CHAPTER 16

THE UNTHINKABLE, JUNE 24,2009

I want to finish the race with God working through me.

ED THOMAS

“BUTLER COUNTY 911.”

“We, uh, had, a, I think, a shooting right now in the bus barn down at the high school.” Daryl Myers struggled to keep his composure as he spoke into his cell phone. To the dispatcher he sounded very calm, very much in control, but he was anything but. Daryl could not believe the words coming out of his mouth. He felt like he was about to throw up. This cannot be happening, he thought.

“Yeah, at the high school where?” the dispatcher asked.

“Uh, in the bus barn.”

“In the bus barn?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Daryl said as high school students raced past him, running for cover. He noticed one adult running toward the bus barn. Daryl recognized him as one of the parents who had dropped off their kids earlier. A few minutes earlier, the man had been sitting in his car, reading the paper, waiting for his daughter to finish lifting weights in the bus barn that was serving as the weight room. Now he ran toward the bus barn while everyone else was running away from it.

“Do you know who it was?”

“No I don’t, uh,” Daryl said, “kids just came running out and said somebody shot Ed Thomas.”

“Ed Tho …” The dispatcher gasped and tried to catch her breath. Finally she managed to spit out, “OK.”

Daryl had been in the bus barn himself maybe ten minutes earlier. He had gone in with vital news to share with Ed. “Your sod is in,” Daryl told him.

“Great,” Ed replied. “That spot over by the visitors’ stands still looks pretty bad.

“We can get on it right after you’re finished here, if you want.”

“I should be through in about an hour.”

“All right. I’ll have everything ready to go when you are.” Daryl turned to walk out. Off to one side sat the orange lawn mower Ed used to mow the field. The sight of him on that mower was one of the staples of life in Parkersburg. As he walked out of the weight room, Daryl overheard Ed talking with one of his football players: “Way to go! Good job. That’s a new personal record for you, isn’t it?”

Standing outside the bus barn a few minutes before 8:00 a.m., surrounded by panicked students, waiting for the police to arrive, Daryl could not believe what was happening. He dropped his cell phone into his pocket and raced toward the bus barn. “Go, go, go,” he called to students running past him. “Get down there,” he said, pointing to the elementary school across the street from the bus barn.

At 7:53 a.m., Chris Luhring’s pager came to life. “Shots fired at the high school.” Like every town in America, Parkersburg had its share of crime, mainly drugs, but the town hadn’t seen a murder since sometime in the 1920s. As police chief, Chris did his best to keep it that way. Even though this was his day off, the moment he read the words “shots fired,” he ran to his bedroom, changed out of his pajama shorts, threw on a shirt, and headed toward the door.

“Chris, wait! You don’t have your vest,” his wife yelled, referring to his bulletproof vest. She had taken it apart to wash it earlier that morning.

He scooped up his weapon, handcuffs, and radio and shouted back, “I don’t have time to put it back together. I have to go NOW!”

“But, Chris,” she said as he dashed out the front door and into the white Ford Explorer that served as his squad car.

He shot out of his driveway and headed toward the school, lights flashing, siren blaring. “1223 Butler County,” he said into his radio, “1223 Butler County.” No one responded. The emergency radio system went down right after the call went out about the shooting at the high school. Chris pressed down harder on the gas pedal, his speedometer climbing to sixty as he flew through the neighborhood near the school. “1223 Butler County!” he shouted into the radio, but still no response. “Crap!” he yelled and threw the microphone aside.

The moment he turned the corner onto Johnson Street, he saw kids running. He pulled into the school parking lot. The lot was always busy with construction traffic. The school was scheduled to reopen in less than two months.

Before Chris could get out of his car, kids ran over to him, hysterical. Two screaming voices overpowered all the rest. “Coach has been shot! Someone shot Coach Thomas!”

Chris shook his head, trying to make sense of what he had just heard. “WHAT!?”

“He shot Coach in the head!”

“Who shot him?”

“Some guy. You’ve got to help Coach!” “Does anyone know the shooter’s name?” “NO!” multiple voices scream.

“Did he leave the school? Did anyone see what he was driving?” “He ran out the back of the building,” one voice shouted. “He left in a blue car,” yelled another. “He drove off going north.” Chris jumped out of his squad car and pulled out his gun. The pounding of his heart echoed in his ears. He didn’t know what to do first. He had to get these kids to a safe place, but he also needed to find the shooter. Get to Coach! Get to Coach! he screamed in his head. A trained EMT, he knew he had to get to Ed as quickly as possible to try to help him.

“Did he drive away or did he run out the back of the building?” Chris tried to put all the pieces together, while more information flew at him. Kids collapsed, weeping and wailing. Some kids screamed. Finally Chris grabbed one boy who seemed to know the most. “Here, take this paper and pen and write down everything you’re trying to tell me. Go to that bus over there, and write it all down for me. I’m going to go check on Coach.”

“I’m not gonna get in that bus!” the kid panicked. “No, it’s not safe.”

“Calm down, son,” Chris said. “I’m here. I’ll protect you.” “No. If I get in the bus, I’ll be trapped.”

“Fine,” Chris said. “Go over on the far side of the bus, outside the bus, and write everything down for me. I’ll be right back.”

The throng of kids moved over toward the bus. Chris herded them along to a spot where he thought they would be safe. Only then did he race to the bus barn.

Jan was just about to walk out the door to go to work when her EMT pager went off. “Parkersburg ambulance,” the dispatcher said, “we have a gunshot/stab wound at the high school weight room.” Jan looked at the clock on the wall. Ed normally called her every day around 8:00 after he finished in the weight room. She thought, I should call him and ask what’s going on. Instead, she grabbed her purse and darted out the door.

“Sounds like one of the construction workers had a nail gun accident,” Jan said. Climbing in her car, she pulled out her cell phone and called her boss. “Hi, Gary, I wanted to make sure you knew I’ve been called out with the ambulance, and I’ll be a little late for work.”

Jan drove the few blocks to the station, climbed into the ambulance, and waited for another EMT to respond to the page. Since most of their volunteers work outside of town, putting a crew together during the day can sometimes be a problem. The dispatcher set the tones off again, only this time adding the code 1033, which means EMERGENCY!

“Dispatch, this is Parkersburg ambulance.” Jan wanted to tell the dispatcher to set off the tones again because she didn’t have a crew. Dispatch never answered. For some reason the radios were down. Jan used her cell phone to call and told the dispatcher to start an ambulance crew from Aplington. If this truly were a 1033, they needed to get a crew there as soon as possible. Jan was about to give up on any other help arriving when two other crew members pulled into the fire station parking lot.

“All right, let’s go. You drive,” she said to one of them. The other EMT climbed into the back. Jan called the dispatcher on her cell phone and said, “We’re en route.”

The fire station was less than a half mile from the high school. Jan got her kit ready so she could get to work the moment they arrived.

Chris walked in the weight room door. Two men cradled Ed as he lay on the floor. The weight room equipment partially obstructed his view, but Chris could see enough. One of the men looked up at Chris, obviously in shock. “It’s real bad, Chris. Really bad. I don’t know what to do.”

The policeman in Chris fought to keep him in control. Chris the former Falcon football player, Chris the man who admired Ed Thomas more than anyone on earth, Chris who counted Ed as his best friend, wanted to run over and grab hold of Ed and not let him go. He pushed his emotions down, but he felt he was about to lose the battle. “Just stay with him. Help should be here soon,” he said.

A siren started off in the distance. Oh, my gosh, Jan is on her

way. Chris knew she was in the ambulance because she was always the first to respond when the ambulance was called out, especially during the day. As this thought ran through Chris’s mind, he stepped closer to Ed. Blood from the head injury seemed to obstruct Ed’s breathing. “All right, we need to turn Coach onto his side. Keep him off his back and on his side, OK?”

Chris took one last look at Ed. Ed’s breathing was labored, but he was still alive. “Hey, Coach, everything’s going to be all right. I want you to know that. Hang in there. The ambulance is going to be here real quick and you’ll be all right.” Ed didn’t respond, but Chris thought he heard him. Oh my, he’s lost so much blood, he thought to himself but didn’t dare say it out loud.

“I’ve got to secure the scene,” Chris said and jumped up. “Stay with him, guys. Keep talking to him. I’ll be right back.” As soon as Chris came to a spot where Ed could not hear him, he called his dispatcher on his cell phone. “Dispatch, I need you to get the air ambulance started this way. We need it here RIGHT NOW!” He paused for just a moment as his knees buckled. “Keep it together, Chris,” he told himself, “keep it together.”

The students had told Chris that the shooter took off out the back door of the weight room, so Chris dashed off in that direction, gun drawn. Pushing through the door, he did a quick, frantic search of the parking lot. If the shooter was still here, Chris was fully prepared to use deadly force. He looked for the car the students described. It was nowhere to be found. A handful of cars littered the parking lot, but all of them were empty. Every student, as well as all the parents and anyone else on school grounds, had scattered over to the elementary school.

“Chris, is the scene safe?” someone called out to him. He looked up and saw the ambulance stopped at the parking lot entrance.

“Yes,” he called back. “Pull in and park directly in front of the doors of the bus barn. I’ll meet you there.”

As the ambulance turned in front of Chris, he saw Jan sitting in the passenger seat. The moment it stopped, the three EMTs jumped out, Jan in the lead.

Chris jumped in front of her. “Jan, stay right here with me,” Chris said.

As one of the EMTs took off running into the bus barn, Jan tried to follow her. “No, Jan. Stop!” Chris yelled out.

“I need to get in there,” Jan said. She tried to get around him. Chris grabbed her by the shoulders. “Jan, stop.” “I don’t understand,” she said.

“Jan, look at me. Listen.” Chris swallowed hard. Tears welled up in his eyes. “The person in there is — it’s Ed, Jan. He’s been shot several times in the head.”

Those words did not make sense to Jan. This was supposed to be a workplace accident involving a construction worker and a nail gun. “How is he?” she said.

“It’s bad, Jan. It’s very, very bad.”

This is impossible. This is impossible. This is impossible. “None of this makes any sense, Chris. It can’t be Ed. This was a construction accident, right?” Her mind could not comprehend what she had just heard. It sounded impossible.

“No, Jan. Someone shot Ed with a gun.”

Jan began to tremble from head to toe. “I need to get to him. He needs me.”

“I don’t want you to go in there. Not yet, at least. Your crew has to do their work, and you know they can’t do that with family right there.”

“OK,” she said in a near whisper. She fought to keep from hyperventilating. Shock swept over her. Oh, God, what has happened?

The pain in Jan’s face was nearly more than Chris could bear. Ed knows she’s here, he thought. He had to have heard the siren. He must know she is here. How can I keep her outside when he knows she’s here. He pushed those thoughts away as hard as he could. His years on the ambulance service taught him that grieving family members get in the way of the medics. And Ed needed medical attention right now more than he needed his wife. Please, God, let him be all right.

More ambulance crew members arrived and went inside to help. Jan stood with Chris outside. Time seemed to stand still for her. Every second outside was sheer torture, wondering how he was, praying she would walk inside and find him lying there with a smile on his face, then telling her he was embarrassed by so many people making a fuss over him.

“How are you holding up?” Chris asked.

Jan nodded and tried to say, “I’m OK.” The words stuck in her throat. By all rights she should have been in hysterics. Inside she was, but somehow she kept it together on the outside. Finally, she leaned over to Chris and said, “I need to go in, now. I know what you told me. I know it’s bad. But I need to go in there now.”

“OK,” Chris said without trying to talk her out of it. “When you go in there, you need to tell him that everything is going to be all right. He needs to hear your voice. He needs to know you’re here.”

Jan nodded and headed toward the door.

The EMTs were loading Ed onto a backboard when Jan walked in. The local pastor who rushed in when the kids ran out was still at Ed’s side, praying over him. Jan walked over and knelt down beside Ed. For a split second she was able to take in the scene as a paramedic rather than the victim’s wife. She did a quick survey of his wounds. Right away she knew that he probably would not survive, although she did not allow her mind to process that thought. He didn’t appear to be conscious, which did not surprise her, given the extent of the injuries she could see right in front of her.

“Ed, I’m here,” she said. The moment those words came out of her mouth, the EMT in her melted away. She took hold of his hand. Tears streamed down her face. “I’m here. Everything is going to be all right. They’re going to take good care of you.” Please, God, let him be all right. She held tightly to his hand and did not want to let it go. Ever. But her EMT training kicked back in, and she knew she needed to get out of everyone’s way as they fought to stabilize him and prepare him to be transported to the hospital. “I need to step away so the guys here can help you. I love you, Ed. I love you.”

She stepped back and looked around at her friends with whom she had worked together on many, many serious accidents. The looks in their eyes confirmed what she already knew. No, no, no, no. Oh, God, no, she cried inside as outwardly she kept her composure. “Thanks, guys, for everything.” Her voice cracked ever so slightly as she dismissed herself.

Jan walked out of that room and into another room inside the bus barn where she could be alone. She pulled out her cell phone and dialed Aaron’s number.

“Hey, Mom, what’s up?” Aaron said as he answered the phone. He and the high school principal at Union High in La Porte City were on their way to an administrative conference in Des Moines. They were nearly there.

“Aaron, there’s been an incident at the high school. Your father has been shot, and it doesn’t look very good.” Jan could barely force herself to say the words.

“What? What do you mean he’s been shot, Mom? Dad doesn’t have a gun. He doesn’t hunt. How could he be shot?”

“No, Aaron, this wasn’t an accident.” She paused to try to gain her composure. Part of her wished she had asked Chris to make this phone call, but she felt she needed to be the one to break the news to Aaron. She pushed the words out with all her strength. Even then, they barely came. “Someone shot your father several times. It’s bad, Aaron; it’s really bad.”

“Where are you, Mom? Is anyone with you?” Panic welled up in Aaron’s voice.

“I’m still at the school with the ambulance crew. They are getting ready to transport your dad, I think to Covenant Medical Center in Waterloo. Chris is here with me. He called for the helicopter, so they may take your dad to University Hospital in Iowa City. I’ll let you know.”

“You’re serious, aren’t you? This is really happening?”

Jan’s voice broke as her grief and pain poured out. “I am afraid so. Would you call Ellie and see if she can get hold of Todd? I don’t have the contact information for the hotel where he and Candice are staying in Jamaica.” Todd and Candice were in Jamaica for a friend’s wedding.

“Sure, Mom. Anything.” Aaron hung up the phone, and turned to his principal. The look on his face said everything. He blinked hard and rubbed his head. His mother’s words rang in his ears. Aaron felt like he had just stepped into someone else’s nightmare. “We need to turn around. Someone shot my dad.”

“What? Who?”

“They don’t know,” Aaron said, but one name leaped into his mind.

At church in Parkersburg that Sunday, someone had started talking about the high-speed chase that had come through Parkersburg, a chase that began in Cedar Falls, twenty miles away. That was when Aaron found out that Mark Becker had been the driver. He also learned why the police were chasing him. Apparently, Becker had attacked a house, trying to get to the people inside. He bashed in the windows with a baseball bat and then grabbed a tire iron and tried to break down a door. All the while, he screamed profanities at the top of his lungs and threatened the people inside. When he could not break through the doors with the tire iron, he jumped into his car and tried to drive it through the garage door. About that time, he heard police sirens and took off. The police chased him all the way from Cedar Falls through Parkersburg and out toward his grandparents’ house. The chase ended when Becker hit a deer seven miles outside of Parkersburg. Chris Luhring was the arresting officer.

Aaron had never understood his father’s commitment to Mark, especially since he had done so many things that went against everything his father stood for. Ed told Aaron the same thing he had told Todd about Mark. Aaron could still hear his father say how Mark needed the team more than the team needed him and that he would not give up on him. And now this. Aaron did not yet know who shot his dad, but the more he thought about it, the more he knew only one person was capable of it.

The principal turned his truck around and headed toward Parkersburg. A Gulf War veteran who had led his unit into Baghdad, he knew what it was like to lose someone very close to him. He patted Aaron on the leg and drove without saying a word. He gave Aaron space to grieve. They were at least two hours away. Aaron called Ellie and broke the news to her. She tried to call Todd and Candice in Jamaica, and then broke down in tears, unable to move or speak.

Chris paced in front of the bus barn. The air ambulance helicopter was still at least fifteen minutes away. We have no time! We’ve got to get him to the hospital NOW! But Chris wasn’t sure he could leave the scene. He thought the shooter was gone, but he didn’t know for sure. At any moment, more shots could fly from God knew where. Panic tried to set in. He looked over at Jan. The color had drained completely from her face. She can’t ride in the ambulance, and she sure isn’t in any condition to drive herself. Where is that HELICOPTER?!

His cell phone chimed, telling him he had a text. It read, “12-1 and 12-2 have the shooter in custody.” 12-1 was the Butler County sheriff; 12-2 his deputy.

That settled it. “All right, let’s get rolling,” Chris yelled to the ambulance crew. He called the dispatcher on his cell phone. “Have the air ambulance contact me when they get close. I need them to meet us on the way.” Then he turned to Jan. “Ride with me, OK?”

Jan nodded. She then followed behind as the EMTs rolled the gurney to the ambulance. A friend put his arm on her shoulder and whispered something in her ear. She didn’t hear him. Right before they loaded Ed into the ambulance, she took his hand and said, “They’re taking you to the hospital now. It’s going to be all right. I’ll be right behind you. I love you.” As she released his hand, she feared these would be the last words she would ever say to him. The crew lifted up the gurney. Jan stood off to one side, softly crying. She tried to pray for her husband, but she did not know what to say.

The ambulance doors slammed shut, pulling Jan out of her daze. The ambulance took off, siren blaring. Jan climbed into the passenger seat of Chris’s squad car, the same Explorer that had nearly been destroyed during the tornado a year earlier. Before he got in the car, Chris grabbed Dave Meyer, the high school principal. “Lock the bus barn up tight, and don’t let anyone go in or out. It’s a crime scene.” He then took off behind the ambulance, lights flashing, siren blaring.

They weren’t even out of the parking lot when Jan looked at Chris and said, “Those are mortal wounds, Chris. I want to pray for him, but I don’t know if I can pray that he survives this. The shots in the head …” Her voice trailed off. “If he survives he will not be the same, and Ed would never want that.”

“Jan, we’re both medics. We’ve both seen some very bad stuff where it looks like there is no hope, and the people make a full recovery. Remember that woman who was dead, but you and I brought her back with CPR? Don’t give up.” Chris was telling himself this as much as Jan. As an EMT himself, he knew Ed’s chances were slim at best.

The ambulance sped south down Highway 14. The air ambulance got through to Chris’s radio. Whatever was wrong with the radio system, it had to be in Parkersburg, not on Chris’s end. He set up a rendezvous point on Highway 20, a four-lane divided, limited access highway near the town of Dike. Dike is halfway between Parkersburg and Cedar Falls/Waterloo. Chris and the ambulance carrying Ed reached the point first, which allowed Chris to stop traffic and set up the landing zone for the helicopter. Once the helicopter landed, Chris told Jan, “You probably have time to check on him before they take off.”

“OK,” Jan said. There wasn’t room for her to climb into the helicopter and sit down next to Ed. Instead, she opened the door and looked in. Her husband’s eyes told her what she was afraid she already knew: He would not recover from these wounds and probably would not survive the trip to the hospital. She took a deep breath and whispered, “I love you.”

While Jan spoke to Ed, Chris answered a phone call. It was Butler County Sheriff Jason Johnson. “We’ve got him in custody, the shooter. You know who it is, don’t you?”

“I have no clue,” Chris replied.

“Mark Becker. It is Mark Becker.”

“Can’t be. They locked him up in the psych ward. The hospital was supposed to notify us when he was ready to be released so we could put him back in jail.”

“Yeah, I know, but they didn’t. It’s Becker all right. I’m staring at him right now.”

The doors of the helicopter closed. The medic on board took over Ed’s care. Chris and Jan climbed back into the squad car and took off toward Covenant Medical Center. “They have the shooter in custody, and you might as well know who it is because you are going to find out pretty quickly,” Chris said.

Jan took a deep breath.

“Who?”

“Mark Becker.”

“That’s impossible. Joan told me yesterday that he was in the hospital and that they were going to keep him for a while.”

Chris shook his head. He felt like vomiting. “I’m sorry, Jan, but that’s who it is. They’re questioning him right now.”

Jan could not respond. She and Chris rode in silence the rest of the way to the hospital. When they arrived, Chris pulled around to the emergency entrance in the back.

The helicopter landing pad was nearby. It was empty. They had beaten the helicopter to the hospital. Jan prepared herself for the worst that she knew was coming.