The Competition

53

A theater. I’d figured it out. Just not in time. A movie’s take on the human condition. A movie about the movie business. A quote from that movie-with just one word changed. But we were set up to fail. By the time we got the letter, it was already too late. And even if there’d been some lead time, there was no way to know which theater, or even which city. Los Angeles? Or in Shane’s neighborhood, Camarillo? Or in Boulder? It was another needle in a haystack.

Bailey got the call within minutes. A shooting at the Cinemark in Woodland Hills. A theater Logan probably knew well, since it was close to home. We broke all speed limits getting to the scene. There were at least twenty squad cars and two fire trucks occupying all of the drivable space in front of the theater. Bailey double-parked next to a squad car at the far end, and we ran toward the police line. She badged us through and tracked down the detective in charge. It turned out to be Detective Gina Stradley-an old friend of Bailey’s from their Police Academy days.

“I heard this one’s yours, Keller,” she said.

“Yeah, lucky me,” Bailey said. “What have we got?”

“Same MO as the school. Twisted fucks.” Gina gestured for us to follow her into the theater. “And it was so easy for them. It’s sickening. They must’ve bought tickets, because there’s no sign of forced entry anywhere. Just walked in with everyone else. Assault rifles were SBR AR fifteens, like last time.”

A short-barrel rifle wouldn’t be hard to conceal under a coat, and this was coat weather. Gina turned right and led us up the staircase to a wide corridor on the second floor. She stopped just outside the crime scene tape that stretched across the hallway and pointed to a door on our right. Uniformed cops stood guard as crime scene techs worked inside the taped-off area. Most seemed to be grouped near the doorway Gina had pointed out. “They headed up here to the projection booth, got the projectionist to open the door, and stabbed him to death. They fired through the projection window.” A sniper couldn’t have picked a better spot. I remembered Jenny’s words: “‘fish in a barrel’ style.”

“Only two dead?” Bailey asked.

“In the audience,” Gina said. “Four, counting the projectionist and the manager, who ran to the booth when he realized where the shots were coming from.” Gina shook her head. “He called nine-one-one on his way up. If it hadn’t been for him, it would’ve been a helluva lot worse.”

“So they dumped the weapons again,” I said.

“Yeah,” Gina said. “But it looks like they shot the manager with a nine millimeter. We picked up a shell casing near the body.” It was crowded in the hallway with all the cops and techs, and we were three extra bodies that weren’t needed at the moment, so Gina led us back downstairs to the lobby. “Our gun expert says it looks like the rifles were rigged to go fully automatic, but one of them jammed.”

Bailey nodded. “One of them jammed last time too-”

“But last time they weren’t rigged to go fully automatic,” I said.

“Where the hell are they getting these guns from?” Gina asked.

“Probably the same person who altered them,” Bailey said. Shane checked both boxes. Bailey told Gina we thought he might be the second shooter.

“Well, thank God he screwed up,” Gina said. “If that gun hadn’t jammed, we would’ve had a higher body count than Fairmont.”

I nodded. “We got lucky.” I stopped even as I heard myself say it. This case had mangled all sense of proportion. Anything less than a double-digit body count felt like a blessing.

Bailey stared out through the glass doors at the throng of police. “Worse than Aurora. That’s what they were going for.”

“Right,” I said. I thought about the incident between Logan and the jocks in middle school. “We’d better shut Platt down.”

“I’ll get ahold of the principal,” Bailey said. “In the meantime, Gina, would you mind if I got our firearms guy, Ed Berry, out here? Just to keep things clean and simple?”

“No problem. I’ll make sure they don’t bag anything up. Your guy can put himself in the chain.”

The chain of custody is how we prove evidence wasn’t tainted or tampered with. The more hands on a piece of evidence, the more of a hassle it is in trial because I have to call every cop who touched, tagged, or moved something. So Gina was saving us a headache down the line by letting Ed handle the firearms evidence.

Gina moved off to see to it, and while Bailey put in the call to Ed, I called Nick. “Have you had any luck with the postmark on that envelope?”

“Same as the last one: Boulder, Colorado. And it was sent out by expedited mail yesterday.”

“I guess they could’ve sent it themselves-”

“It’s physically possible, but if you ask me, that dog won’t hunt. Too much exposure bein’ on the road all that time.”

“Someone’s helping them.”

“Has to be.”

It depressed me almost more than the existence of the shooters themselves to know that there was someone out there willing to help them.