The Competition

40

When the elevator bounced to a stop at the ground floor, I snaked my way through the crowd, out to the stairway behind the courthouse. “Okay, go.”

“You won’t believe that little punk Evan. He’s been tweeting that we’ve been harassing him-”

“What? Are you kidding me?”

“According to him, he keeps telling us he doesn’t know anything and we just keep pressuring him. And the best part? The press just got wind of it.”

Damn. Just what we needed-bad press. “Stand by for the four o’clock news. You guys doing another presser today?”

“Yeah. And we’re putting out that Shane Dolan is a ‘person of interest.’ That’s a bigger deal, so maybe Evan’s little hissy fit will fly under the radar. Either way, it’s going to be crazy here. Mind if I come over there?”

“No. You stay put. I’m on my way over.”

“Uh, okay.”

I could tell she knew something was up. I hurried over to the station and found Bailey at her desk. “Mind if we use the interview room?”

She looked puzzled, but led me to the nearest room and closed the door. “What’s going on?”

I told her about the bug.

She slammed her hand down on the table. “Are you friggin’ kidding me? What’s next?”

“No. Do not ask that question, okay?” I rubbed my aching neck. “But there’s nothing we can do. Graden’s on it and we’ve got bigger fish to fry. Speaking of which, what’s the deal with Evan? I get that he might be upset, but why on earth would he tweet that crap?”

We walked out of the interview room and headed to Bailey’s desk.

“Who the hell knows?” Bailey said. “My guess? Evan’s world blew up on him when he found out his buddy was a psycho killer. So now, anything’s possible.”

“And he’s using the tweets to tell Logan he’s not talking so-”

“So Logan won’t feel the need to come back and shut him up. That’s my take.”

Which might not be that crazy, now that I thought about it. “From Logan’s point of view, all he knows is we’ve named him as a person of interest. As far as he knows, no one could identify him. He was covered from head to toe. He doesn’t know we spotted his tattoo on the video. So who could’ve pointed the finger at him?”

“The last person he spoke to who’s still alive,” Bailey said. “Which seems to be Evan.”

“I’m not saying I believe Logan would risk coming after him. But I do get why Evan might be worried about it. We’ve got someone sitting on Evan’s place, don’t we?”

“We’ve got extra patrol, but it’ll take some doing to get a car permanently stationed. We’re stretched pretty thin.”

Graden had gotten the chief to discreetly approve extra details for malls, government buildings, and some of the bigger venues around the city. It was a shot in the dark, but we had to do something. Getting an extra body assigned to one house on a full-time basis when there was no specific threat would’ve been hard under the best of circumstances-and these were the worst.

“I got hold of the shrinkers this morning,” Bailey said. “They should be here any minute. And I had Nick print out all of Logan’s emails.” Bailey leaned in, her voice low. “We’re going to tell them about the letter, right?”

I’d given this some thought. “I’d like to, but our conversations with the shrinks aren’t privileged-”

“Jeez, don’t you think they’d be willing to keep this under wraps?”

“They’re probably cool, but we don’t know for sure. If we’re wrong and they sound the alarm, there’ll be riots in the streets.” Bailey gave a tight-lipped nod. “Let’s at least hold off until we can talk to Graden about it again.”

“Okay, but the sooner the better.”

“Absolutely,” I said. “I’m going to run to the snack bar.” When the going gets tough, the tough pound chocolate. “Want anything?”

Bailey opted for a Snickers. I commended her good taste. I went for the Look! bar. I’d just gotten back when Nick sauntered over to Bailey’s desk, wearing his usual cowboy boots and sexy smile. He eyed the candy. “Not that y’all need to get any sweeter, but those are some fine choices.” He handed me a batch of pages. “Didn’t find too many emails from Logan, and they only go back about ten months. That when they met?” I nodded. “Nothing remarkable crime-wise, but there you go.”

“What about Otis’s laptop?” Bailey asked. “Anything?”

“Not so far. Kid was a major gamer, but from what I’ve seen, his guns were all digital. And not all that much correspondence with Logan.”

“So no weird writings?” I asked. Nick shook his head. “What about other pictures?”

“None that we care about. Some old ones of him and some junior high buddies at a paintball party. That’s about as ‘hot’ as it gets.”

“And nothing of interest on Logan’s laptop, I take it?” Bailey asked.

“Nope. I printed out all his emails for the past year, though, just to show you.” He handed Bailey a thick stack of paper. “Got some from Evan, a few from Caleb and a kid named Kenny. But it was all just routine boy stuff. Girls, school, movies, junk like that.”

We thanked Nick. He tipped an imaginary cowboy hat and left. A few minutes later, Drs. Malloy and Shelby showed up. Bailey had managed to snag us a small conference room in a private corner of the building.

“I wanted to ask you a couple of questions about Evan.” I told them about Evan’s encounter with Logan the morning of the shooting, his reaction to the photo of Shane, and his recent tweeting that we’d been harassing him. I gave them Bailey’s theory. “Do you think he’s trying to show Logan he’s not a threat?”

Michael Malloy nodded. “Seems likely. And probably your second suspect as well. Bailey’s right about his world being rocked. If a buddy he trusted can turn out to be a murderer, especially on this scale, then anything’s possible.”

“And remember, Evan was in that gym too,” Jenny said. “He’s lucky to be alive, and he knows it. I agree with your assessment of Logan’s point of view. From his standpoint, Evan might well appear to be his number one threat. Does that mean I think he would go after Evan? No. It’s too big a risk. And it’s not worth it. Evan’s information wouldn’t put Logan away. And much as I understand why Evan might be frightened by the revelation that Logan has teamed up with someone who looks as threatening as Shane, Evan’s certainly no threat to Shane. He seemed to be truthful when he said he didn’t know him?”

“He did,” Bailey said.

“But we’re being objective,” Michael said. “Evan’s psychological state is not conducive to objective thinking. Remember, all of these kids are extremely traumatized.”

“Right,” Jenny said. “Now imagine that on top of all that, you’re the last living person to speak to Logan. And what he tells you strongly indicates he was about to commit a massacre. The emotional conflicts would be massive.”

Michael nodded. “On the one hand, Evan feels guilty about not alerting anyone when Logan told him to skip school-”

“He does,” I said. “Which is crazy. No one could’ve known-”

Jenny held up a hand. “Again, we’re not talking about rational thinking here. And on the other hand, he’s scared for his own safety, for all the reasons we’ve discussed. Added to that, believe it or not, he probably also feels guilty for telling you about his encounter with Logan-”

Bailey nodded. “For betraying his buddy.”

“And they typically overestimate their own importance,” Michael said. “To put it bluntly, they’re self-centered. Evan’s statement isn’t huge in the grand scheme of things, but it is to him. And so he believes it must be to Logan-or maybe Shane-as well.”

“Still strikes me as kind of paranoid, don’t you think?” I asked.

Jenny tilted her head. “Is there such a thing as irrational fear when you’re dealing with someone who’s so irrationally violent?”

Touché.

I passed them the copies of all the email correspondence with Logan. “We’d like you to read these and get back to us by tonight or, at the latest, tomorrow morning with any ideas you may have about where Logan and his accomplice might be-”

Michael nodded. “I assume your people have already checked for any oblique references to a plan? Or some kind of code that might have been used?”

“Yes,” I said. “There was nothing they could see.”

Jenny frowned. “That’s very, very odd. I’ve never heard of a case where there wasn’t some evidence of preparation or planning. Typically written. Whether it’s in the form of poems to a teacher, drawings of some kind, or posting on the Internet or in some kind of journal. This type of killer is usually a copious writer. And it usually begins months before the event. It’s a form of ramping up, if you will. For a mass murderer-​especially one as young as Logan-not to write or say anything about what he plans to do…it’s extraordinary.”

“But why would they want to write down their plans?” Bailey asked. “Why take the risk?”

Jenny nodded. “It does seem counterintuitive, doesn’t it? But these killers live in their heads a great deal of the time. They get a lot of traction out of their fantasies. Writing, for them, is a way of savoring those fantasies. Plus-and this is an important point-much of the thrill for this type of killer is the sense of power. Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac for them. That’s why the killings are almost always set up ‘fish in a barrel’ style. They want to master the situation and terrorize a captive audience. That’s also why writing about their desires is perfect for them. When they write about their desires, they control it all: the means, the location, and the outcome.”

“Writing or no, there had to have been a heck of a lot of planning,” Bailey said. “They didn’t just put that arsenal together over a long weekend.”

“Oh, no doubt they’d been planning this for several months, if not a year,” Jenny said. “I’m only saying that these killers need some outlet for all this homicidal energy that gets generated every time they think about what they plan to do. Writing usually provides that outlet.”

“They had each other to talk to,” I said. “Wouldn’t that have siphoned off some steam?”

“Some,” Michael said. “But they couldn’t talk about it whenever or wherever they wanted. Understand that this killing was something they both thought about night and day, every single day. Writing is something one can do at any time. No one overhears it. And if they’re careful, no one sees it. Talking is a different story.”

“Right,” Jenny said. “And given that there are no writings, it’s difficult to believe this boy, Logan, showed absolutely nothing out of the ordinary in the months leading up to the crime.”

“His friends did say he seemed wound pretty tight,” Bailey said. “He’d pop off at little things. But how would that tip anyone off that he was planning something like this?”

“Yeah, exactly,” I said. “What would tip you off? If a kid doesn’t already have a track record for violent behavior-”

“And these killers seldom do-” Jenny said.

“Then what would you expect to see that would make you suspect a kid would do something like this?”

Jenny sighed. “That is the classic question in these cases. So Johnny got into a fight, or stole someone’s cell phone. Or defaced school property. Why should that make us suspect he’s building bombs in the basement?” Jenny shook her head. “We have never been able to answer that.”