The Competition (5 page)

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?” she asked.

“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 sarcastic. 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, her mother would 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.

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.

“No, not that I ever knew.”

It wasn’t a DNA match, but it was enough to make it worth our time to find out whether Otis Barney had been accounted for. We rescheduled the rest of the interviews for the following day and hurried out to Bailey’s car.

“I don’t want to red-flag this guy before we’re sure he hasn’t shown up anywhere,” I said.

“We can check EMT lists, hospital lists, and police reports without getting noticed.”

I took the hospital and EMT lists; Bailey took the police reports and the school liaison who’d access the attendance records for us. An hour and a half later, I had my answer: eighty-four wounded, thirty-three dead, and none of those who had been positively identified were named Otis Barney. The numbers were so staggering, just hearing them was beyond comprehension. I felt numb as I waited for Bailey to finish her calls.

“And?” I asked.

“He doesn’t show up on any police log and he wasn’t checked in at homeroom. He might’ve just gotten to school late.”

“He might have. There’s one way to find out for sure.” I looked at my watch. “Almost ten o’clock. If his folks haven’t heard from him they’re not sleeping. Assuming they’re even home.”

“And if they are, and he’s there, we apologize for waking them up and say we’re checking in on everyone and have to talk to him,” Bailey said. “I just don’t want any reporters to run with this. We’ve already mentioned his name to some of the kids. If the press sees us at Otis’s house and asks the kids…”

It was a problem. We’d warned all the students that it could seriously undermine the investigation if they talked to reporters, and we’d asked them to warn all their friends about it. But it was a big school—more than three thousand enrolled—and reporters knew how to make people feel important. Odds were, someone would cave to the siren song of momentary fame. And even if the kids stayed strong, reporters were bound to have their own sources in the hospitals or in LAPD. Hell, I was sure they had sources in my own office.

“All the more reason to move on it now,” I said. “The press probably has interns comparing lists of wounded and dead to school records even as we speak. I—wait, do we?”

“Have people working on the lists? Yeah. But the attendance records aren’t entirely accurate. Like I said about our buddy Otis, if a kid skipped homeroom, played hooky, or a teacher just made a mistake taking roll, that’ll take a while to sort out.”

Bailey got the number for Tom and Sonny Barney fairly quickly. She paused before punching it in. “For our sake, I hope this is our guy. But for their sake…”

I nodded. I could hear the phone ring. No one picked up. Not even an answering machine.

Bailey ended the call. “Could mean they’re on the phone or—”

“At the rec center, looking for their son.” The community recreation center had been designated as the gathering place where family and friends of missing students could wait for reports. “Let’s hit the house first.” It’d be easier to talk to them there. “You have an address?”

Otis lived five miles away, in a small Spanish-style house adorned with colorful tiles just under the roofline. Bailey and I approached the house quietly, listening for any sounds coming from inside. When we reached the front door I heard a woman’s voice, shrill with tension, then the deeper tones of a male voice. Bailey and I exchanged a look.

With one hand on the holster of her gun, she knocked. The voices abruptly stopped. After a few seconds the male voice responded, “Who’s there?”

Bailey identified us. “We’re here to ask you about your son, Otis.”

The door opened, and a man in socks and corduroys stared at us for a moment before asking to see our IDs. As I held out my badge, I saw a petite woman with short, dark hair peeking out from behind him. She was holding a Kleenex to her nose, and her eyes were wet and red. Tom and Sonny Barney.

The man stood back to let us in and gestured to the couch against the wall. Before we even sat down, the woman asked, “Have you found our boy? Do you know where he is?”

“No, ma’am,” Bailey said. “We were hoping you’d heard from him.”

At this, the woman squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head as tears leaked out and ran down her cheeks. There was a framed photograph on the side table next to the couch that showed Otis standing between his parents. He could definitely be described as medium height and build—for what it was worth.

“We’re so sorry we don’t have better news,” I said. “You’ve heard nothing all day?”

Tom Barney shook his head. “We’ve been at the rec center—just came home to change clothes. And we’ve called all over the place, but no one seems to know anything.”

Bailey and I exchanged a look.

“We can tell you that his name has not shown up on the list of injured or…deceased,” Bailey said. “But he doesn’t seem to have been in school today either. Do you have any idea where he might have gone?”

“Not in school?” Sonny asked, her tone incredulous. “That’s impossible. I dropped him off myself this morning.”

“Did you see him go inside?” I asked.

“N-no. There was a line of cars behind me. I had to move. But he doesn’t ditch. He might play sick, try to stay home, but…”

“Do you remember what he was wearing?”

“His usual: hoodie and jeans,” Sonny said.

“Have you checked with his friends?” Bailey asked. “Asked whether they’ve seen him?”

Sonny dropped her head slightly. “He really doesn’t have many.”

Tom frowned. “I’ve been trying to remember the name of that kid he did that science project with. Jason…something. He came over here a couple of times, didn’t he?”

“That was last year, Tom. He hasn’t come around since.” Sonny looked at us, her eyes filled with pain. “Otis is a very sweet boy, but not much of a socializer. I-I’m afraid I don’t know of any friends he’d skip school with.”

“Do you mind if we take a look at his room?” Bailey asked.

Sonny stopped, looked at Bailey, then at me for a long moment. “Wait a minute…what’s going on?”

“Now, Sonny.” Tom put a hand on her shoulder. “They’re probably just checking on all the students who’re still missing.” Tom Barney looked from me to Bailey. “Right?”

Bailey and I were silent.

Sonny’s breathing quickened. “No. They’re not.” Her eyes flashed, her voice was low and raw. “You think he’s one of them! Don’t you? Well, I’m telling you right now, that’s impossible! I know my son! He had
nothing
to do with this! Do you hear me? Nothing!”

“Mrs. Barney, we’re not accusing your son of anything,” I said. “But we have to follow up on all leads. We have reason to believe someone involved in the shooting may still be at large,” I said. We hadn’t released the fact that the killers had escaped, so I had to keep it vague. “If you won’t cooperate, we’ll just have to get a search warrant. It’ll cost us precious time, but…”

I was bluffing. I didn’t have enough to get a warrant. We
might
be able to justify a quick search right now as hot pursuit of a fleeing felon. But getting consent would be a lot safer. I waited and tried to act confident.

Sonny’s gaze dropped to the floor. Her body began to shake, whether from rage or fear or grief—or all three—I couldn’t tell. Tom put his arms around her, his expression tortured. After a few moments, he spoke. His voice was raw, angry. “Sonny’s right. Whatever kind of ‘leads’ you got that pointed to Otis are wrong. But we have nothing to hide. Look all you want.” Tom led us down a short hallway, to a room with navy-blue walls covered with posters of bands I didn’t recognize. Bloodstained Boots, Crew XXX, and Der Fuehrer. They all showed white guys with shaved heads, most sporting swastika tattoos.

“Mind if we look around?” Bailey asked.

Tom made a sweeping gesture. “Have at it.”

We went through everything—his chest of drawers, the bedding, the closet—searching for guns, ammunition, any mention of a weapons supplier, any notes or photos that might relate to the school shooting. Nothing. I glanced up at the posters on Otis’s wall again.

Sonny saw me. “I know how it looks. We hate them too, but Otis isn’t…he’s not that guy. It’s just a…phase he’s been going through. We think it probably makes him feel powerful, tough. But he’s a good kid. Really.”

I didn’t answer. Tom saw my expression, and his features hardened.

Bailey scanned the room. “It’d help if we could have a crime scene tech in to test for gunshot residue or—”

Tom cut her off. “We’ve already helped enough. Now how about
you
help
us
and find our son, goddamnit! Otis had nothing to do with this! So if you want to waste more time searching here, you’d better get a warrant.”

He turned and left the room and we followed him out. There was no point arguing. If we got anything more to tie Otis to the shooting, we’d get that warrant. Short of that, we had no choice but to leave.

From what we’d seen, Otis did look like the typical angry, alienated loner who hated the world enough to lash out, but that didn’t mean he was one of the shooters. At least, not yet.