The Competition Page 5

  “Best to do it in their homes, where they feel safer,” Bailey said. “I’ll get some unis to help. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover.”

  And we had to cover it fast.

  “I’ll call Graden,” Bailey said. “Guess you better hurry up and call Vanderhorn.”

  William Vanderhorn, known on the inside as Vanderputz and by the outside world as the district attorney of Los Angeles County, was everything I detested in a manager or politician—which was like saying he epitomized the worst of the slimiest ooze that inhabits the blackest of lagoons. Politicians and managers—to me they’re cut from the same useless, unproductive, endlessly self-promoting, ass-covering, you-scratch-my-back-I’ll-scratch-yours cloth. Vanderputz’s sole talent lies in currying favor with the people who can get him elected. He couldn’t handle a trial if his life depended on it. The only thing he could do was look good standing at the podium with the flag behind him. I’d call him an empty vessel, but it would be an insult to empty vessels. And he’s just as fond of me as I am of him. Ours is a relationship in perfect balance, steeped in a deep, abiding mutual loathing.

  It satisfied Bailey’s sadistic streak to watch me squirm whenever I had to meet with him. But this time she wouldn’t get her wish. For now, I figured I could dodge that bullet and report to my immediate boss, Eric Northrup, head deputy of the Special Trials Unit. Eric was everything Vanderputz was not. Smart, experienced, savvy, and unflappable, he was a lawyer’s lawyer, and that unique person who could try lawsuits and be a good manager. As a result, he was beloved by all—no easy feat in an office full of big egos and power players.

  I called Eric and got Melia, his secretary. Though generally unmotivated, Melia had shown a whole other—downright efficient—side when I picked up the Antonovich case. Prosecuting a Hollywood big shot had made me a weird kind of celebrity, and Melia, an unrepentant celebrity junkie, instantly became my devoted fan. Suddenly, I got my messages on time, I got through to Eric faster than anyone else, and she personally escorted witnesses to my office. I knew my shine wouldn’t last forever, so I intended to enjoy the ride for as long as I could.

  “Hey, Melia. Is Eric around? It’s pretty urgent. Oh, and it’s Rachel.”

  “Rachel, come on, I know your voice.” There was a warm smile in hers. Ah, the perks of fame. “I’ll get him right away. Hold on.” Toni would turn green if she could see the Melia-love I was getting.

  Eric got on the line and I brought him up to speed.

  “Just a bit of advice,” he said. “Get the students’ cell phones and watch any footage they got before you do the interviews. The kids will probably still be a mess, so you’ll need to know what makes sense and what doesn’t.”

  “Right. And I’ll tell the crime lab to put a rush on everything.”

  “You won’t have any problem with that,” he said. “The press is already all over it. When they find out the killers are at large—”

  “It’ll be completely batshit. So what are they saying about the shooting so far?”

  “That the shooters were a couple of fringe-type losers who’d been victims of bullying by the jocks—”

  “But they fired at random—”

  “But they targeted a pep rally, and specifically called out the jocks,” Eric said. “I’m not saying you rule anyone out based on that. As far as we’re concerned, everyone who isn’t accounted for has to be considered a possible suspect. All I’m saying is, it wouldn’t hurt to start there. Get a list of kids who fit the profile.”

  I ended the call and went to find Bailey. I had to get the cell phones and start the interviews ASAP. With traumatized kids running all over the place and being treated at who knew how many hospitals, just figuring out who hadn’t been accounted for was going to be a daunting task.

  And that was only the beginning.

  8

  Bailey had the cell phones brought to us in Principal Campbell’s office. The paramedics had ordered him to go home, and he’d generously offered us the space so we could work in private. I braced myself for what we were about to see. We’d only viewed the footage from a camera positioned outside the gym doors. These phones would show us the scene inside the gym.

  Though the images were shaky and out of focus, and the sound was tinny, this footage gave us our first real glimpse of the kind of monsters we were dealing with. The killers, looking like evil personified in their camouflage jackets, boots, and black balaclavas, stalked down through the bleachers and strafed the students with a bloodlust that was palpable even on these small screens. One of them laughed as he fired into the face of a young girl cowering on the floor, a high-pitched, almost manic-sounding giggle. I was sick with fury.

  “Which one is Chuckles?” I asked. “The short shithead or the taller one?”

  Bailey pointed to the shorter of the two. “Him, I think.” She held up the phone that had the most close-range footage. “See how his head tilts up when you hear the laugh?”

  I wanted to tilt his head up myself. Up and off. I picked up another cell. This one seemed to have been held by someone who was on the floor just inside the doors to the gym, behind the shooters. A brave soul who might already be dead. At first, the images were jumbled, a bouncy montage of students running, stumbling, and screaming. Then, the taller of the two shooters came into view. I recognized the motion he was making from the surveillance video. He was shaking the assault rifle. I now knew it was because the gun had jammed. He extended his arm and the skin of his wrist was exposed. I saw something on it—a dark spot. I hit “pause” and tried to enlarge the image. Something was definitely there. A bruise? A birthmark? A tattoo? It was too blurry to make out. I showed Bailey.

  “We’ll get the lab to work on this,” she said.

  “Is the kid who took this…?”

  “Alive?” I nodded. “Is there a name on the evidence bag?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Hugh Filoma.”

  “I’ll check right now.”

  “Did you get any footage with a better shot of the shorter guy?” I asked.

  “No. But I think I know why. It looks to me like he was doing most of the shooting. The kids closest to him are either hiding, on the run, or already down. The only reason this Hugh kid could get a shot that close is because the shorter one was gone and the taller one was right in front of him. This is the best lead we’ve got so far.”

  It was also the only one. We packed up the cell phones and headed out to start our interviews. We’d just reached the main entrance when a small, slender man in a black parka waved us down from the front steps of the school.

  Bailey smiled. “Hey, Ed. Since when do they let you out in public?”

  “Since they lost the key to my cage.” He glanced at me. “That your partner?”

  “Sort of. Rachel Knight, Special Trials, DA’s office, meet Ed Berry, senior firearms examiner.”

  We shook hands. His was leathery. “You here to check out the weapons?” I asked.

  “And all the casings. Got more brass here than a shooting range.” He shook his head.

  “Can you tell us anything?” Bailey asked.

  “I can tell you that one of these assault rifles was fired a hell of a lot more than the other. They both had fifty-round magazines, but one rifle about emptied the clip in that gym. Only had a few left by the time he got out to the hallway. The other one only fired a few in the gym before it jammed.”

  That would’ve been the taller shooter’s gun. “And outside the gym, on the stairs and second floor?” I asked.

  “So far, it looks like a mix of forty-four- and three-fifty-seven-caliber casings. Mostly forty-fours. Those guns haven’t shown up—”

  “I think they hung on to them,” Bailey said.

  “Well, maybe we’ll find some prints on the guns they left behind,” he said.

  “Hate to tell you this, but we looked at the footage,” Bailey said. “They wore gloves. But hey, feel free to check the casings for prints.”

  Bailey was being sarcasti
c. They always try, but I have yet to see anyone get prints off casings.

  “And you feel free to lift some prints off your victims,” Ed said. Finding decent prints on skin is another near impossibility. Cop humor. “Sorry I can’t do much more for you right now, but if you get hold of that forty-four and three-fifty-seven…”

  Bailey clapped him on the back. “I’ll bring them to you myself.”

  Bailey had arranged for us to interview the first batch of witnesses from the gym at the home of one of the students, Charlotte Kerrigan, who lived just a couple blocks away. I wouldn’t ordinarily be all that thrilled to have witnesses hanging out together until I’d gotten each of their statements recorded, but there was no way to keep them apart. The ones who hadn’t been injured had banded together from the moment they’d escaped. And it probably didn’t matter anyway. According to the first responding officers, no one had seen the shooters’ faces or had any idea who they were.

  The house was a sprawling ranch style, and Charlotte’s mother ushered us into the den. “I feel so fortunate that my Charlotte wasn’t hurt…but those poor parents who…” She stopped and swallowed hard. “Anything I can do to help, just let me know, okay?”

  I took in her pale face and shaky voice, knowing that from this day forward, every time Charlotte left the house, she’d choke on the fear that it might be the last time she saw her.

  We ushered in groups of three and four at a time, mainly to let them have one another for support. Any more than that and we wouldn’t be able to keep the statements straight. When we’d arrived, I’d estimated there were about fifty students lined up outside for interviews, but I was wrong. It was more like a hundred. And we saw what we were in for after the first six: disjointed glimpses of figures in camouflage jackets and ski masks, seemingly endless gunfire, students flying or falling down the bleacher stairs…or dropping to the ground like broken puppets. Some thought there were four gunmen; most remembered hearing them yell something, but weren’t able to make out the words. A few said they were sure the gunmen shouted something about jocks. But they couldn’t add much to the general descriptions of height and weight we’d already gotten from the cell phone and surveillance footage.

  They’d all heard the reporters speculating that the killers were bully victims, but getting the kids to give up names of students who might fit that description wasn’t easy. They didn’t like the idea of putting someone on the suspect list just because they’d been targeted by asshole jocks. I didn’t blame them, but we spent precious minutes explaining over and over that we wouldn’t take anyone into custody based solely on that criteria and that we had to start somewhere. It took longer than I would’ve liked, but they eventually gave us some names. By seven o’clock, we’d done more than twenty group interviews and amassed eighteen names of “possibles.”

  We still had about forty students waiting, but the kids looked exhausted. It had been a long, draining day. I wouldn’t have minded working all night, but I had to admit that the statements were starting to run together. The fact that they were all so similar didn’t help.

  “What do you say we pull the plug?” I said to Bailey as the group left the room.

  Bailey yawned. “Yeah.” She rubbed her neck. “They look like they’ve had it. But I hate to make them all come back tomorrow. Think we can squeeze out one more hour?”

  I did. We forged ahead. And finally, we hit something that felt like pay dirt.

  It was in the group that included Charlotte and her two besties, Marnie and Letha. All three girls wore jeans tucked into UGGs and had long, straight hair streaked with various colors. Like so many of the other girls, they held hands and sat close to one another on the sofa. Letha chewed the fingernails of her free hand, and Marnie, who sat in the middle, squeezed her friends’ hands so tightly I saw them wince. Charlotte seemed the calmest of the trio, but even she nervously pulled at the whiskered threads on the knees of her jeans.

  “We were on the far left side, in the middle,” said Charlotte. “I think they just didn’t shoot at the kids sitting at the top of the bleachers where we were—”

  “And it was just luck that we wound up there,” said Letha. “It was the only place left where we could all sit together. But Christy…” Slow tears rolled down her face.

  “Christy wasn’t sitting with you?” I asked.

  “Christy just made the varsity cheerleading squad,” Marnie said. “It was her first pep rally.” Marnie stopped to wipe her tears, and Charlotte bit a trembling lip. “I didn’t see it, b-but we heard she got shot in the back. We still haven’t heard…anything.” Marnie looked at me with fearful eyes. “Do you know…?”

  “We’ll find out for you,” Bailey said.

  I remembered Harley had asked about her too. Bailey wrote down her last name. I gave them a moment to recover. “Can you describe the suspects?”

  “One was definitely shorter, smaller—” Charlotte began.

  “And wasn’t he the one with that creepy laugh?” said Marnie.

  “Yeah!” said Letha. “It was freaking twisted.”

  “Do you know anyone who laughs like that?” Bailey asked.

  The girls all shook their heads.

  “And the other shooter, what did he look like?” I asked.

  “Real tall,” Marnie said. “I’d say over six feet, like six feet five or something.”

  “And he seemed skinny to me,” Letha said.

  “Yeah,” said Charlotte. “I couldn’t see their bodies or anything. But the way they moved…it’s like, they weren’t fat or anything, you know?”

  “Could you see their feet?” Bailey asked. “What kind of shoes they were wearing?”

  A smart question. When the shooters put their outfits together, they would’ve thought about coats, gloves, and masks, but it was unlikely they’d worry about their feet. So, whatever boots or shoes they wore might be distinct enough to be identifiable. The only problem was, who’d be looking at feet when gunmen were leveling rifles at their heads?

  The girls exchanged glances, then gave us an apologetic look. “We got down on the ground and hid when we saw the guns,” Charlotte said.

  “Do either of you know someone as tall as six feet five who has a birthmark or a tattoo on his wrist?”

  The girls stared off into the distance. “No,” Charlotte said. “Not that I can think of.” The others shook their heads in agreement.

  “Could he maybe have been a little shorter than that?” I asked. It was natural for witnesses to exaggerate unusual characteristics—especially height—and especially when the suspect has a gun. An assault rifle can make even a skinny guy look like the Hulk.

  “I don’t know,” Marnie said. “He just seemed really tall to me.”

  “Do you know any guys who’ve been bullied by jocks in the past year or so?” I asked.

  Another long pause. They all shook their heads. “But we don’t hang with the jocks,” Letha said. “You’d have to ask them.”

  “I heard on the news that they’re thinking the shooters might have hung around with the Goths,” Charlotte said.

  “You think Goths were involved in this?” Bailey said.

  “No way,” Charlotte said. “They’re just emo wimps with eyeliner.”

  “Do you know any Goths?” I asked.

  “Not really,” Letha said.

  “And besides, I don’t know any who’re that tall,” Marnie said.

  But since they didn’t know any Goths, and their estimation of height was a bit suspect, the Goth possibility would have to remain in play for now.

  “You said you remember one of the shooters had a weird laugh,” I said. “I know you said you didn’t recognize that laugh, but you were under a lot of stress. Can you listen to it and tell me if you recognize it?” They moved closer together. I pulled out a cell phone and played the short snippet.

  The girls stared at each other with wide eyes. At last, Marnie answered. “Yeah, but it couldn’t be him. I’ve known him since third grade
—”

  “What’s his name?” I asked.

  “Otis Barney.”

  “Are you close?” I asked.

  “No, but we’ve been in the same schools practically forever.” Marnie’s expression was tortured. “Otis couldn’t have been involved in something like this. He couldn’t have.”

  “Have you ever known him to be bullied?” Bailey asked.

  “N-no,” Marnie answered.

  “But he’s the type, isn’t he?” I asked.

  Marnie looked down. “I don’t know. He’s kind of…geeky, but he’s always trying to be cool.”

  “Who does he hang with?” I asked.

  Marnie shrugged, but she kept her gaze focused on the floor. “I don’t know. I’ve never seen him with anyone in particular. I guess he keeps to himself.” When Marnie looked up at me her eyes were wet with tears. “Ms. Knight, I really don’t want to get Otis in trouble. I just don’t believe he could have…”

  “You know him?” Bailey asked the other two.

  They did. “But not well,” Charlotte said. “We just know who he is because Marnie told us she knew him back when we all started at Fairmont High.”

  “Can you give us a description, Marnie?” I asked.

  “He’s medium height, about medium weight—maybe a little on the skinny side.”

  In other words, the same build as the smaller of the two shooters.

  And he had that laugh.

  9

  Finally we had something to work with. But I wanted at least one more student to confirm Marnie’s statement before we moved on Otis Barney. We didn’t have time to waste on dead ends. Energized, we knocked out ten more interviews. I asked about Otis Barney, but I was careful to toss his name into the mix with no particular emphasis, along with several others on our list of possibles. A wiry-looking kid in glasses said Otis had been in his freshman Spanish class. And he remembered that weird, high-pitched giggle.

  “Is Otis into guns?” I asked.