The Competition

by Marcia Clark

  Mark gave him a surprised look. “Dude, that totally sounds like Otis,” he said. He nudged Harrison. “Don’t you think?”

  “Yeah,” Harrison said. “It does.”

  “Vincent?” I asked. “You don’t think so?”

  Vincent stretched his neck. “I guess, maybe. Yeah, probably.”

  I guessed Vincent was nervous about tagging his classmate. The wonders of teen loyalty. I kept at it a little while longer, but just kept hitting dead ends, so I wrapped up by showing them the blowup of the tattoo on the shooter’s wrist. “Do any of you recognize this?”

  They passed the photo around. Nada.

  Four down, twenty nine hundred ninety-six students to go. We were cooking.

  Dale Campbell had volunteered to set up the next batch of interviews. Based on our shrinks’ advice, Bailey asked him to make English class the top priority. He started with Otis’s current class. The teacher couldn’t make it. He had to fly back to Arizona to help his father, who’d suffered a heart attack. But Dale had managed to round up several students and even let us meet at his house.

  As we pulled into his driveway, Bailey got a call from the unis working on Carson James. It was a brief call, and when she ended it she stared out the front window.

  “And?” I said, impatient.

  “No one answers the door or the phone at his house. When they called his cell it went straight to voice mail. None of the bodies at the morgue fit his description, and they haven’t found him at any of the hospitals so far.”

  We exchanged a look. “I would say Carson James is looking good,” I said. “But I’m not going to because—”

  “Yeah, don’t jinx us.”

  Our hopes cautiously lifted, we got out and headed for Dale’s house. Nine students, four male, five female, had crowded into Dale’s family room. The parents had been relegated to the kitchen. They’d wanted to sit in with their kids, but there wasn’t room. These students didn’t look quite as shell-shocked. Did they feel more secure because it was a larger crowd? Or did they just not want to show how terrified they really were in front of the others? Even so, by no means did they look calm. The girls twirled their hair and hunched forward, some with arms wrapped around their bodies. The boys bounced their knees and cracked their knuckles.

  They’d all been in the gym at the time of the shooting, but none had been able to see the shooters well enough to add to what we already knew. I moved on to the questions suggested by our shrinks. And got the same results as before: no, no, and no. I segued into Otis Barney. All they remembered was that he was pretty quiet and got real nervous when the teacher called on him. I played the snippet of footage with the shooter’s weird laugh. No one recognized it. We were getting nowhere. I tossed out one last question. “Do any of you happen to know Carson James?”

  Nancy, a petite brunette in leggings and a long sweater that fetchingly exposed one shoulder, asked, “Is he kind of tall, has long, black, greasy hair?”

  Bailey, who had pulled his school yearbook photo, said, “Yeah. You know him?”

  “He sat behind me in my English lit class last year. He was always bitching about something. The other kids in the class, the homework, the teacher.” She shook her head. “What a loser—”

  Carrie, who’d been groggy from taking antihistamines for her allergies, sat up. “Oh, is he the one who told you—”

  “Yeah. One time, I asked him to keep it down and he told me to go fuck myself and said the next time I gave him shit, he’d shut me up forever.”

  “Did you report that to anyone?” I asked.

  “No. I didn’t take him that seriously. I thought he was just being an asshole.”

  He was at least that. “Did he ever talk about guns? Or about shooting people?” I asked.

  “He never said anything about guns,” Nancy said. “But he was always talking about how much he hated the school and how the kids were all loser assholes.”

  “Who did he hang out with?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. I didn’t exactly go looking for him.”

  Interesting that no one reported seeing Carson act like that in science class. I wondered what his project had been. If it was how to make a Molotov, that might explain his good behavior. All kidding aside, his project might’ve had some subtle connection to explosives. I made a mental note to check with Liam.

  We kept at it for a while longer, but there was nothing more—from Nancy or any of the others.

  I passed the tattoo photo around. Nobody recognized it.

  Still, Bailey and I left Dale’s house feeling better than we had since we’d picked up the case.

  When we got into the car, I looked at Bailey. “Okay, now I can say it: Carson James is looking good.”

  “He is,” Bailey said. She pulled out her cell. “Let’s get ahold of Carson’s English teacher. See if we can get a few writing samples.”

  We shared a grim smile.

  15

  A few phone calls later, Bailey had a meeting set for five thirty at the teacher’s house in Tarzana, which would give us just enough time to drive through a fast-food joint and pick up a very late lunch.

  “Feel like Taco Bell?” Bailey asked.

  “Always.”

  “She had no trouble remembering Carson,” Bailey said.

  “She say why?”

  “No, but the way she said, ‘Oh, yes,’ I’ll bet it wasn’t because he volunteered to clap erasers,” Bailey said.

  “No one does that anymore.”

  “Whatever.”

  “They use whiteboards now,” I said. Bailey shot me a look. “Just saying.”

  We found a Taco Bell on Ventura Boulevard, and Bailey pulled into the parking lot so she could eat without getting it all over herself.

  I savored a big, crunchy bite. “Taco Supreme—the best fast food has to offer.”

  “There’s also In-N-Out—” Bailey’s cell phone buzzed. She answered it with a mouthful of taco. “Keller.” Her chewing slowed, then stopped as she listened. When she ended the call, she wadded up her taco wrapper and threw it against the dash. “Son of a bitch!”

  “What?”

  “They found Carson. He’s in a hospital out in Santa Clarita—”

  “Why the hell is he all the way out there?” That was at least an hour away from the school.

  “His uncle’s a resident. His parents had him transferred straight out of the ER. They’ve been at his bedside this whole time.”

  Which is why no one answered the phone or the door. But maybe he was just hiding in plain sight. Maybe he was just acting like a victim to fool us. “What’re his injuries?”

  “Two shots to the gut. He’s stable, but they’re still worried about possible peritonitis. They couldn’t get all the shrapnel out of his intestines.”

  That seemed a bridge too far. I could see shooting himself in the hand or the foot, but not in the gut. It was too dangerous. But if he was one of the shooters and his buddy did that to him, he might just be pissed off enough to talk to us. “Can we see him?”

  “The uni said yes, but we need to get going. She said visiting hours for nonfamily end soon, and traffic’s going to be a bitch.”

  Bailey canceled the meeting with Carson’s English teacher, and we headed for the Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital in Valencia. The place was a labyrinth. It took less time to get there than it did to find Carson’s bed. He had just been moved out of ICU and into a private room. The natural light flowing in through his window softened the harsh glare of the standard fluorescent bulbs, but even candlelight couldn’t have masked the gray pallor of Carson’s face. His doctor (uncle) warned us not to push him, said he was not out of the woods yet—can no one think of a new cliché?—and told us we had fifteen minutes, max.

  His parents insisted on staying for the interview, his mom hovering on one side of his bed while his father glowered at us from the other and pointedly looked at his watch. There was no time for open-ended questions, so I went straight at it.
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  “Where were you when you got shot?”

  “In the gym.” His voice was thin and strained.

  I asked him to be more specific. At the top of the bleachers? The bottom? I had him describe who sat next to him, what class he’d been in that morning—questions designed to tell me whether he could’ve been a shooter. The answers would be easy to verify. If he was lying, I’d know soon enough. But seeing him now, I had a strong feeling they’d check out. “Can you describe the shooters at all?” I asked.

  “One looked tall.”

  “Taller than you?”

  He nodded.

  “I’m going to play a part of a video taken by one of the students in the gym. Tell me if you recognize this voice.” I played the snippet of the crazy laugh.

  Carson shook his head, a barely perceptible move. “Is it…one of the shooters?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  He mouthed, “Motherfucker.”

  “Does it sound like anyone you know?”

  “Kinda sounds like Otis. But it’s not.”

  “Why not?”

  Carson snorted. “Fucking wuss. Couldn’t even cut up a frog.”

  The frog lesson plan didn’t seem to have a lot of fans. But it didn’t mean Otis wasn’t one of the shooters. Animal lovers can be psychopaths too. Hitler had scientists working on a more humane way to cook lobsters. Couldn’t bear the fact that they were boiled alive. “But you agree, it does sound like Otis’s laugh?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Did Otis ever talk about guns?”

  “No…wait. He told me about someone…this dude who said he could get stuff online.” Carson’s voice was starting to sound like it was being squeezed through a narrow tube.

  “What kind of stuff?”

  “AKs and shit.”

  “Do you remember who that was?” I crossed my fingers behind my back.

  Carson closed his eyes. Suddenly, he gave a sharp inhale and curled into a fetal position. One of the monitors started to shriek. Papa James stepped forward and pressed the call button for the nurse. “Okay, that’s all. You’re finished.”

  Just as abruptly, Carson’s body relaxed. He lay on his back, panting. “S’okay, Dad.” He took a few deep breaths and I found myself doing the same. When he spoke again, his voice had dropped to a whisper.

  I leaned toward him, winding my body around the father, who’d stepped in even closer. “I didn’t catch that. One more time?”

  “Logan Jarvis.”

  “Do you know him?” I asked.

  Carson shook his head.

  I stepped back, and his father held up a thick hand. “That’s it. I mean it. You have to stop.”

  I was about to tell him we had stopped when a nurse trotted in and shooed us all away. “Officers, whatever it is you need, it’ll have to wait.”

  As she began to check his monitors, Carson whispered, “That school…bunch of fucking assholes.”

  “Angry young man,” I said.

  The nurse raised an eyebrow. “You blame him?”

  Not now I didn’t.

  16

  Tuesday evening, October 8

  The sun had dropped low on the horizon, taking the day’s warmth with it. I shivered and pulled my thin wool coat closer. It really was time to break out the winter wardrobe. Bailey and I trotted back to her car in silence. We talked as little as possible when we were in public because you never knew who was listening. Especially in a case like this.

  As soon as we got into the car, Bailey handed me her cell phone. “Call the unis at the rec center. It’s rush hour. I want to get on the road.”

  The phone rang six times before someone picked up. “Sharven here. What can I do for you, Detective Keller?” The din of frantic parents swelled over the young officer’s voice. And mine. I had to yell my question four times before he could make out the name.

  “Logan Jarvis?” He asked. “Is that j as in John, v as in Victor?”

  “I think so.”

  “Hang on.”

  I started to bite my cuticles—my go-to stress coping strategy when there was no room to pace. Bailey slapped my hand. “Knock it off, Knight. What are you, twelve?”

  I turned my back to her and attacked my right hand. I’d just gone to work on my thumb when the officer came back on the line.

  “Detective Keller? Looks like your guy was reported missing—assuming the spelling’s correct.”

  My heart began to pound. I told him to have the parents meet us at their house and got the address, then punched it into the navigation system. When I hung up, neither of us said anything about Logan looking good. No more jinxes.

  We hit the 101 freeway in the middle of rush hour. We’d roll a few inches, stop, roll a few more, stop. I couldn’t stand it. I had to do something. “What else can we check?”

  “You could get the unis to check the juvy records, see if he’s got anything.”

  “Didn’t they already check the kids who had records? I thought they were all accounted for.”

  “Doesn’t hurt to double-check.”

  It kind of did. I needed progress, forward motion. I stared at the line of cars ahead of us. “Wait…if the killers left the scene, at least one of them had to have had a car, right?”

  “I’d guess.”

  I called DMV, got Logan Jarvis’s license and registration, then called the unis and had them check it against the cars in the school parking lot.

  “And?” Bailey asked.

  I kept my eyes forward. “Not there.”

  Having one idea pay off gave me another.

  I put in a call to my buddy in the coroner’s office, investigator Scott Ferrier. “Hey, Scott, how you doin’?”

  “What do you want?” His voice was wary. Not that I blamed him. Generally speaking, a phone call from me meant two things: (1) I wanted him to get me something I wasn’t supposed to have and (2) I’d bribe him with lunch at Engine Co. No. 28, his favorite restaurant, to get it. So Scott was always conflicted about taking my calls.

  “Just one bit of information. Has Dr. Shoe finished the autopsy on those two kids in the library?”

  “Yeah, took him a while. They were a mess. He just finished a couple of hours ago.”

  “Can you check out his report—”

  “It’s not typed yet.”

  “You only need his notes to see what I’m looking for—”

  “Rachel, I’m not supposed to—”

  “Come on, Scott. This one’s easy.” I heard him sigh. “And I’ll still buy you lunch at Engine Company Number Twenty-eight.”

  “No, that’s okay. What do you need?”

  “Did either of the two boys in the library have a tattoo or any kind of marking on his right wrist?” We already knew one of them was close to six feet tall.

  “That is easy.” He sounded relieved. “No, neither of them has any kind of marking on the right wrist. At least, nothing that’s in the notes. Anything else?” His voice had that wary note again. He couldn’t believe he’d gotten off that lightly.

  “Just one thing. Do we have results on the gunshot residue?”

  “Yeah. No GSR on either of them. Is that it?”

  “Then the report confirms they’re not the shooters?”

  “Well, the official report isn’t done yet—”

  “But the answer’s yes.”

  Scott sighed again. “Yes. They are not the shooters. But I can’t get the report for you. Not this time, Rachel. The case is too hot, I might really get fired—”

  “Scott, what are you thinking? I would never ask you to jeopardize your job.”

  “Would and have, Knight.”

  True and true. “Well, I’m not doing it now. Just one more thing.” I waited a beat to build suspense. “How about lunch in a couple of weeks?”

  I could practically hear him exhale. “You got it.”

  I ended the call and told Bailey what Scott had said. We continued to inch along, and I leaned forward in my seat, straining against the s
eat belt. I sat on my hands to keep from biting my cuticles. I looked at my watch, then the car clock, then back to my watch. I must have done it fifteen times before we finally got off the freeway and headed into Logan’s neighborhood.

  17

  Bailey turned onto a quiet street lined with trees that had grown so large their roots had buckled the sidewalks. The houses were a mix of ranch, Tudor, and Cape Cod styles, but all were in the four-thousand-square-foot range and well maintained. Bailey pulled over and pointed across the street to a beige two-story house with off-white trim situated on a large lot at the end of the block. Red and white roses lined the walk leading up to the front door, and still-leafy jacaranda trees shaded the front yard—the very epitome of upper-middle-class suburbia. I wondered if it housed one of the nation’s most heinous mass murderers.

  We headed across the street and when we reached the door, Bailey used the brass knocker to give two sharp raps. I felt footsteps approaching from somewhere in the house. Seconds later, a tall, stoop-shouldered man answered the door. His eyes were red rimmed behind wire-framed glasses, his short brown hair was matted on one side, and his clothes—a long-sleeved T-shirt and jeans—looked slept-in.

  Bailey produced her badge, and I did the same. “Mr. Jarvis? I’m Detective Keller and this is Deputy District Attorney Rachel Knight. Thank you for meeting us here.”

  I saw alarm and misery in his face. He opened his mouth, but just stared at us silently for a moment before gesturing for us to come in. We followed him down a short hall and turned right, into a tastefully furnished living room. We settled on the sofa and he sat down in the wingback chair across from us, his hands on his knees. He cleared his throat with a harsh cough, took a deep breath, and made himself ask the question. “Have you found him? Have you found my son?” He looked from me to Bailey.

  I could see how much that question had cost him. We shook our heads. “I’m sorry, Mr. Jarvis,” I said.

  He blinked slowly, nodded.

  “Does he usually drive his car to school?” Bailey asked.

  “Yes. But it’s not there. We’ve been calling everywhere trying to find him. No one seems to know anything—”