The Competition

20

The uniformed officers had already set up a barricade to keep the press away from the property. Bailey parked in the driveway this time, so we wouldn’t have to outrun the media when we left.

We found Herrera setting up at a folding table in the garage, where he’d examine the laptop for prints, hair, and DNA. Bailey called the Computer Crimes Unit and asked them to send someone out to look at Logan’s laptop when Herrera had finished with it. We’d worked with Herrera on our last case, so I knew the CCU guy would have plenty of time to get here. Herrera was, impossibly, even more painstaking than Dorian. I watched him work for fifteen minutes, then had to walk away to keep from pulling my own hair out. Bailey couldn’t stand it either. She went back into the house to check on the search team.

I went out to the backyard and scrolled through my email. Nothing of any urgency there, which was a relief. Bailey brought our computer expert out to meet me. I’d never have guessed he worked the Computer Crimes Unit. In a beige cowboy hat, jeans, and Western boots, Nick Parsons looked more like an undercover cop-if LAPD was surveilling rodeos. He said howdy-yes, he really did-and when I told him we had to wait for Herrera to finish with the laptop, he said he’d take a stroll around the neighborhood. I was about to warn him that he’d get hounded by the press, but there was something in his eyes that said it was the press that needed the warning.

Twenty minutes later, Herrera sent a uni to tell me he’d finished and I called out to Nick, who was leaning against Bailey’s car and talking on the phone. Bailey was already in the garage when we got there. Herrera was stripping off his gloves.

“Find anything?” I asked.

“Nothing,” Herrera said. “In fact, it looks to me as though it’s been wiped clean very recently. And thoroughly.”

Bailey and I exchanged a look. Nick’s expression said he was thinking the same thing. If Logan cleaned the keyboard, he probably…

Nick sat down and began to punch keys. It didn’t take him long. “He wiped it,” Nick said. “There’s nothing here. If you want, I can get into the hard drive, but I’ll need to take it downtown for that. And it’ll take some time.”

“What are your chances of finding anything?” I asked.

“To be perfectly honest, ma’am, I wouldn’t bet on it,” Nick said.

Ordinarily, “ma’am” sets my teeth on edge, but it was stylistically consistent for Nick, so I let it go. I wondered if Graden could bring back our master hacker M. Parkova. She’d come to the rescue when I’d had a computer issue on my last case. But how many times could I get away with hiring a convicted felon? I might already have exceeded my quota.

The problem was, I’d hoped to find something on Logan’s computer to pump up our probable cause for the search warrant for Otis’s house. “We can still try to get a warrant, but…”

“But you don’t think we’ve got enough,” Bailey said.

“It’s pretty dicey.” Some think the more heinous the case, the more likely judges are to hand out search warrants. In fact, it can be just the opposite. A heinous case usually means a high-profile case, and a high-profile case means lots of scrutiny. No one wants to screw up with the whole world watching.

“Then I guess we’re stuck with guilt.”

As in, we try to guilt Otis’s parents into letting us search his room. Banking on getting consent for a search is always my least favorite option, but it was our best-well, really, our only-shot this time.

“Hey, do we have an ID on either of those boys found in the library?” I asked.

“One. Lionel Franks. We got him through the DMV database. We’re confirming with DNA.”

“Any known connection between him and our shooters?”

Bailey shook her head. “Right now it just looks like a poor kid in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

The thought twisted my gut. I had to take a minute to refocus. “I was thinking, since we’ve got Herrera here, we probably ought to get the Jarvises’ DNA,” I said. “I know Logan’s ruled out as one of the bodies in the library, but you never know when we might need it.”

“Good idea.” Bailey headed back to the garage to tell Herrera to swab the parents.

By the time we left the house, the entire block was packed with news vans, making the street barely wide enough for one-way traffic. Bailey navigated carefully as I sank down in my seat to stay out of camera range. It was eight o’clock, and the night air was cold and damp. I looked up at the sky and saw clouds scudding across the moon. I’d worried that the parents might still be at the rec center, but when we got to the house I saw a car in the driveway and a light on in the living room window. There was a heavy knot in my stomach. I didn’t want to face another set of devastated parents. “You lead off on this one.”

Bailey parked at the curb in a legal spot-and there was a spot next to a fire hydrant just one house up. That’s how upset she was. “Why me?”

“Because you’re the investigating officer.”

“Since when has that mattered?”

“It has always mattered, Detective Keller.”

“Then you’ll have to live with the way I handle it. No interference.”

“Fine.”

Bailey raised an eyebrow. The truth? I have been known to jump in on interviews on occasion. Okay, on most occasions.

As we headed toward the front door, I admired the red and white begonias that were planted in a circle in the middle of the lawn. It was a nice, unexpected touch of color. I wanted to study them for a while. Then maybe check out the backyard, see what fun surprises they’d planted there. Basically, I would have washed their windows to avoid the meeting we were about to have.