With the bad guys dead, Maureen didn’t have anything to do.
She hung around the fishing aisle, thinking someone might want to ask her questions about what had happened there, but nobody did. Everyone who came through went right to Detillier. As the crowd grew, she grew more and more eager to leave. She wanted to lose the FBI jacket and get out of her heavy vest. She wanted to go home, be alone, and have a drink and a long shower. For right now, she’d be happy to get outside and breathe cooler, less blood-laden air. Outside she could find someone to ask about Preacher’s condition. Christ, she had a shift that night, which was hard to even think about.
Who would do roll call?
Sporting Goods swarmed now with NOPD detectives and FBI agents, large, anxious men arguing in hushed tones over who was in charge of what. The FBI was labeling the afternoon’s shootings acts of domestic terror, which came under their jurisdiction. As far as Maureen could tell, the NOPD didn’t give a shit about terminology and jurisdiction. They wanted an all-out manhunt. They wanted blood. However much of it pooled on the floor of the fishing aisle, that blood wasn’t blood they had spilled. It wasn’t enough. That blood didn’t count. Maureen understood. She watched as a calm and determined Agent Detillier struggled to explain to whoever from the NOPD would listen to him, which appeared to be nobody, that the investigation was paramount now, that the three known shooters from that afternoon were dead.
At the moment, Detillier insisted, there was no one to hunt.
Maureen wasn’t so sure that was true. Somebody, she thought, scratch that, everybody should be looking for Leon Gage. Detillier had to be thinking the same thing.
She suspected, though, that he feared the raw wrath and bloodlust of a gut-shot NOPD. Anyone connected to these attacks who the city cops got their hands on tonight wouldn’t live to see the morning. Any information a prisoner gave up before dying would be beaten out of him, and that information would be useless as a prosecution tool. As badly as she wanted Leon Gage caught or even dead, she understood Detillier’s strategy. He needed Gage, needed the information in his head.
As the voices of the men surrounding her got more heated, Maureen decided that hanging around corpses and angry men did her no good. From a distance, she made eye contact with Detillier and pointed toward the front of the store. He nodded and put a finger to his lips. She got the message. Talk to no one. She decided she might heed his wishes. She might not. Someone had to find Leon Gage. She’d blown the hunt for Madison Leary. She wouldn’t make that mistake again. Detillier made a hand signal at his ear that meant he’d call her later, like someone would make to a friend across a crowded barroom. The gesture seemed so absurd, Maureen had to fight back laughter.
On her way out of the Walmart, she passed through the grocery section and grabbed a cold bottle of water. She’d pounded half of it down by the time she got outside.