The Competition Read Online Free PDF Page A

The bodies had been removed, but the clothing that had been ripped and cut away by paramedics draped the steps. And once again, blood was everywhere. I closed my eyes for a moment, overloaded by the gore and the terrifying violence that had ripped through the school like a demonic cyclone.
    “This is the last of it,” Graden said, as he led us toward the library.
    He pointed to a desk on our left and I saw a pink sneaker on the floor in front of it. “We found another two victims there. A teacher and a young girl. The girl had a close-range shot straight to the forehead.”
    I didn’t even try to make myself look under that desk. Graden moved farther into the library, and I trailed behind, knowing I couldn’t take much more.
    “And here is what passes for good news,” Graden said. He stopped outside a taped-off section of the room where photographers and coroner investigators were congregated. At the center of the activity were two dead bodies. It took me a few moments, but from what I could see, they looked like two teenage boys. It wasn’t that obvious at first. To call the sight gruesome wouldn’t do it justice. The faces were masses of red pulp and exposed bone, the features completely obliterated—no doubt by shots fired at point-blank range—and their bodies were just a couple of feet apart. Black balaclavas lay next to each of them and there was a handgun at each of their right sides.
    “So the suspects shot each other?” I asked. “Or themselves?”
    “We think they shot each other,” Graden said. “But we’ll have to wait for the coroner to give us a definite on that.” Graden stared for a long minute, then continued, his voice brittle. “At least you won’t have to sit in trial and listen to a bunch of shrinkers talk about how it was all mommy’s fault for giving them an Atari instead of an Xbox.”
    “Yeah,” I said. But it was cold comfort. Their deaths wouldn’t bring all those children back.
    Bailey pointed to the small handguns near the bodies. “I thought they used AKs.”
    “They did,” Graden replied. “We found one on the floor just outside the gym. Looks like it might have jammed—”
    “So he dumped it—” I said.
    Graden nodded. “And we found the second one at the top of the stairs with an empty magazine.”
    “So the other one kept firing the AK—” Bailey said.
    “Until it emptied. But the one who’d dumped his AK downstairs had at least one, possibly two, handguns on him. We found shell casings from a forty-four caliber and a three-fifty-seven on the stairs.”
    Bailey pointed to the guns that lay near the bodies in front of us. “But those aren’t forty-fours or three-fifty-sevens.”
    “No. They’re both cheap twenty-five-caliber Saturday night specials.”
    “Man, they were carrying an arsenal,” Bailey said.
    I stared at the guns. “Doesn’t it seem weird that they’d use low-caliber, trashy stuff like that for their finale?” I asked. “I mean, why settle for dicey junk that might only wind up maiming them?”
    “My guess is they wanted to use the reliable hardware on their moving targets,” Bailey said, her voice cold with anger. “They could afford to use the cheap stuff on each other. They weren’t going to miss at point-blank range.”
    “And the dicey junk did do the job,” Graden added.
    “Got ID on them?” Bailey asked.
    “Not yet,” he said. “Haven’t had the chance to get their prints. Hopefully they have driver’s licenses—”
    “Or rap sheets,” I said. If they didn’t, their prints wouldn’t be in the system.
    “Any of the survivors get a good enough look to make an ID?” Bailey asked.
    “Not yet. But we’ve got a few kids who had the presence of mind to take videos with their phones, and we’re checking into the school’s surveillance footage.”
    “Anybody give a description?” I asked.
    “All kinds.” Graden’s tone was glum. “The only consistent one—and it’s not totally consistent—is that they