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  SHOT GIRL

  Jack is a retired cop who knows and respects firearms. A recent victim of gun violence, she is confined to a wheelchair, getting physical therapy in a rehab facility, and teaching handgun safety and Second Amendment history to the elderly residents.

  A thousand miles away, a very disturbed individual with a modified 9mm pistol, a thousand rounds of ammo, and a singular obsession—to make history as the biggest mass murderer ever—decides to make that active shooting fantasy a reality.

  It has been said the only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.

  Jack is about to find out if that’s true.

  SHOT GIRL by J.A. Konrath

  America has 300 million guns. This is the story of one of them.

  SHOT GIRL

  A Jack Daniels Thriller

  J.A. KONRATH

  CONTENTS

  Author’s Note

  Begin reading SHOT GIRL

  Author Afterword

  Preview of CHASER

  Other recommended titles

  Joe Konrath’s Complete Bibliography

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Between starting to write this novel and completing it, the media has covered over a dozen active shooting tragedies. Not just in America, but worldwide.

  This book is fiction. I’ve made up the perpetrators, incidents, victims, reporting agencies, statistics, and news stories.

  But it should still scare the hell out of you.

  “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

  THE SECOND AMENDMENT

  “Throw up your hands! I want your guns!”

  VIRGIL EARP

  JACK

  According to the best estimates, there are more than one hundred thousand victims of gun violence in the US every year.” I lifted my wheel brake and rolled out from behind the table, pausing for effect. “I’m one of them.”

  I heard no gasps from the group of a dozen, four of whom sat in wheelchairs of their own. Two of the residents, Mrs. Garza from building F16 and Mr. Shoop from B9, flirted in a highly disturbing way, licking and manipulating their dentures, and I might as well have been invisible to them.

  Mr. Karakakus from E2 had his eyes closed. Asleep. Or possibly dead.

  Mrs. Addelbaum from C41 smiled at me, but I had a suspicion it had nothing to do with her interest in my talk, and a lot to do with her believing I was her daughter, Clarissa.

  I locked eyes with Mary Streng from B65, who also smiled appreciatively at me like I was her kid. But in this case, I actually was her kid. Her fifty-three-year-old ex-cop partially-paralyzed kid, wondering once again why the hell I agreed to do this.

  A strong and surprisingly cool-for-August Gulf Coast breeze tousled my hair, and Mrs. Marden lost her floppy sunhat and didn’t seem to notice as it went somersaulting through the piles of zinnia, hopping the fence into the physical therapy pool.

  My mother gave me a thumbs up.

  I glanced down at the notes on my iPhone, but I’d given this lecture many times and only needed a reminder of my place before continuing.

  “Any time you hear a gun statistic, you need to regard it with skepticism. There are too many factors and agendas on both sides of the gun ownership debate, and no mutually agreed upon data collecting body that can… do you have a question, MS. Conseco?”

  MS. Conseco, E55, put down her hand. “Is this the sexual positions group?”

  “That’s after lunch, MS. Conseco. This is the gun handling and safety group.”

  She nodded, smiling. Then she raised her hand again.

  “Yes, MS. Conseco?”

  “What time is it now?”

  “It’s five minutes after nine, dear.”

  “Are they going to teach us reverse cowgirl?”

  “I’m sure they’ll cover it.”

  “How about the clapper?”

  I had no idea what the clapper was. “Sure. Probably.” Sensing I was losing the room, I cut to the chase. “Who wants to hold a gun?”

  Three-quarters of my audience raised their hands. The holdouts were Mom, Mr. Karakakus (who remained asleep or expired), Mrs. Ramos from C28, who was halfway through a disturbingly large plate of BBQ ribs that required one hundred percent of her concentration, and Mrs. Shadid, from Building B, who sat with a poster in her lap. On it, she’d bedazzled the words GUNS KILL PEOPLE with enough glitter to be seen from orbiting satellites.

  Mrs. Shadid acted as our conscientious objector, and I’d promised to give her some one-on-one time later to discuss, in her terms, “Why all guns should be destroyed and all people who use guns are evil.”

  Really looking forward to that talk.

  I had my .38 tucked warmly under my left thigh and managed to lift my leg just enough to free it without too much pain or difficulty.

  The geriatrics who noticed oohed and ahhed appropriately. For the gun, I guessed, not for my feeble motor skills.

  “This is a Colt Cobra thirty-eight caliber +P. It’s a double action revolver, and it holds six cartridges. You pull back the release to free the cylinder to load and unload it.”

  “What is +P?”

  My mother, the plant. She knew exactly what +P meant, but felt compelled to ask questions when I didn’t explain something to her satisfaction.

  “Plus P means it can accept overpressure rounds, which have a higher internal pressure than a standard .38 cartridge. They have a higher stopping power and velocity.”

  “And what’s double action?”

  Thanks again, Mom. “A single action revolver fires when the hammer is manually pulled back into a cocked position. Double action can be fired by just pulling the trigger.”

  “And what’s—”

  I gave Mom a hush up look, and she nodded and smiled and pulled an imaginary zipper across her mouth.

  “Mr. Fincherello, can you tell me the first rule of gun safety?”

  “Shoot the head,” he crowed.

  Titters from the elder gallery.

  I gave a polite, tight-lipped smile. When public speaking, never let your audience know how much you hate it.

  “The first rule of gun safety is always treat a gun as if it is loaded. Never take anyone’s word for it. Always check for yourself. Mr. Fincherello, what’s the proper way to hand someone a firearm?”

  “Just how I like ’em. Butt first!”

  More giggles. I swear, geriatrics were more immature than my five-year old daughter, Sam.

  I took the leather pouch out of the compartment beneath my seat and found the key. Then I removed the trigger lock—two metal pieces that fit over the trigger and trigger guard, preventing the weapon from being fired—and did a quick double check of the Colt, swinging out the cylinder to make sure all six chambers were empty, closing it before the hand-off to Mr. Fincherello.

  Though he enjoyed his role as class clown, Mr. Fincherello had paid attention, and he checked the cylinder for bullets even though he’d just seen me complete the task.

  “MS. Conseco, what’s the second rule of gun safety?”

  “Never point it at anything you don’t intend to destroy.”

  “Very good, MS. Conseco.”

  “Will we learn the bullfighter?”

  “I don’t understand, MS. Conseco.”

  “In the sex position class?”

  “I’m sure they’ll go over it.” I had no idea what that one was, either.

  “Can I dry fire this?” Mr. Fincherello asked.

  “If you can tell me the last two rules.”

  “Only put your finger on the trigger when you are ready to shoot.”

  “Good. That prevents accidentally pulling it. And the fourth?”

  “Th
e fourth is… uh… um…”

  “Always know what’s behind your target.” Mom to the rescue. “Shooting isn’t like you see in the movies. People miss what they’re aiming at. A lot. And if you don’t hit what’s in front of you, you’ll likely kill what’s behind it. With certain kinds of ammo, you can go right through what’s in front of you and still kill what’s behind it.”

  Like me, Mom was a former cop. But she hadn’t won as many shooting trophies as I had.

  “Thanks, Mom. Go ahead and pull the trigger, Mr. Fincherello.”

  He respected the first rule and avoided pointing the weapon at any of the attendees, though when one of the nurses, Marlotta, walked by, he made a vaudeville show of considering it. Thankfully, instead of dry-firing at Marlotta, he opted for the truck parked on the street to the west, the driver unloading storm windows for our retirement-slash-nursing-slash-rehab facility.

  Mr. Fincherello sighted on the side panel and pulled the trigger three times.

  “Now try thumbing the hammer back, Mr. Fincherello. What happens to the trigger?”

  “The trigger moves in.”

  “That lowers the trigger pull weight from about nine pounds to about three and a half pounds. It’s a shorter pull length, and much easier on your finger.”

  Mr. Fincherello dry fired three more times, thumbing back the hammer each time.

  The wind kicked up again, and someone screamed.

  I startled at that; something that had become normal for me lately. Pre GSW, my neurosis of choice had been insomnia. Since my gunshot wound, the sleeplessness had gotten worse, but I’d also been flirting with symptoms uncomfortably close to post traumatic stress disorder.

  Panic attacks. Jolting at loud noises. Hand sweats. Dry mouth. Paranoia.

  Taking a bullet can damage the mind as much as the body.

  The scream had been delivered by Mrs. Ramos; the strong gust had upended her paper plate of ribs, which now decorated her yoga pants and Velcro kicks.

  “I love this,” Mr. Fincherello declared, holding up my Cobra as if it was a trophy. “Where can I buy one?”

  “This is the United States of America,” I told him. “You can go out and buy one right now.”

  “There are no dangerous weapons. There are only dangerous men.”

  ROBERT A. HEINLEIN

  “All we ask for is registration, just like we do for cars.”

  CHARLES SCHUMER

  GAFF

  B4 we get into my story, you need background deets.

  My story doesn’t really start until tomorrow, anyway.

  I’m Gaff.

  Sup.

  Here’s truth.

  The fake media thinks that violent videogames can make you kill people IRL.

  Dead. So dead.

  Like some head glitching scrub on Fortnite finna shoot up a school for realz.

  As if.

  Videogames don’t make killers. Truth.

  The National Research Study Initiative on Videogame Violence estimates that over a billion people play games involving some degree of violence. How many of them go on shooting sprees? NRSIVV could only connect 12 spree shooters from the last two decades to rated M games. Twelve out of a billion isn’t a connection. It can’t even be called a statistic. Compare that to the very real statistic that every single active shooter of the last fifty years has drank milk.

  Should we ban cows bcuz drinking milk leads to mass murder?

  Correlation ain’t causation, yo.

  It’s like those scrubs who think porn leads to rape. That’s cray. Some dude addicted to porn won’t have any juice left to rape no one.

  Those trolls at Good Christian Women and Men United Against Pornography want you to believe that everyone who watches a spanking video is a serial killer in training, and that anytime sex is videoed it degrades women.

  Bye, Felicia.

  Like every person in the world with Internet access, I’ve seen porn.

  How many people I raped? Zero.

  GTFO—get the fuck out—Good Christian Women and Men.

  Why do all these teeks want to blame crimes on stupid shit? The problem isn’t movies or music or games or the internet or porn or immigrants or Muslims or the poor or the rich or drugs or whatever political party isn’t yours.

  Truth. Some people are bad and want to do bad things.

  Sorry not sorry.

  People suck and life is pain and it’s better to be the hunter than the prey.

  Plus, killing is dank.

  That’s a guess on my part. I haven’t killed nobody.

  #NotYet.

  But I think about it. Constant.

  When I was a shawty I saw this old TV show about Cleveland Hooper. Hooper climbed to the top of a water tower in El Pancho, Texas, near a state park. He had a Winchester M14 rifle and shot 38 people, killing 18. The year was 1966, and the M14 was bolt action.

  Every time he fired he had to load the next bullet.

  Extra.

  The TV went into deets how he pinned down a lot of people, shooting one guy four times, just plinking him in the same leg over and over trying to get others to come help him.

  People tried. People died.

  Dope.

  Raw.

  Off the shits.

  It took ten minutes b4 the crowd got woke, twenty-eight minutes for 5-0 to respond, and one hour sixteen minutes b4 a police sniper finally took Hooper out.

  While we watched the TV, my moms kept saying, over and over, how terrible it was.

  “Terrible! So terrible! This is terrible!”

  I thought it was high key.

  I was seven.

  When I was twelve, the Rathlin Massacre went down. You heard of it. August 10, 2009, in Rathlin, South Carolina, teenagers and BFFs Gregory Taylor Schneider and Tully Huffland walked into Rathlin High School wearing commando outfits and ski masks, carrying two giggled-out Glock 21s and four hundred rounds of ammunition. They weren’t expert marksmen like Hooper. This was point and click.

  Spray and slay.

  They offed six teachers, eighteen students, and wounded thirty-four others. Police took nine minutes thirty-eight seconds to arrive on the scene, shot both dudes. Schneider died, GSW to the dome, but Huffland survived, and is now serving twenty-four consecutive life sentences.

  Schneider and Huffland called themselves the Suburban Eliminators. I’ve read five ebooks about them. Like the fake media, the books tried to blame their parents, and bullying, and gun control laws, and violent videogames, and death metal music, and drugs, and splatter movies.

  But Huffland always denied all that BS. Everyone knows his famous quote.

  “I did it for lulz.”

  I got that shit tattooed on my forearm.

  My moms went ballistic. Not bcuz of the ink; she never seen it. I keep it hid, cover it with make-up when I’m sleeveless. Moms went nuts bcuz of the massacre. Kept me out of school for over a week, blinds drawn and praying her rosary over and over. When I finally went back to seventh grade, she made me carry around a twelve-pound cast iron skillet in my backpack.

  “If someone starts shooting, hold it in front of you.”

  “How about I just get a gun. Then I could shoot back.”

  “Guns are the problem! Don’t you ever let me hear you talk that way again!”

  Can’t even.

  In high school, I hit puberty late, didn’t have a growth spurt until I was fourteen. But during my pre-pube years I tried to pick a fight with anyone I could.

  For the feels.

  When I was a kid, my moms was known as a helicopter parent. Always hovering around me, making sure I didn’t get hurt. Signed me up for a katrillion activities, and my moms went to every one.

  When I fell during peewee soccer practice and skinned my knee, she cried louder than I did, then went on a crusade to force everyone to wear knee pads.

  When I came in fourth place during a cross country meet, Moms gave the whole district an earful about how everyone who participates nee
ds to get a ribbon.

  Moms went postal when they wouldn’t let me into high school bcuz my vaccines weren’t up to date bcuz vaccines caused autism. I was forced to get the boosters, and then walked around with a thermometer in my mouth for the next month bcuz if I showed the tiniest symptom Moms was ready to sue the school district, the doctor, the AMA, the vaccine manufacturer, and all the corrupt politicians that made it a law.

  I didn’t get sick. She acted all disappointed.

  Now y’all might think this made me salty or something.

  Stay in your lane.

  I grew up feeling nothing. Pops died when I was two years old so I had no one to look up to. No neighborhood kid was ever good enough to be my friend. But Moms never loved me neither, so I didn’t get why she always scared them off.

  #Confusing.

  As a kid, I didn’t know what it was to win. Or to lose. Or to pay for the consequences of my actions. If I got a C on an assignment, Moms went jihad on the teacher. If I got into a fight I started, Moms always victim blamed.

  But I don’t blame her for what I am.

  Wanting to shoot a bunch of people has nothing to do with anything my moms did or didn’t do.

  I want to do it for the same reason I got into fights.

  To feel something.

  High key.

  Hitting someone felt good.

  Getting hit felt good.

  I didn’t care about the kids I fought. Some of them were okay.

  No offense, bruh. Bite or get bit.

  A school counselor, who didn’t think my fighting had anything to do with R rated movies, too much sex on TV, the threat of legalized cannabis, or role-playing games and first-person shooters (which I didn’t even play, bcuz Moms forbid it), recommended I take an MMA class for kids.

  I 4realz loved it. Went five times, did pretty good, until a bigger kid gave me a black eye, and Moms hired a lawyer and sued the kid’s parents and my instructor.

  To be honest, none of it matters. Maybe, in the future, someone will write a book about me. Try to show I’m a product of my effed-up era. Grew up learning to read on a smart phone. Got my lulz trolling n00bs on social media bcuz no accountability online. Just an overprotected and entitled teen who don’t understand hard work bcuz the baby boomers and gen Xers deitsched the world and why should I have to do anything difficult bcuz I’m a special snowflake and there’s no real equality and SJWs blame me for my white privilege.