The Competition

73

Bailey put out the alert for Evan Cutter. When she ended the call, I gestured to the notebooks that were now packed in grocery bags in the backseat. “We can’t wait for Dorian. We need to tear into those things.”

“Definitely,” Bailey said. “And we’ve got to let Harrellson know-”

“I’ll try him now.”

I couldn’t get any signal. When we got back to the hotel, I got Harrellson’s voice mail and left a message-no details, just saying it was urgent. I hoped he’d cleared Mark Unger. One missing psychopath was plenty. Bailey called Graden and filled him in, while I found us a three o’clock flight back to L.A. Then Bailey took out her Swiss Army knife and sliced through the tape on all of the envelopes.

At Graden’s request we headed straight to his office with the notebooks. Now we reread them over his shoulder. The first line encapsulated the running theme throughout all of them.

“The world is filled with stupid, pathetic, inferior worms. They’re all a waste of precious resources.”

Evan, the brilliant, the amazing, had no use for the “shrimp brains” of the world. Except as fodder for his sadistic fantasies.

“I saw a movie once where they tied a guy’s arms to the bumper of one car and his legs to the bumper of another, then drove the cars in opposite directions. Just tore him to shreds. I loved it.”

Graden finished the fourth notebook. “Jesus,” he muttered. Bailey and I exchanged looks. We’d had a similar reaction. It was a bird’s-eye view into the mind of a raving psychopath. But these pages explained something that had always bothered me about the letters I’d received. Back when I thought they’d been written by Logan, I’d had a hard time squaring them with the eloquent writing style Logan’s teachers had described. I’d supposed Logan’s fury had stripped his prose of its usual poetry. But now, knowing that it was Evan who’d written the letters, and seeing the writing in these notebooks, it all made sense.

In Notebook 6 we found a mention of the car burglary charges in Lubbock, Texas. It was a chilling example of Evan’s skill in presenting a facade that was a hundred and eighty degrees from the truth.

“Dumbass fools! Not one of those stupid fucks in juvenile court has a fucking clue. I wrote that bullshit letter to that loser victim yesterday and my PO was all like, ‘Oh, Evan, y’all are doin’ so well. I wish all my probationers were like you.’ Really, rat face? Do you? Do you wish all your probationers were a thousand times smarter and better than you? And that dumb fuck victim. He DESERVED to have his shit stolen, leaving it on the dashboard in plain sight. STUPID chump-assed motherfucker!”

Stanley, the PO, had no clue. He’d been completely taken in by the act. As the PO put it: “He was a model probationer.” And all the while, Evan was laughing at the “chump-assed motherfucker” he’d duped so easily.

There was a mention in Notebook 7 of James Holmes, who’d done the shooting in the theater in Aurora, Colorado.

“Pathetic fucking loser, with that stupid orange hair. Fucking clown. It’s all in the execution, asshole! If you’d done it RIGHT, you could’ve taken out at least a hundred. Fool.”

In Notebook 8 we found a sneering reference to Timothy McVeigh and Oklahoma City. “He sets up a bomb and hides like a little bitch. Where’s the art in that? Where’s the joy? The world is going to see how it’s done by the BEST. And when we get through, everyone will know we’re far superior to that little punk-assed bitch McVeigh.”

I pointed to the line. “That’s the first time I’ve seen him say we. So at this point he must’ve hooked up with Logan.”

“And started some actual planning,” Bailey said.

Evan made it clear that he didn’t intend to get caught “like that stupid clown douche in Aurora,” and that he wasn’t afraid to die. In fact, he planned to go out in a “blaze of glory.” Just as our shrinks predicted. But there was no mention of any plans for future shootings. Not even a specific mention of the plans for the Fairmont shooting.

When he’d finished reading the last notebook, Graden looked up at us. “I have never seen anything like this.”

“Who has?” Bailey said.

“But I don’t get this,” Graden said. “For a kid this young, with his background, to be such a cesspool of hate. I’m not saying his parents were necessarily perfect-we never know the whole story when it comes to family dynamics. But they didn’t seem that far off the beam. Where did it come from?” I shook my head. That was a question no one seemed to be able to answer. “And why didn’t he put his plans for Fairmont or the Cinemark in these notebooks? You think he didn’t trust Amanda?”

Bailey began putting the notebooks back into their manila envelopes. “Yeah. He couldn’t take the risk. If Amanda read about those plans, she’d have called the cops-”

“And also, he probably wanted to keep those plans close,” I said. “The shrinks did say these mass murderers get off on writing and reading their own master plans.” My eyes were gritty and my shoulders ached. I looked at my watch. Nine o’clock. I hadn’t realized how long we’d been at it.

“Guess we can pull back on the Platt Junior High security,” Graden said.

“Yeah,” Bailey said. “That was Logan’s thing, not Evan’s. We should probably keep a detail on it just in case, but I doubt Evan will hit there.”

Graden looked more than just tired. He looked drawn, spent. “You okay?” I asked.

“Yeah.” He sighed. “I went to another one of the funerals today.”

A lead weight pulled at my heart. I was no stranger to depravity-none of us were-but this case was enough to shake what little faith I had in humanity. I thought about naive, unsuspecting Amanda, all the innocent children and teachers at Fairmont High, the victims at the Cinemark, and all the others who were such easy pickings for monsters like Evan. Good people didn’t stand a chance against this kind of random evil.