Page 54

Pullman, Washington

I t’s lunchtime and Evan Ellis, the news director of Pullman Radio, has just finished up in the studio. He’s prepping for his Monday-morning show when local photographer Geoff Crimmins calls him.

“You listening to the scanner?” Crimmins is at his in-laws’ house, and they keep their scanners set to the police frequency.

“Stopped when I left the studio,” Ellis replies. “Why?”

“You’re not going to believe this. We got four bodies over in Moscow. Eleven twenty-two King. I’m listening to it right now. The cops just walked in. The volunteers, fire and EMT, are saying there’s blood everywhere.”

“Meet you there,” says Ellis.

With decades of experience between them, there’s no need to have a conversation about the seriousness of the situation.

Ellis and Crimmins get to the King Road residence within fifteen minutes. A patrol car is barricading the entrance to the block and tape is around the perimeter.

Ellis can see a group of four or five kids sitting on the sidewalk in a circle, all sobbing uncontrollably. He’s never heard wailing like this. There is terror and tragedy in those cries.

Ellis has been to and reported from every major crime scene in the area over the past twenty years.

In 2007, he even arrived at an active shooting in Moscow.

Outside the sheriff’s office, Lee Newbill, a police officer, was killed, and two others, including sheriff’s deputy Sergeant Brannon Jordan, were injured.

As a journalist, Ellis practices old-style reporting; he has values that, in the coming days and weeks, prove vanishingly rare.

He believes that off the record means off the record and that sources are to be protected.

He also believes that some people have a right to privacy, to not have cameras shoved in their faces—and these kids, in this moment, should not be interviewed.

He deliberately turns his phone away from them and even tries to block the noise of the bawling as he begins live streaming from the scene on Facebook.

“All right, I’m going to go fast here, we’ve got a sketchy signal where I’m at.

Homicide investigation in Moscow.” He tells his listeners where he is.

“Moscow police on scene. University of Idaho has issued a Vandal Alert saying that the Moscow PD has a homicide investigation here at one of these apartments. Suspect is not known at this time. University of Idaho alert states that people need to stay away from this area and shelter in place. That is the alert from the University of Idaho, is to shelter in place, that’s what the Vandal Alert said, with this homicide investigation here near campus.

Suspect not known at this time. This is Evan Ellis—”

He stops streaming when he sees a cop come out of 1122 King Road. He recognizes the officer: Captain Tyson Berrett. Unlike the kids, Berrett is not off-limits, so Ellis approaches.

Berrett lets him. Because he knows that Ellis knows the Moscow cops. They trust him. He’s never betrayed their confidence, and when they’ve told him stuff that is for background only, it’s stayed that way.

So Berrett is happy to answer Ellis honestly when the journalist asks: “Is there a shooter at large?”

Berrett shakes his head. “No threat to the public,” the captain says. “We’re going to put that out there.”

But Ellis is skeptical. Sure, he doesn’t see anyone walking around looking like they want to attack anyone, but still… “Really, Tyson? Are you sure?”

Berrett says he is.

Ellis points at the house. “So is everybody in there?” His question is implicit: Is the murderer in there, dead too?

But at that, Berrett shuts down. “I’m not going to say anything else.”

After years of dealing with these guys, Ellis knows better than to push. But questions race through his mind. Are we talking murder? Are we talking guns? What are we talking about?

Holy hell, he thinks as he walks away. He calls Chief Fry.

“Chief, Tyson’s going with ‘No threat to the public.’ Are you sure? The university is saying shelter in place.”

Fry is quick to answer. “We are going with ‘no threat.’ That’s what we’ve got right now.”

There’s a pause.

“Hey, Evan,” Fry says, speaking to his friend as much as to a journalist. “Tamp this down.”

Fry doesn’t want chaos on the campus. That isn’t helpful to anyone. The police are going to need calm and order so they can get to witnesses and proceed with their investigation.

Fry knows that people are just as safe now as they were twenty-four hours before the murders.

Common sense, not just his years of training and experience, tells him that when someone comes for you in your bed with a knife in the middle of the night…

it’s personal. Whoever did this is not likely to strike again randomly.

What Fry can’t explain right now is why four victims were knifed and why two other roommates were not. But he knows that there will be an answer. And they will find it.

They always do.

He hasn’t had an unsolved case once in his years of being a cop.

Ellis knows that Fry and Berrett are as good at their jobs as any cops you’ll find anywhere. Better, probably, because there’s a pride and sense of ownership that comes with policing a small town, something that likely doesn’t happen in the big cities.

But Ellis also knows that the police are going to have another problem while they’re hunting for whoever stabbed four students to death in their bedrooms.

And he’s worried that these cops, as good as they are, aren’t prepared for this aspect. Namely: publicity.

Everything about this crime—the age of the victims, the proximity of the house to the school, the fact of there being four of them, the fact that they were in the safety of their own beds, the fact that there appear to be survivors in the house, the fact that this is Moscow, safe little Moscow—all of this means that this story is going to be big .

Way bigger than the town’s mass homicide in 2015, when John Lee, the troubled son of a beloved local couple, shot and killed his adoptive mother, his landlord, and a restaurant manager and injured one other person.

Way bigger than the sordid saga of Katy Benoit and her professor.

Bigger than the two Wells brothers gunning down a member of the Vandals football team. And bigger than Charles Capone strangling his wife and dumping her body in the river.

The Moscow cops are going to face questions from journalists who don’t know them. Journalists who will ask, not unreasonably, how the police can be certain the public is safe if they don’t have a suspect in custody.

That’s why he’s pushing here.

But in all his years of reporting, he’s never gotten in the way of an investigation. And he’s not going to start now.

So he taps the live-stream button again on his phone.

“All right, Evan Ellis with you, back again at the scene of a homicide investigation in Moscow. We’re near campus; you can see the unit here where the investigation is taking place, eleven twenty-two King Road.

And we’ve got the police tape here around the scene.

” He tells his audience that Captain Tyson Berrett of the Moscow Police Department specifically said that there was no threat to the public right now, although the University of Idaho had sent out a campus-wide alert telling people to stay away from the area and shelter in place.

“The key here,” he goes on, “is it’s Moscow Police Department investigating, they do not believe this case represents a threat to the public at this time, and again that’s different from what we’ve heard from the University of Idaho on their alert.

” It’s possible, he says, that the university is being overly cautious, and he reiterates that the police are saying there is no threat to the public at this time.

“What exactly that means, you can speculate,” he says.

“We’re not going to necessarily do that.

Homicide investigation here again in Moscow, King Road.

Here is new Greek Row, right back here. University of Idaho campus here. ”

Ellis’s hand is shaking. So is his voice.

In this moment, he and Geoff Crimmins are the only members of the media there.

But he knows that within hours, that will change, and he worries that the police narrative he has repeated several times—that there is no threat to the public—will change as well.