The Competition

71

I felt all the blood leave my face as her words washed over me. It couldn’t be. A buzzing filled my brain as I fought to make sense of what I’d just heard. Evan Cutter, the second shooter. The frightened runaway, the reluctant witness was…the suspect? A thousand questions sprang to mind. “What did he tell you about me and why he wanted you to mail those letters?”

“H-he s-said Rachel Knight was a school counselor who was coordinating the grief therapy sessions. He said the letters were condolences. He felt bad for the kids because he used to go to Fairmont High.”

“So he told you he wasn’t going to Fairmont High anymore?” Amanda nodded. “Did he say where he was going?”

“He said he was getting a GED.”

“And you never wondered why he didn’t mail the letters himself?” She shook her head again. “Amanda, I have to tell you, the letters he gave you were not condolence letters.”

“Th-they weren’t?”

“No.” She dropped her gaze to the floor and fell silent. I waited for her to absorb the news.

Finally, she looked at me. “What were they?”

“Threats. Written by one of the killers.”

She jumped to her feet. “What? No way! That’s impossible!”

“I’m sorry, Amanda.” I pulled the copy I’d made of the letters from my purse and held them out to her.

Her breath was coming fast and shallow. She stared at the pages in my hand as though they were poisonous snakes. “That’s impossible! I know it is because…because didn’t the same guys do the theater shooting?”

“Yes. So?”

“So, there’s no way! He couldn’t have done the shooting at that theater.”

“Why not?”

“Because he was gone! He ran away; it was on the news!” Tears sprang to her eyes.

I didn’t bother to argue. “Then you haven’t heard from him since he gave you the last letter?”

“No.”

“Please read these letters, Amanda. It’s important that you know the truth.”

Amanda took the letters and sat down on the ottoman. Her mother leaned in and read with her. I watched as the horror spread across their faces.

Everything we’d believed about Evan was a lie. The distraught, conflicted friend, the frightened witness-all of it was an act.

Harrellson had said Evan was present in homeroom the day of the shooting. But now that I thought about it, he could easily have slipped away when the class headed for the gym. The gym. Didn’t Harrellson say he thought he’d seen a witness statement putting Evan in the gym at the time of the shooting? But I couldn’t remember him ever saying he’d confirmed it. I’d bet there was no such statement.

Then I remembered how Evan had talked about Otis during our first interview. What he said, the way he’d said it. Just enough spin to build suspicion, but not so much that it seemed pointed or vindictive. And Evan and Otis were close enough in size. Otis, the loner loser-and the perfect patsy. I thought about the timing of the second letter. If Evan got the second letter to Amanda on Thursday, it could easily have gotten to me the day of the Cinemark shooting. The timing worked.

As for the logic…that did too. There was no doubt that the same shooter who’d done the Fairmont High attack had done the Cinemark shooting. And we now suspected there was only one shooter at the Cinemark. Evan was never “on the run.” He was just gearing up for his next massacre.

In fact, now that I thought about it, all his tweets about “police harassment” were nothing more than window dressing, meant to set us up to believe he was scared so we wouldn’t get suspicious when he took off.

“Oh, God!” Amanda dropped the letters, covered her mouth, and ran out of the room. From down the hall, we heard the sounds of violent retching. Janice picked up the pages and stared at them, pale and speechless.

A few minutes later, Amanda stumbled back into the room clutching a wad of Kleenex, her face clammy. She squeezed into the wing chair with her mother and put her head on Janice’s shoulder. Janice wrapped her arms around Amanda and stroked her hair.

Did it occur to me that this might be an act? Of course. After Evan’s successful feint I was ready to second-guess gravity. But this time I was prepared. “Amanda, I showed you those letters because I need you to understand how important it is that you be completely honest with us. We have every reason to believe he’s going to commit another mass murder. We don’t know where or when, but we know it’s coming. And soon. Whatever information you have, anything you know about him, it’s critical that you share it with us.”

“But I don’t have any information! I don’t know what he’s going to do. He never told me anything!”

He probably didn’t tell her what he intended to do. That much I believed. But she had to know something. She’d mailed those letters and apparently never thought to question it. Why? I knew there was more to that than just blind trust.

I wanted to think about it before I pushed the issue any further. For the moment, I turned to Janice. “Did you meet Evan?”

“No, but Hank did.”

“Your husband?” Janice nodded. “How did that come about?”

Amanda looked up and darted a glance at her mother out of the corner of her eye. “My dad took us to a gun show,” Amanda said. “He hunts. I don’t. But I like to go to the range and do target practice.”

I smiled at Amanda. “Me too. When was it that you all went to the gun show?”

Amanda fidgeted with a spot on her jeans. “I don’t know. A while ago.”

She seemed uncomfortable. I had a feeling it had to do with her mother being there. “Janice, do you think I can impose on you for a glass of water? All this clean air is starting to get to me.”

Janice patted Amanda’s arm. “Of course. Detective Keller, can I get you something as well?”

“Do you have tea?” Bailey asked. Janice nodded and stood up. Bailey joined her. “Let me help you.”

Bailey hated tea. But that was her signal that she was buying me time alone with Amanda. When Janice and Bailey left the room, I leaned toward Amanda, who’d reseated herself on the ottoman, and kept my voice low. “You’re not in any trouble, Amanda. I’m going to tell your mom that you won’t need a lawyer. But I think it’d be better if we talked privately. What do you say?”

Amanda nodded and swallowed hard. “Only, can you promise not to tell anyone what I tell you?”

“I can promise to try. Okay?”

She sighed and looked away. Her hair fell forward, cloaking her face like a blanket. Eventually, she nodded. Bailey came in carrying a cup of tea and raised her eyebrows at me in a silent question. I nodded. Janice followed, carrying two bottles of water. I took one of the bottles and thanked her.

“Amanda is not going to need a lawyer. She’s not in any trouble and she’s not going to be.”

Bailey took over. “But we will need to talk to her for quite a while. So if you wouldn’t mind calling the school…”

Janice nodded and turned to look at me. “You’re sure?”

“Absolutely. I’ll put it in writing and on tape if you like.”

“No, that’s okay.”

“But it would help if we could talk to her alone,” I said. “We need her to try and remember a lot of details, and having someone else listening can be a distraction.” I wasn’t sure that was true, but it was the best I could come up with off the cuff.

Janice looked uncertain. “I think I’d rather-”

“Mom, it’s okay. I’m not a baby. Let me do this. And you need to get to work anyway. These guys can take me to school when we’re done.”

Janice studied her daughter. “No, I’m staying here. Work can wait. But I won’t sit with you, okay? I’ll just be in the den…”

Amanda sighed. “Okay.”

Janice scanned us all with one last look of concern, then left the room. Amanda moved to the wing chair and tucked her feet under her. I picked up where we’d left off. “When was the last time you went to a gun show?”

“Last spring. I wasn’t that interested, but Evan wanted to go.”

“Was that out here in Colorado? Or in Texas?”

“Here, in Colorado Springs.”

“So he traveled out here to see you?”

“Not just me. He said they were going to visit family out in Utah.”

“So he didn’t come alone?”

“No, he brought Logan.” Amanda swallowed, her expression wary. “He’s the guy…the other shooter, isn’t he?”

“Yes. Was he friendly with you?” Amanda let her hair fall all the way across her face. The gesture couldn’t have been more obvious. “It’s not your fault, Amanda. There was no way for you to know.”

After a few moments, she nodded. “He…sorta had a crush on me. But I got the feeling it was mostly because he always wanted what Evan had.”

“And were you Evan’s girlfriend?”

Amanda nodded shyly. I saw a faint tinge of pride before she dropped her eyes. “We got together just before I moved out here. Back in Lubbock, we saw each other every day, but we didn’t really get, like, involved until about a month before I left.” Amanda gazed off into the distance of her memory, a happier place. “Evan could get any girl he wanted. Even last year’s junior prom queen. She was a model. And he was just a sophomore.”

Wow. Imagine. “So he was pretty popular?”

Amanda stared at the floor. “Yeah. I figured he’d never be into somebody like me.”

He never was. But I wouldn’t be the one to give her that painful news. “Was that gun show the first time you met Logan?”

“Yeah. Actually, that was the only time I ever saw him. After that visit, Logan wrote to me for a little while, but then he stopped.”

“Letters? Or emails?”

“Letters.”

“Did you answer him?”

“Sure. I felt sorry for him. He seemed kind of…sad, you know? He wrote a lot about how he’d always felt so alone, how no one ‘got’ him-”

“Not even Evan?”

“No. But I never thought he and Evan were that tight. Evan never talked about Logan, and Logan hardly ever mentioned Evan in his letters. That’s why when I heard Logan might be a suspect, it never occurred to me that Evan could be…” Amanda stopped and bit her lip. She blinked rapidly, then continued. “Anyway, I got the feeling Logan just liked being able to hang out with someone that cool. Someone who wasn’t afraid of anything.”

“And Evan wasn’t afraid of anything?” I’d never seen him show that kind of swagger. But I’d only seen the act. Not the real Evan. I’d bet the guy Amanda saw was closer to the truth.

“Yeah. Nothing scared Evan. Logan thought that was amazing.” Amanda’s face crumpled, and she wiped away a tear that escaped from the corner of her eye. “I did too.”

I knew where her thoughts were taking her. I tried to nip it in the bud. “It makes perfect sense for you to be sad that Evan isn’t the person you thought he was. But if you’re feeling guilty about it, you have to stop.” Amanda bit her lip. The pain in her eyes was heartbreaking. “Evan’s a very good actor. He fooled a lot of people for quite a long time-us included. And it’s our job to spot guys like that. So let yourself off the hook, okay?” Amanda nodded without looking up. I hoped my words would sink in eventually. But right now, I had to move on. “So Logan confided in you about feeling lonely and depressed. Did he ever say anything about suicide?”

“Never, like, ‘I’m gonna do it.’ More like it was something he used to think about when he was a kid.” Amanda pushed her hair back. “If he’d said something about wanting to kill himself right then, I’d have told someone. For sure.”

Talk of past suicidal thoughts could just be typical melodramatic teenage posturing. Or it could be an oblique way of talking about serious current suicidal ideation. Obviously, Logan’s talk was the latter. But there was no way for Amanda to have known that. “You say he wrote to you for a while, then stopped. How come?”

“I think he could tell from my letters that Evan and I were together, and I wasn’t into anything more than being friends.”

“Do you still have those letters from Logan?”

“No, I’m sorry.”

I was too. They might not have been terribly illuminating, but any little bit of information would’ve helped. The more we could learn about these shooters, the better we’d be at spotting them in the future. Maybe. “Let’s get back to the gun show. Did he or Logan buy any guns?”

“They couldn’t. But I remember they went off on their own for a while.” Amanda tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “I couldn’t find them, and my dad was, like, ‘Where are they?’ It was so uncool. He was pissed.”

“Did you see either of them with a gun after the show?” I asked.

“No. But that doesn’t mean they didn’t have one. They could’ve found someone to buy a gun for them. That happens sometimes.”

Yes, it does. The picture was becoming clearer. I’d bet Evan had sized up Amanda right from the jump as someone he could use. I doubted he knew exactly how she’d be of use to him when she moved to Colorado. But he was obviously capable of long-range thinking and he knew a valuable asset when he saw one. So when he found out she was moving, he made Amanda his girlfriend. After all, what did it take? A bit of romancing before she left, some phone calls now and then after she’d moved. And it had paid off. I had no doubt that by the time he and Logan went to the gun show with Amanda, their plans for Fairmont High were well under way.

So now I knew why Evan had trusted her to mail the letters to me. What I still didn’t get was why she’d done it.