The Competition Read online

  Annoyed, I yanked my arm away. “I’m authorized—”

  “I know. By me.”

  The familiar voice made me stop. I looked up, and for a brief moment, even smiled. “Hey.” I shouldn’t have been surprised. After all, Graden Hales was the lieutenant of Robbery-Homicide. I started to lean into him, then caught myself and stepped back.

  Graden gave my arm a quick squeeze, then turned to the area inside the crime scene tape. “I just finished walking through the school,” he said. “I’ve seen bad, but nothing comes close to this.”

  That was saying something. Graden hadn’t scored an early promotion to management by cozying up to the brass. He’d worked his way up through the ranks, serving in some of the most violent divisions in the city.

  “How many?” I asked.

  “We’ve counted twenty-seven dead so far, and those are just the ones who were pronounced at the scene. We don’t have an accurate count of the wounded yet, and may not for a few days. The local hospitals filled up fast. They’ve had to reach farther and farther out to find beds.”

  Twenty-seven dead and counting. That made this one of the worst school shootings since…the thirty-three killed at Virginia Tech—but that was a university. As far as public school shootings went, it was worse than Columbine or Sandy Hook. Graden looked at me intently. “You sure you want to see this?”

  No. I really wasn’t. “I have to.”

  Graden signaled to Bailey, who’d been talking to one of the officers at the door.

  “Lieutenant,” she said, when she’d joined us. Graden nodded. “I just got another update.” The tension in her voice told me it wasn’t a good one. “Hospital just pronounced two more.”

  “Twenty-nine confirmed,” Graden said. “So far.”

  4

  Bailey’s cell phone buzzed on her hip. I didn’t want her to answer it. I didn’t want to hear about yet another dead child.

  “Dorian’s on her way,” Bailey said. “Says nobody better be touching anything.”

  Dorian Struck, aka “she who must be obeyed,” was the best criminalist and crime scene analyst in the business—and she knew it. She ruled her roost with an iron fist and woe to the fool who didn’t follow her orders.

  “Then we’d better get moving,” Graden said. “I’ll walk you through in chronological order. They hit the gym first, so we’ll start there.”

  Bailey and I followed as he skirted the crime scene tape and led us through the wide hallway that ran from the main entrance to the back of the school, where the gym was located. “How many shooters?” I asked. “Do you know yet?”

  “We’re pretty sure there were just two.”

  The fluorescent lighting penetrated every inch of the scene with cruel, sharp clarity. A body covered with a sheet lay in the hallway just outside the open door to the gym. As we drew near, the thick, metallic smell of blood grew overwhelming. I slowed to look around the stretch of hallway that led into the gym—and to push down the nausea that threatened to bubble up into my mouth. Blood was everywhere. There was a pool near the sheet-covered body, a fine spray on the walls and the doors just outside the gym. When we reached the entryway to the gym I saw numbered evidence cards that marked the killers’ path through the bleachers and across the floor to our left.

  Graden stopped and pointed at them. “Keep to the far right and stay close.”

  We fell in behind Graden, moving slowly, careful to stay away from the evidence markers and the cops, crime scene techs and coroner investigators. As bad as the hallway had been, the scene in the gym was worse—much worse. Bodies—eleven by my count—were strewn like rag dolls across the bleachers, the aisle stairs, and the floor. The sight and the smell of the carnage made me swallow to keep from heaving. I forced myself to take it all in. The air still felt thick with panic, tears, and terror. What kind of monsters could have done this?

  “The killers were students?” Bailey asked.

  “That’s the theory at this point,” Graden replied.

  We left the gym, and Graden stopped at the foot of the stairway that led to the second floor, where crime scene techs were taking measurements and dusting for prints.

  “We had another four victims on the stairs and three more in the hallway leading to the library. We’ll take the elevator.”

  When we got to the second floor, I was able to look down on the stairway. The bodies had been removed, but the clothing that had been ripped and cut away by paramedics draped the steps. And once again, blood was everywhere. I closed my eyes for a moment, overloaded by the gore and the terrifying violence that had ripped through the school like a demonic cyclone.

  “This is the last of it,” Graden said, as he led us toward the library.

  He pointed to a desk on our left and I saw a pink sneaker on the floor in front of it. “We found another two victims there. A teacher and a young girl. The girl had a close-range shot straight to the forehead.”

  I didn’t even try to make myself look under that desk. Graden moved farther into the library, and I trailed behind, knowing I couldn’t take much more.

  “And here is what passes for good news,” Graden said. He stopped outside a taped-off section of the room where photographers and coroner investigators were congregated. At the center of the activity were two dead bodies. It took me a few moments, but from what I could see, they looked like two teenage boys. It wasn’t that obvious at first. To call the sight gruesome wouldn’t do it justice. The faces were masses of red pulp and exposed bone, the features completely obliterated—no doubt by shots fired at point-blank range—and their bodies were just a couple of feet apart. Black balaclavas lay next to each of them and there was a handgun at each of their right sides.

  “So the suspects shot each other?” I asked. “Or themselves?”

  “We think they shot each other,” Graden said. “But we’ll have to wait for the coroner to give us a definite on that.” Graden stared for a long minute, then continued, his voice brittle. “At least you won’t have to sit in trial and listen to a bunch of shrinkers talk about how it was all mommy’s fault for giving them an Atari instead of an Xbox.”

  “Yeah,” I said. But it was cold comfort. Their deaths wouldn’t bring all those children back.

  Bailey pointed to the small handguns near the bodies. “I thought they used AKs.”

  “They did,” Graden replied. “We found one on the floor just outside the gym. Looks like it might have jammed—”

  “So he dumped it—” I said.

  Graden nodded. “And we found the second one at the top of the stairs with an empty magazine.”

  “So the other one kept firing the AK—” Bailey said.

  “Until it emptied. But the one who’d dumped his AK downstairs had at least one, possibly two, handguns on him. We found shell casings from a forty-four caliber and a three-fifty-seven on the stairs.”

  Bailey pointed to the guns that lay near the bodies in front of us. “But those aren’t forty-fours or three-fifty-sevens.”

  “No. They’re both cheap twenty-five-caliber Saturday night specials.”

  “Man, they were carrying an arsenal,” Bailey said.

  I stared at the guns. “Doesn’t it seem weird that they’d use low-caliber, trashy stuff like that for their finale?” I asked. “I mean, why settle for dicey junk that might only wind up maiming them?” I asked.

  “My guess is they wanted to use the reliable hardware on their moving targets,” Bailey said, her voice cold with anger. “They could afford to use the cheap stuff on each other. They weren’t going to miss at point-blank range.”

  “And the dicey junk did do the job,” Graden added.

  “Got ID on them?” Bailey asked.

  “Not yet,” he said. “Haven’t had the chance to get their prints. Hopefully they have driver’s licenses—”

  “Or rap sheets,” I said. If they didn’t, their prints wouldn’t be in the system.

  “Any of the survivors get a good enough look to make an ID?” B
ailey asked.

  “Not yet. But we’ve got a few kids who had the presence of mind to take videos with their phones, and we’re checking into the school’s surveillance footage.”

  “Anybody give a description?” I asked.

  “All kinds.” Graden’s tone was glum. “The only consistent one—and it’s not totally consistent—is that they were wearing camouflage jackets.”

  I pointed to the bodies on the floor. “I don’t see any on these guys.”

  “I know. But like I said, even that description wasn’t consistent. Some kids didn’t notice any camouflage jackets. The video footage should resolve that question. And even if the suspects were wearing camouflage jackets, they could’ve taken them off and dumped them somewhere before they got to the library.”

  The library, the talk of two bullied, disenfranchised losers going ballistic—it all seemed too familiar. “Doesn’t it kind of sound like a rip-off of Columbine?” I said. “With a different ‘uniform’?” The Columbine killers had worn trench coats and hadn’t covered their faces.

  Graden nodded. “Yeah, it does. Like a deliberate copy, in fact.”

  “Seems pretty obvious the suspects knew the layout of the school, and knew there’d be a pep rally in the gym today—” I said.

  “Had to be students,” Bailey said.

  I dredged up what I could remember about Columbine. “But no propane tank bombs?” Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold had set up propane tank bombs in the cafeteria of Columbine High, but they’d malfunctioned and never went off. If they had, the death toll would have topped three hundred—more than the Oklahoma City bombing. Their goal, according to Harris’s journals.

  “No,” Graden said. “And we haven’t found any pipe bombs or Molotovs like the ones they used at Columbine either—”

  “But they still managed to top the Columbine body count,” Bailey said.

  Graden nodded. We stood in silence for a few moments. Finally, Graden spoke. “Seen enough?”

  “For a lifetime,” I said.

  We headed out of the Hellmouth.

  5

  Graden took us to an ambulance that was parked behind the school where a surrounding wall and steep hillside provided a measure of privacy and quiet. He gestured to a figure wrapped in a blanket sitting on the gurney inside. “This is Harley Jenson. He’s still a little shock-y, obviously, but he’s pretty coherent, all things considered.”

  We walked over and introduced ourselves. Pale, baby-faced, and slender, his dark hair cut conservatively short, Harley was the quintessential studious high school nerd. But right now, huddled inside that blanket, he looked more like a frightened sixth-grader.

  In halting sentences, he told us what he’d seen. As he described how one of the killers put the gun to the girl’s head, he began to shake and his teeth chattered so hard he had to stop. We waited in silence until he found his voice. Finally, speaking in a monotone, his eyes staring, vacant, he told us how he’d been momentarily deafened by the shots that killed the girl under the nearby desk, how he’d heard the killers do the countdown, and how he’d been sure he was going to die.

  “Did you see their faces?” I asked.

  “No, I—I was afraid to look.”

  “Did you see what kind of shoes they were wearing?” I asked. “Or their pants?”

  Harley shook his head and began to shake again. “I must have, right?” Harley said. “But every time I try to remember things, I just keep hearing that girl saying ‘Please, please don’t’…” Tears filled his eyes and he swallowed hard.

  I knew the sights and sounds would haunt him for the rest of his life, so I didn’t offer any platitudes about the healing effects of time. I don’t lie to victims. They deserve the respect of honesty. I gave Harley a few moments to recover then asked whether he remembered what the suspects said.

  “They really didn’t say anything, except ‘Knock, knock,’ and the things I already told you. And then the countdown.”

  “Did either of the voices sound familiar?” I asked. Harley shook his head. “They didn’t say anything about jocks?” I asked. The “why” of this atrocity was going to be the focal point of the investigation. The more I could gather from the survivors about the suspects’ words and behavior, the more we’d learn about their possible motives.

  “No. But I heard that they called out the jocks when they were in the gym. Everyone’s saying they probably got bullied by them.”

  “‘Everyone’s saying’?” I asked.

  Harley held out his cell phone, the bane of most investigations. We always try to keep witnesses from talking to each other and influencing each other’s memories. But it was obviously a hopeless cause in this case.

  Harley leaned forward. “Can I ask you a question?”

  I nodded.

  “Have you seen Christy Shilling? I’ve been calling and calling, but I keep getting her voice mail. She’s a cheerleader. She was in the gym when…” Harley licked dry lips that barely moved. “Is she okay?” His voice cracked.

  “I don’t know, Harley,” I said. “It’s going to take a little while to find everyone. I’m sorry.”

  Harley’s mouth trembled as he nodded. He’d been holding it together pretty well, but I could see that wasn’t going to last much longer. I fought the urge to put my arms around him. The paramedic gave me a warning look. I nodded. I wasn’t going to ask him any more questions. At least, not right now. Whatever else he’d seen—and I didn’t think it was much—he was too traumatized to remember it. We’d come back to Harley when he was in better shape. I looked at Bailey, who shook her head. We thanked him and headed for Bailey’s car.

  “You said some kids got video?” I asked.

  “Yeah, we’ve been collecting their phones,” Graden said. “Which really made them happy.”

  “Who’s got them?”

  “I’ll check.”

  “No, I’ll do it,” Bailey said. “You’ve got bigger fish to fry. Thanks for the walk-through.”

  Graden nodded to Bailey, gave me a warm smile, and walked off to do lieutenant business.

  Bailey started to scroll on her cell phone but stopped abruptly as she stared over my left shoulder. “Well, what do you know.”

  I turned to see the head coroner, Dr. Shoenmacher—affectionately known as Dr. Shoe—and my buddy, coroner’s investigator Scott Ferrier, walking briskly behind him. The head honcho showing up at a crime scene was a first for me. And it was even more surprising given the fact that the perpetrators were dead. But I was all for it. In a tragedy of this magnitude, we had to pull out all the stops to answer the how, the why, and—the most impossible question of them all—the what to do to make sure it never happens again. But I was sure it was also a political move, a grand CYA to head off the lawsuits that were probably already being cooked up in law firms around the county.

  “Want to go watch him do his thing while I chase down the cell phones?” Bailey asked.

  “You mind?”

  “No. I’ll meet you up there when I’m done. I’d like to watch the master in action myself.”

  I started to head back into the school, then remembered a question I’d meant to ask Graden. “Hey, Bailey!” She stopped and turned. “Who’s getting the footage from the school surveillance cameras?” Most schools had them nowadays. And I had a feeling that would soon beg the question as to why they didn’t also all have metal detectors.

  “I put unis on it,” she said. “We should have it pretty soon.”

  I hurried back into the school. When I got to the library, I found Dr. Shoe standing to the right side of the suspects’ bodies, hands on his hips, wearing a frown that made him look like a bald eagle. He moved down to their feet, backed a few steps away, and tilted his head to the left, still frowning. “Scottie, get me the—no, wait.” Dr. Shoe scanned the surrounding crowd of officers, crime scene techs, and paramedics with narrowed eyes. “No one moved these bodies, did they?” In near unison, the group shook their heads and said, “No.” Dr. Sho
e looked skeptical. “Where’s the first officer?”

  A blonde man with a runner’s physique raised his hand. “I was the first EMT, but a SWAT officer was already here. He told me to forget about these guys and sent me over there”—he pointed to the area where Harley and the girl had been hiding.

  “So you’re telling me you never touched these bodies?”

  “Yeah. I mean, it was obvious there was nothing to be done for them.”

  “You have the name of this SWAT officer?” Dr. Shoe asked.

  Another officer spoke up before the paramedic could answer. “It’ll be in the log, Doctor. I can get it for you.”

  “Don’t get me the name. Get me the officer. I want him here. Right now.”

  A low murmur rolled through the room as the logbook was located and examined. I’d heard that Dr. Shoe was a charmer in the courtroom, but I’d never heard about this side of him—the crime scene martinet. I wondered if he was married. He and Dorian would be a perfect match.

  When Bailey joined me, she scanned the hushed room. “What’s going on?”

  I filled her in and asked her about the cell phones. “Still checking,” she whispered.

  A burly SWAT officer dressed all in black clomped into the room. He faced the coroner with a clenched jaw. “I was the first officer on scene in the library. What can I do for you?”

  Dr. Shoe, who’d been directing Scott’s photography, peered closely at the officer. “You can answer a question. I need that answer to be completely and perfectly accurate. Did you touch these bodies?”

  “Yes. I put two fingers to each of their wrists to check for a pulse. I didn’t want to touch the neck because…”

  “Yes, I know, I know, too much blood and it was obvious they were dead.” He waved an impatient hand. “Last question: did you move any part of them in any way, no matter how slight?”

  “Absolutely not. As soon as I confirmed they were dead, I taped off the perimeter.” The SWAT officer looked around the room. “After that I believe an officer was posted here to make sure nothing got disturbed. But that was out of my purview.”