The Competition (33 page)

Graden drove me
home. I invited him to come up to my room even though we were both fried. I needed to connect with something positive. The insanity I’d been immersed in for the past week had reached a crescendo with those notebooks.

I poured us each a glass of Ancien Pinot Noir. “Do you want to order room service?”

Graden studied his glass. “No, I don’t want anything to get in the way of the buzz.”

I turned on the CD player and we sat on the couch. The lazy-sweet strains of Stanley Turrentine’s “Little Sheri” softly filled the room. Graden clinked his glass against mine and we took a sip. He put an arm around me, and I kicked off my shoes and curled up next to him. “You know, it’s funny,” he said. “I’ve seen you more during this case than I ever do, but it sure doesn’t feel that way.”

We hadn’t had the chance to really connect because we were always running ninety miles an hour. “It is kind of a tease.”

He smiled. “Well, I don’t think I’ve ever been accused of
that
before.” He put down his glass, lifted my chin, and kissed me. A long, slow kiss. “Better?”

I was a little breathless. “Even more of a tease.”

He took my glass and put it down on the coffee table, then stood up and pulled me to my feet. Ten minutes ago, I’d have bet serious money that nothing could put me in the mood. But all it took was five minutes alone with Graden to completely change my mind. I followed him into the bedroom and we fell into each other as though we’d been apart for months.

I woke up Thursday morning feeling rested for the first time since I’d caught the case. Graden was already out of the shower and trying to dress quietly. “It’s okay, I’m up.” My voice was still hoarse with sleep.

He smiled and came over to sit next to me on the bed. He pushed my hair out of my eyes. “What’s on tap for you today?”

“We’ve got to meet with the shrinkers about those journals.”

“Did you get a look at that note he wrote to Amanda?” he asked.

“The one asking her to keep the notebooks for him? No.”

Graden shook his head, his features stony. “He worked her but good. Said, ‘You’re so special. You’re the only one who gets me. That’s why I trust you with these. They’re the most important things to me—other than you, of course.’ It’s incredible how that monster can mimic human behavior.” Graden picked up the remote. “Since you’re up, mind if I turn on the news?”

“Nope. And you can order us breakfast while you’re at it. Two eggs over medium and a bowl of mixed fruit.”

“I’ll go rattle some pots and pans.”

I kissed him and headed for the shower. I’d just finished drying my hair when I heard my name coming from the television. I ran into the bedroom and saw a news reporter standing in front of the St. Julien, where Bailey and I had stayed in Boulder. I turned up the volume.

“…and now we’ve learned that prosecutor Rachel Knight and Detective Bailey Keller paid a visit to someone here in Boulder yesterday. Officials have refused to answer questions about why they were here or who they saw, but it had to be something big to take them out of Los Angeles with at least one killer still at large. Back to you, Andrew.”

Graden had walked in during the newscast. He looked at me, worried. “How the hell did they find out about your trip?”

“Could be someone at the airport, or at the hotel. Who knows?”

Room service arrived. Graden started toward the door, then abruptly stopped. “Wait…Evan—”

“Will know we were talking to Amanda.”

Graden pulled out his cell. “Yeah, Sandy, get me Boulder PD right now.”

The captain of the Boulder Police Department took about ten seconds to guarantee immediate, round-the-clock protection for Amanda and her family. We barely spoke as we ate, each of us consumed by our own thoughts. When we’d finished, I brushed my teeth and grabbed my raincoat and scarf. The sun was shining, but I didn’t trust it—the trees were swaying in a strong wind.

Graden pulled me in for a quick hug before we went out into the world. “Let me know what the shrinks say.”

“I will.”

He gave me a little smile. “And hey, thanks for last night.”

“No, thank
you.
” I wrapped the scarf around my neck and opened the door. “Your money’s on the nightstand.”

Graden gave me a shove. “Get out.”

We headed downstairs. Graden, unlike Bailey, always had Rafi park his car, and he tipped well. His car was waiting at the curb. Bailey pulled up, and Graden waved as he drove off. She raised an eyebrow at me as I buckled up. “I see you’ve been putting in some overtime.”

“How original of you.” I told her about the newscast and getting protection for Amanda.

“I’d be surprised if Evan bothered with her at this point, but we should ask the shrinks about it.”

I intended to. “Did you get a copy of Evan’s journals out to Jenny and Michael?”

Bailey nodded. “Made them myself last night. Sealed them up and had them hand-delivered early this morning.”

“Do you ever sleep?” Bailey gave a grim smile. It was a drag of a chore, but she was wise not to trust anyone else with it. If those journals leaked, there’d be mass panic. “You talk to Harrellson yet?” I asked. “Hear anything about that San Diego kid, Mark…?

“Unger, yeah. He’s got a solid alibi. Kid’s been in school and at work at the local Jamba Juice every day for the past month. So at least we know we’re only looking for one psycho.”

“Good,” I said. “Did you ask Harrellson if he ever found that uni report saying witnesses had seen Evan in the gym?”

“I did. He can’t find it, and now he thinks he must’ve been hallucinating.”

“But Evan did go to homeroom,” I said.

“Yeah. But if they had all their stuff stashed close by, he could’ve ducked out when everyone else headed to the gym. It’s not that hard.”

Exactly what I’d figured. Now that I thought about it, I’d snuck into the girls’ room to ditch assembly a time or two myself. “I assume by now someone’s told Evan’s parents that we’ve got an arrest warrant out for him?” Bailey nodded. “How’d they take it?”

“The mom fell apart, but the dad refuses to believe it. Said Evan was never violent and never showed any interest in guns.”

“Did anyone ask them how Evan was acting just before the Fairmont shooting?”

“Yeah, and they said he acted completely normal. A little busier than usual; he wasn’t around much. But that was it.”

I had a hard time believing it. How could he possibly be that well controlled? Maybe later, when the shock wore off, his parents would be able to sift through their memories and find the clues that were escaping them now. But those clues had to have been fairly subtle for the parents to have missed them to begin with.

“Has the tip line blown up?” I asked. Now that we’d identified Evan Cutter as the shooter and released his photo, I expected a flood of calls.

“Of course. But nothing solid yet.”

Releasing Evan’s identity was a double-edged sword. The upside was that people would be on the lookout. The downside was that now he’d know he had to act fast to put on his big “finale.” And that meant the pressure was on like never before.

I put in a call to Eric to bring him up to speed.

“Hey, Rachel, I just heard about Evan being your suspect. What the hell?” I gave him the whole story in abbreviated form. “I have never seen a case like this in my life.” Eric gave a long sigh. “I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but Vanderhorn wants you in ASAP for a debriefing.”

“Tell me he didn’t actually say ‘debriefing.’”

“Unfortunately, he did. I wouldn’t push you on this, but there’s a big memorial planned for the Fairmont High School victims, and he’s planning to attend.”

“Of course he is. There’s bound to be a ton of press.”

I could hear Eric smiling. “So Vanderhorn wants to know as much as possible, just in case he has to give a statement.”

Just in case. He’d chase them down and tackle them if they didn’t ask for a statement. This was one of the few moments when I really hated my job.

“Okay. But I’ve got a meeting with the shrinks first.”

We found Jenny
and Michael already starting on their second cup of coffee. This coffee-meeting ritual had grown on me. There was something comforting about it, although given the reason for these meetings, I didn’t know why. The photocopied pages of Evan’s journal were spread out on the table between them. Jenny held up the pot. “Want some?”

“Sure, thanks,” I said. Bailey took a cup too, and we settled in around the table. Bailey brought them up to speed on the latest events, including the press release identifying Evan Cutter as the shooter and the leak that we’d been in Boulder.

Michael and Jenny exchanged a look; then Michael cleared his throat. “Before we get to these pages”—he gestured to the copies of the journals—“we think you should be aware that the press releases are likely to speed up his timetable. I guarantee he knows that he’s been identified.”

“So the net is tightening quickly,” Jenny said. “As we’ve surmised, he never expected to go on indefinitely, and this journal confirms what we’ve said all along: he plans to continue these rampages until he’s stopped—”

“And that means when he dies,” Michael said. “Evan Cutter has no intention of being taken into custody.”

And I had no intention of letting him have his finale of choice. Death was too good for this subhuman. I wanted Evan Cutter taken into custody alive and kicking. “We agree. What’d you think of his journals?”

Jenny led off. “This boy is a classic example of a psychopath—”

“No big shock there,” Bailey said.

“No. But I’ve seen what many would have called the most extreme psychopaths in the world, and Evan Cutter is right up there. And unlike some of the other, more prolific killers, he doesn’t even pretend to be serving a political ideology. He simply hates the world. And loves power. The combination of that hatred and thirst for power is what fuels his desire to kill. Murder for him is the epitome of power.” Jenny pushed a few of the pages around, then pulled one out and pointed to the bottom of the page. “See here, where he rails against his father for moving the family around so much? For a normal child that might be tough, but for Evan Cutter it was torturous because it undermined his power. His father said go, and like it or not, he had to go. That infuriated him. You said his father is a military type, a former Marine, correct?” I nodded. “And I’d guess fairly strict?”

“I got that impression,” I said.

Jenny shook her head. “You couldn’t hope for a worse combination. In general, psychopaths can’t tolerate any form of restriction. But Evan in particular has a very low threshold for frustration. What is apparent in these pages is that any obstacle, no matter how small, sends him into a rage.”

“Because it’s a threat to his power,” I said. Michael nodded. “But he doesn’t fit the profile you guys gave us. Evan didn’t complain about feeling persecuted or even do a lot of yakking about guns. And neither did Logan.”

“We had to go with generalities,” Jenny said. “But when it comes to specific individuals”—she sighed—“there just are no concrete rules. And this is a big part of the problem when it comes to spotting a potential psychopath of this ilk. As we said from the start, they’re heterogeneous. There is no single profile.”

“True,” I said. “But Logan…he doesn’t fit any mold.”

Jenny nodded, reached into an accordion folder that was on the floor next to her chair, and pulled out some photocopied pages. I recognized them as the pages from Logan’s journal. I’d forgotten we’d given them a copy. “After hearing that Logan was dead, I took another look at these pages. I’d always had the sense that Logan was a follower, not a leader. I think Amanda probably had it right when she told you she thought Logan had a crush on her primarily because he wanted to emulate Evan. And Logan clearly had some serious psychological problems—certainly he was severely depressed. I don’t think, given what he ultimately did, that it’s a big stretch to say Logan also had a great deal of anger boiling inside him. In that regard, he and Evan had something important in common. But the difference is in how they dealt with that anger. That difference is what made Evan so attractive to Logan. Evan’s aggressive energy, his apparent power, was revelatory for Logan. Here was someone who channeled his rage outward, who punished others rather than what Logan did—”

I nodded. “Punish himself.”

“Right,” Jenny said. “I doubt Logan, on his own, would ever have harmed another person. He might’ve fantasized about homicide in his darker moments, but I doubt he would ever have acted on it. It was the introduction of Evan into his life that induced him to turn his rage outward—”

“You think he committed suicide out of guilt?” I asked.

“In part, yes,” Michael said. “He was suicidal in general, so he might’ve killed himself eventually no matter what. But Logan was not psychopathic, so it’s highly unlikely he derived the pleasure from killing that Evan did. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if Logan suffered terribly in the aftermath of the Fairmont shooting.”

“And what about the reverse?” Bailey asked. “Would Evan still have done these shootings if he hadn’t met Logan?”

“In light of the fact that he did carry on after Logan killed himself, I’d say probably yes, he would have,” Michael said. “Now, would he have done the Fairmont shooting if he hadn’t met Logan? That I can’t say. But I can say that connecting with Logan made Fairmont a more likely target.”

I had a question that’d been in the forefront of my mind since our meeting with the Cutters. “Sorry for the dogleg, but I’ve been meaning to ask you, how come none of the parents—not the Jarvises or the Cutters—saw anything wrong, nothing out of the norm, before the shooting? The parents seem like responsible people. The type who pay attention. These guys were planning the Fairmont murders for almost a year. How can it be that they didn’t notice anything was wrong?”

“The only thing the parents said was that the boys weren’t around much in the last month,” Bailey said.

Jenny nodded. “Of course, they were busy getting ready. Or they might’ve been keeping themselves away to make sure no one could see any difference in their behavior. But that wouldn’t register with any parent as ‘something wrong.’ As for Evan, I wouldn’t expect to see any gross manifestations of unusual conduct by the time he was planning the shootings. He had no moral compunctions about it, so there was no reservoir of guilt to trip him up. These shootings were something he eagerly anticipated. He would’ve made sure not to do anything that might raise concerns.”

“Logan would have been the one more likely to show visible signs of something amiss in the last few weeks,” Michael said. “He had a conscience.”

“But even if Logan wavered, or started to act out, Evan was there to keep the lid on,” Jenny said.

“Right,” Michael said. “And it’s even likely that Logan was in a bit better mood than usual in the last month. Once a suicidal person has made the decision to end his life, he feels a sense of relief, even euphoria. Logan knew the killing spree couldn’t last forever. So for him, the shooting marked the light at the end of the tunnel.”

“Bottom line, by the time their plans were under way, it was way too late,” Jenny said. “They were old enough to manage their behavior. The time to catch signs of homicidal pathology like Evan’s was much earlier, in childhood.”

“And what would those have been?” I asked.

“The early signs of psychopathology are varied. There was a study that showed infants who turned out to be psychopathic had a pronounced tendency to stare at objects out of their reach. They theorized that the infants stared in an effort to exert control; that the space between the infant and the object was a threat to the baby’s control—”

Michael shook his head. “I’m not sure how much stock I put in that one—”

“It may be a bit far-out,” Jenny said. “But generally, psychopaths show a greater attachment to objects than to people from a very early age. Some believe that may be caused by mothers who have difficulty bonding with their babies. Personally, I think the child has to already have a tendency toward psychopathology for maternal detachment to have that kind of impact. My own mother suffered severe postpartum depression for a solid year after I was born. Refused to even touch me. She eventually recovered—enough to go back to work, anyway. But she never became anything close to a ‘loving’ mother.”

“How
did
it affect you?” I asked.

“From about the age of six I knew I wanted to help children—”

“So it had a positive effect?” Bailey asked.

“Well…I also vowed never to have any children of my own. But it certainly didn’t make me a sociopath. And, diagnostically speaking, that’s the problem we face. Family trauma or even abuse is not a predictor. As I’m sure you’ve seen, there are plenty of kids who suffer devastating abuse who have no violent tendencies whatsoever.”

I nodded. I’d been assigned to juvenile court for a year. It was sadly common to find that the kids had been abused, but most were charged with drug crimes or theft. The few who were in for violent crimes were usually involved in gangs.

“Anyway, as for the early signs of psychopathology, you’ve heard of the classic ones: cruel, sadistic behaviors toward animals or smaller children—”

“And younger siblings are often targets,” Michael said. “But in this case, neither Logan nor Evan had them.”

“And not all children will behave in such obvious ways,” Jenny said. “While they lack empathy and do not have normal attachments to family and friends, their behavior may not initially be overtly abnormal. A child may merely appear to be less demonstrative than others or a little less empathic. But if the child is a fast learner, he’ll pick up on the appropriate social cues at a young enough age to avert detection. Destructive behavior is common. Such children often have a penchant for setting fires. Deceptive behaviors, lying, cheating, stealing. For them, the ends always justify the means, and no value is placed on honesty—”

“Which is why they can be very glib,” Michael said. “They have no regard for rules or for the truth. Evan had that juvenile arrest for car burglary?” I nodded. “I’d bet he was the ringleader. And I’m sure there were other such instances for which he never got caught. I’d also imagine Evan committed noncriminal acts as a child that showed a cruel, sadistic side, but weren’t big enough to force the parents to put two and two together.”

“How on earth could a parent see
any
kind of sadistic behavior and not know that there’s something seriously wrong?” I asked.

“A combination of denial—we don’t see what we don’t want to see—and a failure to grasp the significance of what they’re seeing,” Jenny said. “It’s not uncommon for parents to view each incident as an isolated event and explain each one away, rather than see the whole picture. And if the behavior surfaces during adolescence, well…even the most normal teenagers can be unlovely.” Jenny gave a brief smile.

Memories of our interviews with Evan flashed through my mind. “I just can’t believe Evan gamed us so well,” I said.

Jenny nodded. “I understand. It is upsetting. But remember, your contacts with him were relatively limited. And even trained professionals have been deceived by psychopaths. They can be excellent actors. After all, they’ve been studying normal behavior practically since birth.”

“Where does it come from?” I asked. “Psychopaths are born, not made, right?”

Jenny nodded. “Biology plays a part, of course. There are studies of monozygotic twins that show psychopathology has a genetic component.”

“But environment, upbringing, they matter too,” Michael said. “Though, as this case has shown you, socioeconomic factors really don’t matter. You can find psychopaths in Beverly Hills or on skid row.”

“And to complicate matters further,” Jenny said, “this pathology is not a black-and-white issue. On one end of the spectrum you have narcissists, who are most certainly empathy-challenged and self-absorbed, but not usually physically dangerous. And on the other end of the spectrum, you have the most severe psychopaths—who are extremely dangerous in every way.”

“Like Evan,” Bailey said.

“Yes,” Michael said. “And you have everything in between those two extremes.”

“But studies do show that psychopathology is on the rise,” Jenny said. “I’m not sure whether that’s because we’re better at spotting the disorder or the incidence has truly increased.”

“If it really has increased, wouldn’t that explain why there seem to be more of these mass shootings?” I asked.

“It might,” Jenny said. “But remember, not all of these shooters are psychopaths. Logan is a prime example. His pathology might never have resulted in harm to another person had he not met up with Evan.”

“You mentioned these killers live through their writings,” I said. “Then why did Evan give his writings to Amanda?”

“For posterity,” Jenny said. “Remember, he doesn’t have any illusions about his longevity on this planet, and in addition to satisfying his homicidal desires, he wants recognition, fame. By secreting those notebooks with Amanda, he was ensuring that they would survive him. He plans to die in a spectacular way, and once he does—”

“Amanda would bring out the notebooks, and everyone and his brother would want to see them,” I said. It was disgusting, but true. “You also said they love to write about their killing plans, but there aren’t any in these journals. Is it possible he did write out his plans but didn’t want to risk leaving them with Amanda?”

Michael sat forward. “Yes, that’s what we believe. He took a big risk even leaving those journals with her.”

Jenny nodded. “We think he’s keeping his plans close at hand, wherever he is.”

“Now if we just knew where that was,” Bailey said. “The problem is, he could be anywhere. Sleeping in his car, camping out under a bridge—”

“Even staying in a motel if he has a fake ID,” I said.

“But now that we put his picture out there, he’s going to have a much harder time with that option,” Bailey said.

“You have an alert out for his car?” Jenny asked.

“Of course,” I said. “And we still have one out for Logan’s car too.”