"I'm going to try to get everything on his phone over to you, but..." Tricia said as she sped along the interstate on her way to Southfield Mall. "I know. We're dealing with the local cops too – make sure you show them your badge." Alexi's wry tone cut into Tricia's uncertainty. "Turn left at Exit 117," the GPS on Tricia's phone called out. "OK, Alexi, I'm almost there, I've gotta go," Tricia said, hanging up the call. Her office had gotten the call forty minutes before: mass shooting incident at a mall just over the North Dakota border. Her office wouldn't normally respond to things like this, but they were the closest FBI field office, and with her lights on Tricia could be the first one on the scene.
Pulling off the interstate and into the sprawling mall parking lot, Tricia found the assembled squad cars and parked next to them. She stepped out and flagged down the first officer she saw, an older man with grey-blonde hair who seemed to be in charge. "Special Agent Tricia McMullon, FBI," she said by way of introduction, flashing her badge. The police officer gave a long, uncomfortable pause, looking Tricia up and down, and then said, "I'm Chief Ganton, Southfield PD. I'd heard the FBI was going to send someone, but I'll tell you the truth, we don't need the help. Shooter's dead and we're talking to the witnesses."
Tricia couldn't help but wonder about the chief's response – was it stupid pride or sexism? After all, Tricia was a fairly unassuming woman. In her late thirties, she stayed fit and often looked younger, especially at her height – five foot four in heels, she would say. Of course she wasn't wearing heels, preferring a practical track shoe, along with simple glasses and her unruly hair pulled back into a messy ponytail. She was someone who was fairly easy to overlook. That quality had suited Tricia just fine when she'd started her career. Starting out as a computer forensics analyst in Quantico, she had kept her head down and done the work; that was how she'd succeeded. Then of course there was an opening for a special agent role, and somewhat on a lark she'd applied and found that she'd been accepted. Her background in computers was something the FBI sorely needed in its agents as more and more crime turned digital and less and less of a special agent's work was traditional pavement pounding. She didn't mind that even after she'd made special agent people still mistook her for an analyst; she did some of her best work when no one was paying attention, and it gave her a certain freedom.
With Chief Ganton, Tricia knew exactly the tack to take, one she'd learned to employ over years of dealing with superiors who were confidently wrong. "Look, Chief, you clearly have this under control," she said without a hint of sarcasm, even as she gestured to the police officers milling about trying to figure out what to do. "When there's a mass shooting like this the FBI gets brought in. Let me do my job here, and we'll make sure you get to do yours." Chief Ganton nodded; Tricia could tell he liked that she'd complimented him. "I'll need the killer's phone, anything else he had on him," Tricia said, and the chief obliged, directing her to a uniformed officer collecting evidence. As Tricia started to head over, a woman caught her eye – a uniformed police officer, dark-skinned, but seemingly separate from the others. She was standing by herself, and unlike the other officers she didn't seem concerned with looking busy. Something about this woman drew Tricia towards her. Something wasn't right.
"Hi, Special Agent Tricia McMullon, FBI," Tricia said, introducing herself. "Lieutenant Daniella Roxbury," the woman offered in return, her voice shaky. "What can you tell me about the shooting, Lieutenant?" Tricia asked, slowing her words and stepping to the side so the woman's view would be focused on her and not the other officers. Daniella looked Tricia in the eye for a second and then, lowering her head, began to talk. "I had stopped here to grab something for lunch during a patrol. When I went in I heard the commotion and the gunfire, so I tried to get somewhere safe to call for backup." Daniella paused and Tricia nodded. Alexi had briefed her on the situation over the phone: a police officer had happened to be at the mall and managed to single-handedly take down the gunman. Tricia hadn't realized that it was a woman, and a Black woman at that. She looked at the rest of the Southfield police force – white men, tall and blonde. Here this woman stood out like a sore thumb, and that she was the hero cop who had saved everyone was going to rub all these guys the wrong way. Tricia gave her a month before she would resign. Daniella finished the story: how she'd ducked into a store only to have the gunman come in, how he hadn't seen her at first as he'd started shooting the store clerk, and how she'd managed to shoot him. "I killed him," she said with a waver in her voice, clearly conflicted. "You saved a lot of people," Tricia reassured her, then reached into her pocket and pulled out a business card. "If you ever need anything, give me a call," she said, adding, "What you did was pretty amazing. The FBI could use people like you." Tricia knew it was a long shot – Daniella seemed nice, someone who wasn't really ready for what was about to hit her all at once: the private trauma of killing someone, the public praise for being a hero, and the subtle harassment for being better than people with fragile egos. Still, if she did end up in the FBI, Tricia could always use another agent. She loved her analysts, but sometimes she needed someone who could get their hands dirty.
The rest of the crime scene was exactly as described. The mall itself had been mostly empty. The man had shot three people: a security guard who was expected to make it, a janitor who was pronounced dead on the scene, and a young woman working in a retail store who had been shot before Daniella managed to take down the gunman. Word had just come in that the woman had died on the way to the hospital. Then of course there was the killer himself. He'd had his driver's license on him – Shaun Bennet of Dallas, Texas – and they'd found his car, an old beat-up Camry, one of only a few in the lot that didn't belong to a mall employee, its Texas plates giving it away. The inside of the car was filthy, filled with discarded energy drink cans.
Tricia had managed to get a partial clone of the killer's phone using the laptop in her car; for the full copy it would need to be sent off to a lab for the encryption to be broken. With the evidence collected, Tricia handed out business cards to all the witnesses and police, reminding them to call with any information, and got ready to head back to her office. As she did she overheard a man in a nice collared shirt arguing with the police chief. "We're going to have to keep it closed as a crime scene for a few days," the chief was saying, a note of sympathy in his voice. "Look, when I talk to the town council you're going to hear about this," the man said, frustrated, and stormed off. Tricia looked around. Southfield seemed like a place that was pretty down on its luck. She'd seen the map when she'd put the address into her GPS – a mall and some surrounding small shops, a handful of houses spread out – and with the mall shut down for a few days she imagined most of the town would be out of work. Still, what were they supposed to do? It would take a day at least for the crime scene cleanup people to come in and get the blood off the tile. Did this guy really think people would show up to a mall and just ignore the bloodstains from a mass shooting? Feeling drained from the whole situation, Tricia climbed into her car and got back on the interstate heading east, back to her office.