The Competition

by Marcia Clark

  42

  Half an hour later, the three of us convened around the table in the conference room. Jenny put on a pair of black-framed reading glasses to consult her notes. “We don’t have a great deal to go on here. Neither Michael nor I are code crackers”—she looked up and gave a little smile—“but there’s nothing we saw that alerted us to any secret language or code being used. The emails were largely about school or girls.” She took off her glasses. “None of it struck us as unusual in the least.”

  “So their relationship was fairly superficial,” I said.

  “That’s the way it looks.”

  “Now that you’ve read those emails, do you feel any differently about why he tweeted that we were harassing him?”

  “No, we’ve gone through all the possible explanations and I don’t see anything in these emails that would let me narrow it down to any one in particular. Anything else you’d like to discuss about Evan?”

  I shook my head. We’d heard enough about him. It was time to get down to the heart of the matter. “We need to share some information with you that you cannot discuss outside this office. Not even with Michael.”

  I’d made a copy of the letter—just one because I didn’t want to risk its getting lost or lifted from my office. Paranoid? Maybe. But better paranoid than sorry.

  When she finished reading the letter, she took off her glasses and said nothing for several moments. “I suppose I should’ve expected that they’d seek out new targets. It’s just…I’ve never seen anything like this before.” Jenny put her hand to her forehead.

  I gave her a moment, then leaned in. “What we need more than anything is to figure out where they’re most likely to strike next. The more you can tell us about him, the better our chances of predicting his next target.”

  Jenny nodded. “He—and I say ‘he’ because this sounds very male—appears to be a classic psychopath. Grandiose, manipulative, completely non-empathic.” She looked at me. “But you already know that, don’t you? I’ll bet you were shocked at how he managed to drill down on your particular weaknesses, weren’t you?”

  I was shocked that she knew that. “Completely.”

  Jenny nodded. “They’re empathically and emotionally stunted, but even so, they often do have an uncanny ability to suss out someone’s weak spot. It’s a survival skill for them, and they start honing it from an early age. When most children are learning how to get along with others, make friends, and show affection, the psychopaths—who are emotionally incapable of those things—are figuring out how to manipulate others in order to get what they want.”

  That certainly fit our letter writer to a T. “But if that’s the case, then how come no one saw all that in Logan? Wouldn’t it be pretty obvious?”

  “No, not necessarily. The smarter they are, the better they are at observing how others respond to social cues and mimicking normal behavior. That doesn’t mean some people won’t figure out that there’s something ‘off’ about them. You can’t fool all the people all of the time. And in any case, we can’t be sure that Logan wrote this letter. It seems to me that the letter writer was the alpha in this duo, but there are no absolutes.”

  “So the person who wrote the letter might be the second shooter,” I said.

  “It’s possible.” Jenny frowned and picked up the letter. “But about this parting shot, ‘Do your job, you’ll stop us. Fail and we will go on. And on.’ I don’t want to overstep my bounds. I’m not your therapist, Rachel. But I want to be sure that you don’t get taken in by this effort to blame you for anything that might happen.”

  I shifted in my seat, suddenly aware that my back hurt. “I’m not.”

  Jenny observed me silently for a few moments. “I believe you have a particular…sensitivity when it comes to guilt.” I started to respond, but Jenny held up a hand. “Yes, I know it’s common. Many people—especially in law enforcement—carry the weight of the world on their shoulders. But given your background, I’d guess that you have a particularly acute tendency to believe you’re responsible whenever something goes wrong. So please try to remember that you’re not to blame for what these shooters do. Only they are.”

  Her words reminded me of the feeling I’d had when I’d read the letter—an all too familiar heaviness in my chest, the coil of anxiety that wound around my gut. But I was in no mood to share. “I don’t have any doubt about that, Jenny.”

  “Not consciously, no. But subconsciously, you might. And that alone I don’t worry about. It’s not the worst thing anyone’s ever had to deal with. But you’re under enormous pressure to catch these killers. When that pressure is added to your subconscious motivators, you may find yourself impelled to take undue risks.” Jenny gave me a stern look. “And that’s what I worry about.”

  I tried for a smile to lighten the moment. “So I’ll move my toaster off the edge of the bathtub.”

  No one laughed.

  43

  After Jenny left, Bailey reported on the uni interviews with Logan’s outer circle of friends. “None of them ever heard of anyone named Shane, and the unis had zero impression they were holding anything back. We can catch Caleb at home right now. I’ve got a call in to Kenny to see if he’ll meet us there.”

  I filled her in on my call with Ed. Bailey agreed that the way the serial numbers had been burned off pointed to someone like Shane. Nice to know, but a minor detail that only left us more frustrated and miserable. With no line on either Shane’s or Logan’s whereabouts and disaster drawing closer with every second, it was all we could do to keep from punching the walls.

  We headed back to my office so I could pick up my coat and scarf. I locked the door behind me, though I don’t know why. It obviously didn’t do any good.

  “So we’re not going to use your office for the duration?”

  “No way. Not until they figure out who planted that thing.” It depressed me, so I turned my thoughts back to the case at hand. As we headed out to the elevators, I thought of another question I meant to ask Jenny. “Why do you suppose they addressed the letter to me? Why not you? Or Dale Campbell?”

  “Because you’re the famous one.”

  It kind of made sense. The geeky nerd who wanted the world to know he was all-powerful. And Shane, the rebel without a clue, out to thumb his nose at authority in every way possible. Yeah, that could work.

  We made it to Caleb’s house in record time. His mother, a pleasant-looking brunette on the attractively plump side, greeted us with a worried look. “Has something else happened?”

  “No, ma’am,” Bailey said. “We’re just gathering information. Thank you for letting us impose on you like this—”

  “Oh, my goodness, of course. Anything I can do. Kenny just got here. They’re in the living room. Can I get you anything?” We declined and she led us to a cozy room, where an inviting fire was crackling in the fireplace. Seeing it made me aware of how bone weary I was. I pushed the feeling aside.

  Caleb, the pocket-protector nerd, and Kenny, a tall, handsome boy with shoulder-length blonde hair, were a study in contrasts. But seeing their easy body language, I got the impression they were pals.

  We cut to the chase. “Do either of you know a person named Shane Dolan?” I asked.

  “No,” Caleb said. “Why?”

  “Kenny?”

  “I know a guy named Shane,” he said. “Not sure about the last name. Maybe if you had a picture—”

  Bailey held out her cell phone. The boys studied the photo.

  Caleb shook his head. His expression said we may as well have asked if he’d been hanging around with Kim Jong Un.

  Kenny didn’t hesitate either. “No,” he said. “The dude I know is my age. Who’s this?”

  “We think he might be a friend of Logan’s,” Bailey said. “Do you remember ever hearing him mention the name?”

  “No,” Caleb said. “Never.”

  Kenny shook his head. I had no sense they were hiding anything. I had one last question. “Have either of
you talked to Evan lately?”

  Kenny said he hadn’t, but Caleb licked his lips and began to rub his palms on his pant legs.

  “Caleb?” I asked.

  He looked down. “He called me yesterday. Said you guys took his laptop and kept bugging him even though he told you he didn’t know anything.”

  “How did he sound?” I asked.

  “Stressed. Freaked.”

  “And what did you tell him?” Bailey asked.

  Caleb shrugged. “I told him you guys were talking to everyone. Seems like there are cops at someone’s house every day. So I told him he’s not the only one.”

  That was certainly true. “What did he say to that?” I asked.

  “Not much. I thought maybe hearing about how everyone was getting the same treatment would make him realize it was no big deal. But then I saw his tweets about you guys harassing him, so…”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Maybe not.”

  We asked how they were doing—not great, but as well as could be expected—and ended the interview.

  Bailey dropped me off at the Biltmore, and I decided a hot bath might relax me enough to take a full breath. The double shot of Dalwhinnie didn’t hurt either.

  Graden called around nine o’clock, sounding every bit as tightly wound as I was. We tried to keep it light, but the conversation kept stalling as our minds wandered back to the case, so we gave up and said good night. For the thousandth time, I thanked the gods that I’d found someone who understood the all-consuming nature of the job.

  I set out my clothes so I could jump into them in the morning and put myself to bed by ten o’clock with a murder mystery set in London. All the descriptions of fog and damp made me slide farther and farther under the covers, till I was practically holding the book above my head. Finally, I got sleepy enough to put it down and turn off the light.

  When the hotel phone rang Saturday morning, I looked at the clock. Six a.m. What the hell? I’d told Bailey I’d be downstairs waiting for her at seven thirty. I snatched up the phone. “I said I’d be on time—”

  “Get dressed and get downstairs!” Bailey sounded tense. “I’ll tell you when I see you.”

  I turned on the news as I got ready, expecting to hear about another shooting, but there was nothing. What could it be? The question whirred through my brain on an endless loop. When I got downstairs fifteen minutes later, Bailey was already there waiting for me. I hurried to the car and got in. It was still dark outside and icy cold.

  “What? Tell me,” I said, as I pulled on my seat belt. Bailey jumped on the gas, throwing me into the dash before I could get it buckled. “If you’re trying to kill me, just use your gun, it’ll be quicker.”

  “Sorry,” she muttered. She didn’t speak again until we’d merged on to the 101. “I got a call from the Topanga station. Evan’s gone.”

  “Gone…how?”

  “He ran away. There’s no sign of forced entry or a struggle. His dad knocked on his bedroom door to wake him up for school and got no answer…”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me!” I put my head in my hands. “Maybe we should have—”

  “What? Slapped an ankle monitor on him?”

  Bailey was probably right. We couldn’t justify a twenty-four/seven tail on him. But that didn’t stop me from thinking we should’ve seen it coming.

  Bailey grabbed my shoulder. “I know what you’re doing and you can stop it right now—”

  “Caleb told us he was getting weird, he was tweeting—”

  “So fucking what? Kids bitch and tweet a thousand times a day.”

  True, but that didn’t make it feel any better.

  Fog had blanketed the Valley by the time we pulled onto Evan’s street. The flashing blue-and-red strobe from a dozen squad cars glowed eerily through the mist, and the officers guarding the house looked almost ghostly. I saw a news truck parked at the corner. The press was here. Already. News of Evan’s flight would go nationwide within the hour.

  Bailey left her car in the middle of the street and badged us through the crowd. Evan’s father was in the front room, standing nose to nose with a uniformed sergeant, poking his finger at the sergeant’s chest. “If they’d given him protection instead of haranguing him constantly, this would never have happened!”

  The sergeant bore the tirade stoically. “Sir, I can understand you’re upset. But we need to process this scene for evidence. Every second I stand here is another second wasted. Now, if you’ll—”

  Cutter spotted us. “This is all your fault! You come here, you disrupt my house, you harass my son. I’m going to sue you and your whole useless department!”

  Bailey took a deep breath and spoke slowly in her Jedi voice. “Mr. Cutter, I am very sorry that this happened. It is your absolute right to file a complaint if that’s what you choose to do. But right now, we need to gather the evidence as quickly and efficiently as possible so we can find your son. We’ll need your cooperation. I’d like you to talk to a uni and give all the details you can about where Evan might’ve gone. Can you do that?”

  Cutter was still breathing hard, the veins in his neck stretched taut as piano wire, but he stopped yelling. Bailey stood and waited for him to respond to her question. Finally, he gave the barest of nods. As many times as I’ve seen her do it, it never ceases to amaze me the way she can calm anyone, no matter how rabid. Bailey asked one of the unis to sit down with John Cutter; then we moved down the hall to Evan’s bedroom, where crime scene techs were already at work. That was about as fast as I’d ever seen a team arrive.

  The sergeant joined us. “The father said he didn’t hear anything last night. Didn’t know the boy was gone until he came down for breakfast and knocked on his door.”

  I hadn’t noticed there was an upstairs when I was here before. “Where’s the staircase?” I asked.

  The sergeant pointed to our far right. I walked in that direction and saw a short hallway that led to a flight of stairs. It looked like an add-on. I went back to Evan’s doorway—no one but the techs were allowed in right now—and craned my neck to get a glimpse of his room. The only thing that looked out of place was the window screen, which seemed to be missing. The window was cranked open. I pointed to it and asked the sergeant, “That how he got out?”

  “Seems so. Mom says he always slept with it open.”

  The window was fairly large, four feet by three feet, and it gave easy access to the backyard, which was encircled by a high whitewashed wooden fence. Which meant Evan’s escape was perfectly shielded from view. And of course, it had been dark and too early for anyone to be out and about. The unis would door-knock everyone in the vicinity, but the odds of finding any witnesses in a quiet neighborhood like this were lousy. “Is there a side gate that lets out to the street?” The sergeant nodded. “What happened to the screen? Did you find it?”

  “Outside on the ground,” the sergeant said.

  “Did you call Dorian?” I asked Bailey.

  “First thing,” she said. “Said she’d be here to make sure they didn’t miss anything.”

  “They won’t,” the sergeant said. “These guys are the best in the business.”

  “You haven’t met Dorian,” I said.

  “Sure I have. Who do you think trained ’em?” The sergeant headed back to the front of the house.

  I scanned the bedroom again. “I can’t imagine they’ll find anything of use, but I guess we’ve got to try.” I heard the rumble of approaching news vans. “This is going to hit the airwaves in three, two, one—”

  “Probably already has.”

  “Maybe this time we’ll luck out and get better tips than ‘Justin Bieber did it.’”

  Bailey sighed. “Yeah, maybe this time they’ll tag Taylor Swift.”

  44

  We found Mikayla Cutter on the front porch shivering under her long down coat, her face swollen and blotchy with grief. I’d expected her to be holed up in her bedroom, where she wouldn’t have to see the swarm of cops and reporters, but
she was staring past it all, into the farther reaches of the Valley. Mikayla glanced at us, then turned back to her vigil. “He can’t be far, can he?” Her voice was small and far away.

  “No,” I said. I reached out and squeezed her arm. “We’re going to do everything we can to get him home as soon as possible, I promise.”

  Mikayla bit her lip and nodded as tears leaked out of the sides of her eyes. We wove our way through the police line toward Bailey’s car. By the time we hit the freeway, the fog had lifted and left behind a fresh, clean, blue sky. “We’d better get our shrinks in on this.”

  Bailey nodded. “And we need to tell Dr. Malloy about the letter.”

  I stared down the freeway at the sea of red taillights. We’d hit the morning rush hour dead center. With the threat of another shooting hanging over our heads, no clue where to find the killers, and now Evan’s disappearance, being trapped in traffic was so agonizing it made my stomach churn. “Can this goddamned case get any more bizarre?”

  Bailey winced. “Must you? Really?”

  She was right. I definitely should know better than to tempt fate with a question like that.

  As we inched along, I thought about where Evan might have gone. “Are the unis digging into Evan’s background?”

  “Of course.”

  “God, if anything happens to him…”

  “Don’t go there. We’ll find him. We have to.”

  “But when Logan hears he’s running—”

  “I said, don’t go there.”

  Logan knew Evan better than we did, which meant the odds that he’d find Evan before we did were pretty damn good. And he’d never have a more risk-free chance to kill Evan. By running away, Evan had managed to put himself in a thousand times greater peril.

  It felt like a knife was twisting in my stomach. I wrapped my arms around my torso and tried to catch my breath. We should have given Evan protection. If we’d had a car posted in his driveway, this would never have happened. I should’ve insisted on it. This was my fault, all my fault.