Carnage

The school resembled a stone monster on its knees, its arms spread out between islands of asphalt and patches of grass. The darkness had not yet lifted so that a yellow glow radiated from its entrails, pools of light showing through the rectangular wounds of its concrete skin.

The building knelt there, behind a flag buffeted by the autumn wind and East 120th Street, with its incessant flow of white and red headlights, like so many blood cells feeding the system of veins. Beyond, the blocked network of major arteries pumped into life, gearing up to start another day.

In the small school yard, figures brushed past each other, laughing as they jostled and shoved, some chattering, some complaining, others not saying anything at all. Their dark outlines hurried into the building’s gaping mouth
and, as they passed in front of the windows, it was as if the monster were winking at the shadowy sky.

The central hallway slowly filled up with students who would soon disperse to their classrooms to soak up knowledge.

Lisa-Marie tied her hair up with an elastic band while her best friend told her about her evening. Lisa-Marie wasn’t really listening; she was focusing on a boy she had had her eye on for weeks and who had just appeared. She had to make a good impression. She immediately adjusted her expression – she knew her face was prettier when she smiled. This week, she was determined to get him to talk to her. It was no good just obsessing about it.
Carpe diem
, like it said in the film.

A little further away, Lucas was sitting on one of the radiators under the bay window. He was tired. His heart had been racing for the last minute or so – maybe that was what tachycardia was? The morning spliff had been too strong, for sure. He nodded to himself as he sat there on his own. He’d put too much in, or else the shit had been poor quality. There was too much tar in it … Yeah, that was it.

I’m baked, he thought, with a grin.

His eyes glazed over as he watched the students file past in a long multicoloured procession.

Mario went down the steps to the corridor that led to
the changing rooms. He hated starting the week with PE – sport was not his thing. He was overweight, which didn’t help. He had to get himself excused. The doctor should have excused him ages ago, in fact. Yes, next time he would make sure of it …

The bell rang. It reverberated through every hallway, every staircase, every floor.

In the shadows, a teenager whom several witnesses would later identify as Russell Rod, aged seventeen, pulled his hood up, tugging the strings so that it tightened round his face. He was breathing hard.

He pulled on his leather gloves, which crackled as he spread his fingers. He was filled with a sense of power.

His backpack was open at his feet. But it didn’t contain exercise books.

Only a black bar that reflected the corridor lights. Long and rectangular.

The magazine of an Uzi submachine gun.

The boy bent to pick it up.

The weapon rose into the air in the school corridor, almost in slow motion.

The improbability of such an object being in this place gave it a different, almost unreal, appearance. It shone.

It seemed elegant.

The teenager carefully stored some extra magazines in his pockets.

And started walking.

A fat student stood in front of the changing-room door.

The barrel of the Uzi pointed at him.

Lisa-Marie leant against the wall outside the classroom, waiting for the teacher. Just opposite, the boy she fancied was with a group of students who were chatting as they waited. He was Hispanic; she preferred Hispanic guys. And he was really cute.

A series of sharp blasts rang out so loudly that most of the students covered their ears, wincing. Several of them jumped.

They all looked at each other. One of them began to laugh hysterically. The others exchanged glances that were curious, surprised or a bit worried. Some of them were unfazed and resumed their conversations.

Lisa-Marie left the line to go and stand in the middle of the corridor to try to see what was happening. The fire doors were closed. There was nothing to see.

Then one of the doors shook. It began to open. A leg
appeared, then the rest of the body. Holding something strange in its hand …

Lisa-Marie didn’t hear the next shots go off, nor the panicked shrieks of those nearby.

Her head had just exploded.

The boy she had fancied a second earlier was now covered with her brains, splinters of bone and burnt fragments of her long red hair.

Lucas let out a long sigh. The deafening noise was getting closer and boring into his head. What on earth was that racket? Roadworks?

Right now, though, he had something else to worry about.

He was late. And he absolutely had to go to class. He was stoned and if Derringer, his maths teacher, noticed him because he was late he would be in big trouble.

Get up.

He saw a girl he didn’t recognise run past him, fast. Lucas frowned.

Then two more ran past.

Then another.

They looked terrified.

What the hell?

Lucas wanted to stand up but couldn’t. The state he was in, he’d have to try harder.

That was some shit he’d smoked.

Four more figures ran past him.

The hammering noise started up again. Louder than before.

Lucas put his head in his hands, moaning.

The next moment someone was standing in front of him.

He sat up a little to see who it was.

Did he know him?

There was a strong smell coming from him, pungent.

‘What d’you want?’ Lucas asked, straining to make out the guy’s face.

The other boy raised his arm. There was a gun in his hand. Lucas made a face, wrinkling his nose.

‘Oh, man …’

The next second the impact of the bullets flung his body
backwards so violently he ended up embedded in the bay window.

His blood began to flow down the outside of the glass.

A dozen dark-red rivulets dripped to the ground.

And the shots continued to ring out.

8.34 a.m. Fourteen people were dead.

Twenty-one were wounded, some permanently.

Hundreds would be scarred for ever by what they had seen.

Outside, the world was waking up.

To start another day.

Lamar Gallineo was nervous.

He was driving his old Pontiac up Third Avenue towards Harlem, and the coffee he had just picked up threatened to spill all over the dashboard.  

Lamar was hunched over, too tall to sit comfortably in a normal car. He was slightly over six foot seven.

His height had made it difficult for him to join the police department. Nothing about him was standard, and that was a bad thing.

After studying law, he had wanted to join the NYPD at the highest possible level, as a detective. Which was another bad thing. Since he was black. Or African-American as everyone was supposed to say nowadays.

At the time, the old-timers in the NYPD administration still thought that six-foot-seven black men should be playing basketball, not working as police detectives.  

Twelve years on, Lamar carried his badge proudly.

Even better, he worked for the central homicide squad of
the NYPD. A few brilliant flashes of intuition meant that he had been put in charge of several significant cases, which he had solved without making waves. He had rapidly climbed through the ranks. Now he was a lieutenant. The new politics of affirmative action had helped him; he was under no illusion about that. But so much the better, he thought. You had to take your chances where you could find them.

He’d got used to many things over his twelve years. Bad racist jokes from his partners. Long gruelling hours that had destroyed his private life. Decomposing corpses.

But he had never been able to get the hang of driving fast in Manhattan.

His head was bent over the steering wheel in order not to brush against the roof of the car. He was frowning, trying to anticipate the path of the vehicles that might cut him up. The Pontiac’s flashing light turned silently, without the siren – Lamar detested the idea of sirens always blaring in the city, saying it put crime and accidents at the forefront of everyone’s minds – while he tried to navigate his way through heavy traffic.

He’d been called out on an emergency.

A mass shooting, they’d said.

It was the cops of the 25th precinct who’d contacted him. An unidentified individual had opened fire in the middle of a high school, less than half an hour earlier. Homicide. Harlem. A sensitive situation. This was the kind of tragic scenario that called for Lamar Gallineo.

The sky was barely light when he arrived in front of the school, which was cordoned off with yellow police tape and bathed in the red and blue of the emergency lights. Two police officers immediately came over to meet him as TV vans drew up with a screeching of tyres outside the building.

‘Over here, Detective, come inside,’ said the first officer, who was squeezed into a uniform that could barely contain his impressive paunch. ‘The most seriously injured have been taken away in ambulances, the rest are being treated in the classrooms. We’ve started taking witness statements.’

‘Are you sure the shooter isn’t still in there?’ demanded Lamar in his deep baritone.

‘We know where he is,’ replied the second police officer sharply.

Lamar frowned, surprised not to see more activity. If the gunman was still in the building, they would have to organise a complete evacuation, and a SWAT team would first have to seal off all the exits.

‘Is that it?’ pursued Lamar. ‘You know where he is – what does that mean? Is he still here?’

‘Yes. We’ve been told he went into a room on the first floor and didn’t come out again.’

‘How can you be sure? Is there a camera trained on the door?’

Lamar was hurrying now, more and more anxious at the thought that an armed psychopath might be holed up in a high school still full of students.

‘It’s a janitor’s closet and it only opens from the outside,’ explained the officer. ‘And witnesses say they saw the shooter go inside. Then it went quiet for a minute or two before the gun was fired again, and then it was over.’

They’d arrived at the school entrance where firefighters and paramedics were going in and out of the swing doors.

‘Have you been inside to take a look?’ asked Lamar, one hand on the door.

The two officers exchanged a brief embarrassed look. ‘No,’ replied the man with the large belly. ‘We thought we’d better wait for you.’

Lamar pursed his lips. ‘I see.’

He reached for his weapon and entered the building. He heard moaning and crying.

There were dozens of figures in the hall, sitting on the floor, lying down or huddled up receiving medical attention or answering the questions of the six or so police officers who had responded to the emergency call.

Lamar made for the large wooden staircase opposite the entrance.

The landing on the way up to the first floor was used for
displaying student notices. A crimson sun about three feet in diameter had exploded over the area. Its core consisted of little particles of molten brain that now stuck to the board, and its rays were made of blood, glistening in the harsh light. The linoleum was also streaked with swirls of blood that stretched towards the stairs where pools stagnated, dripping softly.

A beige blanket covered a body. A hand was sticking out.

A hand with short stubby fingers and several rings. And varnished nails.

Lamar stepped over the body, his Walther P99 at the ready, the two police officers at his heels. They climbed the remaining stairs and found themselves in a long corridor with classrooms leading off it.

There was a lot of blood all over the floor, and panicked teenagers and teachers had skated in it, spreading macabre flower patterns as far as the stairs.

Lamar immediately noticed the three bodies. Two boys and an adult.

Most of their body fluids pooled around them, still warm.

The black man looked at them compassionately without for a moment being distracted from his main objective.

One of the officers crept cautiously towards an unmarked wooden door. He pointed his gun at the lock.

‘The janitor assured us that there’s no way out,’ he murmured. ‘There’s no door handle on the other side; it’s just a closet.’

The two officers took up position on either side of the door.

There was a sweetish odour, a mixture of iron and the smell you get in a butcher’s shop – the smell of blood – combined with the sharp whiff of gunshot. How many cartridges must have been fired to make the corridor smell like that? wondered Lamar.

The detective hesitated. He could still call out a SWAT team for backup. He didn’t have to go in there all on his own.

Too late.

According to witnesses, the gunman had gone into the cupboard, which had no other exit, and then a shot had rung out. Lamar knew that in these sorts of massacres, the perpetrators almost always turned their guns on themselves. So it all fitted. On the face of it there should be nothing in there but a corpse.

Lamar put one hand on the gold doorknob, training his semi-automatic on the opening. His palm was sweaty. He gripped the weapon so tightly his knuckles showed white.

He tugged the door open, moving aside quickly to avoid presenting too easy a target.

The closet was unlit, but the light from the corridor illuminated it completely.

The smell was nauseating.

Someone in military fatigues and a hooded sweatshirt had collapsed amongst the buckets and pails and cleaning products. A bag full of ammunition lay at his feet, with an Uzi abandoned nearby.

Lamar stepped inside.

The man’s head was tipped backwards. Lamar had to go in further to see his face.

He saw a pointed chin, thin lips and the fluffy beginnings of a moustache beneath a large nose.

Then there was a confused mess of meat and splinters of bone amid gaping holes.

He had committed suicide – no doubt about it.

The nauseating odour was even more noticeable now. Lamar instinctively began to look at where he had stepped.

It was shit. It smelt of shit.

He searched the tiny space around him.

A cleaning cart was parked to his left, by a rail of overalls and aprons.

A shoe had been tidied underneath.

Lamar started.

It was a sneaker.

He slowly raised his weapon in front of him.

Then moved forward slowly.

The sneaker jolted.