Marcia Clark - The Competition

Wow. Imagine. “So he was pretty popular?”

Amanda stared at the floor. “Yeah. I figured he’d never be into somebody like me.”

He never was. But I wouldn’t be the one to give her that painful news. “Was that gun show the first time you met Logan?”

“Yeah. Actually, that was the only time I ever saw him. After that visit, Logan wrote to me for a little while, but then he stopped.”

“Letters? Or emails?”

“Letters.”

“Did you answer him?”

“Sure. I felt sorry for him. He seemed kind of…sad, you know? He wrote a lot about how he’d always felt so alone, how no one ‘got’ him-”

“Not even Evan?”

“No. But I never thought he and Evan were that tight. Evan never talked about Logan, and Logan hardly ever mentioned Evan in his letters. That’s why when I heard Logan might be a suspect, it never occurred to me that Evan could be…” Amanda stopped and bit her lip. She blinked rapidly, then continued. “Anyway, I got the feeling Logan just liked being able to hang out with someone that cool. Someone who wasn’t afraid of anything.”

“And Evan wasn’t afraid of anything?” I’d never seen him show that kind of swagger. But I’d only seen the act. Not the real Evan. I’d bet the guy Amanda saw was closer to the truth.

“Yeah. Nothing scared Evan. Logan thought that was amazing.” Amanda’s face crumpled, and she wiped away a tear that escaped from the corner of her eye. “I did too.”

I knew where her thoughts were taking her. I tried to nip it in the bud. “It makes perfect sense for you to be sad that Evan isn’t the person you thought he was. But if you’re feeling guilty about it, you have to stop.” Amanda bit her lip. The pain in her eyes was heartbreaking. “Evan’s a very good actor. He fooled a lot of people for quite a long time-us included. And it’s our job to spot guys like that. So let yourself off the hook, okay?” Amanda nodded without looking up. I hoped my words would sink in eventually. But right now, I had to move on. “So Logan confided in you about feeling lonely and depressed. Did he ever say anything about suicide?”

“Never, like, ‘I’m gonna do it.’ More like it was something he used to think about when he was a kid.” Amanda pushed her hair back. “If he’d said something about wanting to kill himself right then, I’d have told someone. For sure.”

Talk of past suicidal thoughts could just be typical melodramatic teenage posturing. Or it could be an oblique way of talking about serious current suicidal ideation. Obviously, Logan’s talk was the latter. But there was no way for Amanda to have known that. “You say he wrote to you for a while, then stopped. How come?”

“I think he could tell from my letters that Evan and I were together, and I wasn’t into anything more than being friends.”

“Do you still have those letters from Logan?”

“No, I’m sorry.”

I was too. They might not have been terribly illuminating, but any little bit of information would’ve helped. The more we could learn about these shooters, the better we’d be at spotting them in the future. Maybe. “Let’s get back to the gun show. Did he or Logan buy any guns?”

“They couldn’t. But I remember they went off on their own for a while.” Amanda tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “I couldn’t find them, and my dad was, like, ‘Where are they?’ It was so uncool. He was pissed.”

“Did you see either of them with a gun after the show?” I asked.

“No. But that doesn’t mean they didn’t have one. They could’ve found someone to buy a gun for them. That happens sometimes.”

Yes, it does. The picture was becoming clearer. I’d bet Evan had sized up Amanda right from the jump as someone he could use. I doubted he knew exactly how she’d be of use to him when she moved to Colorado. But he was obviously capable of long-range thinking and he knew a valuable asset when he saw one. So when he found out she was moving, he made Amanda his girlfriend. After all, what did it take? A bit of romancing before she left, some phone calls now and then after she’d moved. And it had paid off. I had no doubt that by the time he and Logan went to the gun show with Amanda, their plans for Fairmont High were well under way.

So now I knew why Evan had trusted her to mail the letters to me. What I still didn’t get was why she’d done it.

I had tobe careful how I segued back into the subject of Evan’s letters to me. A sharp turn into serious territory like that could push Amanda into panic mode and make her clam up. I decided to approach it from the relationship angle. “Did Evan say he still wanted to be a couple after you moved? Or did you guys become just friends at that point?”

Amanda blushed a little. “He said he didn’t want to give me up.” She floated away for a moment. “Evan always told me I was special. That he could really talk to me-not like the other girls. He said they were lame, that they only cared about their clothes and their makeup and who was sleeping with who…”

“He made you feel special.” Amanda nodded. “What did you and Evan talk about?”

“Everything. How stupid politicians are and how the sheeple keep voting for them because they get taken in by campaign promises that’re obvious lies-”

“Any specific politicians?” The sheeple. Stupid. Lies. A grandiose indictment of both the voters and the candidates. Typical of a psychopath. And Amanda’s delivery sounded like it came straight from the horse’s mouth. If that horse was a sociopath.

Amanda frowned. “Probably, but I can’t remember. He said he wanted to go over to Iraq. He’d kill the bad guys and end this thing fast.”

No, he wouldn’t. It was too dangerous. Evan was no hero; he killed like a coward. “So you guys stayed close after you moved?”

“Definitely. We Skyped or talked on the phone.”

“You didn’t email?” I asked.

Amanda shook her head. “Evan had a thing about emailing. He said he didn’t trust it.”

“Did he stay with you during the gun show?”

“No. They drove out in Logan’s car and took off afterward. Evan said Logan had to visit his relatives in Utah.”

Or something. We knew that was a lie. The family in Utah said they hadn’t seen Logan in years. “Was that the last time you saw Evan?”

“Yeah.”

Time to get to the point. “And you guys never wrote letters to each other?”

“No, never.”

“So what did you think when he sent you those letters and told you to mail them to me?”

Amanda shrugged. “I guess I didn’t think anything. It was just a favor he needed, so I did it. I mean, it wasn’t that big a deal. He sent the letters along with his other stuff.”

Bailey and I exchanged a look. “What other stuff?”

“Um, notebooks.”

My ears perked up. “Notebooks? What was in them?”

“I don’t know. When he sent them to me they were all sealed up, and he told me not to open them.”

“Did he tell you why?”

“He said they were poems and stories and stuff like that. He was going to send them to an agent, to get published. But he didn’t want anyone to see them because they might steal his ideas.”

“What did he want you to do with them?”

“Just keep them safe where no one could see them.”

“Did he just recently send them to you?”

“Not all of them. He started sending them to me a while ago. But the last two he sent were recent. Those were the ones that had the letters with them.”

“And you never thought to question why he needed you to forward those letters for him?”

Amanda shook her head. “I know it sounds stupid.” New tears gathered in her eyes. “I-he was my boyfriend. I trusted him. So I went along with it. And now I don’t know why.”