The media spotlight was everything.

Striker watched Takuto tell his boys to take five, then strip off his ballistic helmet and goggles. He used his forearm to mop the sweat from his brow, then sat down on a kerb and leaned back against the cream stucco of the school’s outer wall. Striker was about to ask him more questions when Takuto looked across the parking lot and sneered.

‘Look at that prick.’

Striker glanced back and spotted Deputy Chief Laroche in the White Whale. The man was brushing his hair back over his head and checking out his teeth in the mirror. It wasn’t until the three media vans pulled up – one for BCTV, the other two Global – that Laroche finally lumbered out of the vehicle.

The mob of reporters rushed towards the school, microphones and video cameras ready. They reached the yellow crime scene tape and stopped hard, bunching together, almost crawling over one another. There was excitement in their faces, a palpable buzz in the air. Children had been slaughtered in the safety of their school.

Story of the Century.

Without thinking, Striker neared the mass. Watched the reporters fixing their make-up. Positioning themselves for the cameras. Making sure they got their best angle.

Moments later, Deputy Chief Laroche strutted in from the north. He marched stoically up to the crime scene tape, his pressed hat held gently in both hands, rim down – just the way Striker was sure he’d practised in front of the mirror a hundred times. The lineless perfection of Laroche’s hair told anyone who cared to notice that he never wore the damn hat. It was just a necessary prop, a part of the intended image.

Striker listened to the beginning of the speech, the Deputy’s voice dripping with cosmetic grief, his words laced with heavy pre-planned pauses, and Striker wondered if the man had taken the same long pauses while sucking back his Starbucks sandwich in the car.

‘I was on scene in minutes,’ the Deputy said.

And when one of the reporters asked him if he’d ever faced an Active Shooter before, Laroche looked him in the eye, offered a steely expression, and reminded the group of his wartime experience, being carefully vague so as to never really explain what he did during the war, and adding at the last moment: ‘There were children, dammit, children – how couldn’t we respond?’

It was too much for Striker to take, and he knew he had to do one of two things – expose the man for the fraud he was and make a scene in front of the media, or remove himself from the situation. Common sense and compassion told him that the last thing the families needed at this time was a police drama. So he gritted his teeth and turned away. With a heavy heart, he marched through the school’s front doorway and stepped back into the carnage that this day’s insanity had wrought.

Ten

An hour later, Striker finished helping the paramedics check the last of the unresponsive bodies. Then he made his way to the boys’ changing room. It was just after twelve noon. He stood alone at one of the sinks, looked around. Everything in the room felt too small – the green lockers, the yellow benches, the white hand-dryers on the wall.

His body shivered uncontrollably. His suit jacket was gone, left behind somewhere in the chaos – he’d draped it over one of the exposed children – and his shirt was so saturated with blood it looked more red than white, sticking to his skin wherever it was stained.

The blood wasn’t his, and that pained him, filled him with a strange revulsion. More bodies had been discovered, some by the dogs, some by police. Some of the wounded, in an effort to hide from the gunmen, had hidden themselves from help as well, and it had been their demise.

Striker had done his best to save them all – the wounded, the dying – and to his credit, his actions might have saved a few lives. He understood that. Deep in his heart, he understood that. But more of the wounded had died than been saved.

A lot more.

Felicia’s earlier words now haunted him: ‘We should go back.’

And he wondered if she had been right. After all, what had they gained by pursuing Red Mask?

The horrors of the cafeteria still filled his mind. The heat of the gun as it kicked in his hands; the hot smell of gunsmoke; the shrill cries of the teenagers.

They would be with him forever.

It made him think of Courtney. Again. Word had come in through the student grapevine. She’d been seen by friends at the mall, but it was Metrotown, not Oakridge. She was safe and unhurt, and by the sounds of things completely unaware of the school shootings.

It didn’t make him feel any better.

With trembling hands, he reached down and snatched the BlackBerry from his belt. The screen was smeared with sticky redness. He wiped it on his trousers. During the past half-hour, he had called her ten times, but she had yet to return his call. And he was getting mad. He dialled her number yet again, and this time it rang through to voicemail:

‘Hey there, you’ve reached the Court! Don’t get toxic on me ’cause I can’t take your call right now – I’m out getting ready for the concert. Just two more days til BRIIITNEEEY!’

The concert . . .

The Britney Spears concert.

What else could matter in the life of a fifteen-year-old girl? Were it not for the hell around him Striker could have laughed.

The greeting ended with a loud beep. Striker tried to leave a message, but couldn’t. The message box was full. He hung up, called home, and got no answer there either. Just Courtney’s small voice on the answering service. It made him feel sick.

‘For Christ’s sake!’ He slammed the cell down on the sink.

‘She’ll call, Jacob.’

The sound alerted him. He looked up at the reflection in the mirror and watched Felicia as she entered the boys’ changing room. Unlike him, her clothes were almost blood-free. She wore blue latex gloves and held a bundle of rumpled clothes and some brown paper bags. He hadn’t heard her open the door, much less sneak into the room. She was like a goddam fox sometimes. But a tired one now. Despite the sharpness of her Spanish eyes, everything else about her appearance looked haggard. Her shirt was sloppily half-tucked into her trousers, and her face looked older than it had this morning.

Almost as old as he felt.

‘First I can’t get through at all,’ he explained. ‘Now her message box is full.’

Felicia closed the door, came nearer. ‘Well, she wasn’t here when the shooting started, twenty people have testified to that. She’s out with her friends at Metrotown. Skipping school. Safe and sound. So don’t freak on me.’

‘I don’t freak.’

The BlackBerry screen was sitting on the lip of the sink. The bloodied screen stuck out amidst the white porcelain. Striker willed the phone to ring. It didn’t, so he stood there silently.

Felicia came right up beside him, touched his arm. ‘Look, you gonna be okay?’

‘I’m fine.’

‘You’re shaking.’

‘You excite me.’

She frowned. ‘You know, Jacob, if it’s too soon for you after your wife’s—’

‘It’s not.’

‘I’m just saying, it wasn’t all that long ago that Amanda died, and—’

‘Jesus Christ, Felicia, we were just in a shootout this morning, and now we’re back where it all happened. It’s got nothing to do with Amanda! You sure as hell never thought it was too soon when we were dating.’ He gave her a challenging look, then felt the wind go out of his sails. He closed his eyes. ‘Let it go, okay? For just once, listen to what I say and let–it–go.’

‘Fine.’

Striker turned on the hot-water tap. The trickling was loud in the boys’ changing room – amplifying the fact that no boys were there, getting ready for gym class. There was no laughing. No joking. No chatter. Just a harsh, overbearing silence.