Page 3

Three

Moscow, Idaho

Two hours earlier

O fficer Nunes radios the police station and reaches Sergeant Shaine Gunderson, who’s been taking advantage of his quiet Sunday-morning shift to plan a hiking trip to Mount Borah, on the other side of the state.

“This is serious,” Nunes tells him.

Gunderson snaps out of his boredom, leaps into his car, and heads for King Road.

As he rides, he phones Tyson Berrett. His boss, the commander of the campus police, is on call that day.

Berrett says he’s already sent patrol officers Smith and Warner to join Nunes, who’s taping off the area around the house.

Berrett knows what to do, and not just because he’s an experienced cop. He was the sergeant assigned to Moscow’s previous famous homicide, the case of John Lee, a mentally ill man who went on a shooting spree in January 2015, killing three people, including his adoptive mother.

But Berrett has another advantage here. He’s a Vandal (the name of the school’s athletic teams, a nickname that comes from a long-ago U of I basketball team said to have “vandalized” its opponents).

He knows the school, the students, the faculty, the administration, the culture.

He’s been attached to the university on and off for years.

He worked it years ago as a sergeant. His daughter is a student.

When Berrett arrives, he recognizes Ava Wood, a neighbor who rushed out with blankets for the group of students sitting in front of the house at 1122 King Road.

“Do you know the people inside, Ava?” Berrett asks.

She nods and Berrett looks at her, eyes filled with sympathy.

And then he turns to the front door.

All those years of training and experience kick in. He runs through his checklist.

1. Clear the residence and run tape around the perimeter.

Check.

2. Call for medical assistance if needed.

There is no need.

3. Secure the scene.

Check. Nunes has put up the tape. Berrett assigns one cop to watch the front of the house, another the back.

4. Call in the detectives who will lead the investigation.

There’ll be five detectives: John Lawrence (who is about to retire); Dani Vargas; Brett Payne, detective corporal; and forensics detectives Lawrence Mowery and Andrew Fox.

Berrett knows it’s important to call only those cops who will play essential roles.

With each body comes the risk of contaminating evidence.

5. Notify the police chief.

6. Notify the county prosecutor, Bill Thompson.

7. Notify the other Moscow PD captains, Anthony Dahlinger and Roger Lanier.

8. Call the sergeant running the Idaho State Police detectives.

Moscow is going to need the state police’s forensics team, at a bare minimum. This is too big for the MPD to handle alone. State has a forensics lab; Moscow does not.

9. Call the university’s president, provost, and dean of students.

10. Call the coroner, but not until all the evidence is collected. Someone might accidentally move something and contaminate the scene.

11. Notify the public if there is a threat.

Berrett knows not just from his years of experience but from common sense that the probability of some random stranger knifing four people to death in their bedrooms is almost nil.

There’s a connection somewhere between whoever did this and at least one of the victims. There always is.

That’s what the police are going to have to find.

The patrol officers correctly begin with the people in front of them. Why is this young student, Hunter Johnson, holding a kitchen knife? What happened here?

Hunter sits with the patrol officers and tells them what happened as best he knows. They let him go.

Sirens start to wail.

But the first emergency vehicle that arrives is unnecessary. It’s the volunteer ambulance, the medical responders to the 911 call. It stays a couple of minutes, then, at the cops’ request, leaves.

It’s much too late for anyone to need medical attention.