The Competition (6 page)

By the time
we left Otis Barney’s house it was almost eleven p.m. The autumn air had a bite that made me pull my peacoat closer and wish I’d brought my cashmere scarf. When we got back to Bailey’s car I reached for the heater.

“It’s not that cold,” she said.

“It is for me.”

Bailey closed the vents on her side. “Maybe you should transfer to the DA’s office in Dubai.” We rode in silence as she steered us toward the Tampa Avenue freeway on-ramp.

“Those posters were pretty strange,” I said. “But we didn’t find anything else. Maybe his parents are right. Maybe he isn’t one of the shooters.”

“And maybe his parents are in denial about who their son is. They wouldn’t be the first. But I don’t blame them for being pissed off at us. It’s a hell of a thing to hear your kid accused of mass murder.”

“Yeah.” I sighed. It was hard to even imagine how that must feel. I pictured Otis’s room again. Those posters. And something I hadn’t seen. “I didn’t notice a computer,” I said. “He must have one.”

“Yeah, probably a laptop. But I didn’t want to bring it up and give them any ideas. If Otis does have one, I’m hoping they won’t think to wipe it before we can get a warrant.” Which meant we had to dig up some probable cause for a search warrant, and fast. “Home?” she asked.

“May as well. Can’t get anything more done tonight.” I put my hands next to the vents to warm them. “We need to have the unis ask around about Otis. Talk to students, teachers, and counselors and find out if he was into guns or made any threats, that kind of thing. But they can’t make it sound like—”

“He’s our guy. One of ’em, anyway. I know.”

Traffic was light, and before I knew it, we were heading into downtown Los Angeles. Bailey cleared her throat. “Feel like a drink?”

I was tired and depressed and in no mood to hang out, but Bailey’s voice was uncharacteristically strained. I looked at her closely. She had a death grip on the steering wheel, and her jaw was clenched so hard the cords in her neck stood out. She needed company—and a stiff drink…or seven. Come to think of it, so did I. “Sure. And why don’t you crash with me?”

Bailey gave me a tight smile. “Sounds good.”

Twenty minutes later, Bailey pulled up in front of the Biltmore and parked next to a fire hydrant. Bailey believes illegal parking is one of the few perks of being a cop. But it’s not just a matter of convenience. She’ll pick the red zone over a closer space every time. It’s a religion with her. “You know, eventually, someone’s going to bust you for this shit.”

“Good thing I know a lawyer then, huh?”

“Please. I’ll be the first to testify against you. You want to know who’ll be second?” I pointed to Rafi, the Biltmore valet, who was shooting daggers at Bailey.

Bailey threw him a smile as we walked past the valet stand. “Catch ya next time, partner.”

Rafi nodded sullenly.

“That’s what you always say,” I said, as we reached the front entrance.

Angel, the doorman, opened the door and chuckled. “I believe she’s right about that, Detective,” he said.

“Good idea, Angel, side with her,” Bailey said. “You don’t care about getting that Christmas bottle of scotch anyway, right?”

Angel put on an earnest expression. “On second thought, I believe you
have
let him park your car on many prior occasions,” he said.

“Shameless,” I said.

“Nicely played,” Bailey said.

Angel smiled. “Marriage has taught me many things.” We stepped inside. “Have a nice evening, ladies.”

The familiar faces of home. It was the best I’d felt all day. And I knew it was comforting to Bailey too. Even so, as we crossed the lobby and headed for the bar I noticed her steps were heavy. We had to lighten up. There was no way of knowing how long it would take us to wrap up this case. If we didn’t find some emotional balance we’d wind up wearing jumpsuits with very long arms. I grabbed the large brass handle of the bar door, pulled it open, and gestured for her to enter. “Your Highness.”

“Your Highness?”

“There’re plenty of other things I could call you.”

Bailey and I took our usual spots at the end of the bar nearest the wall. It was a classic, well-appointed bar, mahogany with plush swivel stools and a mirror that was lit softly enough to prevent depressing news if I accidentally caught a glimpse of myself. Our spot at the end offered the most privacy. But that wasn’t a problem tonight. The bar was relatively empty. Just a few businessmen whose loosened ties and red faces told me they’d finished their business for the day at least three drinks ago.

“I don’t see Drew,” I said. Drew Rayford is the head bartender and, more important, Bailey’s boyfriend.

“No, he’s off tonight. We were supposed to have dinner, but…”

“But a mass murder got in the way.”

We exchanged a look and sank back in our chairs. I’d hoped Drew would be here tonight. It would’ve been good for both of us to see him. Cliché though it is, he became my confidant and buddy from the day I first moved into the hotel. And he’s plenty easy on the eyes, which is also helpful. Tall, with a muscled V-shaped torso and skin the color of mahogany, Drew had women falling into his lap when he wasn’t even trying. When he and Bailey got serious, I could practically hear the weeping from all corners of L.A. County. I probably would’ve been one of them myself if I hadn’t been such an emotional wreck when we first met. I had been staying with my mother, nursing her through her battle with breast cancer. But after she died, I couldn’t bear to be there anymore. I had a high-p
rofile
murder trial that was about to start, so I’d temporarily moved into the hotel because it was within walking distance of the courthouse. The murder victim was the Biltmore CEO’s wife, and she’d been killed in the parking garage during a robbery. Between the stress of that trial, my mother’s recent death, and the breakup with my long-term boyfriend, Daniel Rose, I wasn’t looking for love. Drew poured my drinks while I poured out my heart, and a deep, long-lasting friendship was born. As a side perk, after I’d won the trial, the CEO had made me an offer I couldn’t afford to refuse: a permanent residency at the hotel. I hadn’t planned to stay longer than a year—two at the most. But it’s been three years now and it still hasn’t gotten old. The truth is, it’s hard to give up a life with no laundry, no dishes, and room service.

A young bartender who’d started a few months ago took our orders: Ketel One martinis straight up, very dry, very cold, olives on the side. Bailey asked for an extra tray of Crunchies, the only food we could get at that hour.

“We need to nail down a list of who’s accounted for and who isn’t,” I said. “Have all the bodies in the hospital and the morgue been identified?”

“Not quite. Not all the kids carried ID with them when they went to the pep rally. We’ve got officers on loan from the burglary desk working on it. A lot of kids ran home, but not all. The parents have been blowing up the phone lines at the Valley Division.”

“It would help if we could round up all the students and take roll call—”

“Like they’d be doing if they had a school to go to?”

I sighed. “Yeah.” Fairmont High School would be out of commission for the next few weeks while every inch was combed for evidence. In the meantime the students had to be relocated, but finding the space for them in the overcrowded L.A. Unified School District was going to be a nightmare.

“I hate to tell you this, but it’s even worse than you might’ve thought,” Bailey said. “The unis said there were a ton of kids who were ambulatory whose parents took them to hospitals and clinics all over the place. If they weren’t brought in by paramedics, they might not show up on any of our lists.”

“But I heard the parents who haven’t found their kids are all waiting at the local rec center. That should give us a pretty accurate missing list.”

“Not necessarily. Not all of the parents are there, and even those that are keep coming and going. Like Sonny and Tom. Plus, some kids got taken to the hospital by other kids’ parents. Some kids went on their own. And I’ve heard some just ran to friends’ and relatives’ houses. It’s pretty crazy.”

So even if students were reported missing, that didn’t mean they really were. “The fastest way to find out who’s really unaccounted for is to go public with the fact that the shooters are still at large and ask all students to check in at the local police station. But that’ll tip off the killers—”

“Not to mention cause a riot,” Bailey said. “But we’ve got to do something or it’ll take us days to figure out who’s missing—”

“And we don’t have days.” I rubbed my forehead. “We’re going to have to let it out pretty soon no matter what.”

“If it doesn’t get leaked first.”

“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.

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’ve got 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.