“She’s doing okay now, right?” he asked.
“For the moment.” Ava gave a wry grin. “It makes me suspicious. When things are crazy, I’m relaxed because that’s normal. During the calm times, I’m constantly waiting for something to explode. It’s nerve-racking.”
For identical twins, the women were night and day. How had they emerged from the same genetics? Last time he’d seen Jayne, her hair had been as brown as Ava’s and the resemblance had been startling. But in her dozen mug shots, she was blond. The main difference was in their eyes. Both had blue eyes, but Ava’s felt like calm seas. Jayne’s were more like a hurricane. Even in her photos, restless energy leaped out of her gaze.
“Is there any news on Justin’s vehicle?” Ava asked.
Zander scanned through his emails and opened one. “This says there was nothing unusual in the car. They’ve sent several things to trace, but who knows how long until we hear back on those. There was a gym bag in the backseat with dirty shorts, T-shirt, and running shoes. Only thing of interest was a receipt for ammo from the county shooting range. It was two months old.”
“Doesn’t he need to have his own weapon to be allowed to shoot there?” Ava asked.
“Yes, but remember Cole said he thought he went with a friend. I bet the friend owned the weapon.” Zander scratched a note to visit the shooting range and follow up with Justin’s workplace friends and his parents. One of them should know whom Justin had gone shooting with.
He read further down the report. “This is odd.”
“What?” Ava asked.
Zander kept reading and the hairs on his arms stood up. “Justin’s car was wiped down. Everywhere. They couldn’t find a single print of Justin’s in it. Someone was very thorough.”
Ava sucked in a breath. “Would he wipe down his own vehicle before going into the mall? That says he assumed the police would find it—”
“He didn’t hide the vehicle. Of course he expected it to be found. But why wipe it down?”
“Maybe he wasn’t the one who left it there?”
Zander was silent as his brain searched for an explanation. “Then who? And why?”
“Has his cell phone turned up?” Ava asked.
Zander rubbed at his forehead. “Not that I’ve seen. We got back his records from his wireless company. There were no calls or texts the morning of the shooting. The company lost contact with the phone during the night at some point. His mother tried to contact him several times the day of the shooting, wondering when he was coming home. The calls went nowhere.”
“I don’t get it.”
“You and me both. The wiped-down car really confuses me. Did Justin think he could get away after the shooting? Removing his fingerprints doesn’t hide who the car belongs to.”
“Logic dictates that it wasn’t his fingerprints he was hiding . . . or someone else was hiding. Someone doesn’t want us to know who else was in that vehicle, right?” Ava asked slowly. “You said a minute ago that we’re missing an element of the story. I think there’s a big glaring one missing here. It’s almost as if the things that are missing are what’s creating the path. Missing medication in Justin’s system . . . missing fingerprints . . . things that we expect to be there, aren’t.”
“You’re saying someone else is involved. Could it be the shooter who died this morning in Troutdale?” Zander glanced up at the silent television someone had tuned to the local news station. It’d canceled all regular programming and was running constant reports about the Troutdale shooting, interspersing them with details from the Rivertown and Eugene shootings. The reporters had already connected the similarities among the three shootings, commenting on the ages of the shooters, the weapons, and the suicides at the end.
“When’s the briefing on the Eugene shooting?” Ava asked, her gaze following Zander’s as a high-school picture of the shooter from Eugene flashed on the TV screen.
“In an hour. They moved it up. Lane County Sheriff’s Department is presenting. They handled the entire investigation two months ago.” Zander pulled up a news article from June about the Eugene shooting. “Joseph Albaugh. Age twenty-four. Grew up in Eugene. Did both high school and college in the area. Was an employee at Home Depot. Opened fire early morning in a park. Four adults killed. Two children injured.” The same high-school senior photo from the newscast accompanied the article. Joe Albaugh was fresh-faced, with blond hair and a heavy coat of freckles. His smile was infectious. “Shot himself in the restroom. The usual comments from friends and family that it shocked the hell out of them that he’d done it.”
“This is giving me the creeps,” muttered Ava. “It’s like they belong to the same herd of sheep.”
“Word out of Troutdale is that the shooter is a young male, too. No ID yet.”
“There has to be a connection between the three of them,” Ava stated. “There’re too many similarities.”
Zander took the devil’s advocate role. “It could simply be generational. They could have all been disgruntled young men. Once they saw the first one do it, they decided to follow suit. Something about shooting innocents and the media coverage feels glamorous to them.”
“There’s nothing fucking glamorous about it!”
“It might be similar to the mind-set of the young men who are willing to blow themselves up to kill their enemies. Or the Japanese pilots who were willing to make their planes into torpedoes. They think they have a higher purpose.”