In the background, he heard Braddock providing a description of the suspects and the likelihood that three or more men were armed with AK-47-type weapons and one or more bombs similar to what detonated on Lakeshore Drive two days ago. Sinclair took a quick left switchback, which normal drivers would take at ten miles an hour, at twice that, throwing Braddock against the passenger door. He accelerated down a straightaway, trying to keep Buckner in sight and praying no one would pull out of a driveway in front of him.

The radio screamed in Sinclair’s ears with units advising they were en route to the school. The nearest one was coming from Forty-First and Telegraph, which would probably take just under ten minutes at code-three speed. The Oakland Hills were blessed with the lowest crime rate in the city, which meant their police coverage was bare bones, but when they did have a significant crime in progress, the nearest officer was often a long way off and his nearest cover officer even farther.

“Advise all responding units,” Braddock said over the radio, “to shut down lights and sirens at least a mile away.”

The dispatcher relayed the instructions for all other units on the channel.

When Buckner crossed Beauforest Drive, the Caldecott Academy appeared ahead. Sinclair and every officer in Oakland had been trained how to respond to active shooter incidents. Traditional police tactics that included a slow, methodical, cautious approach and waiting for SWAT teams did nothing but give these kind of shooters more time to kill. Even though the risk to responding officers was great, the only way to stop an active shooter was to rush through the scene toward the gunfire and engage him.

Buckner stopped his vehicle at the far end of the parking lot. Sinclair pulled alongside and popped the trunk. He and Braddock stripped off their coats, threw them in the trunk, and pulled out their Kevlar vests. Although Sinclair wished for a heavy tactical vest—one that would stop 7.62x39 rounds—and the M4 rifle he had when he was on the SWAT team, they only had two choices. They could wait for more officers with the right equipment to gain a tactical advantage or rush toward the sound of gunfire and screaming children to eliminate the threat with what they had.

Buckner held a Remington 870, the standard shotgun mounted in every marked Oakland police car. He worked the pump action and racked a round into the chamber. He then slid another 12-gauge round from the carrier on the shotgun’s stock and fed it into the gun’s magazine, giving him five rounds of double-ought buckshot in the gun and four more rounds in the carrier. Sinclair and Braddock gave him a thumbs-up to indicate they were ready. There was no need to discuss who would take point—the officer in uniform with the biggest gun was the logical choice. Buckner took off on a slow jog toward the front door, with Sinclair falling in behind him and Braddock taking up the rear.

Gunshots echoed from inside the school. Two, then three more, followed by a pause, and then a succession of shots too numerous to count. The shots were sharp and loud, as Sinclair had feared, undoubtedly coming from rifles such as AK-47s or SKSs. Armed with only handguns and a shotgun, they were significantly outgunned.

Buckner squeezed his lapel mic and said, “Shots fired inside. We’re on the scene and approaching the front door.”

Sinclair gripped his .45 Sig Sauer with both hands at a low ready as his eyes scanned the parking lot and the front windows of the school for any movement. The rain beat down on him, rolling off his head, down his face, and soaking his shirt. He ignored it. In the right side of the parking lot, he spotted the mud-brown Ford Bronco parked next to a green Prius.

A couple rows down, a familiar red Mazda Miata was parked—Alyssa’s car. This was the school where she was doing the career presentation. He felt his heart skip a beat. But he forced himself to return to the present.
Mission focus
, he reminded himself.

They reached the alcove by the front doors where Sinclair and Braddock had stood two days ago. The reinforced glass in the doors was shattered, a few shards of glass still hanging from the doorframes. A sledgehammer lay on the ground on top of the broken glass.

They stepped through the doorframes. Two adult women were sprawled on the floor in pools of blood inside the main office. One was moaning and writhing in pain; the other, a tall, thin woman, remained motionless. A pair of large black-framed glasses lay in the puddle of blood.

The harsh reality in active shooter incidents was that to save the most people, you sometimes had to leave people to die. Rendering first aid had to come later. The hardest part for Sinclair and any officer responding to a school shooting was seeing injured and frightened children, knowing they’d have to bypass them to stop the killers.

They flowed through the office, Buckner leading the way with his shotgun. The door to the headmaster’s office was open. No one was inside. She was likely the woman lying wounded on the floor.

Sinclair tried the other door. Locked.

“Police,” Sinclair said. “Anyone inside?”

The door squeaked open. A heavyset woman, her arms wrapped around three small children, peered out. Her eyes froze on the women lying in front of her.

“How many are there?” Sinclair asked.

“Are they alive?” The woman’s face was white. Obviously in shock.

“They’ll be fine,” Sinclair lied. “Help’s on the way. How many armed people did you see?”

“I saw two, announced lock-down on the PA, then pulled the children in here and locked the door. Then I heard voices. More than two. They asked where Mrs. Harper’s classroom was. The headmaster wouldn’t tell them. Then I heard gunshots.”

“Stay here,” Sinclair said. “Lock the door.”

She pulled the kids inside. The lock clicked. Through the door, she said, “All the third and fourth graders are in Mrs. Harper’s classroom for a presentation by a nurse. You have to get there before those men do.”

Buckner spoke into his radio mic, “One dead, one wounded in the front office. Teacher and kids barricaded in a room. We’re headed toward the classrooms.”

Even with the volume on Buckner’s radio turned low, Sinclair heard the dispatcher acknowledge and one unit announce he was five minutes out. Men armed with semiautomatic rifles could kill a lot of people in five minutes.

They stepped into a short hallway. Fifty feet ahead, a longer hallway turned right. Sinclair remembered from Monday that it was a long corridor, maybe two hundred feet long, with Harper’s classroom near the end. Beyond it, another hallway
turned right and led to more classrooms, an auditorium, and a cafeteria.

They marched forward, Sinclair and Buckner in front, shoulder to shoulder, with Braddock in the rear, glancing back every few steps to ensure no one attacked from behind.

Suddenly, a man jumped around the corner in front of them. Black trench coat, black ski mask. He held an SKS rifle at his hip and fired.

Buckner’s shotgun roared. Sinclair brought up his pistol and shot. The SKS rifle barked again, and again. Sinclair continued to shoot. He didn’t know how many times Buckner shot or how many rounds the man fired. He focused on his front sight and the man beyond it, and he continued firing until the man dropped and Sinclair’s slide locked back.

He depressed the magazine release, and the empty magazine rattled to the ground. He inserted a fresh magazine of eight rounds, guiding it into the pistol’s butt with his left index finger touching the top round and slamming it home with the heel of his hand in one smooth movement. He thumbed the slide release, which slammed a .45 cartridge into the chamber, and scanned the hallway.

The shooter was down, but so was Buckner.

Braddock was still standing. She went to Buckner and Sinclair went to the shooter, lying in the open area where the two hallways intersected. Rule number one in a gunfight: it’s not over until you’re certain the threat is neutralized. Sinclair pulled the SKS rifle from the shooter’s hands and ripped open the man’s trench coat, revealing a ballistic vest similar to what he was wearing. A dozen or more projectiles were embedded in the Kevlar fibers. Half of his throat was missing, blown out by one or more .45 slugs or .33 caliber pellets from the shotgun. Sinclair flipped him over. The back of his skull was gone. The exit wound from a .45.

Sinclair glanced to his right. Two men in black raincoats came out of an empty classroom halfway down the long hallway. Their guns came up. A third man took up prone position at the
end of the hallway, pointing a rifle down the corridor. Sinclair leaped back around the corner as they fired.

Sinclair duck walked backward to where Braddock was attending to Buckner. Buckner’s face was pale and coated with sweat. Braddock had stripped off his vest to reveal an entry wound just below his right breast. The Kevlar vests they wore weren’t designed to stop rifle bullets. Sinclair rolled Buckner on his side. The bullet had exited near his kidney, creating a bloody hole an inch in diameter.

“Is it bad?” Buckner asked.

“Hell, brother, ACH will patch you up good as new,” Sinclair said, hoping Buckner would believe him.

Braddock shook her head. She knew it was bad. Sinclair had seen wounds like this in Iraq. They couldn’t do much for him here. The internal bleeding could only be handled by opening him up in an operating room. In the meantime, he needed bandages, direct pressure, and an IV to counteract the blood loss and to keep his body from going into shock until the trauma surgeons at ACH could do their magic.

Sinclair grabbed Buckner’s shoulder mic. “Thirteen-Adam-Five, we have an officer down. GSW to the chest. We need paramedics to the front door now.”

“Thirteen-Adam-Five,” the dispatcher said. “Ambulances and fire are staging one block south waiting for the scene to be secured.”

Screw radio procedure.
“Damn it!” Sinclair yelled into the microphone. “An officer’s going to die if we don’t get him out now. Send them to the front door. It will be secure.”

Buckner forced a smile. “So it’s worse than you said.”

“Don’t you fuckin’ give up,” Sinclair said. “You’re gonna make it.”

It wasn’t fair that police ignored wounded civilians in an active shooter scenario but would stop and aid a fallen officer. But that’s the way it was. Just like with soldiers on a battlefield, cops don’t leave a fallen officer behind.

Sinclair said to Braddock. “Drag him to the front door. If you don’t see the paramedics or fire department, keep dragging him. All the fucking way to ACH if you have to.”

Tears began welling in Braddock’s eyes.

“There’s no time for that,” Sinclair said. “Buckner’s gonna make it if you get him out of here.”

She blinked away the tears. “What about you?”

“I’m gonna go and get those assholes.”

“Alone?”

“Don’t worry about me. Save Buckner.” Sinclair watched as Braddock grabbed Buckner under the armpits and dragged him down the hall.