The Competition Page 7

  “I just wish we could get the killers ID’d before we go public with it,” I said. “At least we’d be able to tell everyone who to look out for.”

  Bailey leaned back and sighed. “Yeah, that’d be nice.”

  The waiter brought our drinks, and I raised my glass. We clinked and drank, but two more miserable toasters would have been hard to find.

  11

  Tuesday morning, October 8

  Bailey left early to go home and change. Though she had a drawer of clothing in my dresser, she didn’t have anything that was warm enough for this weather. The clothes Bailey still had at my place were left over from the time she’d moved in to help me deal with a psychopath who’d nearly succeeded in killing us both.

  That psychopath, Lilah Bayer, was responsible for at least three murders and she was still at large. Though not a serial killer, Lilah was an “ends justify the means” kind of person, and if those means happened to include murder, so be it. But generally speaking, other than the ax murder of her husband—a crime for which she, incredibly, had been acquitted—she’d left the messy work for her employees. And if it was messy important work, she gave it to her main guy, Chase Erling.

  Bailey and I had managed to nail Erling, but when Lilah found out that he was in custody, she hired an inmate to kill him. He’d always been loyal to her, but she couldn’t be sure that loyalty would last when he was facing a sentence of life without parole. A Nazi Low Rider serving a lifetime sentence shanked Erling.

  Certain that Erling would soon be sleeping with the fishes, Lilah hopped a private jet to parts unknown. But right before takeoff, she’d texted me with information about my sister. Reports that might prove Romy, who’d been abducted more than twenty-five years ago, was still alive. The text was Lilah’s way of saying that if I left her alone, she might get me more information on Romy’s whereabouts. But if I kept after her…well, whatever form her retribution took, it was almost guaranteed to be lethal for Bailey and me.

  But I one-upped Lilah: Erling had survived the attack, barely. He was in a coma. I answered her text with a photo of him in the hospital. I left out the part about him being in a coma, the better to make her sweat.

  Graden had checked out the reports she’d sent me about Romy and found they were legit. But they were more than twenty-five years old and so far there’s been no further trace of my sister. Nor has there been any trace of Lilah, though both Graden and the district attorney investigators have been actively hunting for her.

  If it were anyone else, I wouldn’t have had any concerns about my personal safety, though I certainly would’ve been pissed off that a criminal had escaped justice. But Lilah was a whole different story. Bailey says she’s got a bizarre obsession with me. I can’t argue. At one point, Lilah followed Graden to a downtown bar and hit on him—and said just enough to make sure he’d tell me about it. To make matters worse, Lilah had the resources to disappear—or reappear—almost anywhere, at will. I try not to dwell on the fact that she’s still out there, but since she’s unlikely to get therapy for her obsession, let alone her sociopathy, I keep one eye on the rearview—and a loaded gun in my purse.

  I lingered over coffee, thinking about our next move. We needed to push forward harder and faster on Otis Barney. I’d hoped we could track him through his cell phone, but his parents told us he’d lost it recently. It seemed to be true. There had been no activity on his number for the past five days. The unis had checked out his calls and texts for the past month and found nothing of interest. The calls were mainly to and from his mom and dad, with a few to video game companies and electronics stores. So he really did seem to be the loner Marnie and his parents had described.

  That was bad news for us, because it made it that much harder to get information on where he might be. Worse, it meant that identifying his buddy, the second shooter, would be like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack. We’d have to talk to everyone in his classes—and maybe the whole school—and hope someone could give us a lead. It would be a major time suck, and it might not even pay off. The only other option—and one that would give us much faster results—was to get into Otis’s computer, if he had one. But for that, we’d need a search warrant. I looked at my clock radio. It was a little after seven. J.D. would be in his chambers soon. If I headed for the office right now, I could bang out the warrant in time to catch him before he got swamped with his daily calendar.

  But there was one thing Bailey could do in the meantime. I called her on the way to the courthouse. And caught her in one foul mood.

  “I said I’d meet you at the station,” Bailey said. “What couldn’t wait another half hour?”

  “We’ve got to get that photo of the shooter’s wrist enhanced so we can show it to—”

  “Already done, Knight. It should be on my desk by the time I get to the station. I’d ask if there’s anything else, but I don’t want to know.”

  “Actually, you might.” I told her I was going to put together a warrant for Otis’s computer.

  “Shouldn’t take you long,” she said. “We don’t have diddly-squat. Who’re you going to take it to?”

  “J.D.”

  Bailey snorted. “Way to work the friend angle, girl. Guess it’s worth a try. You need me there?”

  “Nah, I can sign this one. I’ll meet you at the station.” I like to do my begging in private.

  Bailey was right, it didn’t take me long to write the warrant. I pumped up the probable cause as best I could, even waxed a little poetic about the shooter’s crazy laugh, and got down to J.D.’s courtroom by eight o’clock. I was in luck. The hoards hadn’t descended yet. The clerk let me straight into chambers. I kept my pitch short and handed J.D. the warrant with a silent prayer.

  I watched his face as he scanned the probable cause affidavit; I squeezed the arms of my chair to keep from fidgeting. I guess it was true that I was banking on his friendship to make him a little more sympathetic to the cause, but I was also counting on J.D.’s experience as a former detective in Robbery-Homicide to know how badly we needed to speed up the investigation. He finished reading and dropped the pages on his desk.

  “I’ve seen a lot of search warrants in my time,” he said. “This one’s a hands-down winner for the most well-written—”

  “Thanks, I—”

  “And skinniest excuse for probable cause I’ve ever seen. I’d ask if you were kidding me with this, but I know why you took a shot at it and I don’t blame you. The problem is, this warrant’s so thin, it’ll be my ass if those parents decide to file a beef. And anything you find will get tossed out so fast it’ll put a hole in the wall. I’m sorry, Rachel.”

  No sorrier than I was. I trudged back upstairs to my office to drop off the case file and noticed that Toni’s door was open. I missed her. Since picking up the school shooting, I hadn’t even had the chance to call. Toni was glued to her computer screen. I knocked on the door frame. “Hey, Twan. What’s new?”

  “Huh. You tell me.” She peered at me. “The way you look, it ain’t good. Come sit, catch me up.”

  I did.

  When I finished, Toni drummed her fingers on the desk, then asked, “Have you considered bringing a shrink in on this?” I looked at her. She held up a hand. “I know, you’re not a fan. Me either. But strange times call for strange measures. You need to make sure Otis is your guy, and you need to identify your second shooter. And you’re in a bad time crunch—”

  “The worst—”

  “You can’t be talking to all three thousand kids in that school with your killers flying around out there. You’ve got to narrow down your search. Only way I can think of is to get some idea of who you’re looking for, what type of kid. You need someone who can help you figure out the teenage brain—”

  “The twisted teenage brain,” I said.

  Toni nodded. “Even harder.”

  She had a point. We’d never tracked killers like these before. And we definitely needed to pull out all the stops. Having a
shrink on board couldn’t hurt. Toni helped me put together a list of psychologists we liked—or at least didn’t hate. “Thanks, Tone. Gotta run. Bailey’s waiting for me at the station and I’ve got to check these names out—”

  Toni waved her hand. “Go, go. I’m here if you need me. Call when you come up for air.”

  I went back to my office, did some research, and winnowed our list down to three names, then headed to Eric’s office. I told him I was considering bringing in a psychologist. “What do you think?”

  “It won’t hurt. And it’d be good PR. Shows the public we’re doing everything we can.” He sighed. “Jeez, I sound like Vanderhorn.”

  “If it makes you feel any better, I thought the same thing.” I handed over the list of names. “Anybody you like?”

  Eric read the list. “They’re all good. I’ve got one more you might want to check out. Ran into her when I was in juvy.”

  I took down the name and headed for the station at a fast trot.

  When I got there, Bailey was standing at her desk, tapping her watch. “You’re half an hour late and we’ve got a boatload of—”

  I put up a hand. “Hold your fire. I haven’t exactly been lying around in my fat pants with a spoon and a can of frosting.” I told her about J.D.’s no-go on the search warrant and my plan to bring a shrink on board.

  Bailey gave me an incredulous look. “A shrink?”

  “Actually, two shrinks. Eric liked my idea of Dr. Malloy, and he suggested Dr. Shelby.”

  “Dr. Malloy sounds familiar. Didn’t he testify in that pedophile case last year?”

  “Yep,” I said. It was a case involving seven victims who’d been molested by a summer camp counselor. Not one of them had reported the crime, and when police first questioned them, five denied it. The jury was falling for the defense claim that the police coerced the kids into saying they’d been molested—until Dr. Malloy showed up.

  “But does he have experience with teen freaks?”

  “That I don’t know.” But how many shrinks could there be who had firsthand experiences with psychos like these?

  “What did Eric say about Dr. Shelby?”

  “She’s a child psychologist too, but she’s got more hands-on experience with juvenile offenders. And she’s done studies on Columbine and some of the other school shootings.”

  Bailey nodded. “Sounds like a good team. How fast can you get them on board?”

  “I’ll call them right now. How fast they’ll come is another matter.” In my experience, forensic psychologists—at least the good ones—were usually overbooked. I dialed Dr. Malloy’s number, expecting to hear that at best he might be able to fit us in sometime next week.

  But I’d underestimated the powerful pull of this case. Not the media-whore factor—in fact, both doctors demanded that their names not be released to the press. I mean the desire-to-help factor. They agreed to drop everything for this case simply because they wanted to help us find the shooters. In this job it’s easy to forget that there are people like that in the world.

  I asked them to meet us at the station as soon as they could. They said they were on their way.

  12

  “Got coffee?” I asked. I’d been up since five thirty, and my engine was starting to sputter.

  “I’ll see if I can snag some of Graden’s. The shit we’ve got probably had dinosaurs stuck in it. In the meantime, check this out.” She handed me a large manila envelope. Inside, I found the blowup of the taller gunman’s wrist. When Bailey came back with two steaming mugs, I held it up. “What the hell is that? A dagger through a rose? A spider? A screwed-up iron cross? I can’t believe this is the best they can do.” I’d hoped this picture would give us a solid lead on the second shooter.

  “It’s not great. I’ve got the lab working on getting us a better enhancement, but don’t expect much. It’ll probably never be super clear.”

  “We need to show it to Charlotte and her buddies.”

  “We will.”

  I held the photo at arm’s length to see if it helped. It didn’t.

  “Rache, don’t obsess. It’ll be good enough if we find someone who knows him. At least you can tell it’s not just a birthmark.”

  That much was true. It was better than nothing.

  A patrol officer with two civilians in tow headed toward us. Our doctors had arrived. Bailey and I thanked them for showing up on such short notice and for agreeing to help us. “I know you had to push a lot out of the way to get here,” I said.

  “Please,” Dr. Malloy said. “I’m just glad to be able to help out. And you’ll have to call me Michael if we’re going to work together.

  He looked like a Michael. And he looked like someone kids would have an easy time opening up to. Of average height and sporting a hint of a belly, he had warm brown eyes and thick, wavy brown hair that in spite of his best efforts kept falling into his eyes. To top it off, he wore a sweater vest. Nothing says “cuddly” like a sweater vest.

  Dr. Shelby, who likewise insisted on her first name—Jenny—was slender and attractive. Not the frilly type, she wore a brown turtleneck sweater and black slacks. Her shoulder-length dark blonde hair hung straight and simple in a side part, and she wore minimal makeup that enhanced her gray eyes and high cheekbones. She too had an easy, approachable vibe. Even without a sweater vest.

  They declined my offer of Graden’s coffee—it really was pretty good—and Bailey led the way to one of the smaller conference rooms. We got right down to business. I told them what we knew so far and what we needed from them. Then I played the video footage from inside the gym. When it ended, Michael rubbed the side of his head as though he were trying to wake up from a nightmare. Jenny looked pale.

  “How many dead?” Jenny asked.

  “Thirty-three as of now,” Bailey replied. “We’re hoping it stops there.”

  “Jesus,” Michael said. “That’s worse than Sandy Hook.”

  “And much worse than Columbine,” Jenny said. “But from what you’ve told me, I’d agree that may be exactly what they intended. They wanted to prove they were better, so they exceeded the body count and managed to escape.”

  “Yes, that much seems obvious,” Michael said.

  “As for what type of person you’re looking for, that’s less obvious,” Jenny said. “The angry loner, bully victim—which seems to be Otis Barney—is a stereotype, but it doesn’t always hold. Columbine is instructive. Eric Harris was very socially adept—”

  “And popular with the girls, if my memory serves,” Michael said.

  “He was,” Jenny said. “Even Dylan Klebold was fairly social. So there are no hard-and-fast rules. Studies show these mass shooters are a heterogeneous group. They come in all stripes. But there are certain markers that show up with some consistency.”

  “The sense of feeling persecuted or victimized is very common,” Michael said. “They frequently feel mistreated or undervalued by the school, their teachers, their parents—”

  “Great,” Bailey said. “How’re we going to spot that?”

  “By asking other students to tell you if they’ve heard anyone talk about feelings of persecution and plans for revenge,” Jenny said. “Individuals with this type of pathology often vent to others, may even demand an audience.”

  “You should also ask students if anyone has seemed overly invested in guns or military paraphernalia, or romanticizes guns and weaponry in general,” Michael said.

  “What about the video gamer theory?” I said. “Some shrinks—uh, sorry, psychologists—say the first-person-shooter battle games desensitize kids, get them addicted to violent fantasies, and make them forget people are real. I heard there’s even a game called School Shooter.” Which sickened me on every level: both the fact that someone dreamed it up and the fact that people bought it.

  “First of all, we call each other shrinks, so no apologies necessary,” Michael said. “Second of all, no normal kid turns into a mass murderer because he played too many video games—
”

  “But if a kid has pathological homicidal tendencies, an addiction to violent video games can tip him over,” Jenny said. “So the games may exacerbate the tendency, but they don’t create it. In fact, someone who’s already planning to commit this type of crime might use the video game as a form of practice and perhaps to further desensitize himself—”

  “Just to play devil’s advocate, isn’t it possible the games act as a form of release?” I said. “You know, like porn?”

  Jenny smiled. “They may. If you’re normal. In that case, certainly, porn or video games can be beneficial. But for a sexual predator, or someone with a homicidal pathology, the opposite is true. The porn might offer the predator temporary release, but in the long run it’ll just cause the pathology to escalate until he explodes and acts out. Same thing with the homicidal types. The games might provide transitory relief, but ultimately the games aggravate the unbridled rage and lack of focus that’s intrinsic to their pathology.”

  “Lack of focus?” I asked. “Seems to me the games require a lot of focus.”

  “Only in a superficial sense,” Michael said. “You have to pay attention to what you’re doing, but the focus is constantly shifting from one obstacle to the next, with only fractions of a second per target. So the focus is extremely fragmented.”

  “In general, though, the games may encourage what’s already there. But they don’t create it,” Jenny said.

  “You said they like to talk to people about their pisstivity with the world and their plans to get revenge,” Bailey said. “Isn’t that what you guys always say people should do? Talk things out? How come it doesn’t do anything for them?”

  “Because they’re not talking constructively, with the purpose of understanding their feelings,” Michael said. “They’re just venting, spewing. When you talk to a friend or lover about your feelings, you’re trying to understand, to gain some awareness of your situation. Not these people. They’re just looking for an audience. So talking only feeds their rage.”