The Competition - [95]

“Only if you promise not to wake me up at the crack of dawn.” Bailey was a morning person times ten. For me, mornings work best when they’re the end of my night.

She gave me a tired smile. I don’t know how she managed to keep her eyes open. Bailey had done most of the driving since yesterday morning. And now that I thought of it, she really had no choice. She had to spend the night with me. We needed to get our stories straight.

Monday, October 14

The next morning over breakfast we agreed on our official story about last night: Harrellson had forwarded us the tip from off-duty officer Todd Santos about seeing Shane in La Conchita. We followed up, and Shane agreed to help us out by setting up the meeting with Jax. All true, except for the bit of arm-twisting we’d needed to persuade Shane to join up with the good guys. But that bit of fudging only helped make him look better, which would come in handy when his lawyer tried to negotiate a deal for him. When we told him how we were going to play it, he was happy to go along.

We watched Shane give his statement on a monitor outside the interview room. It was a little scary how well he sold it.

We still hadn’t gotten any updates from Harrellson about the body they’d found in Box Canyon. A part of me didn’t want to hear from him. I didn’t want confirmation that it was Evan. But we needed to find out whether they’d recovered anything from the body or the scene that might help us find Logan and company. “You want to give Harrellson a call?” I asked.

“Yeah, I’ve been wondering what the holdup is.” Bailey picked up her office phone and punched in the number. Then she frowned and hung up. “I got his voice mail.” Her tone was aggravated.

“So? I’m told it happens in the best of families. Why not leave a message?”

“Because I called his private cell, and he always answers it.” She used her cell and tried again. This time, he answered. “Hey, what gives?” Bailey asked. She listened, then finally said, “Okay, got it,” and ended the call. She didn’t look happy. “Said he got my first call but didn’t want to answer because it was the station number and he wasn’t sure it was me. He wouldn’t talk on the phone. He’s at the morgue. Said he’ll get in touch when he’s done. I know we need to be careful and all, but seriously? It’s going be on the news in about ten seconds anyway.”

“Yeah, this radio silence shit is getting pretty old,” I said. And to be honest, we weren’t in the best of moods. The Shane-Jax connection had only confirmed our working theory: there was a second suspect-still unknown-who’d scored more guns after the school shooting. Since there was no indication when or even if the shooters ever intended to go back to Jax, we were basically back to square one. “We need another move.”

“I know,” Bailey said. “I’ve been thinking about those letters. We figured someone must be helping them because it’s not likely our shooters mailed them from Boulder, right?” I nodded. “I was thinking that person might be a weak link.”

And therefore our best lead. “And what’s cool is they’ll be so easy to find. After all, there’s only about twenty-seven million people living in Boulder, Colorado. We can just start knocking on doors. Hell, by twenty twenty-five we might get through a good ten percent of them.” We’d already checked all of Logan’s phone records-both the family phone and his cell-for calls to or from someone with a Boulder area code. Zilch.

Bailey sighed and leaned back in her chair. “We need to smoke that person out. Make him come to us.”

“Maybe our headshrinkers can help.”

“Can’t hurt.”

Michael picked up on the first ring. I told him we needed a strategy meeting. One hour later we were in Jenny’s office.

Bailey laid out our idea to smoke out the letter mailer. Jennifer liked it.

“And bear in mind, this helper may not even know what he’s helping with,” Jenny said. “As I recall, you said you received an envelope within an envelope?” I nodded. “If the shooter sent these letters out to the helper in a sealed envelope with instructions not to open them and to mail them to you at a given address, the helper might never have seen what was being mailed.”

It was a good point, and one I hadn’t thought of. “So how do we lure that person out?”

“By getting on camera and telling the truth,” Michael said. He saw the look on my face and shook his head. “Not the whole truth. You don’t have to say what was in the letters, you only have to say that the content of the letters made it abundantly clear-”

“Okay, I’m not going to say ‘abundantly’-”

Michael smiled. “Yes, of course-sound-bite English. But in essence, say that you have proof the letters were written by the shooters, but you also have proof they were mailed by someone else. Someone who may not know they’ve been helping the killers.”

I wasn’t sure about that strategy. “That might motivate a decent person to wake up and realize what they were doing, but…”

Bailey finished my thought. “But since Logan’s name is already out there, don’t you think that person already knows he’s been helping the shooters?”