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crosses made out of pressure-treated furring strips stuck in the grass. Several children, embraced by their parents, sang softly as they rocked back and forth, comforting each other.
    Thiery pushed past the yellow plastic crime-scene tape that surrounded the school and identified himself to the phalanx of Calusa County Sheriff deputies who stood guard. One of them radioed his supervisor for the okay to allow the FDLE agent inside.
    Thiery entered the main office first, as the shooters had. The reception desk had been shredded by bullets. Walls were pocked with holes. There were blood stains on the tile floors, marker tape where bodies had fallen, a red smear on the wall, ending in a handprint. Thiery noted something he couldn’t quite make out, lying on the desk in a dried pool of blood. He produced a small Mag light he kept with him and shone it on the puddle. Bone fragments and broken teeth. He wondered if the person they belonged to had lived, and if so, what did he or she look like, now?
    He caught himself holding his breath, trying not to inhale the death-filled air, as if by doing so, he was in some metaphysical way taking something from the victims. He shook off the feeling and tried to breathe through his mouth, so he wouldn’t smell the burnt scent of carnage.
    He proceeded slowly down the hall, passing another taped outline next to a janitor’s work cart and another blood stain, its edges smudged, probably from the victim rolling around in pain. He continued on.
    Around the corner, he saw yet another taped outline and began to feel anger building up inside. He tried to push it away and remain objective, professional, but he’d always been a man ruled by his emotions and not his intellect. True, it was a detriment as a law officer, but people are who they are; with very few exceptions, that can’t be changed.
    He focused on a ceiling light, blown off by a shotgun blast. Hanging precariously from a piece of electrical conduit pipe, it swung slowly back and forth, like a metronome, the acoustic ceiling tiles around it dotted like Swiss cheese.
    Thiery began to look into the classrooms. Nothing of note in the first few. Then he came to one where the door was battered and its window shattered. Entering the room, he discovered another taped outline and scattered bullet casings with small, numbered notes next to them.
Had to be one of the gunmen
. He looked around the room, observing the devastation: the closet where the children must have taken refuge, a pile of overturned desks. Plywood had been affixed to the blown out windows, but a steady, cool wind crept into the room. Thiery shivered as he saw a small pink shoe with a single drop of blood on it. His eyes grew moist and his jaw muscles flexed involuntarily. He thought of his sons again, remembering them as school-age kids, confused and angry about a mother who had simply left them behind one day. Dropped them at school and disappeared. They directed their anger at him for being a cop who worked all the time, but couldn’t even find his own wife. In spite of that, they’d grown up okay, if a bit distant from him.
    Thiery looked down, surprised to see his fists clenched.
    He exited the classroom and resumed his tour of the hall, past more taped outlines, more emptied cartridges and shotgun shells, more numbered tags next to them. More blood. The smell of gunpowder had permeated the walls and ceiling, and the coppery scent of blood assaulted his nostrils.
    Via email and texts on his tablet, Thiery had been getting updates throughout the day from the local police agencies involved and had finally received the names of all the victims. With the exception of the janitor, they were all women. He wondered about that.
Were there no men teachers? If so, why weren’t some of them shot? Wouldn’t they be more likely to confront a shooter?
Typically, one doesn’t find many male teachers at an elementary school, but it seemed to him there should be
some
.
    He completed