Chapter Two: Museum Spree Shooting

Ed could see the woman fuming as she triggered the barrier and stalked to her seat; it made him grateful that he was on the opposite side of the table from her. He also had a rather good idea of what had made her so mad; the transcript, with its periodic blackout marks, sat open next to her chair.

"Why is this restricted?" Hastings demanded without preamble.

The team leader, no fool, countered, "As I'm sure Commander Holleran already told you, ma'am, some of our calls – and transcripts – are classified. Ordinarily, that one would be too, but with the scrutiny, it was deemed best to give you a restricted copy."

"That isn't your call, Officer Lane," was the clipped retort.

Ed shrugged. "It wasn't my call," he drawled. "But we already had a plan in place for if SIU ever needed to look at transcripts from classified calls." Unspoken was the fact that Ed would have preferred to keep the classified transcripts under lock and key, regardless of what SIU wanted.

Though unhappy, Hastings dropped the subject and settled herself in her seat. After a few moments, she flicked the recording on and started. "I know the last thing you want to do is talk about what happened."

"I'm good," Ed countered, "Let's cut to the chase."

Brisk, Hastings continued, "You ended it. You did your job. I'm not here to discuss the use of lethal force. Clearly, the suspect- sorry, subject- had shown the intent to kill. I just need to hear and assess the details and deliver my report."

Ed allowed another brief shrug. "Well, it's all right there in the transcripts. What else do you need to know? We entered the building, then we contained, isolated, and neutralized the threat."

The slightest of head cocks from the investigator. "Are you comfortable with that language?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, you don't want to seem blasé. 'Neutralize the threat.' What you really mean is…"

"Kill someone," Ed finished, "What's your point?"

"Does thinking in those terms help get the job done?"

"Not at all," Jules replied. "It's never easy to take a life. Even when that life is what saves a number of others."

"Which, of course, you did tonight," Hastings observed.

"That's right," Jules agreed.

"What was the final count?"

"Number shot?" Spike questioned. "Ten dead, two wounded."

"Ten dead," Hastings remarked, "That include the shooter, the one your team killed?"

Team One arrived to chaos; people running, screaming, all of them flooding out of the Royal Ontario Museum's elegant Crystal entrance. Some were being helped along; much of the fancy evening garb was dirty and stained, but that was hardly noticed as people ran for their lives. Team One moved opposite the flow of humanity, struggling to get in and start assessing the threat.

Parker plowed through the patrons, angling for a security guard his gryphon vision had helpfully picked out…at night, his vision wasn't quite as acute, but it was still pretty darn good. As he drew close to the security guard, who escorted a young woman with blood on her chest and arms, he called, "Say, buddy, talk to me, okay? How many casualties?"

The woman was gasping and clearly panicked, but the security guard responded at once. "Got seven," he reported, "Seven dead so far."

"Please, my husband- he's still in there!" the woman pleaded, "Please!"

"Get a paramedic over here!" Parker ordered, drawing one of the nearby EMTs at once.

The woman was handed off to the EMT still crying, "Please!" as she was gently taken away.

Greg leaned close to the guard, compensating for the noise around them. "How long since the last shot was fired?"

Though rattled, the guard replied, "Four, four minutes ago."

"You get a look at the shooter?"

"No," the guard admitted, "I-I was patrolling the hallway."

The party-goers chatted amongst themselves as the waiters and waitresses moved between the small groups, offering trays full of food plates and drinks to the guests. The whole party had an elegant look, situated as it was in the museum's atrium and entry hallway. Small square tables dotted the floor, for the party-goers to lean against or put their dishes down and a bar sat off to the side with seating and bartenders serving more drinks.

"I didn't see anything out of place, and-and everything looked as it should be."

In one area, a security guard had just completed his patrol, making sure that the guests didn't wander into the closed areas of the museum and ensuring that the guests and treasures were all kept safe. He leaned against the wall next to him, watching the guests mingle and chatter. A gunshot rang out, drawing his attention at once. Glass shattered.

"Angela!" As the guard moved, he spotted a woman down on the floor, not moving, with another woman crouched over her, trying to help and crying the fallen woman's name. "Angela! Angela!" Even as the guard strode towards the pair, four more gunshots rang out and the guests panicked and began to run in terror…screaming as they went. Some of them fell; they kicked off their shoes, stumbled up, and ran again.

"Excuse me. Pardon me," the guard called as he worked his way through the running, screaming crowd. Two more gunshots rang out. "Excuse me, guys. Pardon me. Pardon me. Excuse me." Finally clear of the crowd, he reached the woman sobbing over the first fallen woman and grabbed her arm. "Ma'am, ma'am, ma'am," he called, trying to pull the woman up. "You need to come with me, ma'am." Pulling harder, he added, "She's dead. We've got to get out of here."

They were the last ones out; the guard looked behind him as he went, but he didn't see the shooter at all…just a dead woman lying on the ground, blood staining the pearls around her neck.

"Do you have any idea how many people are left inside?" Parker questioned, mentally cataloguing every detail as he went.

"Two hundred. M-maybe two hundred-fifty."

"Eddie…" Parker called, drawing his team leader over. "Eddie, seven shots fired. Hasn't gone to ground. Looks like a spree. Random shooting pattern, high kill ratio."

Ed took all this in as he looked at the security guard. "What kind of event was this?"

"A company party for, uh, Brenton, Inc," the guard replied.

Thinking aloud, Parker mused, "Could be a workplace issue, disgruntled employee." As he spoke, Sam and Spike moved over to them, alert and listening.

"I'll get started," Spike offered.

"All right," Ed agreed, "Spike, get some floor plans from this gentleman. We need to track this."

Spike beckoned to the guard, ordering, "Let's go. Let's go!"

As the pair hurried away, Ed's focus shifted to the building. "Let's lock those exits down! Do it now!"

His Sergeant moved to a different area. "Hey, let's set up a triage area nearby."

The milling uniforms and paramedics shifted into motion, following Team One's orders. It would take time to get everything locked down and organized, but now things were moving in the right direction.

"Guys, direct to threat," Ed ordered his team, "We contain, isolate, and neutralize. Priority is speed."

Ed was well aware that Hastings was still very unhappy with the restricted transcript; her eyes flashed as she looked at the next page, but she stayed on topic. "There were already seven dead when you arrived? Things happen fast in spree killings."

"That's why ending things fast is so important," Ed informed her.

"Thirty-seven minutes," Hastings countered.

"Thirty-seven minutes to arrive, contain, and neutralize, yeah," Ed acknowledged.

Hastings studied him a moment. "You're the tactician, right?"

"I'm the team leader, but Greg Parker's the Sergeant," Ed replied, a faint sense of unease surging up at the change of tactic.

The unease only grew as Hastings questioned, "So you're saying the thirty-seven minutes had more to do with him?"

"He'd seen this kind of shooting before and he brought that experience to the table."

A clipped, "I'm aware of your Sergeant's background."

Ed didn't let his unease show. "That's right, you used to be a cop."

"And now I protect them," Hastings replied, "It's why I joined SIU."

"You've got quite the reputation," Ed drawled.

"The killing spree at Cornwall took nine minutes to contain. Chesapeake High took thirteen. The big question the media are going to ask is why did this one take thirty-seven?"

Ed ignored the barbed edge to the question. "Those were different circumstances. We had a lot more square footage to cover."

"And while you were covering it, the subject was able to shoot four more people. How do I explain that?"

"Well, if you want to protect cops, you suggest to the media to forget the thirty-seven minutes and focus instead on the lives we saved," Ed countered.

The smile was polite, but still carried an edge that Ed had yet to identify. "Fair enough. Let's talk about saved lives."

"Good, let's do that."

Hastings all but pounced. "Would you have been able to save more lives and end the incident more quickly if you hadn't allowed Sergeant Parker to override you?"

"Boss, I need Spike out of the truck and in the building."

Greg was already shaking his head. "No, he's serving a purpose in the truck, Ed."

"Boss, I need the hands here," Ed protested.

"We could use the intel more," Greg countered calmly.

"More than quicker containment?"

"Eddie, a building like this, without intel, we're blind," Greg pointed out. "We're running around in circles."

"Not a fan of circles," Ed admitted.

"Look, tell you what. Leave Lou here for a couple minutes; I'll call Onasi, see if he can get over here and maybe bring some backup with him," Parker offered.

Ed considered, then nodded once. Lou hurried over at the team leader's hand signal and stayed by the Sarge as his teammates headed for the entrance to the building. Around them, everything was still chaos, even as it slowly got organized. People were still streaming away from the building, paramedics hurried to load their charges and get to the hospital, and there was still a very real sense of panic around the entire crowd.

As Team One entered, one last message from their Sergeant came across the comm. "Guys, this is a spree shooting. Just prepare for it."

"What did Sergeant Parker mean, 'Prepare for it'?" Hastings asked. The blond sniper picking at his nails did not reply, didn't even look up. "Sam?"

"You were there, you saw it," Sam replied, still staring at his nails. "Sorry, it's hard to wash all the blood off."

"I won't keep you long," Hastings told him, her voice and gaze sympathetic. "And try hydrogen peroxide, it helps."

With a sigh, Sam finally told her, "A shooting spree isn't like a hostage crisis or a bomb scare. Even if you do everything right, there's gonna be a death count."

"Bodies," Hastings concluded flatly.

"Yes."

A turn of the page on the opposite side of the desk. "You spent time in Afghanistan, right?"

"Yes. Two tours."

"Did that experience dull your sensitivity?"

Sam's jaw curved in a smirk, one he kept on his face as he countered, "I don't have PTSD and I do value human life, if that's what you're asking."

Hastings backed off. "I just meant, did the experience make it easier?"

"Made death familiar, not easy," Sam informed her. "But because the Boss warned us, we were prepared for the bodies."

The investigator picked up on what he didn't say. "Was there something you weren't prepared for?"

Sam's gaze went a little unfocused as he replied, "Guess I wasn't expecting the shoes."

Author note: I went over the dialogue for this episode and noted several…inconsistencies between the dialogue and what actually happened. For instance, when the security guard briefs Parker, you hear five gunshots in the flashback, but Parker immediately says 'seven shots fired'. Then, you have Spike saying ten dead, two wounded, but I counted nine total: seven dead, two wounded. Which means, we end up short three bodies. Now, I plotzed my way through that particular hole, then remembered the dialogue where Jill (Hastings) says that the subject was able to shoot six more people (after the first five in the atrium)…implying that we just didn't see the discovery of the three missing victims. So…I deviated a bit more than I usually would from 'established' facts and did my best to cover all the minor holes.

And don't even get me started on the sense of direction…I looked up the Royal Ontario Museum and found out that the older part of the building is on the east side and Google Maps says the Crystal entrance is on the north side of the building, but then you've got Parker telling his team to 'keep heading north' and Spike's map on the screen showing 'north' (the top of the map) to be what's actually the west side of the museum. Um…pardon me, but if they headed north, they'd be leaving the building, which I'm pretty sure you don't want to do with an active shooter. Sigh.

Anyway...on a RL related note: I am now past the point of no return in the new job...but, of course, if I don't meet standards, they can fire me. I appreciate every last prayer said on my behalf, though only the Lord will know about all of them.

For those who might want a list of prayer needs:
1. That I would have discernment in what I need to study on a daily basis.
2. That I would get all of my assignments done in a timely fashion so I can study.
3. That I would do better on my next evaluations.

Thank you all for your support, prayers, and *cough, cough, hint, hint* reviews. Hope you enjoyed and I'll continue to do my best to keep up the schedule.