Run You Down (Rebekah Roberts #2)(71)

“What kind of car is he driving?”

“I know about the police in Roseville,” says Aviva. “I am not going to tell you anything!”

Van’s radio screams to life. Beep beep beep and a dispatcher’s voice.

“All units all units. We have an active shooter at 67 Hillcrest in Roseville. Repeat: Active shooter. All units respond.”

For a moment, we all just stare at the radio, and then Van presses a button on his mouthpiece and says he is en route.

“Stay here,” says Van but we are already opening the doors on Saul’s car. Aviva in the back, Saul and me in the front. Van switches on his lights and siren; he can’t keep us from following. I get on my GPS and find 67 Hillcrest. We are forty miles away. Google says the address belongs to something named Toras David.

“It’s called Toras David,” I say.

“That’s the yeshiva,” says Aviva. “Sammy’s yeshiva.” I turn around to look at her. She is clenching her jaw. I reach over the seat and put my hand on her knee. It’s going to be all right, I want to say, stupidly.

As we pass through the EZ Pass booth on the Thruway, my phone rings. It’s Mike at the city desk.

“We’re hearing there’s an active shooter situation in Roseville,” he says. “How close are you?”

“I’m on my way. Maybe half an hour. It’s a yeshiva.”

“We know. Photo will call you. Get everything you can from the scene. I’ve got a report of at least one person dead. It’s usually the shooter, but it could be anything. Did you work Newtown?”

“Not the scene,” I say. I was in the Trib office, actually, when the first reports of a shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary came in. It was a Friday and I wanted to turn in my weekly timecard before my shift. I remember everyone standing around looking at the TVs above the city desk. First it was just a teacher shot in the foot, and then a whole classroom of six-year-olds missing. I’ll never forget the quiet that dropped over the newsroom when the words “at least twenty first-graders” flashed across the screens. It was just a few seconds, but everything stopped as we all began to catch glimpses in our minds of what “at least twenty first-graders” at the wrong end of a gun looked like. And then one of the women on the copy desk threw up. Her daughter was in first grade there. It wasn’t until several hours later that she got word her little girl survived, kept safe by her teacher in a bathroom stall as Adam Lanza picked off his prey.

“We need a victim count. Dead and injured. Number of shooters. Weapons. This is where your girl lived, right? You know it a little?”

“Yeah,” I say, thinking: what, exactly, do I know?

“School shootings are a clusterf*ck. With the Jewish angle this’ll be national in an hour. It’s in our backyard and we need to own it, so feed everything back as soon as you get it. Cathy’s lead on rewrite. Get whatever the cops on the scene will tell you, which won’t be much. Take photos. Talk to anybody you see. When did the shooting start? What did they hear? You don’t speak Yiddish do you?”

“No,” I say. “But I’m with someone who does.”

“Great,” he says. “Keep your phone by you. I’m sending Lindsay and Will. They’ll be there in an hour, maybe two. Work the scene for now. Once we start getting names we’ll door-knock. A lot of what you hear at first is gonna be wrong. At the Sikh Temple shooting we initially reported fifteen dead and it was only five or six. I’d like to avoid that. Makes us look bad. Usually the shooter is dead by the time we show up, but not always. This could turn into a hostage thing. What we need is a name. Once we get confirmation on a name we run with it. So: name and body count.”

He’s about to hang up. “Mike!”

“What?”

“I think I might be related to somebody involved in this.”

“What? What does that mean?”

“It’s a long story.” I look at Saul. He nods.

“Tell it to me fast.”

“The guy who I think killed Pessie, that girl I wrote about?”

“Faster.”

“My uncle was dating the guy’s son.”

“Your uncle?”

“But I’ve never met him. I was…” Fuck! “I never knew my mom and it turns out she had a brother. That’s this guy. I just found out.”

“Which guy? The guy who killed the girl?”

“No, the guy who dated the guy whose dad might have killed the girl.” Jesus, that sounds ridiculous. “But I don’t have it on the record.”

“What are you talking about? Do you have a name?”

I turn to Aviva, who is looking at me with unfocused eyes. She appears dazed, like she’s concentrating so hard she’s about to pass out. Is that what I look like when I’m lost in fear?

“I don’t…”

“You never met him? You swear to God, Rebekah. If you lie to me you are fair game. If you lie to me you become the story. I will not protect you.”

“I’m not lying. But listen. It’s possible he’s on the scene. With a gun.”

“Your uncle might be the shooter?”

“I think the shooter might be named Conrad Hall. Call Larry, he knows him. I mean, he’s covered him. He’s an ex-con. Aryan Nation, that shit.”