The Competition

4

Bailey’s cell phone buzzed on her hip. I didn’t want her to answer it. I didn’t want to hear about yet another dead child.

“Dorian’s on her way,” Bailey said. “Says nobody better be touching anything.”

Dorian Struck, aka “she who must be obeyed,” was the best criminalist and crime scene analyst in the business-and she knew it. She ruled her roost with an iron fist and woe to the fool who didn’t follow her orders.

“Then we’d better get moving,” Graden said. “I’ll walk you through in chronological order. They hit the gym first, so we’ll start there.”

Bailey and I followed as he skirted the crime scene tape and led us through the wide hallway that ran from the main entrance to the back of the school, where the gym was located. “How many shooters?” I asked. “Do you know yet?”

“We’re pretty sure there were just two.”

The fluorescent lighting penetrated every inch of the scene with cruel, sharp clarity. A body covered with a sheet lay in the hallway just outside the open door to the gym. As we drew near, the thick, metallic smell of blood grew overwhelming. I slowed to look around the stretch of hallway that led into the gym-and to push down the nausea that threatened to bubble up into my mouth. Blood was everywhere. There was a pool near the sheet-covered body, a fine spray on the walls and the doors just outside the gym. When we reached the entryway to the gym I saw numbered evidence cards that marked the killers’ path through the bleachers and across the floor to our left.

Graden stopped and pointed at them. “Keep to the far right and stay close.”

We fell in behind Graden, moving slowly, careful to stay away from the evidence markers and the cops, crime scene techs, and coroner investigators. As bad as the hallway had been, the scene in the gym was worse-much worse. Bodies-eleven by my count-were strewn like rag dolls across the bleachers, the aisle stairs, and the floor. The sight and the smell of the carnage made me swallow to keep from heaving. I forced myself to take it all in. The air still felt thick with panic, tears, and terror. What kind of monsters could have done this?

“The killers were students?” Bailey asked.

“That’s the theory at this point,” Graden replied.

We left the gym, and Graden stopped at the foot of the stairway that led to the second floor, where crime scene techs were taking measurements and dusting for prints.

“We had another four victims on the stairs and three more in the hallway leading to the library. We’ll take the elevator.”

When we got to the second floor, I was able to look down on the stairway. The bodies had been removed, but the clothing that had been ripped and cut away by paramedics draped the steps. And once again, blood was everywhere. I closed my eyes for a moment, overloaded by the gore and the terrifying violence that had ripped through the school like a demonic cyclone.

“This is the last of it,” Graden said, as he led us toward the library.

He pointed to a desk on our left and I saw a pink sneaker on the floor in front of it. “We found another two victims there. A teacher and a young girl. The girl had a close-range shot straight to the forehead.”

I didn’t even try to make myself look under that desk. Graden moved farther into the library, and I trailed behind, knowing I couldn’t take much more.

“And here is what passes for good news,” Graden said. He stopped outside a taped-off section of the room where photographers and coroner investigators were congregated. At the center of the activity were two dead bodies. It took me a few moments, but from what I could see, they looked like two teenage boys. It wasn’t that obvious at first. To call the sight gruesome wouldn’t do it justice. The faces were masses of red pulp and exposed bone, the features completely obliterated-no doubt by shots fired at point-blank range-and their bodies were just a couple of feet apart. Black balaclavas lay next to each of them and there was a handgun at each of their right sides.

“So the suspects shot each other?” I asked. “Or themselves?”

“We think they shot each other,” Graden said. “But we’ll have to wait for the coroner to give us a definite on that.” Graden stared for a long minute, then continued, his voice brittle. “At least you won’t have to sit in trial and listen to a bunch of shrinkers talk about how it was all mommy’s fault for giving them an Atari instead of an Xbox.”

“Yeah,” I said. But it was cold comfort. Their deaths wouldn’t bring all those children back.

Bailey pointed to the small handguns near the bodies. “I thought they used AKs.”

“They did,” Graden replied. “We found one on the floor just outside the gym. Looks like it might have jammed-”

“So he dumped it-” I said.

Graden nodded. “And we found the second one at the top of the stairs with an empty magazine.”

“So the other one kept firing the AK-” Bailey said.

“Until it emptied. But the one who’d dumped his AK downstairs had at least one, possibly two, handguns on him. We found shell casings from a forty-four caliber and a three-fifty-seven on the stairs.”

Bailey pointed to the guns that lay near the bodies in front of us. “But those aren’t forty-fours or three-fifty-sevens.”

“No. They’re both cheap twenty-five-caliber Saturday night specials.”

“Man, they were carrying an arsenal,” Bailey said.

I stared at the guns. “Doesn’t it seem weird that they’d use low-caliber, trashy stuff like that for their finale?” I asked. “I mean, why settle for dicey junk that might only wind up maiming them?”

“My guess is they wanted to use the reliable hardware on their moving targets,” Bailey said, her voice cold with anger. “They could afford to use the cheap stuff on each other. They weren’t going to miss at point-blank range.”

“And the dicey junk did do the job,” Graden added.

“Got ID on them?” Bailey asked.

“Not yet,” he said. “Haven’t had the chance to get their prints. Hopefully they have driver’s licenses-”

“Or rap sheets,” I said. If they didn’t, their prints wouldn’t be in the system.

“Any of the survivors get a good enough look to make an ID?” Bailey asked.

“Not yet. But we’ve got a few kids who had the presence of mind to take videos with their phones, and we’re checking into the school’s surveillance footage.”

“Anybody give a description?” I asked.

“All kinds.” Graden’s tone was glum. “The only consistent one-and it’s not totally consistent-is that they were wearing camouflage jackets.”

I pointed to the bodies on the floor. “I don’t see any on these guys.”

“I know. But like I said, even that description wasn’t consistent. Some kids didn’t notice any camouflage jackets. The video footage should resolve that question. And even if the suspects were wearing camouflage jackets, they could’ve taken them off and dumped them somewhere before they got to the library.”

The library, the talk of two bullied, disenfranchised losers going ballistic-it all seemed too familiar. “Doesn’t it kind of sound like a rip-off of Columbine?” I said. “With a different ‘uniform’?” The Columbine killers had worn trench coats and hadn’t covered their faces.

Graden nodded. “Yeah, it does. Like a deliberate copy, in fact.”

“Seems pretty obvious the suspects knew the layout of the school, and knew there’d be a pep rally in the gym today-” I said.

“Had to be students,” Bailey said.

I dredged up what I could remember about Columbine. “But no propane tank bombs?” Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold had set up propane tank bombs in the cafeteria of Columbine High, but they’d malfunctioned and never went off. If they had, the death toll would have topped three hundred-more than the Oklahoma City bombing. Their goal, according to Harris’s journals.

“No,” Graden said. “And we haven’t found any pipe bombs or Molotovs like the ones they used at Columbine either-”

“But they still managed to top the Columbine body count,” Bailey said.

Graden nodded. We stood in silence for a few moments. Finally, Graden spoke. “Seen enough?”

“For a lifetime,” I said.

We headed out of the Hellmouth.