The Competition - [17]

“You said you remember one of the shooters had a weird laugh,” I said. “I know you said you didn’t recognize that laugh, but you were under a lot of stress. Can you listen to it and tell me if you recognize it?” They moved closer together. I pulled out a cell phone and played the short snippet.

The girls stared at each other with wide eyes. At last, Marnie answered. “Yeah, but it couldn’t be him. I’ve known him since third grade-”

“What’s his name?” I asked.

“Otis Barney.”

“Are you close?” I asked.

“No, but we’ve been in the same schools practically forever.” Marnie’s expression was tortured. “Otis couldn’t have been involved in something like this. He couldn’t have.”

“Have you ever known him to be bullied?” Bailey asked.

“N-no,” Marnie answered.

“But he’s the type, isn’t he?” I asked.

Marnie looked down. “I don’t know. He’s kind of…geeky, but he’s always trying to be cool.”

“Who does he hang with?” I asked.

Marnie shrugged, but she kept her gaze focused on the floor. “I don’t know. I’ve never seen him with anyone in particular. I guess he keeps to himself.” When Marnie looked up at me her eyes were wet with tears. “Ms. Knight, I really don’t want to get Otis in trouble. I just don’t believe he could have…”

“You know him?” Bailey asked the other two.

They did. “But not well,” Charlotte said. “We just know who he is because Marnie told us she knew him back when we all started at Fairmont High.”

“Can you give us a description, Marnie?” I asked.

“He’s medium height, about medium weight-maybe a little on the skinny side.”

In other words, the same build as the smaller of the two shooters.

And he had that laugh.

9

Finally we had something to work with. But I wanted at least one more student to confirm Marnie’s statement before we moved on Otis Barney. We didn’t have time to waste on dead ends. Energized, we knocked out ten more interviews. I asked about Otis Barney, but I was careful to toss his name into the mix with no particular emphasis, along with several others on our list of possibles. A wiry-looking kid in glasses said Otis had been in his freshman Spanish class. And he remembered that weird, high-pitched giggle.

“Is Otis into guns?” I asked.

“No, not that I ever knew.”

It wasn’t a DNA match, but it was enough to make it worth our time to find out whether Otis Barney had been accounted for. We rescheduled the rest of the interviews for the following day and hurried out to Bailey’s car.

“I don’t want to red-flag this guy before we’re sure he hasn’t shown up anywhere,” I said.

“We can check EMT lists, hospital lists, and police reports without getting noticed.”

I took the hospital and EMT lists; Bailey took the police reports and the school liaison who’d access the attendance records for us. An hour and a half later, I had my answer: eighty-four wounded, thirty-three dead, and none of those who had been positively identified were named Otis Barney. The numbers were so staggering, just hearing them was beyond comprehension. I felt numb as I waited for Bailey to finish her calls.

“And?” I asked.

“He doesn’t show up on any police log and he wasn’t checked in at homeroom. He might’ve just gotten to school late.”

“He might have. There’s one way to find out for sure.” I looked at my watch. “Almost ten o’clock. If his folks haven’t heard from him they’re not sleeping. Assuming they’re even home.”

“And if they are, and he’s there, we apologize for waking them up and say we’re checking in on everyone and have to talk to him,” Bailey said. “I just don’t want any reporters to run with this. We’ve already mentioned his name to some of the kids. If the press sees us at Otis’s house and asks the kids…”

It was a problem. We’d warned all the students that it could seriously undermine the investigation if they talked to reporters, and we’d asked them to warn all their friends about it. But it was a big school-more than three thousand enrolled-and reporters knew how to make people feel important. Odds were, someone would cave to the siren song of momentary fame. And even if the kids stayed strong, reporters were bound to have their own sources in the hospitals or in LAPD. Hell, I was sure they had sources in my own office.

“All the more reason to move on it now,” I said. “The press probably has interns comparing lists of wounded and dead to school records even as we speak. I-wait, do we?”

“Have people working on the lists? Yeah. But the attendance records aren’t entirely accurate. Like I said about our buddy Otis, if a kid skipped homeroom, played hooky, or a teacher just made a mistake taking roll, that’ll take a while to sort out.”

Bailey got the number for Tom and Sonny Barney fairly quickly. She paused before punching it in. “For our sake, I hope this is our guy. But for their sake…”

I nodded. I could hear the phone ring. No one picked up. Not even an answering machine.

Bailey ended the call. “Could mean they’re on the phone or-”

“At the rec center, looking for their son.” The community recreation center had been designated as the gathering place where family and friends of missing students could wait for reports. “Let’s hit the house first.” It’d be easier to talk to them there. “You have an address?”