The Competition - [59]

At that weirdly inopportune moment, Graden called. “Rachel?”

“Yeah.” I didn’t recognize his voice at first, and I think mine was probably still in “I hate Shane” mode.

“You okay? You sound…strange.”

“Sorry. I’m just a little tired. It’s been pretty nonstop.”

“I know,” Graden said, his tone warm and full of sympathy.

My lizard brain remembered that Graden wasn’t Shane or any other asshole I’d ever had the misfortune of knowing. “You okay?”

“I’m fine,” he said. “Look, I just got word that a letter addressed to you was delivered to the school.”

School? “What school?”

“Fairmont High-”

“Why on earth would anyone send mail to me at-”

“Good question. And there’s no return address. It feels bad to me, Rachel. I know this may sound paranoid, but I told them to leave it right there and not touch it. I called in the bomb squad-”

“Jeez, seriously? It might just be someone who recognized me on some news footage or-”

“I’d be glad to be wrong. But I’m not taking any chances. The bomb guys are going to handle it. Assuming it doesn’t explode, Dorian’s people will check it out. But I expect everyone to move fast, so you should be able to get a look at it pretty quick. I’d suggest you get downtown as soon as you can.”

I agreed, ended the call, and told Bailey what he’d said. “I don’t know how many people would’ve recognized us from the news footage though. The shot I saw was maybe two seconds.”

“Yeah, but they showed footage from the Antonovich trial that had your face all over it. So anyone could’ve written that letter. Might just be a weird fan-”

Big cases always brought out the tinfoil-hat brigade. “I’m still getting mail about that trial…”

“Yeah, the only thing that bugs me is no return address. I’m with Graden. If it was an innocent thing, why not leave a return address?”

That was the question. One of them anyway.

36

On the way downtown, I called Principal Campbell to ask him how they’d come across the letter.

He’d been surprised by it too. “The past couple of days we’ve had mail pouring in from all over the world. There was no way to keep up with it, so some of the teachers volunteered to help sort. But it turned out to be easier than we’d thought. Most of them were addressed to the school, and they were obviously meant for everyone. The rest were addressed to the families of the kids who…didn’t make it.” He paused to collect himself. “So the one addressed to you stood out. I thought I should call.”

“You did the perfect thing, Dale,” I said.

By the time we got to the station, the letter had been cleared by the bomb squad, and Dorian had finished processing it. Now it sat alone in a ventilated cardboard box on Graden’s desk.

“Did you read it?” I asked him.

Graden nodded, tight-lipped. “I only had the chance to scan it, but…”

His worried expression made me nervous. I opened the box. There was just the letter, no envelope. “They took the envelope?”

Graden nodded. “Yeah, to see what they could do with the postmark. And there were two actually. The outer envelope was addressed to Rachel Knight at the school, and there was one inside it that just had your name. The letter was in that second envelope.”

The letter was typed on plain white Xerox paper. I put on latex gloves and took it out.

Rachel Knight, Fairmont High is only the beginning. They say we’re Columbine Copycats. They’re idiots. We already proved those pathetic losers are nothing compared to us. But we have more, much more, to show the world. Do you realize how lucky you are? You have the privilege of being involved in what will be the greatest criminal legacy of all time. They say you got famous after that case with the Hollywood director, but that was nothing compared to this. I bet that’s why you wanted my case. Because you always want the big case. Because you blew it with Romy. And now she’s probably dead. I could have saved her. You know why? Because I’m superior to you-to all of you-in every way.

I am the best, the very best you’ve ever seen or ever will see. Our victory at Fairmont High was NOT luck. It was skill. MY skill.

If you catch me, you’ll be a hero. But if you fail, Rachel Knight, like you did with Romy, many, many more will die. So now, it’s all up to you. Do your job, you’ll stop us. Fail and we will go on. And on.

I felt as though I’d been hit in the chest with a sledgehammer. I reread the letter. It wasn’t the fact that he knew about my sister’s abduction. That story had been blasted all over the tabloids during the Antonovich trial. Everyone and his dog could know that my sister had been abducted by a man in a pickup truck while we were playing hide-and-seek in the woods near our house. And it didn’t strike me as a big leap in logic or insight that Logan figured out I might need to avenge my sister’s kidnapping by taking on the gnarliest cases I could find. But that this kid had managed to zero in on my survivor’s guilt-that was a little less obvious. It showed me he not only had smarts, but he also knew how to go for the emotional jugular.

Logan’s teachers had said he tested at genius level. And strategizing the shooting and escape clearly took some intelligence. What I hadn’t counted on was this kind of insidious cunning. Or such grandiose megalomania.