Marcia Clark - The Competition

Bailey smiled. “Hey, Ed. Since when do they let you out in public?”

“Since they lost the key to my cage.” He glanced at me. “That your partner?”

“Sort of. Rachel Knight, Special Trials, DA’s office, meet Ed Berry, senior firearms examiner.”

We shook hands. His was leathery. “You here to check out the weapons?” I asked.

“And all the casings. Got more brass here than a shooting range.” He shook his head.

“Can you tell us anything?” Bailey asked.

“I can tell you that one of these assault rifles was fired a hell of a lot more than the other. They both had fifty-round magazines, but one rifle about emptied the clip in that gym. Only had a few left by the time he got out to the hallway. The other one only fired a few in the gym before it jammed.”

That would’ve been the taller shooter’s gun. “And outside the gym, on the stairs and second floor?” I asked.

“So far, it looks like a mix of forty-four- and three-fifty-seven-caliber casings. Mostly forty-fours. Those guns haven’t shown up-”

“I think they hung on to them,” Bailey said.

“Well, maybe we’ll find some prints on the guns they left behind,” he said.

“Hate to tell you this, but we looked at the footage,” Bailey said. “They wore gloves. But hey, feel free to check the casings for prints.”

Bailey was being sarcastic. They always try, but I have yet to see anyone get prints off casings.

“And you feel free to lift some prints off your victims,” Ed said. Finding decent prints on skin is another near impossibility. Cop humor. “Sorry I can’t do much more for you right now, but if you get hold of that forty-four and three-fifty-seven…”

Bailey clapped him on the back. “I’ll bring them to you myself.”

Bailey had arranged for us to interview the first batch of witnesses from the gym at the home of one of the students, Charlotte Kerrigan, who lived just a couple blocks away. I wouldn’t ordinarily be all that thrilled to have witnesses hanging out together until I’d gotten each of their statements recorded, but there was no way to keep them apart. The ones who hadn’t been injured had banded together from the moment they’d escaped. And it probably didn’t matter anyway. According to the first responding officers, no one had seen the shooters’ faces or had any idea who they were.

The house was a sprawling ranch style, and Charlotte’s mother ushered us into the den. “I feel so fortunate that my Charlotte wasn’t hurt…but those poor parents who…” She stopped and swallowed hard. “Anything I can do to help, just let me know, okay?”

I took in her pale face and shaky voice, knowing that from this day forward, every time Charlotte left the house, her mother would choke on the fear that it might be the last time she saw her.

We ushered in groups of three and four at a time, mainly to let them have one another for support. Any more than that and we wouldn’t be able to keep the statements straight. When we’d arrived, I’d estimated there were about fifty students lined up outside for interviews, but I was wrong. It was more like a hundred. And we saw what we were in for after the first six: disjointed glimpses of figures in camouflage jackets and ski masks, seemingly endless gunfire, students flying or falling down the bleacher stairs…or dropping to the ground like broken puppets. Some thought there were four gunmen; most remembered hearing them yell something, but weren’t able to make out the words. A few said they were sure the gunmen shouted something about jocks. But they couldn’t add much to the general descriptions of height and weight we’d already gotten from the cell phone and surveillance footage.

They’d all heard the reporters speculating that the killers were bully victims, but getting the kids to give up names of students who might fit that description wasn’t easy. They didn’t like the idea of putting someone on the suspect list just because they’d been targeted by asshole jocks. I didn’t blame them, but we spent precious minutes explaining over and over that we wouldn’t take anyone into custody based solely on that criteria and that we had to start somewhere. It took longer than I would’ve liked, but they eventually gave us some names. By seven o’clock, we’d done more than twenty group interviews and amassed eighteen names of “possibles.”

We still had about forty students waiting, but the kids looked exhausted. It had been a long, draining day. I wouldn’t have minded working all night, but I had to admit that the statements were starting to run together. The fact that they were all so similar didn’t help.

“What do you say we pull the plug?” I said to Bailey as the group left the room.

Bailey yawned. “Yeah.” She rubbed her neck. “They look like they’ve had it. But I hate to make them all come back tomorrow. Think we can squeeze out one more hour?”

I did. We forged ahead. And finally, we hit something that felt like pay dirt.

It was in the group that included Charlotte and her two besties, Marnie and Letha. All three girls wore jeans tucked into UGGs and had long, straight hair streaked with various colors. Like so many of the other girls, they held hands and sat close to one another on the sofa. Letha chewed the fingernails of her free hand, and Marnie, who sat in the middle, squeezed her friends’ hands so tightly I saw them wince. Charlotte seemed the calmest of the trio, but even she nervously pulled at the whiskered threads on the knees of her jeans.

“We were on the far left side, in the middle,” said Charlotte. “I think they just didn’t shoot at the kids sitting at the top of the bleachers where we were-”

“And it was just luck that we wound up there,” said Letha. “It was the only place left where we could all sit together. But Christy…” Slow tears rolled down her face.

“Christy wasn’t sitting with you?” I asked.

“Christy just made the varsity cheerleading squad,” Marnie said. “It was her first pep rally.” Marnie stopped to wipe her tears, and Charlotte bit a trembling lip. “I didn’t see it, b-but we heard she got shot in the back. We still haven’t heard…anything.” Marnie looked at me with fearful eyes. “Do you know…?”

“We’ll find out for you,” Bailey said.

I remembered Harley had asked about her too. Bailey wrote down her last name. I gave them a moment to recover. “Can you describe the suspects?”

“One was definitely shorter, smaller-” Charlotte began.

“And wasn’t he the one with that creepy laugh?” said Marnie.

“Yeah!” said Letha. “It was freaking twisted.”

“Do you know anyone who laughs like that?” Bailey asked.

The girls all shook their heads.

“And the other shooter, what did he look like?” I asked.

“Real tall,” Marnie said. “I’d say over six feet, like six feet five or something.”

“And he seemed skinny to me,” Letha said.

“Yeah,” said Charlotte. “I couldn’t see their bodies or anything. But the way they moved…it’s like, they weren’t fat or anything, you know?”

“Could you see their feet?” Bailey asked. “What kind of shoes they were wearing?”

A smart question. When the shooters put their outfits together, they would’ve thought about coats, gloves, and masks, but it was unlikely they’d worry about their feet. So, whatever boots or shoes they wore might be distinct enough to be identifiable. The only problem was, who’d be looking at feet when gunmen were leveling rifles at their heads?

The girls exchanged glances, then gave us an apologetic look. “We got down on the ground and hid when we saw the guns,” Charlotte said.

“Do either of you know someone as tall as six feet five who has a birthmark or a tattoo on his wrist?”