by Lisa Gardner
Doe-eyed cows, trapped for days in frigid chest-high water, bawling in fear. Entire trailer trucks, bravely trying to reach more cattle, swept off inundated roads. Pinch-faced wives and children, finally retrieved by boats from their huddled last stands on metal barn roofs. Stoic dairymen, shooting their own herds to put the fragile beasts out of their misery.
As the journalist assured all the readers, here was a town that had met the wrath of God.
And then rebuilt. Bake sales, bingo drives. Innovative programs such as Adopt-a-Cow, which encouraged city kids and large corporations to support individual cows with money for food and shelter. Half a dozen operations, built on higher ground and spared the flood, opening their barns, hay-lofts, and milking parlors to their neighbors for as long as they needed. The town was making a comeback.
At the end of the article, the mayor was quoted as saying, “Of course we’re helping each other. This is Bakersville. We’re strong here. We care about our town. And we know what’s right.”
The man had known then that Bakersville would be next. A perfect little place, with perfect little people extolling their perfect little values. Where everyone loved everyone, and everyone was a friend. He wanted them all dead.
He was a patient man. He understood better than most the importance of planning. Good reconnaissance, his father had always barked. A smart soldier does his homework.
His father was a shit-for-brains asshole. But the man did his homework. He identified his target. He researched. He learned. Politicians, school officials, reporters, major organizations. Sheriff’s department. He planned. He had all the time in the world, as far as he was concerned. What was more important was doing things right.
He would show this town the wrath of God. He would show them the wrath of him.
Then Officer Lorraine Conner. The first time he saw her in person, casually walking by during one of his many recon visits, he’d nearly stopped in his tracks. High cheekbones, an uncompromising chin. Bold gray eyes that possessed a hard, direct stare. Not pretty, but striking. Arresting, if you were into puns.
Here was a woman who knew how to get things done. Not a trace of stupidity, which he’d come to expect in small-town cops. Not even a wide girth or beer gut to show how she really spent her Friday nights. She was fit, fighting trim, and supposedly hell on wheels with a rifle.
Then he heard the rumors.
Her mother. Fourteen years ago. The brutal slaying that had never been solved. The woman drank, you know. Used her daughter as a human punching bag. Shameless, the old biddies hissed, their eyes bright as they imagined their own hands connecting with firm, young flesh. Everyone knew Molly Conner would come to no good.
They say the shotgun blast ripped off her whole damn head. Not a trace of flesh left above the neck. Just some headless torso in cheap, four-inch heels, clutching her bottle of Jim Beam. Told you she’d take the booze with her to the grave. Chortle, chortle, chortle.
Young Rainie came home from school and found the mess. Least that’s what she told the cops. Came inside to find the body, walked back outside to see a squad car pulling up to the drive. That young deputy—you know, Shep, before he became the sheriff—he was the first at the scene. Reported Rainie had brains dripping down her hair, all over her back. Handcuffed her right away and took her in.
Later they dismissed the charges. Experts claimed the fact the brains were dripping down proved they’d fallen from the ceiling, that she walked in when the scene was still fresh, not that she’d pulled the trigger, which would have caused the gore to blow back onto her body in horizontal streaks. Or some such nonsense.
Let me tell you, no one can get convicted in this damn state. I mean, the girl’s covered in fresh guts and somehow that ain’t enough? Lawyers. That’s the problem. Lawyers.
’Course, Rainie turned out all right in the end. Sure as hell a damn sight better woman than her mom. She’s not even that bad a cop.
The man agreed with them there. A few taps on the keyboard and he’d learned quite a bit about Rainie Conner. Had received a bachelor’s in psychology from Portland State University. Upon returning to Bakersville, she’d become the first female officer in the sheriff’s department. She’d passed her academy courses the first time around. She had a file of excellent reviews. She stayed fit by jogging three to four times a week, and she always read the current issue of the FBI Law-Enforcement Bulletin the minute it arrived. She was dedicated, thorough, and, according to various drunken rednecks, she moved fast for a girl.
The man had also learned things about Rainie’s intensely private personal life. She did date men (which was subject to some debate within town) but always from an outside community. She didn’t go out often, nor did she keep any one man around for long. She never let her dates pick her up or bring her home. Instead, she would meet them at the chosen restaurant, possibly return to their house, and rise and depart long before they even woke up in the morning.
She seemed to have some basic need for sex but never for sharing. That fascinated the man.
She also had another quirk. Every day when she came home from work, she opened a bottle of Bud Light. And every evening before she went to bed, she emptied the full bottle of beer off the back of her deck. An ode to her dead drunken mother, the man figured. Did she picture Molly Conner dead then? Remember the headless torso and gray matter on the ceiling?
It was one of the reasons he’d bought the binoculars. Because sometimes her lips moved as she poured out the booze, and he was beyond general interest now, beyond objective reconnaissance. He desperately, desperately needed to know what she said.
Up yours, Mom?
Fuck you?
The man was enamored with Rainie Conner. She had become his personal hero. And she had added something to his particular venture. She was the police officer destined to find him out, he’d decided. She alone could recognize his genius, his mastery. Finally, ten years later, here was an adversary worthy of his talents.
In the beginning, his plans for Bakersville had been modest. They had changed since then.
Now the man carefully retreated into the cover of low-growing shrubs. He put away his binoculars. He took one last, admiring look at his gun and allowed himself the luxury of remembering how good it had felt.…
Then he moved on. He still had many more things to do before the long drive back to his hotel.
SEVEN
Wednesday, May 16, 8:00 A.M.
INTERVIEW OF DANIEL JEFFERSON O’GRADY
MAY 15, 2000
This is Officer Lorraine Conner, conducting an interview of Daniel Jefferson O’Grady, who is suspected of murdering three people at the Bakersville kindergarten-through-eight school, on Tuesday, May 15, 2000. Assisting me is Officer Luke Hayes. Also present is District Attorney Charles Rodriguez. O’Grady has been advised of his rights and has refused counsel. The time is 4:47 P.M.
CONNER: Danny, can you tell us what happened today at your school?
Silence.
CONNER: Danny, are you listening? Do you understand my question?
Silence.
CONNER: What day is it today, Danny?
Pause.
O’GRADY: Tuesday.
CONNER: Very good. Is Tuesday a school day?
O’GRADY: Yes.
CONNER: Did you go to school today?
O’GRADY: Yes.
CONNER: When did you go to school, Danny?
O’GRADY: This morning.
CONNER: With your sister? With Becky?
O’GRADY: Yeah. My mom drops us off. Becky doesn’t like the bus. It ran over a cat.
CONNER: That’s sad. Becky likes animals, doesn’t she?
O’GRADY: Yes. She’s freaky.
CONNER: Are these the clothes you wore to school today? The black jeans, black T-shirt?
O’GRADY: Yes.
CONNER: Do you wear a lot of black clothes?
O’GRADY: I don’t know.
CONNER: Is there a special reason you wore all black toda
y?
Silence.
CONNER: Did you go to class this morning, Danny?
O’GRADY: Yes.
CONNER: You’re in seventh grade, aren’t you? Who’s your teacher?
O’GRADY: Mr. Watson.
CONNER: Is he a good teacher? Do you like him?
O’GRADY: He’s all right, I guess.
CONNER: What did you study this morning?
O’GRADY: We have English in the morning, then math. Then we were going to have a geography game this afternoon. Map games, the capital cities …
CONNER: The game didn’t happen this afternoon, did it, Danny?
Silence.
CONNER: Do you bring a backpack to school?
O’GRADY: I have a backpack.
CONNER: What did you have in the backpack today?
Silence.
CONNER: Danny, did you have two guns in your backpack? Did you bring guns to school?
Pause.
O’GRADY: I guess so.
CONNER: Where did you get these guns? Are they yours?
O’GRADY: No. (pause) My father’s.
CONNER: Did you take them out of a drawer?
O’GRADY: The gun safe.
CONNER: The safe? It wasn’t locked?
O’GRADY: The safe was locked. My father always locks the safe.
CONNER: Then how did you get the guns out?
O’GRADY: I’m smart, all right? I’m very smart.
Pause.
CONNER: All right, Danny. You’re smart enough to open the safe, get two guns, and bring them to school. Then what were you smart enough to do, Danny?
Silence.
CONNER: Did you fire your guns at school? Did you start shooting in the hallway?
Silence.
CONNER: Danny, I’m trying to help you. But to do that, I need to know what happened this afternoon. Those little girls and that teacher are dead, Danny. Do you understand dead?
Pause.
O’GRADY: My grandma died. We went to the funeral. That’s dead.
CONNER: And did your parents cry? Did it make them very sad? As sad as they were today? You saw your father cry, Danny. Do you understand why he was crying?
O’GRADY: Yeah. (barely audible) Yeah.
CONNER: What happened this afternoon, Danny? What did you do? Were you just so mad, was that it?
Silence.
O’GRADY: I’m smart.
CONNER: Danny, did you kill those girls? Did you open fire on your classmates?
O’GRADY: I’m smart. I’m smart, I’m smart, I’m smart!
CONNER: Did you kill those girls, Danny?
O’GRADY: Yes! Yes, okay? I’m smart!
CONNER: Why, Danny? Why did you do such a thing? Sound of door bursting open.
JOHNSON: My name is Avery Johnson, and I’m here to represent Daniel O’Grady. This interview is over.
CONNER: Why, Danny, why?
JOHNSON: Don’t answer—
CONNER: Tell me why! Why did you kill those little girls, Danny?
O’GRADY: I’m scared.
On the Boeing 747, Supervisory Special Agent Pierce Quincy finally took off the headphones and set aside the tape recorder. He’d listened to the interview of America’s newest mass murderer three times since taking off in Seattle. Now he took a moment to jot down his thoughts in a notebook he had hastily purchased at Sea-Tac airport. On the outside of the red spiral book he had written: CASE STUDY #12, DANIEL JEFFERSON O’GRADY. BAKERSVILLE, OR.
The stewardess came up, took his empty cup to give him more room, and smiled charmingly. Quincy returned the smile automatically, then broke off eye contact before she would be tempted to start up a conversation. He was still preoccupied with schoolboys and the forces that drove them to kill.
Over the years, Quincy had received many charming smiles from flight attendants. At the age of forty-five, he had dark hair that was graying at the temples, but he was tall, lean muscled, and well dressed. He also carried himself well. He’d been there, done that, knew where he was going, believed in always being polite, and had absolutely no patience for fools. He made his living flying to four different U.S. cities in five days and hunting down the worst predators the human race had to offer. And he had a direct, probing gaze that people found either deeply compelling or completely intimidating.
Especially on business trips, when his briefcase was filled with crime-scene photos of some of the most brutal slayings on earth. After fifteen years in the business, Quincy was prone to shuffling the photos like playing cards, an act that made him both proud of his objectivity and saddened by his callousness.
It had been pure coincidence that Quincy was on the West Coast when Quantico called about the Bakersville shooting. In theory, Quincy was on personal leave from his job of researching killers and teaching homicide-investigation classes at the FBI Academy in Virginia. Last week, however, he’d received word of a strangled prostitute’s body found along Interstate 5 in Seattle. Local police were concerned the case might have connections to another string of murders committed in the eighties by the notorious Green River Killer, who was never caught. Quincy had revisited that case last year as part of a project to close out cold-case files. Unfortunately he’d not found any fresh leads. Then the new murder.
The FBI’s deputy director had personally given Quincy the news and told him to stay home.
“These are the times when you need to be with your family,” the deputy director had said. “We understand that. This case is probably unrelated. I don’t want you worrying about it.”
Quincy had thanked the man for his concern. Then he had gone to Dulles airport, purchased a ticket to Seattle, and boarded the plane. His youngest daughter was returning to college the next day, his ex-wife had no intention of speaking to him even if he did stay, and as for his daughter Amanda … There was nothing Quincy could do anymore for Amanda. What was done was done, and frankly, Quincy needed his work.
Before transferring to a research role with the Behavioral Science Unit five years ago, Supervisory Special Agent Quincy had earned his stripes as one of the Bureau’s finest profilers. Each year, he’d taken on roughly one hundred and twenty serial rapists, murderers, and child kidnappers. He’d pursued men with IQs well above genius level and ensnared them in traps of their own making. He’d analyzed crime scenes awash with blood and found the case-breaking clue. He’d saved lives and he’d made mistakes that sometimes cost lives.
He knew how to handle that kind of stress. In fact, his ex-wife, Bethie, routinely claimed he didn’t know how to live without it. According to her, his world had become as dark as the murderers he analyzed, and without a brutal slaying to unravel, he simply didn’t know what to do with himself.
Quincy didn’t care for that image of himself, but neither did he refute it. His line of work did take its toll. He spent so much time enmeshed in cases of extreme violence, it was easy to lose perspective. All county fairs became places where child molesters lay in wait for new victims. All basements housed human remains. All charming, good-looking law students were secretly psychopaths.
Frankly, Quincy would never, ever take a ride in a Volkswagen Bug, the vehicle of choice for many serial killers. He just wouldn’t do it.
Nor, he had found, could he watch his daughter die.
In Seattle, the prostitute’s murder turned out to be a one-off crime, eventually traced to a trucker passing through the area. Quincy had gone so far as to peruse homicide’s cold-case files, ostensibly to offer fresh perspective but really to delay going home, where he would no longer be Super Agent, capable of capturing even the most vile of villains, but instead Helpless Parent, resigned to waiting by a hospital bed like any other person for the inevitable to occur.
Then a young boy had walked into his Oregon school and opened fire. And Quincy, in a matter of speaking, had been saved.
Like most Americans, Quincy had only peripherally noticed a small but tragic shooting that occurred in November 1995 at Richland High School in Lynnvi
lle, Tennessee, leaving two dead and one wounded. The tiny town, population 353, seemed too remote to have any connection with Quincy’s life, and the small murder spree seemed an isolated occurrence. But just three months later another shooting occurred: Frontier Junior High, Moses Lake, Washington. Three killed, one wounded, by a fourteen-year-old student. Almost exactly a year later a new shooting, in Bethel, Alaska. Two killed, two wounded, by a sixteen-year-old gunman who had lined up a gallery of friends to watch his rampage. Eight months later sixteen-year-old Luke Woodham murdered three people and wounded seven in Pearl, Mississippi. Two months after that three more students died at Heath High School, in West Paducah, Kentucky. The pattern was clear. Jonesboro, Arkansas; Springfield, Oregon; Littleton, Colorado; Fort Gibson, Oklahoma. Other schools, other tragedies seared into the national consciousness.
Headlines screamed of an epidemic of violence sweeping across America’s youth. Video games, some cried. Too many guns, not enough parents. Or maybe it was Hollywood or Capitol Hill or Jerry Springer. But something had to be done to stem the tide. Ban guns, censor cartoons, install metal detectors, enforce dress codes, something.
In the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit, researchers such as Quincy were less certain. Were the shootings a genuine trend or a statistical anomaly? Were these “normal” children motivated by outside forces such as the media, or did this point to a deeper, developmental issue?
What really drove teenagers to kill, and how could shootings be prevented?
Even at Quantico, the leading criminal experts didn’t have ready answers.
And that frightened them, for they had children too.
Six months ago Quincy had begun a major research effort to dissect the minds of juvenile mass murderers and identify ways to help them, as well as to prevent future shootings. The goal was to devise a system that would help identify potential mass murderers for school officials and law-enforcement agencies. Also, Quincy hoped to formulate action steps to help parents and teachers deal more effectively with potentially violent teens.