I sat on the roof for twenty minutes then, waiting for the shakes to leave my body. They didn’t.

My phone rang, and it was Remy.

“I just heard what happened from SWAT,” she said. “Jesus, P.T.”

I recounted how the gunman had grabbed the teacher. “He had a .38 to her neck,” I said. “Dragged her to the window.”

“Did he see you?”

“I dunno,” I said. “The teacher got loose, and he just stood there for a moment. Then he turned and pointed his gun toward the kids. I took the shot.”

My partner said nothing, and I watched SWAT move from classroom to classroom, hand-signaling and clearing each area as they searched for additional weapons or explosives.

“I gotta go,” I said, noticing movement through the trees ahead. “Fuller is coming.”

I hung up, and the head of Internal Affairs appeared through the hedge.

“Detective Marsh,” Fuller said.

“Bird,” I answered.

People called Fuller “Big Bird” because he has this scruffy patch of wavy blond hair up on the top of his head. He’s unusually skinny, and has a good four inches on me.

“The cops I see . . . I see often,” Fuller proclaimed in this nasally voice he’s got. The sentence was a reference to him having investigated me before. An investigation I was cleared of.

I ignored the remark. Pointed to the back of the shed. “You wanna come up here, or do you want me to come down?”

“I’ll come to you,” he said.

Fuller scrambled up the same way I did and crouched, the branches all around his shoulders. He took a photograph of me from that angle. Then a wide shot of the whole roof. He lay down prone beside me and shot a photograph of the art room from my vantage point.

“Your weapon,” he said, gloving up and collecting it.

“It’s Gattling’s,” I said. Referring to the blue-suiter whose Remington I’d borrowed. “There’s a slug still in there.” I motioned at the weapon, which I’d reloaded.

Big Bird opened the action and rolled the shotgun over, popping the unused shell from it. He swabbed my hands. “You have binoculars?”

“My partner’s,” I said. “Not the department’s.”

He waited, and I produced them. As I did, I thought of the call from Governor Monroe. If Fuller asked for my cell phone, did I have to oblige?

“I just want to see what you saw,” Fuller said, looking through the binocs. He held on the classroom window for a beat and then handed them back. Bagged the slug from the rooftop and told me to go to the ambulance. Get checked out.

“And don’t talk to anyone,” he said.

I climbed down from the shed and walked back to the front of the school, threading my way across the playing field this time, instead of through the forest. The ground was artificial turf, and tiny black beads of rubber had come loose from players’ cleats digging in and were scattered everywhere.