The Third Victim Part 14

Silence.

conner: Did you fire your guns at school? Did you start shooting in the hallway? Silence. conner: Danny, I'm trying to help you. But to do that, I need to know what happened this afternoon. Those little girls and that teacher are dead, Danny. Do you understand dead? Pause.

O'grady: My grandma died. We went to the funeral.

That's dead. conner: And did your parents cry? Did it make them very sad? As sad as they were today? You saw your father cry, Danny. Do you understand why he was crying? O'grady: Yeah, (barely audible) Yeah. conner: What happened this afternoon, Danny? What did you do?

Were you just so mad, was that it? Silence.

O'grady: I'm smart. conner: Danny, did you kill those girls? Did you open fire on your cla.s.smates?

O'grady: I'm smart. I'm smart, I'm smart, I'm smart! conner: Did you kill those girls, Danny? O'grady: Yes! Yes, okay? I'm smart! conner: Why, Danny? Why did you do such a thing? Sound of door bursting open.

Johnson: My name is Avery Johnson, and I'm here to represent Daniel O'grady. This interview is over. conner: Why, Danny, why? Johnson: Don't answer -conner: Tell me why! Why did you kill those little girls, Danny? O'grady: I'm scared.

On the Boeing 747, Supervisory Special Agent Pierce Quincy finally took off the headphones and set aside the tape recorder. He'd listened to the interview of America's newest ma.s.s murderer three times since taking off in Seattle. Now he took a moment to jot down his thoughts in a notebook he had hastily purchased at Sea-Tac airport. On the outside of the red spiral book he had written: case STUDY #12" DANIEL JEFFERSON O'grady. BAKERSVILLE, OR.

The stewardess came up, took his empty cup to give him more room, and smiled charmingly. Quincy returned the smile automatically, then broke off eye contact before she would be tempted to start up a conversation.

He was still preoccupied with schoolboys and the forces that drove them to kill.

Over the years, Quincy had received many charming smiles from flight attendants. At the age of forty-five, he had dark hair that was graying at the temples, but he was tall, lean muscled, and well dressed. He also carried himself well. He'd been there, done that, knew where he was going, believed in always being polite, and had absolutely no patience for fools. He made his living flying to four different U.S. cities in five days and hunting down the worst predators the human race had to offer. And he had a direct, probing gaze that people found either deeply compelling or completely intimidating.

Especially on business trips, when his briefcase was filled with crime-scene photos of some of the most brutal slayings on earth. After fifteen years in the business, Quincy was p.r.o.ne to shuffling the photos like playing cards, an act that made him both proud of his objectivity and saddened by his callousness.

It had been pure coincidence that Quincy was on the West Coast when Quantico called about the Bakersville shooting. In theory, Quincy was on personal leave from his job of researching killers and teaching homicide-investigation cla.s.ses at the FBI Academy in Virginia. Last

week, however, he'd received word of a strangled prost.i.tute's body found along Interstate 5 in Seattle. Local police were concerned the case might have connections to another string of murders committed in the eighties by the notorious Green River Killer, who was never caught.

Quincy had revisited that case last year as part of a project to close out cold-case files. Unfortunately he'd not found any fresh leads.

Then the new murder.

The FBI's deputy director had personally given Quincy the news and told him to stay home.

"These are the times when you need to be with your family," the deputy director had said.

"We understand that. This case is probably unrelated. I don't want you worrying about it."

Quincy had thanked the man for his concern. Then he had gone to Dulles airport, purchased a ticket to Seattle, and boarded the plane. His youngest daughter was returning to college the next day, his ex-wife had no intention of speaking to him even if he did stay, and as for his daughter Amanda .. . There was nothing Quincy could do anymore for Amanda. What was done was done, and frankly, Quincy needed his work.

Before transferring to a research role with the Behavioral Science Unit five years ago, Supervisory Special Agent Quincy had earned his stripes as one of the Bureau's finest profilers. Each year, he'd taken on roughly one hundred and twenty serial rapists, murderers, and child kidnappers. He'd pursued men with IQs well above genius level and ensnared them in traps of their own making. He'd a.n.a.lyzed crime scenes awash with blood and found the case-breaking clue. He'd saved lives and he'd made mistakes that sometimes cost lives.

He knew how to handle that kind of stress. In fact, his ex-wife, Bethie, routinely claimed he didn't know how to live without it.

According to her, his world had become as dark as the murderers he a.n.a.lyzed, and without a brutal slaying to unravel, he simply didn't know what to do with himself.

Quincy didn't care for that image of himself, but neither did he refute it. His line of work did take its toll. He spent so much time enmeshed in cases of extreme violence, it was easy to lose perspective.

All county fairs became places where child molesters lay in wait for new victims. All bas.e.m.e.nts housed human remains. All charming, good-looking law students were secretly psychopaths.

Frankly, Quincy would never, ever take a ride in a Volkswagen Bug, the vehicle of choice for many serial killers. He just wouldn't do it.

Nor, he had found, could he watch his daughter die.

In Seattle, the prost.i.tute's murder turned out to be a one-off crime, eventually traced to a trucker pa.s.sing through the area. Quincy had gone so far as to peruse Homicide's cold-case files, ostensibly to offer fresh perspective but really to delay going home, where he would no longer be Super Agent, capable of capturing even the most vile of villains, but instead Helpless Parent, resigned to waiting by a hospital bed like any other person for the inevitable to occur.

Then a young boy had walked into his Oregon school and opened fire. And Quincy, in a manner of speaking, had been saved.

Like most Americans, Quincy had only peripherally noticed a small but tragic shooting that occurred in November 1995 at Richland High School in Lynnville, Tennessee, leaving two dead and one wounded. The tiny town, population 353, seemed too remote to have any connection with Quincy's life, and the small murder spree seemed an isolated occurrence. But just three months later another shooting occurred: Frontier Junior High, Moses Lake, Washington. Three killed, one wounded, by a fourteen-year-old student. Almost exactly a year later a new shooting, in Bethel, Alaska. Two killed, two wounded, by a sixteen-year-old gunman who had lined up a gallery of friends to watch his rampage. Eight months later sixteen-year-old Luke Woodham murdered three people and wounded seven in Pearl, Mississippi. Two months after

that three more students died at Heath High School, in West Paducah, Kentucky. The pattern was clear. Jonesboro, Arkansas; Springfield, Oregon; Littleton, Colorado; Fort Gibson, Oklahoma. Other schools, other tragedies seared into the national consciousness.

Headlines screamed of an epidemic of violence sweeping across America's youth. Video games, some cried. Too many guns, not enough parents. Or maybe it was Hollywood or Capitol Hill or Jerry Springer. But something had to be done to stem the tide. Ban guns, censor cartoons, install metal detectors, enforce dress codes, something.

In the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit, researchers such as Quincy were less certain. Were the shootings a genuine trend or a statistical anomaly? Were these 'normal' children motivated by outside forces such as the media, or did this point to a deeper, developmental issue?

What really drove teenagers to kill, and how could shootings be prevented?

Even at Quantico, the leading criminal experts didn't have ready answers.

And that frightened them, for they had children too. Six months ago Quincy had begun a major research effort to dissect the minds of juvenile ma.s.s murderers and identify ways to help them, as well as to prevent future shootings. The goal was to devise a system that would help identify potential ma.s.s murderers for school officials and law-enforcement agencies. Also, Quincy hoped to formulate action steps to help parents and teachers deal more effectively with potentially violent teens.

Identifying future shooters, however, was easier said than done.

Unlike serial killers, ma.s.s murderers were not a h.o.m.ogeneous bunch.

People went postal because they'd had a bad day, because they were mentally unstable, because someone influenced them, because they were high/drunk/ stoned, because they were in love/out of love/confused by love, because they sought glory, because they sought revenge, because they sought death. Ma.s.s murderers could be young, old, rich, poor, well educated, poorly educated, well adjusted, or loners. Their attacks could be random or well planned.

In addition, many ma.s.s murderers ended their rampages by taking their own lives, making it difficult to get more information. What had brought that person to the breaking point? What had the shooter been thinking during his rampage? Would he repeat his act given the chance, or was it a onetime homicide spree? Most of the time, no one ever knew.

The best experts could do currently was a 'risk a.s.sessment' of individuals, a checklist of behaviors statistically found in ma.s.s murderers. Ma.s.s murderers:

1. had a history of violence, e.g." wife-beating, child abuse, brawls, etc.

2. inspired 'subjective fear' in people. After shootings, there were always a few neighbors or coworkers who had a 'bad feeling' about the person. They avoided the man at work, didn't let their children play with the boy, were sure never to be alone with the guy, etc.

3. exhibited antisocial behavior, either a loner-type personality or someone who deliberately violated societal rules.

4. had poor social skills.

5. liked to make threats, realistic or idle.

6. lacked a support system, e.g." came from a fractured family, had few friends, etc.

7. felt wronged by life, the corporation, peers, spouse, etc.

8. were under severe situational stress, e.g." recent job loss, impending divorce, death in the family, etc.

Quincy felt that the checklist was not a bad tool. Human resources departments of many major corporations routinely used it to identify potentially dangerous employees. In the wake of school shootings, school counselors across the country had also requested the information for their offices.

Unfortunately, the checklist was proving too vague when applied to

youthful offenders. What was 'situational stress' for an eleven-year-old? Getting braces, having a pimple, breaking up? What was a 'history of violence' for a grade-school boy? Throwing rocks, tearing wings off flies, engaging in rough sports?

Add to that the significant number of children who came from broken homes, and that every teenager worth his salt felt deeply and grievously wronged by life, and a statistically improbable number of youths emerged as future homicidal maniacs hardly an encouraging thought.