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Shooter

Beth Christensen

    In the aftermath of the shooting, what Jason noticed more than anything was the dullness, the near-absence of color and sound. After the kaleidoscopic spray of bright red blood, of the searing white muzzle flashes that seemed to celebrate each shot from the semi-automatic, the piercing sirens, and the blinding red and blue lights from the police cars and ambulances, the interview room at the police station was striking in its lack of color. It looked as if someone had gone out of his way to exclude color from the place. The cinder-block walls had dull, peeling gray-green paint that soaked up most of the light in the room. The table and chairs were gray metal, cold and hard. They might have reflected light if there was any in the room to reflect. On the wall opposite where Jason was sitting, there was a large mirror, and he wondered why anyone would want to look at themselves in here.
    Jason was not sure what to think about the lack of noise. He wondered if the noises that had assaulted his ears during the shooting, the cracks of rapid-succession gunfire and the screams of the crowd followed by the incredibly loud and shrill sirens, might have damaged his hearing. Aside from the low, dull buzzing in Jason’s ears, the silence in this room was as thick and heavy as the fog that hung over the bayous on warm winter mornings. But when the detectives came into the gray-green room and spoke to him, Jason knew that his hearing was diminished, but not gone. This finding was confirmed when one of the detectives pulled a chair away from the table, scraping its legs across the concrete floor. Jason heard that. And he heard the detective say, “So, tell me what happened.”
    Where do I begin, Jason wondered. Reaching back in time, time that had lost all means of measure and proportionality, his memory latched onto the feeling of holding Carolyn’s hand in his as they joined the slow-moving mass of people streaming into the festival grounds. He remembered how soft her hand was, and cooler than his own. The day had been sunny with deep-blue spring skies. The sun felt comfortably warm on Jason’s skin, and a soft breeze blew sweet spring air in from the north. Jason had always believed that he had no real idea of what perfection felt like, but he thought that this day, this weather, and the hand of this girl in his might have been the closest thing to perfection he had ever felt. This would have been hard to explain to anyone on any day, but on this day with the detective looking impatient and overwhelmed, Jason thought it might very well be impossible.
    “I was there with my girlfriend. Well, maybe not really my girlfriend yet, but she was my date, and I thought that maybe things were going in that direction...” Jason stopped, realizing that the nature of his relationship was not what the detective was interested in.
    “Her name?”
    “Carolyn. Carolyn Cooper.” Jason loved the way that name felt on his tongue as he clicked it against the roof of his mouth, once for each hard “C,” and he smiled just a bit upon speaking it.
    The detective ran his finger down a list of names on a clipboard, then shook his head and turned back to Jason. “She’s not here,” he said. Jason didn’t respond.
    “Sit tight for a minute,” the detective went on. He showed the list to his partner, who shook his head. “No, I don’t see her name here either,” the second detective said. “Cooper?”
    Jason nodded, and as the detective got up, his chair scraped against the floor again, and the detectives left the room. The door made a hollow, echoing sound as it slammed shut behind them. Jason felt tired. Really, really, tired. He thought that he could sleep for a solid week and it would not feel like enough. The muscles of his upper back and shoulders ached and burned, and he reached back and rubbed as much as he could reach. He then folded his arms on the table in front of him and rested his head on his arms. His eyes closed, and sleep pulled him in like a vortex, spinning and speeding into an oblivion that, even if temporary, was welcome.
    It was the crack of a gunshot – no, it was the door opening and hitting the adjacent wall – that yanked him awake. Jason sat up with a start, and it took him a moment to shake off his brief sleep and return himself to the tiny colorless room at the police station. He bent his neck as far as it could go, to the right then the left, and forward then backward, trying to stretch the muscles that were getting even more stiff and sore. The detective with the clipboard dragged the chair away from the table again and sat down heavily. He was a big guy, well over six feet, and hefty. He had close-clipped light brown hair and a perfectly trimmed moustache. His face was red, probably from the stress of that eventful day, but Jason wondered if it might not be his usual color. He looked like the kind of guy who was pretty tightly wound.
    His partner didn’t sit down. He didn’t even stay still for more than a few seconds. He moved about the room, looking at Jason from every angle. He was thin, wiry, with a thick thatch of dark hair and thick, bushy eyebrows that moved around as if they possessed an animation of their own. Jason thought the two detectives were almost comical in how different they looked and spoke, and he wondered briefly if that had been arranged on purpose. Maybe they were accustomed to playing good cop-bad cop, but at this point Jason couldn’t tell which was which.
    The big guy spoke first. “We didn’t find anyone by the name of Carolyn Cooper among the victims or the survivors. Everyone has been identified.”
    “She was there. She was with me. She was beautiful. She had long, kind of dark blonde hair, the kind that moves like a wave when she tosses her head to one side. And blue eyes. And she was kind of tall, and had on khaki shorts and a red tank top. Sandals. Awesome legs. Tanned. She was perfect.”
    “Nobody left the scene after the shooting started. The gates were secured immediately. We interviewed all the survivors, and we identified the others, the...” Skinny guy’s voice trailed off, and his ample brows knitted themselves into a look that might be taken for some kind of compassion. “The victims. We identified all the victims.”
    Jason closed his eyes, trying to hold on to the image of Carolyn that had formed in his mind. She had been smiling just before the shooting started, her perfect white teeth gleaming in that perfect sun. Jason tried to remember what had made her smile. He hoped it had been something he said that had amused her, maybe even impressed her. Then he remembered the look on her face when the shooting started. Puzzled at first, not able to quite understand what was happening. Then someone nearby was hit and Carolyn’s face was splattered with blood. When Carolyn was hit, a brief flicker of surprise crossed her face just before she collapsed to the ground. Jason chose to believe that it all had happened so quickly that she didn’t realize she was dying. In just a couple of seconds, all expression left her face after Jason pulled her close to him and lay still. He held her like that, her blank face and vacant eyes pressed up against his face, until the shooter was taken down and the police began picking through the bodies in search of survivors.
    Big guy’s voice shattered Jason’s imagery and when he opened his eyes, the big detective’s face was close to his, and redder than ever. “Who was the girl you were holding onto, on the ground? Did she come in with you? How did you know her?”
    “You mean Carolyn? I met her at school, she was in my political science class...”
    “No. The girl you were holding, her name was Marie Clark. She was nineteen years old. She was dead. Why were you holding her like that? How did you know her?”
    “I couldn’t save her. I wanted to, I wanted to save her, but I couldn’t. It all happened so fast. She’s dead.” Jason’s voice trailed off and he closed his eyes as the image of Carolyn, dead, filled his mind.
    Big guy got up suddenly from his chair, knocking it over in the process. It clattered against the hard floor. “Yeah, she’s dead!” Big guy barked. “She’s dead, and so are 14 other people! Four of them are kids!” His big red face looked like it might explode, and skinny guy maneuvered him toward the door and out of the interview room. The door closed with that hollow thud, and Jason heard something coming from outside the room, like somebody punching a wall, and muffled yelling.
    Jason reached back to rub his neck and shoulders again. He wished more than anything that he could just sleep. He felt as if he had not slept in years, not really. He wanted to figure out what it was these detectives wanted from him so they would just leave him alone and let him sleep. He again folded his arms on the table in front of him and rested his head on his arms, and again he felt himself drifting back into sleep, until the door again opened and banged into the nearby wall.
    Now skinny guy was back in the room. He dragged the chair upright and back to the table, and he sat down quietly. “Jason, do you understand what’s happening here?” he asked.
    “Of course I do. Somebody shot up the music festival, and Carolyn is dead, and other people are dead. But that’s all I know. I’m so tired now. I just want to go home and sleep. When can I go?”
    Skinny guy paused for a moment and studied Jason’s face. “OK, I just need to ask you a few more questions. What band was playing when the shooting started?”
    “Oh, it was the Radiators. They always close the second Saturday of the fest. We were dancing – Carolyn and me – when they did their cover of Under the Boardwalk.” Jason replied, and again a faint smile formed on his face. He had never been much of a dancer, but Carolyn, with those long perfect legs, was really good, and if she thought Jason was a bad dancer, she was nice enough to not let it show.
    “Who shot up the festival?”
    “You know who it was! His name was Becker or Beeker or something, John Becker or Beeker.”
    Skinny guy’s eyebrows furrowed again, and his head was tilted down such that he had to look through the thick brows at Jason. He voice had softened. “Jason,” he asked, “what happened to the shooter?”
    Jason’s head was down now too, and his voice lowered to nearly a whisper. “They killed me.”
    Jason felt himself back at the festival grounds. He could smell the rich spring soil and fresh-cut grass under his face along with the burnt metallic smell of spent gunpowder, and he could hear moans and cries and screams as people began to realize what had just happened. But more than anything he could see Carolyn’s lifeless face, spattered with someone else’s blood. His thoughts screamed, Do something! Do something, save her! But he couldn’t save her. He couldn’t save anyone. He couldn’t even move.
    Skinny guy left the interview room again, and again Jason rested his head on his arms. He started to drift off again, and again it was the opening of the door that woke him. The muscles of his neck and shoulders were burning now. When the detectives returned, big guy had a small leather case with him, which he placed on the table and opened. Skinny guy was carrying a laptop computer.
    “You were in the crowd the day of the 2005 shooting. Carolyn Cooper was killed that day,” he said. “You’re a survivor of that shooting.”
    “Well, yeah. Isn’t that why we’re here?” Jason was beginning to lose patience. He just wanted to go home. Big guy took one of Jason’s hands in his and rubbed it with something wet.
    Skinny guy looked puzzled. “We’re here to talk about the shooting that happened today. Today you were lying next to Marie Clark, and she was dead. Did you know Marie Clark?”
    Jason looked for a moment at what big guy was doing with his hands, then returned his gaze to skinny guy. “She was beautiful. She had long, kind of dark blonde hair, the kind that moves like a wave when she tosses her head to one side. And blue eyes. And she was kind of tall, and had on khaki shorts and a red tank top. Sandals. Awesome legs. Tanned. She was perfect.”
    Big guy looked up from what he was doing. “Gunshot residue,” he said. Then he looked at Jason, seeming more puzzled now than angry, and his face was a little less red. “The Radiators broke up at least ten years ago.”
    Skinny guy pulled Jason to his feet. Jason felt the cold metal of the handcuffs on his skin and the pain in his wrists as the cuffs were tightened. “Can I just go home now?” he asked again. “I’m just so tired.”

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