The Third Victim (7 page)

The best experts could do currently was a “risk assessment” of individuals, a checklist of behaviors statistically found in mass murderers. Mass murderers:

1. had a history of violence, e.g., wife-beating, child abuse, brawls, etc.

2. inspired “subjective fear” in people. After shootings, there were always a few neighbors or coworkers who had a “bad feeling” about the person. They avoided the man at work, didn’t let their children play with the boy, were sure never to be alone with the guy, etc.

3. exhibited antisocial behavior, either a loner-type personality or someone who deliberately violated societal rules.

4. had poor social skills.

5. liked to make threats, realistic or idle.

6. lacked a support system, e.g., came from a fractured family, had few friends, etc.

7. felt wronged—by life, the corporation, peers, spouse, etc.

8. were under severe situational stress, e.g., recent job loss, impending divorce, death in the family, etc.

QUINCY FELT THAT THE
checklist was not a bad tool. Human resources departments of many major corporations routinely used it to identify potentially dangerous employees. In the wake of school shootings, school counselors across the country had also requested the information for their offices.

Unfortunately, the checklist was proving too vague when applied to youthful offenders. What was “situational stress” for an eleven-year-old? Getting braces, having a pimple, breaking up? What was a “history of violence” for a grade-school boy? Throwing rocks, tearing wings off flies, engaging in rough sports?

Add to that the significant number of children who came from broken homes, and that every teenager worth his salt felt deeply and grievously wronged by life, and a statistically improbable number of youths emerged as future homicidal maniacs—hardly an encouraging thought.

Children were simply too hard for adults to understand or predict in the best of circumstances. Their coping skills were limited, they were a bundle of hormones, and they generally believed everything must happen now, today, immediately, with no thought of long-term consequences.

Finally, juveniles were highly motivated by peer pressure, a rare factor in adult homicide. Children were also proving more susceptible to media images and outside influences such as cults and hate groups.

In short, the more Quincy learned, the more he realized how much he had left to learn. This would be a long assignment. Years, he was beginning to think, of spending quality time with kids who killed kids.

He was both intrigued by the task and repelled by it—in other words, his general state of mind.

The fasten-seat-belt light came on. The plane was preparing for descent. Quincy gathered up Danny O’Grady’s interview tape and notes. His brow furrowed.

He did not have much information on the case yet, but already there were a number of elements that bothered him. The shooting of the teacher seemed so exact, for one thing. He wanted to know more about her and Danny’s relationship. Then there was the timing of the shooting. Why when all the students had gone back into class? That struck him as an attack strategy devised to
limit
the amount of damage, as if the shooter didn’t want many people hurt.

Finally, there was the interview. Judging by the tone of the child’s voice, Quincy would bet he’d been in a state of shock, not the best time for a thorough interrogation. Plus, while the investigating officer had done a nice job of trying to open the boy up by resorting to simpler questions, she had used too many leading questions. That was always dangerous with children, as they were prone to giving the answer they thought the adult desired, instead of the right answer. Danny’s repeated reference to being smart bothered Quincy as well. Something else needed to be asked.

He wondered what the chances were of the boy’s lawyer agreeing to an interview. Then he wondered what the chances were of the local police welcoming his assistance with the case.

Supervisory Special Agent Pierce Quincy smiled.

A local police officer welcome a fed with open arms? Hardly. He was already placing bets on which expletive Officer Lorraine Conner would use first.

EIGHT
                                                                                                                                                                                                               

Wednesday, May 16, 11:08
A
.
M
.

Y
OU LITTLE SHIT
. Go behind my back to the DA one more time, and I’ll tie you up, take you out into a field, and personally introduce you to Bakersville’s home-grown cow pies. Got it?”

“I simply needed some information—”

“You tried to yank my case!”

“Only when it became clear that you weren’t qualified to handle it.”

Rainie’s eyes bugged open and she nearly foamed at the mouth. She was having a bitch of a morning, which had already included one very terse conversation with Abe Sanders at seven
A
.
M
. Apparently that had not gotten the job done, however, because here it was just after eleven and she was going to have to take her scissors and cut him down to size. How dare he ask the DA to remove her as primary officer on the case! How dare he try to claim state jurisdiction of her homicide!

Didn’t he know better than to mess with a woman who’d gotten only four hours of sleep?

Rainie moved out from behind the hastily erected desk—actually a piece of plywood laid atop two sawhorses—that had just been placed in the brand-new “op center” for the Bakersville case team. Sure, the command post was really the attic of Town Hall, stifling and dusty and hot, but she’d managed to commandeer a coffeepot and a water cooler from the mayor’s office. Already, that made these quarters luxurious compared to the twenty-by-twenty headquarters of the sheriff’s department.

Rainie had been working her damnedest this morning. Up at four-thirty to burn the knots out of her muscles with a good, hard run, she then typed up the police reports from the night before, met with the mayor about getting more space for her case team, and prepared for her first meeting with Abe. She’d thought they’d made the ground rules perfectly clear at that time. The case would require state and local cooperation. Abe would serve as point man for the state’s resources, handling the physical evidence, managing the CSU, and adding his own considerable experience to the investigative efforts. Rainie’s department would provide the ground troops—herself, Luke, and three volunteer officers—to conduct interviews and pull records. They knew the people in their town the best and would get more cooperation from the school and parents than state officers would.

Abe was welcome to process the crime scene and commandeer the school computers in search of further evidence. Rainie knew she needed help. But she would not, could not, should not, give up jurisdiction of the case. End of story.

Or so she’d thought at seven this morning.

“You messed up,” Sanders said now, obviously worried she hadn’t gotten the message the first time. “You’re inexperienced and it showed.”

“I secured the scene and arrested a murderer. Shame on me.”

“You trampled the scene,” he corrected with a grimace. “My God, you let in the EMTs. Haven’t you ever seen what they do to a place? Why not just invite the fire department and throw a party?”

“I ordered Walt docked. He chose to violate those orders. Something Bradley Brown is still very grate-ful for.”

“He might have lived anyway.”

“Might have lived? Are you guys paid by the body or what?”

Sanders remained unswayed. “EMTs ruin scenes, simple fact of life. So do concerned parents running after their children and school bureaucrats trying to do head counts—”

“We got there as fast as we could. Geography is another simple fact of life, and geography places that school in the middle of a residential area and us fifteen minutes away. Can’t stop what we aren’t there to manage.”

“Fine, what about once you were there? Discharging your weapon? In the middle of the scene?” He raised a brow.

“An armed murder suspect drew down on me!” Rainie snapped. “Value a crime scene. Don’t plan on dying for it.”

“Oh, now I get it. You were afraid for your life, so you shot up the ceiling. I stand corrected, Officer. That makes perfect sense.”

“You insufferable—”

Rainie fisted her hands at her side. She counted to ten a second time and noticed that another man had just appeared in the doorway, also wearing a sharply pressed suit. God help her, the state men were multiplying.

She forced her fists open and managed in a more reasonable tone of voice, “As I wrote in my report, Detective—which you have no doubt read, edited, and found fault with the font size—at the last minute the suspect’s father threw himself in front of me, forcing me to alter my fire.”

“So you’re trigger-happy? That’s how you want to go on record?”

“Hey, have you ever pulled your weapon on the job? Have you ever been in the line of fire? What the hell do you know about being trigger-happy?”

Sanders scowled. Apparently, Mr. Perfect never had been at the front lines. Look who was the inexperienced one now? Rainie’s triumph, however, was short-lived.

“Well,” the state detective said briskly, “that brings us to all the problems with the arrest.”

“What?”

“First off, the confession. Have you talked to the DA yet about the confession?”

“Hell, I called Rodriguez in to listen to the confession. Everything was by the book.”

“Apparently not everything. O’Grady’s lawyer is already seeking to have the confession tossed—”

“You thought he’d ask to have it entered into evidence instead?”

Sanders ignored her sarcasm. “He claims the boy was in shock at the time and in no state of mind to waive his rights. He also points out that your questions were leading, which is inappropriate when interrogating a minor. He has a score of experts lined up to contend that you put words in Danny’s mouth, getting him to say exactly what you wanted to hear.”

“Like I wanted to hear that my boss’s son killed three people,” Rainie grumbled, then waved her hand in a dismissive motion. “Fine. It doesn’t matter. We still have the positive GSR results and the two handguns. We can build one helluva case off that.”

Sanders smiled thinly. For the first time, Rainie understood that they really were in trouble.

“Yes. The gunpowder residue found on Danny O’Grady’s hands and clothing.” Sanders adopted the demeanor of a thin-lipped defense attorney. “Is it true, Officer Conner, that you discharged your weapon at the scene?”

“Yes, as I explained—”

“Isn’t it true that anytime a gun is fired, it emits gunpowder residue?”

“Sure, but I was hardly standing over Danny—”

“But it would get on your hands, wouldn’t it, Officer? And then didn’t you pat down the suspect, Danny O’Grady? Didn’t you touch his clothes, his arms, his hands as you searched for weapons, as you twisted his arms behind his back for the bracelets? In fact, couldn’t all that gunpowder found on his person really have come from
your
hands from discharging
your
weapon?”

Rainie was stunned. Christ, she hadn’t thought of that. Everything had happened so fast. First trying hard not to kill Shep or his kid. Then needing to get Danny immediately restrained. What was she supposed to do? Tell a murder suspect to stay there like a good boy while she ran to the lavatory to wash her hands?

“The lab can do more tests,” Rainie mumbled desperately. “There are different kinds of gunpowder. They could prove what’s from my weapon, what’s from his.”

“Oh, they’re trying to,” Sanders assured her, resuming his normal punching tone. “We don’t know yet if it’s possible, however. Looks like Danny was using his father’s ammo, and wouldn’t you know it, Shep does his ordering for the department and for himself all from the same manufacturer. Tricky, huh?”

Rainie had a headache. She almost rubbed her temples, then realized she couldn’t afford to give away that much. Plus, that man was still standing in the doorway, taking everything in with no apparent regard for their privacy. If he was a reporter, she would have to kill him.

“Do we at least have the murder weapons?” she asked Abe, since he was the one in charge of evidence.

“ATF took the weapons for ballistics testing. We don’t have results yet.”

“But what else could they be? If all else fails, we’ve got Danny’s prints on the guns. That’s something.”

Abe said, “No prints on the guns.”

“
What?
No way. I
saw
him holding those guns. I made Shep leave the building before me. There is no way the weapons were wiped clean.”

“Not wiped clean—smeared beyond lifting one clean print. Such as what might happen when an experienced police officer pretended to wrestle a handgun from his child’s grip.”

“No,” Rainie said.

“Why not? Because Shep is your boss? Because you feel indebted to him?”

“Don’t go there. That has no bearing on anything.”

Sanders, however, had no learning curve. “Everything has bearing. In the hands of a good defense attorney, Conner, the Andy Gibb poster you kissed every night when you were twelve can have relevance. I asked around. You were arrested for murder fourteen years ago, at the tender age of seventeen. Arresting officer, one Shep O’Grady. And the man who worked to have the charges cleared, one Shep O’Grady.”

“Because he realized he made a mistake.”

“Who cares? Fact remains that you work together, you have dinner at his house, and fourteen years ago he helped you out of a bind, then six years after that gave you a job some people still question. You think that won’t come up during trial? Shep’s got loyalty to Danny; you’ve got loyalty to him. And you three are alone at the scene. Face it, chain of custody on this case is screwed.”

“Nothing inappropriate happened in that building, Detective. You weren’t there. You don’t know how things went down.”

Sanders was silent for a moment. Then he said quietly, dangerously, “No, I don’t think
you
know how things went down. Shep made you the primary officer before ever arriving at the scene. Why? When you arrive at the school, Shep’s car is there, but for forty-five minutes there’s no sign of him. Where’s the sheriff? What’s he doing?”

“He already stated that Danny was holding him hostage in that classroom.”

“Do you know that? Do any of us really know that? From where I’m sitting, you search this whole school without them ever peeking out their heads. Then, when you’re due to enter that classroom anyway, they finally show themselves. Next thing you know, you’re front-row center for a little display that magically makes you discharge your weapon—obliterating a key piece of evidence—while giving Shep O’Grady a chance to handle the other two key pieces of evidence. Damn convenient if you ask me.”

Rainie was incredulous. “You think Shep staged an
armed
confrontation between a police officer and his son on the off chance it would eliminate some of the evidence against Danny?”

“He didn’t stage it for
any
officer, Conner. He staged it for you. You’ve known Danny for eight years. Hell, according to everyone in this town, you and Luke helped raise Danny O’Grady, watching him every afternoon in the office. What were the chances you’d open fire?”

“Shep is a good cop. He wouldn’t tamper with evidence.”

“He’s a father. Don’t kid yourself.”

“I was there, I saw it go down. I know what happened.”

“Yeah, well, Shep’s already going all over town claiming there’s trouble with the evidence and that he’s certain his kid will walk. Who do you think pointed out that you’d discharged your weapon before frisking Danny? Who do you think is claiming the scene is FUBAR? Shep’s got his own agenda. You just don’t want to see it, and that’s why you need to hand over the case. To someone who is perfectly objective. To someone who has experience.”

“To someone who loves looking good in front of a camera.”

Sanders shook his head. He appeared disgusted. “Conner, I got a ninety percent conviction rate. Hate me if you want to, but show me a little respect. You’re the one keeping the case out of ego. I just want to push it ahead to conviction, so everyone can get on with their lives.”

“Then you’re an idiot,” Rainie told him flatly. “You really think locking away a thirteen-year-old kid will make us feel better? Give us a sense of closure? Personally, I’ll be driving by that school for the rest of my life, wondering what really happened yesterday afternoon. And all the parents and teachers will be wondering the same thing. What drives a boy to kill? Why did two little girls have to die? Why
didn’t
we prevent this from happening?

“More than an arrest, my town needs an explanation, and I’m going to get it for them. Now get out of my office, Detective, and the next time you talk to Rodriguez, pull that stick out of your ass. It’s really not helping.”

Rainie returned to her desk and sat down. A moment later she had the satisfaction of hearing Sanders storm away. It didn’t improve her mood, however. She was already growing weary of their battles.

And disheartened. Sanders was right: she had fucked up yesterday. She’d done her job earnestly, and that meant nothing in the criminal justice system. She had captured a suspect but destroyed the evidence. Soon she’d only be fit for a job with the LAPD.

And her credibility would come into question. People still whispered. Of course, it was a small town. If people didn’t whisper through the long, rainy winters, everyone would lose their minds.

Rainie Conner’s tough. Gotta watch out for her. Killed her own mother.

Rainie sighed, then became aware that the man in the navy blue suit was still standing there, watching.

“Can I help you?” she asked sharply.

“Officer Lorraine Conner?”

“I don’t know. Who’s asking?”

The man smiled, a wry tilt of one corner of his mouth. The gesture crinkled the corners of his eyes and momentarily startled Rainie. Lean hunter’s face. Penetrating blue eyes. She did a quick double take before she caught herself. Then she was embarrassed. Whoever the man was, she already wished he’d turn and walk away.