Previously in "The Teacher":

A gunman invades the Ellison Elementary School and takes a classroom hostage. While the teacher, Andi Defesne, attempts to talk to the assailant, Kevin Greer attempts to negociate on behalf of the police department, all while learning about underlying political implications.


Andi lowered all of the car's windows before driving towards the exit of the hotel's parking lot. Warm air swirled through the sedan as she turned right and joined the light afternoon traffic.

She kept the car's radio off. She knew what all the stations would be talking about, even those who normally didn't cover the news. She didn't want to hear it. Silence was better.

It was mid-May. The ordeal with John Kirkland happened a long time ago. The Ellison Elementary School felt like a world away. So much had changed.

But, for the first time in a long time, Andi was again in the same place as John Kirkland. She wasn't sure how to feel about that.

Andi approached an intersection and stopped as the light turned red. As she waited, she dug her phone out of her handbag and opened the Maps app. Though she hadn't had a destination in mind when she'd decided to drive, there was one place she thought was worth seeing since she was in town anyway.

Earlier, during their drive to the hotel, she and Marshall almost drove past the facility where John was being held. Andi wasn't sure if Marshall had been aware of the coincidence.

She'd briefly considered stopping to go in and see him, but the feeling didn't linger. Still, it did feel strange to be so close to her second assailant again. The fact it'd been so long certainly contributed to these odd feelings.

The light turned green and Andi began driving again. In basic principles, she knew John was where he belonged. But she spent an entire day at the man's mercy. It was still hard to simply find closure when one's hostage taker was locked up.

So much was different now. Shortly before John's invasion into her classroom, Andi and Marshall had begun contemplating the idea of starting their family. At the very least, they wanted to get out of their tiny apartment with the kitchen/office and bedroom/laundry room. There was being joined together for life. Andi and Marshall were living like Tetris pieces.

After leaving Mather Hospital that night in January, they'd put off the idea of having children. Andi had to process everything that happened and needing to worry about a baby wouldn't help.

"We'll wait then," Marshall said and Andi appreciated his capitulation.

They did make other changes. After many late nights of contemplation and calculations, they'd purchased a small, ranch-style house ten minutes from the school. Andi found she liked walking home for lunch every day, provided the weather was favorable.

Then, Marshall made another suggestion.

"There's more than one way to start a family," he said and Andi realized the nature of his underlying idea.

As she drove, Andi smiled at this memory. Rey always brought nothing but happy feelings and positive energy.

After settling into their new home, the couple reached out to Dave, a friend of Marshall's who trained guide dogs at a school not far from Port Jefferson. Dave wrote a referral and they were approved to apply to adopt a dog who did not make it through training. Four months later, they met a blind man named Michael around Andi's age. He walked them through the paperwork and collected two thousand dollars for the adoption of Rey, a seventeen-month-old black Labrador Retriever/Golden Retriever cross. The dog was released from guide dog training for barking at random noises and small animals like squirrels.

"Seems like a regular dog to me," Marshall had remarked.

One consistency in Rey's behavior was his barking when the doorbell rang. While learning and understanding Michael's explanation about why this wouldn't work for becoming a guide dog, Andi appreciated this characteristic, along with the dog's tall stature.

"You going to keep the house safe?" she'd asked him on the drive home that day.

Rey, curled up between her feet in the passenger seat wheel well, replied with a groan of contentment.

Currently, Marshall's friend Dave was watching Rey during this short trip. Andi would have liked to take him, but the logistics with putting the dog in the plane's cargo hold were too complex for this thirty-six-hour trip.

Another light turned red and Andi dutifully stopped, not missing the police car crossing in front of her. The two officers inside paid her no mind. There was a good chance they had no clue who she was, let alone that she was even in their proximity. Despite these good odds, Andi hoped for their obliviousness. She no longer counted on odds, favorable or not.

She also didn't miss the school located diagonally to her left. A bush blocked a clear view of the sign in front of the building, but the swing set poking out from behind the structure made the student body's age range clear.

Andi supposed this school was still one of the lucky academic institutions whose history was not marred by random violence. She supposed she'd made her peace with what happened, but she envied this school's teachers. They weren't haunted by memories of desperate men and guns.

It took a year of therapy and plenty of quiet reflection, along with long walks with Rey, but the nightmares and bouts of sobbing had finally stopped. Still, Andi double-checked her classroom door at least three times a day and her spare glasses now sat next to her computer keyboard at all times. Everyone excepted these changes without comment.

This light turned green as well and Andi made a right turn, avoiding the school building's visage in her rearview mirror. She couldn't see the police car from earlier. Perhaps that was for the best as well.

School back home was canceled for a week following the crisis. Andi and her class received an additional week off, after which the week-long mid-winter break began. Almost a month after John's invasion, they returned to the Ellison Elementary School, having been relocated to a different classroom on the other side of the building. This group of second graders was now nestled at the end of the fourth grade wing.

To Andi's delight, every student was present on their first day back. She didn't dare to venture down to her old room and learned from a colleague it was empty. Rumors suggested it would now be used for storage, its infamy too great for any educator to overcome.

The break hadn't been restful. Apart from meetings and therapy sessions, Andi visited her students at least once a week. It felt surreal to be sitting with them one-on-one in their family's dens or kitchens, with a parent or guardian usually hovering nearby.

"Want to see my room?" more than one pupil had asked.

Andi always declined, wanting to maintain some boundaries. Instead, they talked about activities the kids were doing with their families. Sometimes, she helped with assignments the kids had been given so they wouldn't fall too far behind.

She'd also hosted a few group activities at the community center or library. At least one of those had included a professional counselor with a therapy dog.

The topic of what happened didn't come up often. In fact, Andi had talked about it more with the students' parents to gauge how the kids were doing. The responses varied widely. Some students were angry for a while. Others cried. Though they were all seeing therapists like Andi, some posed their questions to her.

"Did that man really hurt and kill people?"

"Is he going to jail forever?"

"Will he come back?"

"Why did he do it?"

The last question was always the hardest to resolve. Andi still wasn't sure about the answer. John had said he had no choice, but this was too vague to offer closure. He hadn't spoken to anyone since his arrest who was repeating his statements. No reporter was able to get an interview and his lawyers only talked about their intended defenses for the trial.

Following her phone's directions, Andi merged onto I-80 and headed east. She was about twenty minutes away. Cruising down the highway, she thought about the lawyers again. Lawyers always made things more complicated.

Andi had needed to consult an attorney of her own when the Suffolk County District Attorney's Office convened a grand jury to investigate the school's culpability in John gaining access to the school. She spent two months freaking out and not even the lawyer, Lancet Spooner, taking her case pro bono brought any relief. Despite his kindness and professionalism, Andi was sure he'd done it for the publicity.

"They can't find you being responsible for this because there isn't anything to find in your actions," Lancet Spooner explained. "The most important thing you can do now is relax and not talk to anyone without consulting me."

"Can I tell the grand jury I never meant for this to happen?" Andi asked.

"No. That very statement implies you did something to let this happen."

Andi was grateful when it was all rendered moot. Some sort of engineer examined the lock on her classroom door and found it to be defective. While Andi could still lock and unlock it manually, a slipped spring caused the automatic locking mechanism to fail when Andi closed her door after her students' arrival that January morning.

"Did you know the lock was defective?" Lancet Spooner asked before telling Andi about the engineer's determination.

"No," Andi replied.

"No indication there was a problem?"

"No."

Lancet Spooner then spoke to the District Attorney's Office, after which the grand jury determined the fault lay with the school's maintenance department failing to check the locks in the months before the incident. Apparently, this was supposed to happen every quarter but hadn't happened since September.

Some of the parents were said to be preparing a lawsuit against the school district for endangering their children. Rumors and talking heads either dispelled the notion or implied such a suit would not be successful.

Nevertheless, Lancet Spooner asked if Andi wanted to pursue damages against her employer.

"You were in as much danger as those kids," he'd pointed out. "For the same reasons, too."

"I'm not sure," Andi said and the matter hadn't been discussed since. She now wondered if it was too late to file a claim. Was she so vindictive?

A flash of blue caught Andi's eye and she realized her exit was approaching. Moving into the far-right lane, she made it to the ramp for Exit 145 just in time.

Listening to her phone's GPS, she supposed her kids, now two grades beyond her, had also made their peace with what happened. Everyone's grades recovered from their long absence and no one was left behind at the end of that school year. She didn't hear about any serious behavioral issues which could have resulted from their ordeal in the classroom. One boy and his family moved away the following summer and more unconfirmed rumors suggested the hostage crisis was the reason. A girl and her family moved the following year, though that was because of her mother's new job. Andi was willing to believe both moves had similar causes ... or maybe she just wanted to.

Andi focused again, following the signs, she found an empty space and parked. She tucked her phone back in her handbag, she got out of the car and crossed the parking lot.

She was now on her third batch of students since that long day in January. Abigail, the younger sister of one of her students three years ago, was now in her class. Abigail's brother was not mentioned often. With three weeks left in this school year, there wouldn't be many more chances for that to happen.

Andi encountered no one else's younger siblings in her new classes. Still, there were occasions when one of her pupils would make a query about what had happened. Her refusals to talk about it were polite but firm.

"That was a long time ago," she'd often say. "We've got more important things to focus on right now."

"Can I help you?" someone asked.

Snapping out of her thoughts, Andi saw a security guard approaching.

"No," she said, smiling. "I'm just visiting and looking around."

The security guard studied her for a few seconds before nodding. She wondered if he knew who she was.

"The ice rink's closed for maintenance," he advised.

"Thank you," Andi said.

They both kept walking as Andi's mind wandered as well.

Like with her students, she declined to speak to reporters about what happened. For a few weeks after the hostage crisis, she was the hottest media commodity in the country. She refused to embrace her infamy. For a while, the Suffolk County Police Department stationed a car outside her home to ward off reporters and gawkers. Some media outlets even brought up her father's actions from over two decades earlier. A photo of his mistress, believed to have been a contributing cause for his murders and suicide, graced screens across the country while reporters also talked about his mental illness and embezzlement. Thankfully, everyone's interest in Andi died down after a little while.

There were plenty of other subjects in this story more willing to speak with the media. A few parents shared their opinions on school security, gun safety, and more of the usual talking points which arose in the wake of these incidents. Politicians, particularly those throughout the northeast, gave their thoughts on why their opponents were wrong on these matters. It was so convoluted that Andi stopped watching the news for a while.

She had learned one important thing in this barrage of needless chatter. The mysterious blonde she'd seen on the hospital's television was identified. It was no high-octane ah-ha moment. All it had taken was for a reporter to identify her in relation to John's case. She was the mother of one of the victims ... one of the college students he'd car-jacked and killed in Watertown. But, apart from that interview, she was almost as reclusive as Andi. Andi wondered if they'd see each other the next day. Something still nagged her about that woman.

As she walked, Andi thought about what would come tomorrow. It was one final step in this saga.

She stopped and stared at the stadium ahead of her, considering its symbolism. She'd been ten when the towers fell, the Pentagon burned, and a group of passengers prevented further devastation from befalling the Capital or the White House. Five months after that day, after she'd turned eleven, the world gathered at this stadium. She supposed those Olympic Games came with a theme of recovery and coming together. Maybe it was fitting to be here now for the closing chapter of her own long spiel.

The sun was beginning to set behind her. Andi knew she ought to head back to the hotel. She thought she'd spotted a liquor store a block or so from the hotel. Maybe she could retrace her steps and pick something up for her and Marshall to share with whatever they'd find to eat.

* * *

As she moved towards the doors, Andi thought about how many times John had expressed his certainty that his actions would earn him a death sentence. How many references had he made to gurneys and needles and Indiana? It was several weeks after the ordeal when Andi went on the Internet and learned Terr Haute, Indiana, was was the site of a maximum-security prison. Within the walls of this facility was the federal government's Death Row and the Execution Chamber. This new information had made Andi sick and she'd vomited in a wastepaper basket upon digesting it.

Now, the time had come.

"You okay?" Marshall asked, placing a hand on Andi's shoulder.

Andi nodded.

"Let's go," she insisted.

A deputy Marshal stationed at the doors checked the passes they'd been given downstairs. When they were cleared through this checkpoint, the third or fourth since they'd entered the building, another court officer opened the door for them.

The courtroom was bustling as Andi entered with Marshall behind her. Due to space and security concerns, access to these proceedings had been strictly controlled, leaving many eager spectators on the wrong side of the doors. Given everything that happened, Andi was guaranteed a seat from the beginning. This was the first time she'd accepted it.

It took almost two and a half years before John Kirkland went to trial. After conferring with local prosecutors in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New York and then with his superior in Washington, the U.S. Attorney for the federal district of Massachusetts filed murder charges in the deaths of Patrick Fahey and Mallory Whiteson. None of the effected states had capital punishment and there were limitations as to what the U.S. Attorney could do, but murder during a carjacking was a crime eligible for the federal death penalty. The U.S. Attorney General, having the final say on this matter, didn't hesitate in authorizing the prosecution's pursuit of John Kirkland's execution.

The Assistant U.S. Attorney assigned to the case was a man in his fifties named Carl Hasson. A lifelong prosecutor, he understood legal proceedings and when to fight ridiculous motions. He also understood when a token protest was more appropriate. The motion for a change of venue filed by the team of federal public defenders assigned to represent John was the perfect example. The overwhelming publicity throughout New York and the New England region would make it impossible to seat an impartial jury of twelve plus six alternates. In addition, many state and federal judges in the area were recusing themselves because of their prior association with Superior Court Judge Michelle Powell, the jurist slain during the courthouse shooting in Boston.

The case was moved to the federal district of Utah. Eighteen people who were deemed impartial were selected and, in a rare move, sequestered in a hotel in downtown Salt Lake City. The trial, costing taxpayers well over a million dollars, lasted three months with almost a hundred witnesses testifying. Though the press was allowed to observe the proceedings, cameras and recording devices were banned. This left the reporters to go out and regale their colleagues and audiences every afternoon from the streets of Salt Lake City. Legal experts also saturated the news programs and talk shows, dissecting and analyzing every move made and every word uttered inside the courtroom. It was a level of attention this city of two hundred thousand people had not seen in twenty years.

Some reporters watched as Andi and Marshall slid into seats. The couple was a few rows behind the prosecution table, where Carl Hasson and his assistants were completing last-minute preparations.

Looking out at the spectator gallery, Hasson spotted Andi. He stepped away from the table and through the gate separating the front of the courtroom from the gallery. With a few long strides, he reached her row.

"Mrs. Defesne," he said. "Good to see you."

They'd talked on and off over the past two years. At one point, Hasson considered putting Andi on the stand to testify. But, throughout the pre-trial preparations, motions, and hearings, he and the defense agreed not to mention the hostage crisis except for that a car with Patrick Fahey's missing license plate was found in the parking lot of the Ellison Elementary School and that John Kirkland's fingerprint was found on that license plate. The identity of the car's actual owner, Deputy U.S. Marshal Joseph Shaw, was likewise excluded from these proceedings as to not prejudice the jury by bringing up the shooting in Connecticut.

John's guilt in that attack was overwhelming. It turned out a security camera the Shaws installed over their front door recorded the entire incident, also proving that Eleanor Shaw was shot before she even bent to pick up her fallen husband's gun. John Kirkland could be seen on the recording and it was clear his actions hadn't been in self-defense as he claimed to Andi.

Hasson had offered Andi the opportunity to speak during the penalty phase of the trial. Andi suspected he wanted her to talk about her ordeal in excruciating detail in order to leave the jury with no choice but to send the defendant to Death Row. She declined without comment and Hasson was wise enough not to push the issue.

"It should be pretty quick today," the prosecutor commented as he reached over and shook Marshall's hand.

Andi nodded. She hadn't made up her mind about if John deserved the death penalty, whether for the murders of the two college students or his crimes as a whole. She'd never thought much about capital punishment. When she was fifteen, a reporter asked if, had her father not killed himself, should he have received the death penalty for killing her mother and brother. The question came up because her grandfather was about to hear a high-profile appeal by a man on Death Row in Tennessee convicted of murdering his ex-wife and her new husband in Nashville and attempting to cover up his deed by burning down their home. Furious, her grandfather terminated the interview before Andi needed to answer and made it his personal mission to keep the press away from his granddaughter. Since his live interview during the hostage crisis, he refused to make a single comment in relation to John Kirkland, not even responding to considerations that he would need to recuse himself from any future appeal the U.S. Supreme Court might receive from the man. He'd visited Andi several times since the crisis and the two avoided talking about the case. Still, Andi could see the rage in his eyes whenever John's name was mentioned on the car radio or somewhere similar. He probably wanted the man, the second to threaten his granddaughter's life, dead and Andi wouldn't blame him for it.

"I better get back," Hasson said, looking at his assistants up at the prosecution table. "We can talk later if you want."
Andi nodded and he moved back up the center aisle. He stopped to speak with another woman. Andi recognized her as Daphne Fahey, the mother of Patrick Fahey. She'd been on the news several times over the past two years, expressing her grief over her son's death and decrying the lengthy pre-trial preparations, though she blamed the defense attorneys for the latter. Another of Carl Hasson's gifts was appealing to victims and their families.

Andi supposed Patrick Fahey's father, Mark, was seated next to his wife, but she couldn't be sure while only seeing the back of the man's head. He wasn't looking at Hasson.

Andi was sure Mallory Whiteson's family was present, though she couldn't see them. They'd withdrawn from the public eye soon after John was arrested. Reporters were only able to catch glimpses of them as they attended court every day. Andi remembered the solitary interiiew Mallory Whiteson's mother gave, the one she'd seen at the hospital.

Looking around, Andi did catch glimpses of Sargent Greer from Suffolk County and Special Agent Nance from the FBI. Both had testified at the trial, though Sargent Greer's time on the stand was brief as he was only needed to establish the presence of Patrick Fahey's missing license plate at the Ellison Elementary School. Agent Nance's role in the case, and consequently his testimony, was more extensive. He was appointed the lead agent on the case after the murders in Watertown and had reviewed the evidence while the manhunt for John grew beyond Massachusetts's borders.

Andi had heard that Suffolk County Police Lieutenant Aldo Cruz had retired and was rumored to be fishing off the coast of California. He seemed to have made a clean break from the case. Given he'd held a supervisory role throughout the crisis, with his instructions being carried out by various entities, his testimony wasn't needed.

Across the aisle and a few rows up, Andi saw Tanya Kirkland, a.k.a. Dorothy Kaiser. She was sitting with a man around her age, probably her boyfriend or fiancée, and an older couple. They had to be John's parents. Andi couldn't be sure from the angle she had. The only reason she could infer anything was because Tanya had glanced back over her shoulder when someone mentioned her name.

No one had ever made it clear why Tanya wrote her children's books under the penname Dorothy Kaiser. Anyone who didn't know about this connection before knew it now. Through multiple press releases by her agent or publicist, Tanya offered her condolences for the victims and their families and expressed support for her brother. Rumors suggested her offer to pay his legal fees was rebutted, leaving John in the hands of three federal public defenders qualified for capital murder trials. Studying the woman, Andi couldn't tell what she was thinking now.