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Hearing all this incensed Elle. “In which case, you have nothing, absolutely nothing to go on.”
Compton said, “Determining a motive may not be timely or easy, but we won’t give up, Ms. Portman. The first thing we must determine is if he was a disillusioned loner or a disciple willing to die for a cause. Did he have partners who helped camouflage him in that crowd? That would be particularly worrisome because we have no idea who they might be.
“We also need to determine if he fired randomly, not caring who he hit. Or did he/they have a specific target, and the other victims, like your son, were collateral damage? That’s why it’s necessary for us to interview anyone who might recently have had even a passing connection to him.”
“I don’t recognize him at all,” Elle said as she took one last look at the face of her son’s murderer before returning the picture to the agent.
Compton replaced the photo in her blazer pocket, then asked Elle if she would relate what she recalled of the minutes leading up to when the first shot was fired. “The more details you can remember, the better. Let us decide whether or not they’re significant.”
“Well, I said goodbye to Glenda at the kiddie carousel and started—”
“Excuse me.” Compton turned to Glenda. “You were also there?”
Glenda explained their arrangement to meet and her plans for the remainder of the evening. “I peeled off and headed for the beer garden.”
“Did you hear the shots?”
“No. But soon after I’d joined my group, people began coming into the pavilion and shouting about a shooting. Then police officers swarmed in and contained everyone. Forhours. We were given very little information.”
“The officers wouldn’t have had much information at that point.”
“I guess,” Glenda said in response to Perkins’s remark. “But the news reports certainly weren’t censored. All of us were watching on our phones, and the visuals being broadcast actually made everyone even more anxious. Families had split up, just as Elle and I had. Not to know if a loved one was a casualty… Well, you can imagine the anxiety.
“Worse for me, Elle wasn’t answering her phone, and I knew she would have if she could. My best hope was that she and Charlie were being contained in an area like I was and that perhaps she didn’t have possession of her phone. But when I finally did hear from her, she was calling from the emergency room.”
During the telling, her voice had turned rough with emotion. “She was hysterical. No one was with her. As soon as everyone in the beer garden was cleared to go, I raced to the hospital. After she was released, we went to the morgue. We were told they don’t usually let loved ones in to see the body, but under the circumstances…” She paused and looked miserably at Elle.
She said, “They uncovered his face for me.”
“She couldn’t be with him, but she didn’t want to leave him there alone. We stayed. I drove her home early this morning.”
A pall settled over the four of them. Perkins coughed behind his fist. Compton scribbled something on her spiral notepad, then asked Elle to describe her actions from the time she and Glenda had separated.
“Charlie was becoming cranky. I was eager to get him home, but we were stalled because of the bottleneck at the gate. There was a man standing next to us. He and I’d had a brief exchange. When I heard the shot, I turned to him.” She raised her hand to her throat. “He… uh…”
“He was slain by the first shot fired,” Compton said.
Having the gentleman’s death confirmed sent a spike of pain through Elle’s chest. “What was his name?”
“Howard Rollins. You didn’t know each other?”
“No. But he was friendly and seemed good-natured.” Sadly, she added, “I thought he would make a good character.”
The agents looked at each other in puzzlement. “A good character?” Perkins asked.
“Elle writes and illustrates children’s books,” Glenda said.
Quick to clarify, Elle said, “So far only one has been published. I’m working on the second. I liked this man’s…” She made a circular motion over her face. “He had a kindly face. Like a Santa Claus without the beard.” She bowed her head and said huskily, “I saw him die.”
When she didn’t immediately continue, Compton asked if she needed to take a moment.
“No.” She raised her head, then tilted it back and sniffed. “Let’s just please… Can we… finish soon? How much more do you need to know?”
Compton’s prompting was gentle, but, nonetheless, she gave Elle prompts that forced her to verbalize memories she would rather wish away.
“I could hear Charlie crying, but I couldn’t get to him. Then his stroller was tipped over by a man who barreled past it. He didn’t stop. He ran on.
“Then a man dressed in business clothes lunged from behind me and tried to catch the stroller from teetering, but it had too much momentum. He went down with it. At that point, I didn’t know that he’d been shot.” She rubbed her temple. “My right arm had lost all feeling. It was useless, but somehow, I managed to crawl over to the stroller.”
