Corrector (2 page)

Ten Years Later

This time it was a High School.  The school, located in Scottsdale, Arizona was appropriately named for the city in which it resided.  Mark Watkins, who had graduated from the school two years earlier, climbed the stone steps that led up into the main building and entered the long hallway that he hadn’t visited for many months.  The familiarity of the place surprised him.  It was as if he’d been here the previous day.  Quickly he hurried a short distance down the hall carrying the large musical instrument case in his left hand as he sought the unused space behind the switchback stairs that led to the second level.  Once there he set the case down.

It was a matter of only a few minutes for him to arm himself.  Inside the case rested a stainless steel Ruger Ranch rifle.  This one was equipped with a C-More red dot sight, which made target acquisition up to a hundred yards quick and reliable.  Mark fitted the thirty-round magazine into place and chambered a round.  He had nine more of the loaded magazines in the small day pack he wore on his back, which was equipped with a side zipper for easy access of his left hand.  The magazines were made of some clear plastic, which probably meant they were inferior to the heavier steel ones he had at home, but he liked the fact he could look through the side of the magazine and see how many rounds remained.  Each magazine had been individually tested, and had worked flawlessly.  It wasn’t as if the anticipated service for them was to be long.  They each only needed to work once more and he’d be happy.

The rifle had been a gift from his now long gone father on Mark’s sixteenth birthday.  He had learned to shoot it well under the guidance of his father, who had been a Marine and was a superb shot.  Today he’d learn if he was as good as he thought.  Mark laid the rifle carefully in the case as he listened for the sound of anyone in the hallway.  He normally stored the rifle in the case and kept it hidden so that no one knew he had it.  So far, everything remained quite in the halls.  He’d expected as much as class was in session and the hour was less than a third of the way through. 

Mark reached out and pulled the short barreled six shot revolver from the small pocket inside the case.  He slipped it into the right rear pocket of his jeans where he could access it when needed.  The revolver was worn, and he had never been very good with it, but it would be adequate for his needs today.  During his planning he had considered bringing either the Beretta or the Glock 9mm semi-auto that were back at home.  Both would have provided considerably more firepower than the small revolver.  He had finally rejected them as unnecessary.  While the pistols would be effective, their presence would have meant having to decide on how many pistol magazines to bring and how many rifle magazines to leave behind as a result.  He knew that the pistols would result in more misses than the rifle, and probably more wounds rather than kills.  Both results were unacceptable to him.  The rifle was the superior weapon and therefore the better choice.

It was time.  Mark stood and made a final check of his equipment.  He didn’t have a bullet proof vest.  His dad had never ordered one and he hadn’t wanted to attract any attention to himself by ordering something like that.  Besides, that wasn’t the ultimate purpose anyway.  His right hand found the grip of the handgun and arranged its position, then he passed the rifle from his left hand to his right, the left now providing secondary support for the long gun.  Mark walked back toward the main hallway and peered down the corridor.  It was clear.

He stepped out of the stairwell enclosure and started down the long hall toward the main administration offices.  He had gone less than fifty feet when the janitor, an elderly gentleman, stepped out from one of the bathrooms.  The man was facing the other way, but apparently heard Mark’s steps, and he turned to look and see who was approaching.  His eyes widened when he saw Mark with the rifle, and his mouth started to form a warning.  The shout never reached his lips. Mark shot him in the chest from a distance of less than twenty feet.

Too easy
, Mark thought as the janitor collapsed dead onto the hallway floor.

The shot was incredibly loud in the hallway, and while Mark had electronic ear muffs on that clamped the sharp report of the rifle while amplifying the normal sounds in the building, helping him identify movement and voices, others in the vicinity were not so equipped.  Some would recognize the single blast as a gunshot, while others wouldn’t.  One who knew what the sounds represented would be enough to start the panic Mark realized, and he knew he had to hurry now before his victims escaped.

The noise of the shot attracted almost immediate response.  The first was Mr. Simmons, his old social studies teacher, who opened the door of a nearby room and looked out into the hallway.  Mark had never liked Mr. Simmons, and was happy he would be among the casualties.  Quickly Mark let the dot settle on the teacher’s head and killed him with a quick shot, the soft point bullet making quite a mess.  Moments later another door further down the hall opened, and Mr. Hardmore, his geometry teacher, stepped into the hall.  Unlike Mr. Simmons, Mr. Hardmore had always been a favorite, but Mark couldn’t let that influence him.  He quickly fired two shots into the senior teacher.

Now Mark could hear screaming.  With the latest shots people were becoming aware that something very bad was happening.  He could hear running further down the hall, and excited yelling from inside Mr. Hardmore’s room. Mark suspected the students in the room might be trying to escape out of the windows.  He had initially wanted to start his attack on the second floor where such escape wasn’t an option, but he’d wondered if he would be able to make it to the offices if he started there.  He especially wanted to pay a visit to the principle before this ended.

Mark stepped over Hardmore’s body and pulled open the door.  As he stepped into the room a young woman screamed off to his right.  He silenced her with a couple of quick shots.  He’d been right.  A number of students had already fled the room.  He could see them running across the grass outside.  Others were scrambling through the windows, fighting each other to be the next out now that he had entered the room.  Quickly he raised the rifle and started firing as fast as he could into the crowd of bodies.  He saw the bullets striking both men and women who dropped as their lives were taken.  One particularly attractive young woman with long blond hair who had been waiting her turn to crawl out the window to freedom held out her hands toward him pleading for mercy.  He shrugged his shoulders.  She would have been nice to know under different circumstances.  Now there was no time.  He shot her twice in the chest, ejected the empty magazine, and replaced it with another.  Then turned and headed back into the hallway.

Already he could hear sirens in the distance.  That was faster than he had expected.  He increased his pace as he headed toward the offices.  As he headed down the hallway, he shot targets of opportunity, those stupid enough to come into the halls.  Several were teachers, most were students.  As he entered the office area he realized he should have come here first.  The offices were deserted.  The principal, who he had really wanted to encounter, was missing as well.  Angrily he shot up the woman’s office and reloaded once again. 

Quickly he ran out into the hall and hurried away from the main entrance.  He was able to find and kill several others, but already the building was nearly empty of the fleeing students.  He saw one man running across the grass outside the window, and was able to bring him down with a running shot.  He emptied the magazine at a crowd far down the hall, seeing several drop as a result.

The first bullet directed his way took a chip out of the concrete block wall less than a foot from his ear.  He ducked into the small depression provided by the doorway and turned to face his attackers.  Two cops had entered the hallway and were shooting his way with their service automatics.  Mark smiled as he took aim and shot first one, and then the other.  Even as they dropped, he saw the additional police coming through the door at the other end of the hallway.  These cops were in full assault gear and were armed with rifles.  This was ending far faster than he had anticipated.  The number he would be able to kill would be fewer than he’d hoped.

Mark pushed open the door and made his way into the empty room, the windows along the outside wall open where the students who had been in this class had fled. The amplifiers in the ear-pieces magnified the sound of running footsteps coming his way.

“Game over,” he whispered.  He had hoped to have a chance to use at least half of his ammunition supply.  He’d fallen short of expectations.  He set the rifle down on one of the desks and pulled out the small revolver.  He placed it against his temple.  He didn’t need to be accurate at this range and the hollow-point .38 would be enough. 

With a smile, he pulled the trigger.

Jake stared at the television monitor mounted on the wall across from the kitchen nook where he currently sat munching on the apple turnover that was his breakfast this morning.  An all too familiar scene was emerging.  Another whacko had run amok and created a slaughter of innocent men and women.  From the early reports the nutcase had killed randomly with only one individual, apparently missed, that might have been targeted specifically.  The victims appeared to have been unfortunate by having been in the wrong place when the killer passed through.  Like most everyone who was hearing the news this morning, Jake was appalled by what had happened.  He listened with interest and a special purpose.  It was too soon to be sure, but this one looked like it might be workable.  He’d have to wait and see.  The early reports in cases like this were often wrong, with key facts misstated or completely overlooked.  He’d seen cases where they even got the name of the culprit completely wrong.  It appeared that this case was much like others in the past.  The killer started his day with a couple of homicides where he lived before continuing on to the High School where he’d made the news.  His wife and mother-in-law at their shared home had both been early victims to his rampage.

Jake sipped his juice as he made some mental calculations.  Scottsdale was easily in range of his plane.  He was still dressed in his sweats, having returned from his daily five mile run a short time ago.  Six foot one inch tall, with thick wavy light brown hair that he kept just slightly longer than business appropriate, Jake was in peak condition.  Twenty-nine years old and very well off, he had most everything he could want.  He had come a long way since he’d left the Army almost a decade earlier, but then he had a special edge that no one suspected. 

He worked when he was motivated to do so.  He was a software engineer, and a damn good one at that.  He’d discovered the unexpected skill and interest after returning to college after separation from the military.  He worked at home, home being a large ranch style house just on the eastern perimeter of Sparks, Nevada, taking work on consignment in addition to creating video games of his own design.  These days he wrote Apps based games rather than the longer and more involved games for the PCs.  He felt the days of PC gaming were numbered, and he liked to see how much he could wring out of the small tablets.  The work he did on consignment was mostly for NASA.  He enjoyed writing code for the space agency.  The esoteric problems they aimed to solve were intriguing and challenging, and he could pick and choose what he wanted to work on.  He took one or two assignments a year, but his output was so solid the agency was always after him to tackle more.  He had a clever solution to the latest assignment just about ready for submission, months ahead of what NASA had considered a challenging schedule.

Jake switched off the television and pushed back his chair, standing and collecting his dishes which he deposited in the sink on his way out of the kitchen.  He walked through the large great room on his way to the huge study in the back of the house where he settled himself behind his computer.  He brought the Internet news he preferred onto the flat screen to his left, but kept the sound down, and began an Internet search on the main screen in front of him.  With three large monitors forming an arc around him, he could place multiple projects or parts of projects where they were most accessible.  He ran searches on the name of the killer and on the High School, but at this point was able to find little beyond the newly posted, information limited, articles regarding the attack. 

While he waited, he scanned the market to see which stocks might have made some unexpected moves in the past couple of days.  He averaged nearly a half million from the market annually and had already made that much this year, but it never hurt to be aware of an especially enticing opportunity.  He knew he wouldn’t be able to focus properly on programming until he decided what course of action, if any, he might want to take this time.

He also reminded himself he had a date with Karin tonight.  Karin Wolter had come into his life a little over fifteen months earlier, and somehow they had clicked well enough they were still together.  Karin was a five foot eight inch strawberry blond with long wavy hair that she wore almost to her waist.  In addition to a startlingly impressive figure and strong sexual urges, she had a quick wit and a bubbling personality that made her fun to be with.  He thought that they were more than likely moving toward something more permanent.  At least he knew he was thinking along those lines and was considering how to bring up the subject with her.  It was more difficult than he thought it ought to be.  She lived down the 395 in the Doubletree Estates, working in real estate, which had been a tough market the past couple of years.  They were supposed to drive up to Lake Tahoe for dinner and a show tonight at Harrah’s, and would most likely return here afterwards to spend the night.  Karin hated mornings, and could be expected to hang around until mid afternoon, something he normally relished, but which might complicate any plans he could consider making in regards to the current tragedy.