Shooting the Messenger

The paper transcript of the email conversation was walked directly to the office of the Assistant Director. A balding man with caterpillar brows, he frowned as he read through the first two pages of the report and then motioned for the young agent to take a seat. Picking out a pen from the flowering cup of writing utensils, he scribbled a message in the margins: He’s entered the red zone. Take care of it.

A banner scrolled along the bottom of the large flat screen TV: “Breaking News: Five dead, six wounded at Keller High School after shooting rampage.”

            “False flag operation.” Andrew Copper looked from the television screen to the man joining him at his table for lunch, Glenn Sumner. Close cropped haircut, neck tats, tight black pants an inch too short, Glenn would probably be picked out of a crowd as a conspiracy fan based on nothing more than his aura. He pulled a sandwich and bag of chips out of his bag and nodded toward the TV. “They pull this kind of shit all the time.”

            “Who’s they?” asked Andrew, a sinewy, handsome, introverted man in his late twenties. He ate a spoonful of chili as he waited for Glenn to stop chewing.

            “The government. Who else? Pushing through stricter gun control is on their agenda, so they stage these mass shootings to sway public opinion. Same type of thing with 9/11, except that was about oil.”

            “But they’re carrying out bodies and—“

            “Paid stooges are carrying out something in a body bag. Probably somebody’s dirty laundry.”

            “You’re saying the people I’m watching here with blood on them and the sobbing parents are all actors? Glenn, you’ve got to move out of your parent’s basement.”

            Wearing a confident smirk, Glenn picked up his iPhone, tapped it several times and then turned the screen triumphantly toward Andrew, who leaned in.

            “What am I looking at here?” asked Andrew.

            “Your government at work. See that woman there? This was taken a year ago at the Akron Elementary School shooting. Now, here’s the same woman at the Boston Marathon. Oh, and what do you know? Here she is at Sandy Hook.”

            “Looks similar, but—“

            “Same thing with this guy. Here he is, a grieving parent at the Iowa State Fair shooting and, viola, here he is dressed as a paramedic in Boston. These are only two of dozens of photos that have been taken of the same people showing up at multiple tragedies all across the country.”

            “That’s just a little too much for me to swallow.”

            “The truth can do that to a person. Take 9/11­—“

            Andrew stood up abruptly. “Almost forgot. I’ve got a conference call at 1:00 so I have to blast. Sorry.”

            Back in his cube, the data analysis summary he was working on and the ever present “after move to-do” checklist helped him quickly forgot about his paranoid partner until a shadow grew and hovered over his left shoulder. He spun his chair around. Janet Kilmer stood in the threshold, another data analyst who worked a few cubes down. Andrew considered her smart and attractive in an unglamorous way, with a subtle, sultry foreign accent that no one could identify. She was also one of those women whose every body movement said, “I’m not interested.”

            “Sorry. Didn’t mean to startle you.”

            Andrew smiled awkwardly. “No problem. Head’s buried too deep in work.”

            She brought her voice down a level. “I was sitting right behind you and Glenn at lunch and I couldn’t help but overhear your conversation. Can you believe him?”

            “Yeah…I mean, no, all that stuff is way too out there for me. He thinks if the coffee machine breaks down it’s a conspiracy.”

            Janet laughed then caught herself. “Yeah. You’re right. This is D.C. and we draw our share of crazies.”

            “He’s harmless. I think.”

            She tilted her head as if studying him. “My refrigerator is bare, as usual. Want to get lunch with me tomorrow?”

            “Yeah. That would be great.”

            “I’ll grab you about noon.”

            Wow, he thought as she smiled and turned away, I should buy a lottery ticket.

He’d been in his new apartment for three days now and it still looked more like a storage locker than a home with boxes stacked three high in almost every room. Priorities were quickly determined and the TV and stereo system were up and running amid the boxes of pots and pans and dishes. He sipped on a beer as the ten o’clock news came on, leading off with the latest in the seemingly endless chain of mass shootings across the country. This one happened at Keller High School in Elko, Nevada. Angry student brings guns to school and opens fire. Angry somebody brings guns to somewhere and opens fire. Fill in the details.

            Light from the TV pulsated throughout the dark room like a failing strobe light. Andrew woke up and checked his phone. It was 12:30. On screen, the Hindenburg was exploding in some type of History Channel documentary on American disasters. His first thought was Led Zeppelin and not the spectacular death and destruction involved in the accident. Did that make him a callous person? He wasn’t sure. As the air ship was engulfed in a ball of flames, he could only imagine the horror experienced by the small black dots on the ground, the sparse crowd watching the event. This reminded him of his discussion with Glenn that morning in the break room. Professional disaster actors? How do people come up with this shit? Glenn was the only person he knew who wore his tin foil hat proudly and wasn’t afraid to express his unpopular views to anyone who would listen. The reaction of most was to keep the intense geek at arm’s length, but despite the social implications, he occasionally hung with Glenn, secretly entranced by the conspiracy crowd’s latest fixation. But then there was Janet. He knew where she stood on the topic, and if the relationship was going to go anywhere, he needed to be a good little status quo guy. Not a problem, he assured himself.

            The next morning, Glenn stood impatiently in the doorway to Andrew’s cube waiting for him to finish a call. Andrew finally set the phone in its cradle.

            “Hey, what’s up?”

            Glenn glanced around the room. “Come to my cube.”

            “I’ve got—“

            “It’s important. Come on.”

            Andrew followed Glenn through the grey labyrinth defining the cube grid until they reached Glenn’s cluttered digs. He lifted a stack of folders off of a chair so Andrew could sit down, and then started tapping on his keyboard.

            “I got the photos a couple of days ago but this morning was the first time I really had a chance to study them. Some online friends of mine are into…well, the same things I’m into. One of them sent me this.”

            There was suddenly a split screen image on the monitor taken from a newscast. On the left, was woman, an FBI agent, helping lead a line of children out of a school. The image on the right was of a woman being interviewed by a reporter standing near a crowd of people.

            “The picture on the left was taken at the Rosemont Elementary School shooting a-year-and-a-half ago. The photo on the right was taken at Sandy Hook.”

            Andrew leaned in. “Okay, the two women have long dark hair.”

            “Hold on. Let me zoom in.”

           As the woman’s face grew larger in each photo, Andrew’s skin grew warmer. The woman in both shots looked very much like Janet Kilmer. “That…that can’t be right.”

            “Still think I’m a nut job?”

            “I never said you were a nut job, but this is impossible. Those are women who look like Janet, but they can’t be her.”

            “Seeing is believing to me. Can you believe it? We’ve got one working in the same office as us. It’s insane.”

            Andrew’s productivity took a nosedive as he spent the morning pondering the remote possibility that Glenn might be right or that he was being drawn into Glenn’s paranoid world of conspiracy theories.

            Lunch was at a busy Deli a block from work. Janet ordered a Greek Salad and Andrew had a pastrami sandwich on rye. The conversation was light and chatty until it swung back to Glenn and his crazy ideas.

            “I read somewhere on line that there are people who think the Bush’s are really reptiles from outer space.”

            Andrew smiled as he chewed. “Now that one doesn’t seem so far-fetched.” Unable to contain himself, Andrew brought up his meeting with Glenn that morning. “I mean, there was some resemblance, but—“

            “He thought it was me?” she interrupted in a voice just slightly louder than the conversational hum of the store.

            Andrew felt a bit embarrassed now. “Well, yeah. He’s convinced it is you, but that’s impossible.”

            A brief shadow crossed her face but quickly morphed into an eye-rolling scoff. “The guy is nuts, Andrew. How’s the pastrami?”

            The conversation veered away from Glenn, which was fine with Andrew, and they parted to their respected cubicles vowing to do lunch again soon. Andrew wasn’t sure if she meant it or was just being polite, but he did sense a very subtle chill in the air once he mentioned Glenn’s photos.

            Instead of going to his favorite porn site that night in bed, Andrew broke with tradition and Googled the Rosemont Elementary School shooting. All the major news stations were represented with shooting details and photos of the wide-eyed, clearly deranged shooter, Carter Silverman. Andrew watched several videos, and then found one with the dark-haired government agent leading the frightened students out of the school to the parking lot. He replayed the video a few times and each time he did, the woman looked more and more like Janet Kilmer. He looked intently for differences…a tattoo or a birthmark or a scar, but there was nothing that he could see that would clearly distinguish this woman from Janet.

Irritated and unable to sleep, Andrew poured himself a generous Jack Daniel’s at midnight and sat in bed scanning images taken from other recent mass shootings and bombings in America. Few disasters had been as closely covered by both amateur and professional videographers and photographers as the Boston bombings. There was almost too much to wade through. As he sipped, he clicked from image to image of the scene moments after the bombs went off, the chaos and confusion, the blood and heroics. Then, in a stop-motion video, he saw her. His heart raced as he zoomed in on the figure just on the perimeter of the bomb blast, a thin woman wearing a baseball cap looking disoriented. It was without a doubt Janet Kilmer.

            The night washed over him in waves of fevered tossing and turning as his subconscious tried to make sense of the nonsensical. Janet’s face grew as big as the moon and it laughed at him, which made the stars laugh and soon the sun was bellowing and belching furnace blasts of hot gasses. He ran across a bridge of bones, chased by Janet dressed in a black robe. She drew closer and closer, her white gloved hands reaching out, until the only escape was for Andrew to throw himself over the bridge railing into the ocean. He woke up screaming. The clock said 3:20 a.m. The sheets clung to his damp body. Too shaken to go back to sleep, Andrew made coffee and took a long medicinal shower.

            Arriving at work a half hour early, Andrew noted the office had a quieter, more subdued vibe than usual. He maneuvered the grey alleyways between cubes and was about to walk into Glenn’s cube when he realized someone else was sitting in his friend’s spot, a hyperkinetic young woman tapping on her keyboard like a court stenographer.

            “Excuse me,” he interrupted. “Did Glenn move to another cube…?”

            The woman looked disappointed that she didn’t know the answer. “I’m sorry, I don’t know. I just started today and they said, ‘Here’s your cube,” and that’s really all I know. I’m Tracy.”

            Confused, but not wanting to make a scene, Andrew leaned in. “There was another man in this cube just yesterday. Glenn Sumner. Was there anything in here when you moved in?”

            “No. Sorry. It was completely bare. I even had to search around for a chair.”

            “Thanks.” Andrew made his way to his cube, sat down and stared at his blank laptop screen trying to understand what was going on. He was startled to action as Janet walked by.

            “ Janet,” called out Andrew.

            She stopped and turned toward him with a smile. “Andrew. How’s it going?”

            “Hey, what happened to Glenn? I mean, one day he’s here the next, gone.”

            Janet’s smile weakened. “Why would I know where Glenn is?”

            “Uh, right. You wouldn’t. Sorry.”

            “Okay. Take care.”

            “Yeah. Sure.”

            Janet walked off leaving Andrew wondering if he wasn’t falling prey to his own bizarre conspiracy theory. He searched his phone for Glenn’s number. He was immediately dropped into voice mail. He remembered that Glenn had at one time sent his girlfriend’s number to him, although he couldn’t remember why. Several taps later, he’d found it. The phone rang, and a slurry woman’s voice answered.

            “Hello?”

            “Uh, hey. My name’s Andrew Copper and I work with Glenn Sumner. I was just wondering if he’s okay? I mean, he didn’t show up today and…”

            “Who? Who is this?”

            “Glenn Sumner. Do you—“

            “Sorry. You got a wrong number.” The connection ended immediately.

            Andrew’s world was imploding. He started to feel a panic attack coming on and had to consciously slow down his breathing and take his mind to another place. Glenn had disappeared or been disappeared. What the hell was happening, he wondered as he stared at the nonsensical arrangement of letters on his keyboard. His shaky hands were poised to begin striking those letters when he jumped at the crack of a gunshot nearby. Like groundhogs on alert, people’s heads popped up above the cube walls instinctively searching for danger. Another painfully loud shot rang out, this one closer to their large open room. Heads turned, fear swept through the office like a flash fire and now a voice could be heard coming from the hallway. Someone was begging for his life, then there was another sharp explosion. The door leading to the hallway opened and a man dressed in green entered pointing a rifle, with screams following every swing of the barrel. Andrew couldn’t see what the man was doing, but there was another shot and everyone flinched and looked helplessly at their neighbors for some kind of instructions.

            Panicked, helpless, Andrew drew a breath and decided that there was nothing to be done about the situation, as there was literally nowhere to run. He sat in his chair and took the photos of his parents and brothers and sisters off his wall and cupped them in his hands and waited. This would be his final image. He heard sobbing and pleading and then another jarring, muscle clinching explosion. Out of the corner of his eye he watched a shadow crossing his cube’s threshold and he knew he was about to die. He took a deep breath and held it. Milliseconds passed, then seconds and there was no shot. Andrew opened his eyes and turned around. The top of the man’s head was moving away from his cube. He’d been spared for some reason. Another blast echoed through room. Then another. Shortly, a man shouted, “He shot himself. He’s dead.” Silence, then shuffling noises as colleagues warily crept out from under their desks. Someone shouted, “Oh my god,” and, still in a state of shock, Andrew zombie-walked to join the growing crowd hovering over the dead shooter. He pushed people apart and moved closer, finally having a complete view of the blood-spattered scene. A young man in fatigues lay face up on the carpet, a gaping wound in his head still draining blood. A few feet away was another body. It was Glenn Sumner.

            He wasn’t sure how long it was between that moment and the moment when the police arrived and helped evacuate everyone from the building. Men and women he’d worked with for years walked about in dazed silence amid the swirling lights and shouting responders now swarming the scene. Ears still ringing, he stood next to a row of graffiti-covered self-service newspaper machines, unable to process the events of the past hour. People had been shot to death. One of them happened to be Glenn Sumner, conspiracy theorist. What are the chances…the implications? Why had the killer passed by Andrew? He’d never faced violent death before. As Glenn’s dead body overwhelmed other thoughts, he felt his stomach start roiling. A voice called out.

            “Excuse me. Sir? Sorry. Can we talk to you?”

            Pale and weak, arms held across his stomach, Andrew turned and was approached by a television reporter with wide, aggressive eyes and blood red lips, accompanied by her lumbering cameraman.

            “Please, I…” he couldn’t pull together a complete sentence.

            Disregarding him, she positioned the sweating cameraman and put the mic up to Andrew’s lips. “Lauren Cosby with Channel 7 City Beat. Can I get your name?”

            “Andrew. Andrew Copper.”

            She motioned for the cameraman to roll. “I’m talking to Andrew Copper, a DataStar employee. Can you tell me what happened in there?”

            Sirens wailed and paramedics ran back and forth in the background. He could hear a woman sobbing nearby and a man angrily shouting at someone. Andrew tried to focus and cut through the distracting fog, he was on TV.

            “I…I remember hearing the first shot…”

            The reporter smiled, instinctively knowing she’d found the gold nugget in the river of tears. “Go on,” she said, her voice dripping with ambition.

            “It all happened so fast. There was a shot, then another, and then…I saw a shadow and he was approaching my cubicle.”

            “Oh my gosh. What did you do?”

            “There was no where to run. I felt like it was just my time to go, so I sat down and…prayed to God.”

            “Yes, of course you did.”

            An animating energy started circulating through his body. “Don’t ask me how or why, but my prayers were answered and he passed by my cube. It was…a miracle.”

            Lauren pulled the mic away and cued her cameraman to focus on her expression of astonishment. “An absolutely amazing story here. In the midst of a horrendous shooting spree where we now think four people were murdered, this man found the courage to pray, to ask God to spare him, and he was spared. Miracles do happen. Back to you, Fred.” Once the feed was cut, the woman put a hand on Andrews arm and whispered a heart-felt “thank you.”

            He’d lied to the reporter, but he knew that what he’d said was what people wanted to hear. What he would want to hear. How did he know that? Emergency responders were still running in and out of the building as sirens and blinking red and blue lights wrapped the disaster in frenetic immediacy and high drama. Needing a shower and strong drink, Andrew turned toward the parking lot on the side of the building. Before he could move, someone called out his name.

          “Andrew?” It was a familiar woman’s voice behind him. “Can we talk?”