The Competition

by Marcia Clark

  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 themselves 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 as a parent, I’m sure you 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.”

  18

  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 were 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 tog
ether 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.”

  19

  Bonnie swayed, and I reached out and grabbed her arm to keep her from falling. She put a hand to her chest and struggled to catch her breath as I settled her on the sofa. After a few moments, she recovered enough to argue that a friend had to have left the ammunition. It couldn’t be Logan’s.

  There was no honest answer I could give that she’d want to hear. I asked the uni to get her a glass of water, then excused myself and went out to the front porch, where Bailey was waiting.

  Bailey held up her cell. “I’m waiting for a callback from the duty judge.”

  A judge who could approve a telephonic search warrant. Even if Bonnie gave us consent to search the rest of the house, there was no way Brad would and there was no point in taking even a minimal legal risk. We had plenty of probable cause for a search warrant, and getting a telephonic warrant would save time.

  “Just loose ammo?” I asked. “Or did you find a magazine?”

  “Just the ammo. But it’s the same make and caliber as the ammo for the AK that jammed.”

  The gun wielded by the taller shooter, who was looking more and more like Logan Jarvis. “Anything else in the bedroom?”

  “A notebook. I left it in the room for now.”

  I nodded. We’d gotten consent to do the search, and the ammunition was a no-brainer. But the notebook or the laptop, which might have the most incriminating information, could get thrown out by a softheaded judge.

  Bailey’s cell rang. She gestured to me that it was the duty judge and told him she was going to conference me in. I joined the call and we made our spiel. Five minutes later, we had our search warrant. Before we ended the call, the judge asked, “When are you going to go public about the gunmen being at large? Because I can promise you, the press is not going to miss all those cops piling up at the Jarvis residence.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “We’ve got no choice. We’ll have to do the release now.”

  We ended the call, and Bailey punched another number on her cell. “I’ll tell Graden so he can get the chief ready to call a press conference. You’d better call your people.”

  I hoped I could avoid Vanderhorn and get away with just talking to Eric. If I had to go in and brief Mr. Potato Head, I probably wouldn’t get back to the Jarvis house before midnight. I punched in the number and crossed my fingers. “Hey, Melia, it’s Rachel. Is Eric in? It’s urgent.”

  “Sure, Rache! What’s going on?”

  So I’m “Rache” now. Me and Melia, we’re totes BFFs. “Uh, I can’t really talk—”

  “Oh, sure, right. Hang on. He’s on a call, but I’ll see if I can get him.”

  A few seconds later, Eric came on the line. I brought him up to speed. “I’m guessing the chief will say the killers are still out there, but he’ll play it safe with Logan for now and just say he’s a ‘person of interest’”

  “Holy shit, Rachel. This is huge. But no release on your possible second shooter, Barney…something—”

  “Otis Barney. No. We don’t have enough yet. But we’re closing in on it.” An unmarked car pulled up, and three detectives I recognized from Robbery-Homicide got out and headed for the house. We exchanged nods as I pushed open the door for them.

  “Vanderhorn’s going to want to put out his own statement, so he’ll want to see you.”

  “I can’t, Eric. We’re serving the warrant right now and I’ve got to be around in case they find something that needs follow-up. We’ve got two killers out there; I don’t have time to spoon-feed the—”

  “Stop. From now on watch what you say on your cell. You know these things aren’t secure. I’ll try to take care of him myself, but stand by.”

  I thanked him profusely. “I owe you big time.”

  “Yeah, you really do.”

  Another unmarked car and a couple of patrol cars had arrived by the time I ended the call.

  I found Bailey in Logan’s bedroom, where she was talking to the search team. The room hadn’t felt small when it’d just been Bailey, Bonnie Jarvis, and me. But with two detectives and three unis, it felt like a closet. Bailey gave them the list of what they could seize.
It allowed just about everything—including the kitchen sink if it showed signs of recent use by Logan. “And remember to take a couple of his coats. Check the hall closet as well as this one.”

  We could use Logan’s coats to see if the size matched the larger of the two camouflage jackets found in the Dumpster outside the school cafeteria. The officers got to work.

  “We’ve got three more detectives on the way to handle the upstairs,” Bailey said. “We’re not waiting for Dorian?” I asked.

  “We really can’t—”

  “I get it. I just want it on record that I was the one who said we should wait.”

  Dorian would hit the roof when she saw the cops pawing through the house before she could process it. It wouldn’t matter to her that they were all gloved and bootied up. She trusted no one but herself. Bailey made a face. “Heartwarming the way you always have my back, Knight.”

  “And how many times have you thrown me under the Dorian bus to save yourself?” I asked. Bailey answered by turning a stony face toward the sliding glass door. “Exactly.”

  I noticed that the buff detective in the tweed jacket had a spiral notebook opened on the desk. “Is that the one you saw?” I asked Bailey. She nodded. I clasped my hands behind my back to make sure I didn’t touch anything and moved in next to him to see what was written in it. Drawings of sunsets and hearts with a name interwoven through them—I looked more closely and made out the name. “Amanda?” The detective nodded. “See anything related to the shooting yet?”

  “Nope,” he said. “I was hoping we’d at least see some names we could track down. But so far, nada.”

  The detective had opened the notebook to the last page in order to start with the most recent writings. I read as he moved backward through the journal. “I’m the lowest most useless worm on the planet. I’m a blight on humanity. Why am I even here?” Page after page of self-hatred. Then, suddenly, the sun would break through the clouds: “Everywhere I look I see the miracle that is life, and I want to tell everyone that they’re beautiful.” A few pages later, Logan’s sky would darken again and he’d reflect on his “worthlessness and the pain of drawing breath and having to exist on this miserable sphere.” But there was nothing about any real plans to even commit suicide, let alone a mass murder. Finally, I gave up and joined Bailey in the hallway.