Turning Point(32)
One SWAT team was deployed to the back of the school, and the homes around the perimeter were evacuated so neighboring residents wouldn’t get shot by random bullets when the SWAT teams stormed the school. The question was when that would happen, and how. They didn’t want to wait too long, or go in before they were fully prepared. And inevitably, there would be casualties when they went in. At the request of the police, Marie-Laure, Gabriel, and Paul walked to a police bus parked half a block away and got in to confer with the senior officer in charge. Bruno Perliot was the captain coordinating the SWAT teams and responsible for police response. They were planning their entry attack as the others waited outside, cringing every time they heard gunshots again.
“We don’t know why he’s in there,” Perliot said with a calm voice and angry eyes. This was exactly the kind of situation they had feared for years, involving a building full of children. They had just learned that there were six hundred and twenty children in the school, and approximately eighty adult staff who worked there.
There were at least a dozen senior police officers on the bus, which served as tactical headquarters for what they were going to do. There were squadrons of riot police and SWAT teams in the street around them, waiting for the order to go in, but no one wanted to sacrifice safety for speed, nor to wait too long. Whatever they did would have a downside. And they had no idea why the shooter was there, if his motives were political or religious, or if he was a random lunatic on a mission of some kind.
“I want to know who this bastard is,” Captain Perliot said through clenched teeth as two policemen in combat gear stepped onto the bus with an older woman. She identified herself as the school librarian. She had climbed out a basement window where she was putting books in a storeroom when the attack began. She had heard the ranting of the gunman on the PA system and before she left, she had looked for some of the children to take with her. She had approached the gym and said that the doors to the gym were locked, and she thought everyone was trapped in there with him. She said some students and teachers might be hiding, but she had escaped without finding any.
“I think I know who he is,” she said, her voice shaking. “He was talking about his wife, and said everyone had to pay for killing her. The administration reduced the staff three years ago, and about twenty teachers were let go. If he is who I think he is, his wife was one of them, élodie Blanchet. She taught history and Spanish. She was a lovely woman. Six months later, she discovered that she had breast cancer, she had surgery and treatments. I visited her in the hospital when I heard about it. She died about a year ago. She told me when I saw her that her husband was very unstable, and he was convinced that she got cancer from losing her job. They were separated when she died. They had a daughter who is fourteen or fifteen now, and lives with élodie’s mother. We all went to the funeral. Her husband was there, but he didn’t talk to any of us from the lycée. The whole story is very sad. I think he had a history of mental problems and lost his job because of it. That’s all I know about him.” She was certain it was him from his ranting over the PA, and he had mentioned élodie by name.
Captain Perliot asked his name and she said it was Fran?ois Blanchet. The librarian had heard him speaking of his wife on the PA system and then gunshots and people screaming afterward.
Two policemen got on their cellphones immediately, to the intelligence unit, to get everything they could on Fran?ois Blanchet. Five minutes later, police intelligence called back. He was forty-nine years old, had a psychiatric discharge from the army, so he knew weapons, and was an unemployed engineer by profession. He lived in a rough part of Paris, and was on welfare. The whereabouts of his daughter were unknown. Ten minutes after that, they had a cellphone number, and, holding his hand up for silence, the captain called him. Marie-Laure sent a policeman to find Valérie, and she came back to the bus at a dead run before the call connected, and stood an arm’s length away from the captain. The call was being recorded.
There was no answer at first as the gunfire continued from inside the building, and then it stopped and Fran?ois Blanchet answered. Bruno Perliot spoke to Blanchet in a calm, even voice and said that they wanted to have a conversation with him, and wanted him to come outside.
“You must think I’m stupid. And then what? You shoot me on the way out? Don’t try to come in here,” he warned him. “If you do, half the children will be dead before you shoot open the doors.”
“Let’s talk about this. I’m sorry about your wife. That was a terrible thing to happen,” Bruno said in the most soothing voice Stephanie had ever heard. They had been invited to join the French team on the bus, and told where to stand so they wouldn’t get in the way.
“They killed her!” Fran?ois Blanchet exploded into the phone, and then started to sob. “They killed her. She got sick almost immediately after they fired her. She was so beautiful, and so sweet, and a good teacher. They made her sick. She would never have gotten cancer if they didn’t fire her. She was never sick a day in her life. They were too cheap to pay her, so they killed her.”
“I’m sure they’re very sorry now,” Bruno Perliot said smoothly, but the gunman got irritated immediately.
“I will make them sorry for every day she suffered, and every minute she’s been dead. I loved her so much,” he said, sobbing again. “She was such a good person.”