Because life is not a movie. Good guys lose, everybody dies, and love does not conquer all.
“So this is the guy who supposedly wrote eloquent poetry?” Bailey said.
“Not exactly Keats,” I agreed. “But he’s not aiming for an A in English.”
“How did he find out that we know Otis is dead?” Graden asked. “I don’t remember releasing that information-”
“You didn’t,” Bailey said. “He screwed up. He thinks he’s digging on his own private joke, making fun of us for calling Otis a ‘person of interest.’”
“Laughing at how we fell for the decoy,” I said. “Back when we first found out Otis was dead, we hit on the possibility that they deliberately framed Otis to throw us off. That the second shooter might’ve deliberately mimicked Otis’s laugh.”
“But we weren’t sure Otis wasn’t in on it, so we kept looking for more evidence to link him to the shooting,” Bailey said. “We’ve found nothing. All we have is what we started with: the weird laugh and Logan’s photograph on Otis’s computer.”
“So we figured they probably did set Otis up as a decoy-” I said.
“And this letter proves it,” Bailey said. “I’d bet Shane-or whoever the second shooter is-sent that photo the night before the shooting to frame Otis.”
“So the second shooter screwed over his buddy, Logan?” Nick asked. “’Cause that photo dumps Logan out big-time.”
“I thought so too at first,” I said. “But actually, it doesn’t. So what if Logan’s holding a gun? We couldn’t even prove the gun in the photo was real, let alone that it was his. And the upside for them was huge: it bought them time while we chased a dead boy.”
“Then Logan could’ve sent it himself,” Nick said.
Graden looked skeptical. “But how could they be sure they’d be able to find Otis near the library in all that chaos?” he said. “If he’d survived, we would’ve been able to clear him pretty fast. So how could they know Otis would be close enough to the library at just the right time?”
“Logan was friendly with him,” I said. “Remember, Evan said he saw Otis going over to talk to Logan that morning. So Otis might’ve said he was going to be in the library-or Logan might’ve told Otis to meet him there. But then again, maybe they didn’t know. It’s entirely possible they decided to use Otis as a decoy and then just lucked out to find him near the library. I don’t think they needed him to be dead. It just bought them more time that way.”
“True,” Nick said. “It was no biggie if they didn’t kill him. The mislead would work for at least a little while no matter what.”
“Well, at least we can finally clear Otis,” Bailey said. “You agree, Lieutenant?”
“Yeah,” Graden said. “Write it up. We’ll notify the parents right away.”
Finally, a piece of good news. I looked back down at the letter. Something else was bothering me. “That last line.” I studied it again. “It’s familiar somehow. But something’s off about it. It’s not right.”
“I was thinking the same thing,” Nick said. He stared at the letter. “Wait, I think I’ve got it. It’s from that movie with Kevin Spacey, Swimming with Sharks.”
I looked at him, surprised. “You’re a movie buff?” Nick shrugged. I considered the line again. “I’ll be damned. You’re right.”
I turned back to the letter and tried to figure out what was wrong with the quote. Then I had it. An icy chill gripped my heart. “It’s everybody lies. Not everybody dies.”
53
A theater. I’d figured it out. Just not in time. A movie’s take on the human condition. A movie about the movie business. A quote from that movie-with just one word changed. But we were set up to fail. By the time we got the letter, it was already too late. And even if there’d been some lead time, there was no way to know which theater, or even which city. Los Angeles? Or in Shane’s neighborhood, Camarillo? Or in Boulder? It was another needle in a haystack.
Bailey got the call within minutes. A shooting at the Cinemark in Woodland Hills. A theater Logan probably knew well, since it was close to home. We broke all speed limits getting to the scene. There were at least twenty squad cars and two fire trucks occupying all of the drivable space in front of the theater. Bailey double-parked next to a squad car at the far end, and we ran toward the police line. She badged us through and tracked down the detective in charge. It turned out to be Detective Gina Stradley-an old friend of Bailey’s from their Police Academy days.
“I heard this one’s yours, Keller,” she said.
“Yeah, lucky me,” Bailey said. “What have we got?”
“Same MO as the school. Twisted fucks.” Gina gestured for us to follow her into the theater. “And it was so easy for them. It’s sickening. They must’ve bought tickets, because there’s no sign of forced entry anywhere. Just walked in with everyone else. Assault rifles were SBR AR fifteens, like last time.”
A short-barrel rifle wouldn’t be hard to conceal under a coat, and this was coat weather. Gina turned right and led us up the staircase to a wide corridor on the second floor. She stopped just outside the crime scene tape that stretched across the hallway and pointed to a door on our right. Uniformed cops stood guard as crime scene techs worked inside the taped-off area. Most seemed to be grouped near the doorway Gina had pointed out. “They headed up here to the projection booth, got the projectionist to open the door, and stabbed him to death. They fired through the projection window.” A sniper couldn’t have picked a better spot. I remembered Jenny’s words: “‘fish in a barrel’ style.”
“Only two dead?” Bailey asked.
“In the audience,” Gina said. “Four, counting the projectionist and the manager, who ran to the booth when he realized where the shots were coming from.” Gina shook her head. “He called nine-one-one on his way up. If it hadn’t been for him, it would’ve been a helluva lot worse.”
“So they dumped the weapons again,” I said.
“Yeah,” Gina said. “But it looks like they shot the manager with a nine millimeter. We picked up a shell casing near the body.” It was crowded in the hallway with all the cops and techs, and we were three extra bodies that weren’t needed at the moment, so Gina led us back downstairs to the lobby. “Our gun expert says it looks like the rifles were rigged to go fully automatic, but one of them jammed.”
Bailey nodded. “One of them jammed last time too-”
“But last time they weren’t rigged to go fully automatic,” I said.
“Where the hell are they getting these guns from?” Gina asked.
“Probably the same person who altered them,” Bailey said. Shane checked both boxes. Bailey told Gina we thought he might be the second shooter.
“Well, thank God he screwed up,” Gina said. “If that gun hadn’t jammed, we would’ve had a higher body count than Fairmont.”
I nodded. “We got lucky.” I stopped even as I heard myself say it. This case had mangled all sense of proportion. Anything less than a double-digit body count felt like a blessing.
Bailey stared out through the glass doors at the throng of police. “Worse than Aurora. That’s what they were going for.”
“Right,” I said. I thought about the incident between Logan and the jocks in middle school. “We’d better shut Platt down.”
“I’ll get ahold of the principal,” Bailey said. “In the meantime, Gina, would you mind if I got our firearms guy, Ed Berry, out here? Just to keep things clean and simple?”