The Competition (9 page)

Tuesday evening, October 8

The sun had
dropped low on the horizon, taking the day’s warmth with it. I shivered and pulled my thin wool coat closer. It really was time to break out the winter wardrobe. Bailey and I trotted back to her car in silence. We talked as little as possible when we were in public because you never knew who was listening. Especially in a case like this.

As soon as we got into the car, Bailey handed me her cell phone. “Call the unis at the rec center. It’s rush hour. I want to get on the road.”

The phone rang six times before someone picked up. “Sharven here. What can I do for you, Detective Keller?” The din of frantic parents swelled over the young officer’s voice. And mine. I had to yell my question four times before he could make out the name.

“Logan Jarvis?” he asked. “Is that
J
as in
John
,
V
as in
Victor?
”

“I think so.”

“Hang on.”

I started to bite my cuticles—my go-to stress coping strategy when there was no room to pace. Bailey slapped my hand. “Knock it off, Knight. What are you, twelve?”

I turned my back to her and attacked my right hand. I’d just gone to work on my thumb when the officer came back on the line.

“Detective Keller? Looks like your guy was reported missing—a
ssumin
g the spelling’s correct.”

My heart began to pound. I told him to have the parents meet us at their house and got the address, then punched it into the navigation system. When I hung up, neither of us said anything about Logan looking good. No more jinxes.

We hit the 101 freeway in the middle of rush hour. We’d roll a few inches, stop, roll a few more, stop. I couldn’t stand it. I had to
do
something. “What else can we check?”

“You could get the unis to check the juvy records, see if he’s got anything.”

“Didn’t they already check the kids who had records? I thought they were all accounted for.”

“Doesn’t hurt to double-check.”

It kind of did. I needed progress, forward motion. I stared at the line of cars ahead of us. “Wait…if the killers left the scene, at least one of them had to have had a car, right?”

“I’d guess.”

I called DMV, got Logan Jarvis’s license and registration, then called the unis and had them check it against the cars in the school parking lot.

“And?” Bailey asked.

I kept my eyes forward. “Not there.”

Having one idea pay off gave me another.

I put in a call to my buddy in the coroner’s office, investigator Scott Ferrier. “Hey, Scott, how you doin’?”

“What do you want?” His voice was wary. Not that I blamed him. Generally speaking, a phone call from me meant two things: (1) I wanted him to get me something I wasn’t supposed to have and (2) I’d bribe him with lunch at Engine Co. No. 28, his favorite restaurant, to get it. So Scott was always conflicted about taking my calls.

“Just one bit of information. Has Dr. Shoe finished the autopsy on those two kids in the library?”

“Yeah, took him a while. They were a mess. He just finished a couple of hours ago.”

“Can you check out his report—”

“It’s not typed yet.”

“You only need his notes to see what I’m looking for—”

“Rachel, I’m not supposed to—”

“Come on, Scott. This one’s easy.” I heard him sigh. “And I’ll still buy you lunch at Engine Company Number Twenty-eight.”

“No, that’s okay. What do you need?”

“Did either of the two boys in the library have a tattoo or any kind of marking on his right wrist?” We already knew one of them was close to six feet tall.

“That
is
easy.” He sounded relieved. “No, neither of them has any kind of marking on the right wrist. At least, nothing that’s in the notes. Anything else?” His voice had that wary note again. He couldn’t believe he’d gotten off that lightly.

“Just one thing. Do we have results on the gunshot residue?”

“Yeah. No GSR on either of them. Is that it?”

“Then the report confirms they’re not the shooters?”

“Well, the official report isn’t done yet—”

“But the answer’s yes.”

Scott sighed again. “Yes. They are not the shooters. But I can’t get the report for you. Not this time, Rachel. The case is too hot, I might really get fired—”

“Scott, what are you thinking? I would never ask you to jeopardize your job.”

“Would and have, Knight.”

True and true. “Well, I’m not doing it now. Just one more thing.” I waited a beat to build suspense. “How about lunch in a couple of weeks?”

I could practically hear him exhale. “You got it.”

I ended the call and told Bailey what Scott had said. We continued to inch along, and I leaned forward in my seat, straining against the seat belt. I sat on my hands to keep from biting my cuticles. I looked at my watch, then the car clock, then back at my watch. I must have done it fifteen times before we finally got off the freeway and headed into Logan’s neighborhood.

Bailey turned onto
a quiet street lined with trees that had grown so large their roots had buckled the sidewalks. The houses were a mix of ranch, Tudor, and Cape Cod styles, but all were in the four-thousand-square-foot range and well maintained. Bailey pulled over and pointed across the street to a beige two-story house with off-white trim situated on a large lot at the end of the block. Red and white roses lined the walk leading up to the front door, and still-leafy jacaranda trees shaded the front yard—the very epitome of upper-middle-class suburbia. I wondered if it housed one of the nation’s most heinous mass murderers.

We headed across the street and when we reached the door Bailey used the brass knocker to give two sharp raps. I felt footsteps approaching from somewhere in the house. Seconds later, a tall, stoop-shouldered man answered the door. His eyes were red rimmed behind wire-framed glasses, his short brown hair was matted on one side, and his clothes—a long-sleeved T-shirt and jeans—looked slept-in.

Bailey produced her badge, and I did the same. “Mr. Jarvis? I’m Detective Keller and this is Deputy District Attorney Rachel Knight. Thank you for meeting us here.”

I saw alarm and misery in his face. He opened his mouth, but just stared at us silently for a moment before gesturing for us to come in. We followed him down a short hall and turned right, into a tastefully furnished living room. We settled on the sofa and he sat down in the wingback chair across from us, his hands on his knees. He cleared his throat with a harsh cough, took a deep breath, and made himself ask the question. “Have you found him? Have you found my son?” He looked from me to Bailey.

I could see how much that question had cost him. We shook our heads. “I’m sorry, Mr. Jarvis,” I said.

He blinked slowly, nodded.

“Does he usually drive his car to school?” Bailey asked.

“Yes. But it’s not there. We’ve been calling everywhere trying to find him. No one seems to know anything—”

A woman’s voice called out from the hallway. “Brad? Are they…” A small, slender woman in jeans, whose face and body sagged as though attached to lead weights, entered with quick, nervous steps.

“Yes, it’s the police, Bonnie—”

Her swollen eyes asked the question she was too afraid to voice.

“We have not found your son yet, Mrs. Jarvis,” Bailey said.

The mother sank onto the other end of the sofa and twisted a Kleenex in her hands. The anguish in that room was heartbreaking. They had no idea why we were really here. Their only fear was that he was a victim. What we would tell them in the next few moments would make them long for that relatively simple form of agony.

“Can I ask you if Logan has a tattoo anywhere on his body?” I asked.

Bonnie lifted her head. “Yes, he has a tattoo of an iron cross on his right wrist.”

I pulled out the photograph of the taller shooter’s forearm. “This is a little fuzzy, but could this be it?”

The mother leaned forward to look but didn’t take the photograph from my hand. She pressed her lips together and nodded. I showed the photograph to the father. His face turned white.

“Where…when was this taken?” he asked.

I glanced at Bailey. We wanted to hold off on telling them for as long as possible.

“Would you mind if we had a look around Logan’s room?” Bailey asked. “We might pick up on some clue as to where he might be.”

Brad Jarvis’s face lifted with surprised relief. “So you’re saying he’s still alive?”

“He might be,” Bailey said. “We don’t know yet.”

He looked from Bailey to me. I saw his expression harden as relief turned to suspicion. “You didn’t answer my question, Detective,” he said. “Where and when was that picture taken?”

There was no avoiding it now. Bailey looked him steadily in the eye. “It was taken during the shooting in the gym.” She waited a moment for that to sink in, then continued. “This is a blowup. The original photograph shows the entire hand. It’s holding an assault rifle. It’s the hand of one of the shooters.”

It felt for a moment as though we were suspended in space, with no gravity, no oxygen. For several long moments, there was dead silence. Then suddenly a shriek broke through the vacuum.

“No!” Bonnie Jarvis jumped to her feet. She stared at us, wide-eyed, then slowly shook her head. “No! It can’t be! You’re wrong! Not my Logan! Not my son!” Tears began to stream down her face. She clutched her husband’s arm. “Tell them, Brad! Tell them!” She dropped her head and sobbed, the hoarse, choked sob of someone who’d already cried herself raw.

Brad Jarvis remained sitting but drew himself up and clutched his knees even more tightly. His face had paled, but his eyes spit fury. “I refuse to listen to this…crap! It can’t be Logan.” He threw a contemptuous glance at the photo. “That picture’s so grainy, you can’t possibly say it’s his tattoo. Hell, you can’t tell
who
that is! My son could never,
never
do a thing like this! You’re out of your minds!”

Bailey let the air clear. When she spoke, her voice was low and calm. “Mr. Jarvis, I do not for one moment believe we have enough evidence to charge your son with anything right now. We’re following leads. That’s our job, and that’s all we’re doing.”

Bonnie Jarvis slowly sat up and dried her tears on her sleeve. I hoped she might be able to listen to reason. I leaned toward her. “Mrs. Jarvis, it’s just as important that we clear the innocent as convict the guilty. We need to search Logan’s room because given what we know so far, it’s the next logical step in this investigation. It may yield evidence that clears him. If he isn’t involved, we need to know that as soon as possible so we can move on. I’ll be honest with you, I think we have enough to get a search warrant. So you can delay the search but you can’t stop it. The problem is, the longer we wait, the more time the killers have to get away.” I paused for a moment to let her process what I’d said. “And I’m sure you, as a parent, want us to do everything in our power to catch them.”

Bonnie Jarvis drew several ragged breaths, then looked at her husband through eyes that were now nearly swollen shut. “Brad, I think we have to—”

Her husband folded his arms and shot daggers at her. “No, we don’t, Bonnie. They’re on a witch hunt, can’t you see? They just need to put someone in jail to get the public off their back. I refuse to help them frame my son!”

“We only need one of you to consent,” I said. Then clamped my mouth shut. Fighting with Brad Jarvis would only force Bonnie to defend her husband. Bonnie looked at her husband imploringly, but he stomped out of the room. She wrapped her arms around her waist and watched him go as tears rolled down her face. Finally, she spoke.

“I’ll show you his room.”

Bailey had a
search team on round-the-clock standby and she called them in now as we followed Bonnie Jarvis down the hall to Logan’s room. The first thing I noticed was that it had a sliding glass door to the patio and pool area. More important, a gate on the far right side led out to the street. That kind of setup meant Logan could get up to just about anything without his parents knowing. If he were so inclined.

The mother looked around the room distractedly, her eyes darting from one end to the next, as though afraid to land on any single spot.

“Mrs. Jarvis, can you give me a list of Logan’s friends?” I asked.

“Bonnie. It’s Bonnie,” she said absently. Tears continued to leak from the edges of her eyes. She didn’t seem to notice them. “There never were very many. Logan’s been friends with Caleb Samuelson for years, though I haven’t seen him around here lately. There was a boy…Kenny…Epstein. They were good friends back in junior high, but I don’t know how close they are now.” Her mouth trembled, and she bit down hard on her bottom lip. “Evan Cutter, I remember meeting him a few months back. I’m not sure how close they are, though.”

“What about a boy named Otis Barney?” Bailey asked. “Did you ever see him here? Or did Logan ever mention him?”

“I-I’m not…” Bonnie closed her eyes and rubbed her temples. “Wait, yes. Now I remember. Last year. I remember because he stayed for dinner.”

“And that’s unusual?” I asked.

Bonnie nodded. “Brad and I own a temp agency. It doesn’t leave us a lot of time for family dinners.”

“Was that the only time Otis was here?” I asked.

“As far as I know, but…”

“He might’ve been here when you weren’t around?” Bonnie nodded, her expression troubled. “You had some misgivings about him?” I asked.

“Not exactly. It was just, he had kind of a…whipped-dog look about him. As though he was expecting to get hit or caught for…something.” Her gaze shifted to the desk where a laptop sat open, its screen dark. “I asked Logan whether Otis was having problems of some kind—with other kids or at home, but he didn’t know.”

The search team arrived, and Bailey peeled off to direct them. I suggested to Bonnie that we get out of the way, and she led me back to the living room. I noticed Brad had not returned. Bonnie and I sat on the couch. “What about Kenny or Caleb or Evan?” I asked. “What was your sense of them?”

“Nothing out of the ordinary. I haven’t seen Caleb in a while. He and Logan were pretty close in junior high, so that’s when I saw more of him. But unless he’s changed a lot, there was nothing unusual about him. He was a nice kid. And Evan, he was sweet, charming even. Kenny…I only saw him once when I was on my way out the door, so I didn’t really have an impression one way or another.”

“Anyone else you can think of?” I asked. Bonnie dug around in her memory and came up with a couple more names but no details that distinguished any of them as potential suspects. I wrote them all down. “Were any of these kids here in the past few days that you know of?”

Bonnie shook her head. “But we didn’t see much of Logan in the past few days either. He’s been working to put together enough money to trick out his car, and this past week he took on extra shifts. I told him he had to keep his grades up or those extra shifts would have to go.”

“Where does he work?”

“At Cut-Rate Kicks. It’s in the mall on Topanga Canyon Boulevard.”

“So what was he going to do to his car?”

“You’d have to ask his brother about that.” Bonnie’s face broke into the nearest thing to a smile I’d seen. “Luke’s the mechanic in the family.” She shook her head in disbelief.

“You’re surprised by that?”

“I’m surprised any child of ours would be into cars—neither of us is mechanically inclined. But after Luke enlisted in the Army and got assigned to transpo, he discovered a real passion for mechanics. He’s planning to open his own gas station and repair shop.”

“Are he and Logan close?”

“As close as two brothers with eight years between them can be. When Logan was little, he worshipped Luke. And I think Luke was a pretty decent big brother, but they didn’t have much in common. How could they? When Logan was in second grade, Luke was already in high school and almost never around.” Tears began to roll down her cheeks again, and she swiped them away. “But they did seem to get closer after Luke finished his tour and came home. I think helping Logan with his car brought them together.”

I got Luke’s information and moved on. “What about girlfriends? Was Logan seeing anyone? Or did he break up with anyone recently?”

“No, there were no girlfriends. At least not that I knew of. Logan is pretty shy. But Brad might know more about that.”

“Did Logan play sports of any kind?”

A sad smile lifted the corners of her mouth. “No. They pushed him hard to play basketball in junior high. He was very tall for his age even then. But he had no interest. In basketball or any other team sport. He thought they were for ‘knuckle draggers.’”

“Any school activities?” Bonnie shook her head. “Did he have any problems in school recently? Any fights with other students? Teachers?”

“No. Logan never fought with anyone.” She frowned. “The only person I ever saw him angry with was himself. He’d get furious about messing up the littlest thing. I remember the first time, when he was eight. Me and a couple of other moms took our sons fishing. Logan accidentally dropped all his bait into the water. He stood up in the boat and screamed at himself so long and so hard I thought he was going to faint from lack of oxygen.” Bonnie bit her lower lip. “I’d never seen him act like that before. It scared me.”

“Did you ever see that happen again?”

“Yes, a couple of other times. But it was always directed at himself. Never at anyone else.”

“Did he continue to have those…outbursts when he started high school?”

“At first, but then it stopped. He did have sad spells, when he’d hole up in his room. But he’d always come out of it before too long. It didn’t seem terribly unusual. The teenage years…it’s a tough time for kids. Luke went through the same thing at that age.”

“Did Logan ever show any interest in guns?”

Bonnie’s eyes widened. “Never.” She shifted on the sofa and looked down the hall toward Logan’s room. “How much longer are they going to be in there?”

“I don’t know. I can go check—”

“Yes, please.”

We stood up, but at that moment Bailey walked in with a uniformed officer. She was carrying an evidence bag.

“Mrs. Jarvis, I’m afraid we’re going to have to search the rest of the house,” Bailey said. The uni moved in, one hand hovering near the butt of his gun. Bonnie stared at him, white-faced, then turned to Bailey. “Why?” she asked.

Bailey held up the bag. “Loose ammunition in one of Logan’s dresser drawers. It’s the same caliber and make as some of the ammunition used in the shooting.”