Chapter 3: The Warnings from a Friend
"And I'm singing
Amen I, Amen I, I'm alive
Amen I, Amen I, Amen I, I'm alive
And in the air the fireflies
Our only light in paradise
We'll show the world they were wrong
And teach them all to sing along
Singing Amen, I, I'm alive
Singing Amen, I, I'm alive"
An hour later, they were ready to evacuate the first floor. Through the secretary's computer they had gotten a list of all the students and phone numbers. While Adam and Mac started on the second floor, the others make calls to parents.
After forty-five minutes, only four kids hadn't been picked up, Mitchell being one of them. Stella checks the time on her phone. "I should go help Mac."
"Can I come?" Mitchell asks.
"No."
"Why not?"
"You're too young."
"How long until my brother can leave too?" His mom had said she'd pick him up when she could get his brother too. It will be a while since his brother's room is on the third floor.
"A few hours."
"Can I go on the playground?"
"That's not such a good idea."
"Why?"
"Well…," she struggles, not wanting to tell him of the dead kid.
"The killer is still out there," Lindsay helps. "We know he's not within this yellow tape, but he might still be around outside of it. Gun's are so dangerous that he doesn't have to be close to you to hurt you."
"Okay."
"Look, I need to get back to work so we can catch the bad guy. The sooner we find him, the sooner you can come back to school."
"Will I get to say goodbye to you?" he asks.
"Yes, I'll make sure I come down before you leave," she ruffles his hair, then heads back inside.
"What do you want me to do, Mac?" Stella comes up behind him, a hand on his shoulder.
"Don't get attached to that little boy, Stella." She frowns. "He has a family."
"His mother didn't sound relieved like all the other parents did. She won't come get him until his brother can leave too."
Mac looks at her for a few seconds. "People have different ways of showing emotions." She doesn't respond, knowing he's right. "There's a body just inside the bathroom around the corner."
"I'm on it."
Three hours later the whole school had been processed and the last of the students are getting picked up. "Your mother hasn't come yet?" Stella asks Mitchell who is still sitting where he was earlier.
"No. I haven't seen my brother either."
"Let me see what I can do." She goes over to Lindsay who has the list, "Can I see that a second? Sixteen names left."
"Actually ten. Six kids were absent," Lindsay points to marks on the side.
"So that leaves nine names minus Mitchell. And there were… nine bodies of students," Stella looks for his brother's name. "The good news: we have names for the bodies; we just have to match them to the right body."
"The bad news?"
"Mitchell's brother is one of the dead bodies," she looks over at him.
Mac and Hawkes walk over to them, "Do we have IDs on any of our victims?"
"Nine names right here for the kids; we just have to figure out which one is which," Stella hands over the list.
"What's the kid still doing here?" Mac asks.
"His brother is one of the victims."
"Call the parents of all the victims. Have them meet us at the station. We'll take the boy with us since we'll see the mother at the station."
A/N: Hopefully this doesn't get messed up too; I'm not quite sure how that happened. Anyway... I'm almost finished with To Kill a Mockingbird; only fifteen more pages, so I should finish it tonight. Then I just have to finish the charts for all of the books and rewrite them so they look somewhat neat, which is hard, because they give you like no space for plot. And we're doing good at band, well we're where we should be painting wise. Only around twenty dots left I think and two days of painting to go. I still only have the fight song checked off. I know the other pregame songs and all but one football show one; I just haven't found someone to check them off yet. I like the one field commander, but she's always busy; I'll have to wait until the days where we can stay after to check stuff off. And today we went on the practice field; it was all muddy because they water it for whatever reason. I was the one getting yelled at because I didn't get to my spot on time, when I was the only one in the right spot in our line after we do this turn thing. Everybody was back too far so you ended up with three sides of a box, then the fourth side wasn't attached. Of course, I guess I couldn't blame them for being out of place; we couldn't see the hash marks on the field. Well I guess this is it for today. I'll update again Sunday.
