Marcia Clark - The Competition

Certain that Erling would soon be sleeping with the fishes, Lilah hopped a private jet to parts unknown. But right before takeoff, she’d texted me with information about my sister. Reports that might prove Romy, who’d been abducted more than twenty-five years ago, was still alive. The text was Lilah’s way of saying that if I left her alone, she might get me more information on Romy’s whereabouts. But if I kept after her…well, whatever form her retribution took, it was almost guaranteed to be lethal for Bailey and me.

But I one-upped Lilah: Erling had survived the attack, barely. He was in a coma. I answered her text with a photo of him in the hospital. I left out the part about him being in a coma, the better to make her sweat.

Graden had checked out the reports she’d sent me about Romy and found they were legit. But they were more than twenty-five years old and so far there’s been no further trace of my sister. Nor has there been any trace of Lilah, though both Graden and the district attorney investigators have been actively hunting for her.

If it were anyone else, I wouldn’t have had any concerns about my personal safety, though I certainly would’ve been pissed off that a criminal had escaped justice. But Lilah was a whole different story. Bailey says she’s got a bizarre obsession with me. I can’t argue. At one point, Lilah followed Graden to a downtown bar and hit on him-and said just enough to make sure he’d tell me about it. To make matters worse, Lilah had the resources to disappear-or reappear-almost anywhere, at will. I try not to dwell on the fact that she’s still out there, but since she’s unlikely to get therapy for her obsession, let alone her sociopathy, I keep one eye on the rearview-and a loaded gun in my purse.

I lingered over coffee, thinking about our next move. We needed to push forward harder and faster on Otis Barney. I’d hoped we could track him through his cell phone, but his parents told us he’d lost it recently. It seemed to be true. There had been no activity on his number for the past five days. The unis had checked out his calls and texts for the past month and found nothing of interest. The calls were mainly to and from his mom and dad, with a few to video game companies and electronics stores. So he really did seem to be the loner Marnie and his parents had described.

That was bad news for us, because it made it that much harder to get information on where he might be. Worse, it meant that identifying his buddy, the second shooter, would be like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack. We’d have to talk to everyone in his classes-and maybe the whole school-and hope someone could give us a lead. It would be a major time suck, and it might not even pay off. The only other option-and one that would give us much faster results-was to get into Otis’s computer, if he had one. But for that, we’d need a search warrant. I looked at my clock radio. It was a little after seven. J.D. would be in his chambers soon. If I headed for the office right now, I could bang out the warrant in time to catch him before he got swamped with his daily calendar.

But there was one thing Bailey could do in the meantime. I called her on the way to the courthouse. And caught her in one foul mood.

“I said I’d meet you at the station,” Bailey said. “What couldn’t wait another half hour?”

“We’ve got to get that photo of the shooter’s wrist enhanced so we can show it to-”

“Already done, Knight. It should be on my desk by the time I get to the station. I’d ask if there’s anything else, but I don’t want to know.”

“Actually, you might.” I told her I was going to put together a warrant for Otis’s computer.

“Shouldn’t take you long,” she said. “We’ve got diddly-squat. Who’re you going to take it to?”

“J.D.”

Bailey snorted. “Way to work the friend angle, girl. Guess it’s worth a try. You need me there?”

“Nah, I can sign this one. I’ll meet you at the station.” I like to do my begging in private.

Bailey was right, it didn’t take me long to write the warrant. I pumped up the probable cause as best I could, even waxed a little poetic about the shooter’s crazy laugh, and got down to J.D.’s courtroom by eight o’clock. I was in luck. The hoards hadn’t descended yet. The clerk let me straight into chambers. I kept my pitch short and handed J.D. the warrant with a silent prayer.

I watched his face as he scanned the probable cause affidavit; I squeezed the arms of my chair to keep from fidgeting. I guess it was true that I was banking on his friendship to make him a little more sympathetic to the cause, but I was also counting on J.D.’s experience as a former detective in Robbery-Homicide to know how badly we needed to speed up the investigation. He finished reading and dropped the pages on his desk.

“I’ve seen a lot of search warrants in my time,” he said. “This one’s a hands-down winner for the most well-written-”

“Thanks, I-”

“And skinniest excuse for probable cause I’ve ever seen. I’d ask if you were kidding me with this, but I know why you took a shot at it and I don’t blame you. The problem is, this warrant’s so thin, it’ll be my ass if those parents decide to file a beef. And anything you find will get tossed out so fast it’ll put a hole in the wall. I’m sorry, Rachel.”

No sorrier than I was. I trudged back upstairs to my office to drop off the case file and noticed that Toni’s door was open. I missed her. Since picking up the school shooting, I hadn’t even had the chance to call. Toni was glued to her computer screen. I knocked on the door frame. “Hey, Twan. What’s new?”

“Huh. You tell me.” She peered at me. “The way you look, it ain’t good. Come sit, catch me up.”

I did.

When I finished, Toni drummed her fingers on the desk, then asked, “Have you considered bringing a shrink in on this?” I looked at her. She held up a hand. “I know, you’re not a fan. Me either. But strange times call for strange measures. You need to make sure Otis is your guy, and you need to identify your second shooter. And you’re in a bad time crunch-”

“The worst-”

“You can’t be talking to all three thousand kids in that school with your killers flying around out there. You’ve got to narrow down your search. Only way I can think of is to get some idea of who you’re looking for, what type of kid. You need someone who can help you figure out the teenage brain-”

“The twisted teenage brain,” I said.

Toni nodded. “Even harder.”

She had a point. We’d never tracked killers like these before. And we definitely needed to pull out all the stops. Having a shrink on board couldn’t hurt. Toni helped me put together a list of psychologists we liked-or at least didn’t hate. “Thanks, Tone. Gotta run. Bailey’s waiting for me at the station and I’ve got to check these names out-”

Toni waved her hand. “Go, go. I’m here if you need me. Call when you come up for air.”

I went back to my office, did some research, and winnowed our list down to three names, then headed to Eric’s office. I told him I was considering bringing in a psychologist. “What do you think?”

“It won’t hurt. And it’d be good PR. Shows the public we’re doing everything we can.” He sighed. “Jeez, I sound like Vanderhorn.”

“If it makes you feel any better, I thought the same thing.” I handed over the list of names. “Anybody you like?”

Eric read the list. “They’re all good. I’ve got one more you might want to check out. Ran into her when I was in juvy.”

I took down the name and headed for the station at a fast trot.

When I got there, Bailey was standing at her desk, tapping her watch. “You’re half an hour late and we’ve got a boatload of-”