[Cut to: School hallway. Bell rings, and kids come pouring out of classrooms. Various, indistict chatter. The camera follows one boy as he exchanges greetings with various friends. The camera pans over and zooms in on a girl's school ID, clipped to her backpack.]
[Cut to: Front view of students. Suddenly, gunfire erupts and two people in camoflauge and black ski masks appear bearing guns. The kids scream and duck for cover against the walls. One of the gunmen pulles out a second firearm and cocks it.]
[Cut to: The gunman appears in the library, gun drawn. He shoots out a window, causing the students to scream and hide. He backs a boy up against a bookcase and shoots him.]
[Cut to: Hallway. The children are fleeing from one of the gunmen. A teacher peers out into the hall, and is shot. The gunman continues going after the students.]
[Cut to: A girl hides in what appears to be a storage closet.]
[Cut to: Hallway. A student runs from the shooter, and gets killed.]
[Cut to: One of the gunmen, searching a locker room.]
[Cut to: Hallway. The shooter is still terrorizing the students.]
[Cut to: Locker room. A boy is drying his face. He turns, spots the shooter, tries to run as he pleads for his life, and the gunman shoots him.]
[Cut to: Hallway. A girl is running. The girl from the storage closet reaches out to her.]
KAREN: In here.
[She pulls her in.]
[Cut to: Inside closet.]
KAREN:Come here, come here.
[They sit against a door in the back.]
KAREN:It's okay, it's okay.
[BECKY puls out her cell phone and dials.]
BECKY (voice cracking): Dad, it's me. Pick up. Stuff's happening at school. I need you. Come get me.
[One of the shooters appears in the doorway, gun drawn.]
BECKY: Please!
KAREN: Oh my God.
[The shooter fires twice. One of the other shooters calls out to him.]
SHOOTER: Hey!
[The boy in the doorway turns.]
SHOOTER: DMG rules.
[The boy in the doorway pulls off his ski mask, and the other boy shoots him. He falls to the ground. The shooter then turns and walks down the hallway, scattered with books, papers, debris, and bodies.]
[Various voices of victims and dispatchers play over the view of the silent hallway. The shot then merges into one of the same hallway, filled with law enforcement and emergency services personnel. Don and the principal round the corner into the hallway.]
PRINCIPAL: I've been the principal at this school for nine years. Now, we've had problems, but nothing like this.
DON: Okay, why don't you tell me what you know so far?
PRINCIPAL: Oh, God, uh, there were two shooters. Eight people were killed. Seven students and one of my teachers. Twelve more kids were wounded. It all happened in like six minutes.
DON: All right, I'm gonna want to talk to the students, teachers, security, everybody.
PRINCIPAL: I'll get a list.
[He leaves, and David approches.]
DAVID: Don. Found one of the shooters.
[They walk down the hallway.]
[Cut to: Outside storage closet. Megan is kneeling beside the dead shooter's body.]
MEGAN: Hey.
DON: Hey.
MEGAN: This is Paul Elins. He's seventeen years old, he's a senior here, and he was absent today. The headset, the masks, the whole thing matches the witness accounts.
DAVID (pointing into the closet): Looks like he killed this girl right here. The victim's name is Becky Flynn.
MEGAN: He shoots her, then gets taken out himself. (to another person) Thanks.
DAVID: That has to be the other shooter. Security never got off a round.
DON: So what do we think, a suicide pact?
DAVID: Yeah, only the other shooter couldn't close the deal.
MEGAN: Or didn't. If we're talking about a sociopath, he might've told his parnter one thing and had something else in mind.
[Colby approaches.]
COLBY: Well, he probably escaped with the crowd. SWAT found his bag and all of his stuff ditched in an empty locker near the exit.
[Cell phone ringing.]
COLBY: Is that hers?
[Close up of the phone. Caller ID window reads 'Dad'.]
DON: Says "Dad".
DAVID: It's gonna go to voice mail.
[Don looks over at Colby. Megan sighs. Don exhales deeply before reaching down and picking up the phone.]
DON: Hello?
[Individual shots of the saddend looks on the faces of Colby, David, and Megan.]
DON: Excuse me, sir, my name is Don Eppes. I'm with the FBI. Um, look, sir, I'm afraid I have some bad news...
[Fade out.]
[Title credits.]
[Fade in: FBI Office.]
COLBY: Paul Elins was an honer student. Excels in math and computers, and he's got acceptance letters from half the schools in the Ivy League.
DON: All right, so, where's the dark cloud?
MEGAN: Well, the parents divorced last year. He fell into a depression. Dicipline problems... I mean, why pick up a gun and start killing other kids? There's gotta be some kind of trigger.
DON: All right, so who were his friends? I mean, the odds are the second shooter's a student now, right?
MEGAN: Who was probably absent today, too.
COLBY: Yeah, but even if we isolate his friends, we could still be looking at a lot of kids.
[David approaches.]
DAVID: Well, this might help. Student ID, there's a chip on the back. School takes attendance using RFID technoligy -- Radio Frequency Identification.
COLBY: Yeah, it's a tagging system that companies use to track packages, inventory, shipping and stuff... I read the Technology section.
DON: Yeah, yeah. And?
DAVID: Chip on the ID communicates with a network of sensors throughout the school. A central computer tracks the students. It's like a GPS system.
MEGAN: That sounds a bit Big Brother to me.
DAVID: It's not one hundred percent. Kids leave it at home, they forget it in their locker...
DON: Well, this should definately be able to narrow it down for us which kids were running away.
MEGAN: Which will tell us who we can elimate as suspects.
COLBY: And anyone who was absent, we can run down their alabis.
MEGAN: That shool has metal detectors. How did they get the guns inside?
DAVID: They got them in there somehow.
DON: Well if the system can tell us where each kid is, then we should match it with witness statements and map the shooter's route. By we, I mean Charlie.
[Cut to: Basement.]
CHARLIE: I got you thinking like a mathematician.
DON: Yeah.
CHARLIE: However, I'm not too keen on your method. You see, there's a natural flaw in witness statements and statictics show that memory is often unreliable.
DON: Well, Charlie, that's all we got, so...
CHARLIE: Actually, you do have more than that.
LARRY: Neptune.
DON: Neptune? As in the planet?
LARRY: The discovery of Neptune occured because scientists inferred its presence due to its gravitational force on other planetary bodies.
AMITA: From the observable we can divine the unobservable.
DON: Right.
CHARLIE: Remember that trick we did when we were kids? The soap and pepper trick?
DON: Yeah, you put the pepper in the water, you put the soap in and the pepper goes everywhere.
CHARLIE: Same principle. Except let's say the students...
[Footage of the soap and pepper trick, coresponding to Charlie's narration.]
VO: CHARLIE: Are the specks of pepper and the bar of soap are the shooters. The shooters arrive -- and just like the pepper repelled in this case by breaking surface tension, the students flee.
[End footage.]
CHARLIE: They scatter in a predictable pattern.
DON: Yeah, how's that?
AMITA: Using non-linear pursuit-evasion equations.
LARRY: Which is how predators pursue their prey.
DON: Yeah, but wait. You can see the soap.
CHARLIE: Here's the beauty of it. Let's try this trick again, but this time with clear, liquid soap.
[Footage of the soap and pepper trick again, but liquid soap instead of a bar of soap.]
VO: CHARLIE: Now you can't see the soap, but the pepper behaves in precisely the same manner.
[End footage.]
CHARLIE: It's just the same with our two students. Though they may be unobservable, it's the observable -- the fleeing students, that will tell us not just how the shooters got into the school, but every single move they made thereafter.
[Cut to: Outside FBI building.]
DAVID: According to studnets who were there, these shooters were targeting people out in the open.
COLBY: Jocks, popular kids, mainly.
DAVID: A couple of them said these guys would point a gun at one of them and shoot the person right next to them.
COLBY: No one's exactly jumped to the front of the line to say they were best pals with the shooter, either.
MEGAN: Isolation also fits the profile.
DAVID: Several kids said this kid Paul Elins -- he was part of a group of boys.
COLBY: Called themselves the DMG. Dark Matter Guild.
DAVID: Computer geeks, mostly.
MEGAN: Do we know anything else about 'em?
COLBY: Well, apparently the editor of the school newspaper did a profile on them a couple months back. Her name's Karen Camden, so we're running that down.
MEGAN: Why is that name so familiar?
COLBY: She was the other girl in the closet when Becky Flynn was shot.
[Cut to: Greg's house.]
GREG: Whoever said that I'm the leader of the DMG, they're full of it.
COLBY: Well, actually, you said it, Greg. In an interview with Karen Camden.
GREG: All right. You wanna know about the DMG? It's simple. We're just a guild of gamers. That's all.
DAVID: A guild?
GREG: I take it you don't know much about MMORPGS?
COLBY: Like starting with what the hell they are -- no.
GREG: Massive Multi-player Online Role-Playin Games. A guild is a team of players online.
DAVID: Of which Paul Elins was a member.
GREG: Look, I'm as shocked about what Paul did as anybody else.
COLBY: Now, what is the Dark Matter Guild?
GREG: Like I said, we're a team. Dark matter is just a component in the universe that exists all around us that remains unseen.
COLBY: Well, you and your pals just stick to video games or do you engage in other activities as well?
GREG: I don't know anything about the shooting, if that's what you mean.
DAVID: Why were you absent from school?
GREG: I had a cold!
COLBY: You look pretty healthy right now.
GREG: Look, I told you. I don't know anything. And I can't think of anybody in the guild that would condone what Paul did, let alone be a part of it.
[He begins to walk away, but stops.]
GREG: The DMG are gamers. Not killers.
[He leaves.]
[Cut to: Kitchen of the Camden home.]
KAREN: Poor Becky. I keep thinking, why didn't he shoot me?
MEGAN: That's not your fault, Karen. And you're never gonna know why. It could be anything. It could be because you wrote that article in the school newspaper about the DMG.
KAREN: I just wanted kids to understand who they were. So many kids dissed them, you know? Calling them dorks, cyber-geeks.
MEGAN: You know, jocks pick on geeks every day. Bullying happens. It just doesn't usually end like this.
KAREN (facing away from Megan): I could see his eyes. Through his mask. He looked so angry.
MEGAN: And what about the other shooter?
[She turns back.]
KAREN: I never saw him.
MEGAN: But he shot Paul Elins?
KAREN: Yeah. After, I just sat there and waited. I tried to help Becky, but... When I didn't hear anything, I just ran.
MEGAN: You got to know these kids pretty well, didn't you?
KAREN: I guess.
MEGAN: Karen, I need to find that other boy before he hurts someone else or he hurts himself. Do you have any idea who that second shooter might be?
KAREN: There's half a dozen boys in the DMG. It could be any one of them.
MEGAN: Yeah, but did you get a feeling about any of them? Did you have a thought that maybe one of them was capable of something like this? Anything you say to me is just between us.
KAREN: Paul used to hang with this kid named Justin Price.
MEGAN: And what makes you think him?
KAREN: Justin's scary. Into guns, he's always bragging about how he has this huge collection. And he always used to talk about Columbine.
MEGAN: Thanks.
[Cut to: FBI office.]
DON: Hey, guys.
COLBY: Hey, Don.
DAVID (pointing at screen): Kid on the left is Justin Price. Karen Camden describes him as some kind of angry, loner type.
COLBY: Mom's a single parent. She travels a lot. Neighbor said she's away at a convention right now. So we checked the house, there's no sign of the kid.
DON: Yeah, I got a file on him. He's got a juvie record.
COLBY: Now, the seventy-seven kids who didn't show up on the attendance data that day, we were able to account for forty-six of them who were actually there, just not wearing their ID badges.
DON: So what's that? Like, thirty-one absent, huh?
DAVID: Yeah. Including Justin Price.
[Megan enters.]
MEGAN: So the ATF trace on the guns at the school show that they were registered to John Price, deceased. He's Justin Price's uncle. The guns were off the grid, but apparently he voluntarily registered them.
DON: All right, I say we got our second shooter there, right? (to Charlie and Larry) Hey guys, what's up?
CHARLIE: Our preliminary analysis of the first minutes of the attack show that the shooters entered through the southwest entrance.
DAVID: According to the police report, the southwest metal detectors were down for scheduled maintenance.
MEGAN: Coincidence?
LARRY: Well, as a prominent cosmologist once said, "Coincidence is the last refuge of the uninspired."
MEGAN: What cosmologist said that?
LARRY: Oh...
[He shrugs.]
LARRY (pointing at the picture): Hey, are these the two shooters?
DON: Yeah, the kid on the right is the other one we think might be. Why?
LARRY: I know this place. This is an all-night cyber cafe. Yeah, they've got a retro-version of Asteroids there. I quite enjoy it.
MEGAN: Karen Camden said the DMG kids were teased for being "cyber-geeks". If they're hiding out, they'd probably go someplace comforting.
COLBY: And open twenty-four hours.
DON: All right, why don't you guys check it out.
[Cut to: Outside cyber-cafe. David and two armed FBI men come down a staircase to meet Colby.]
COLBY: He's inside. In the back room.
DAVID: Alone?
COLBY: Yeah. Isolated in the corner.
DAVID (to the other men): You two cover the front, SWAT's got the back. (to Colby) Let's do it.
[They enter.]
[Cut to: Inside. David and Colby rush through the room.]
COLBY (to customer): We're FBI, we're gonna need you to leave the room.
[David also speaks with a customer, who leaves the room.]
[Colby nods at a kid in the corner, and David raises his gun.]
COLBY: Justin Price! FBI.
[Justin stands and pulls out a gun.]
COLBY: Everybody down on the ground!
[Justin fires at the ceiling and tries to run, but is stopped by the gunfire from the law enforcement personnel entering his attempted exit door. David and Colby rush over to the collapsed body. Colby checks for a pulse.]
DAVID: Call an ambulance?
COLBY: No... He was just a kid.
[Fade out.]
[Fade in: Outside FBI building.]
MEGAN: So the forensics came back on Justin Price and the blood on his boots does match the victims at the crime scene.
DON: So we got our second shooter.
MEGAN: Yeah, but there's another problem. The gun that David and Colby found on Price at the cyber cafe only matches two of the five kills that he's credited with at the high school.
DON: Yeah. Wait, he didn't have any others on him?
MEGAN: No. And, like the first shooter, he's probably packing more than one gun, which means that gun is still out there.
DON: Plus the rest of the uncle's arsenal.
MEGAN: Right. So now we have a bunch of guns and a bunch of really emotional kids who might have the potential of getting their hand on them.
DON: All right, so let's get every single kid in that DMG on surveillance. I mean, we gotta find these guns.
[Cut to: Charlie's office. He and Amita are plotting points on a large grid.]
CHARLIE: At 11:02:58, Scott Kang was at X-Y coordinates (335, 211) heading north.
LARRY: Oh, evolution is a cruel mistress. Human intellect grows unbounded while our emotional maturity is sadly behind.
CHARLIE: Larry?
LARRY: It's just, high school will always be high school, you know? The jocks versus the geeks, and the popular versus the ostracized.
CHARLIE: I remember.
LARRY: Yeah, but time was when we solved our differences with fists, not automatic weaponry.
AMITA: Times change. And it's not just guns. RFID chips and tracking systems...
LARRY: If it weren't the new millenium, I'd swear it's all very 1984.
CHARLIE: Mm. Yeah, Megan feels the same way. Speaking of, what was that smile she gave you all about?
LARRY: It's her smile, ask her.
AMITA: Wait a second. Can someone clue me in here?
LARRY: Well, the fact is, for some time now, though it's not my specific discipline, I have felt a certain chemistry with Megan.
AMITA: Which you've kept fairly well under wraps.
LARRY: Precisely why my next overture will be overt.
AMITA: You're gonna ask Megan out, Larry?
LARRY: Yeah... Given our disjointed universes, I'm fearful.
[He notices Charlie staring at the grid.]
LARRY: What is it, Charlie?
CHARLIE: This last grouping of data entries... It shows students running towards the shooter and not away from him. But that obviously doesn't make sense at all.
AMITA: It could be an anomaly in the data.
LARRY: Or an anomaly in the school. Thees school plans are old, walls could've been moved, obstructions introduced...
CHARLIE: If you're suggesting what I think you're suggesting... Field work. God, I vowed never to return to high school.
[Cut to: FBI office.]
MEGAN: Ms. Price, your son Justin was associated with a group of boys at school known as the Dark Matter Guild. What can you tell me about them?
LAURA PRICE: Just that they were friends who'd hang out, play video games.
MEGAN: And have you ever met any of them?
LAURA: I met Paul Elins a few times. I never met any of the other kids. I work in health care. It's long hours. I'm on the road three days a week. I wasn't able to keep tabs on Justin the way I would've liked to.
MEGAN: It sounds like you were concerned.
LAURA: I asked my brother John to spend some time with him. You know, I wanted to have a male role mode. He was in the service. I thought he could teach him. But after John was killed, it affected Justin. Nothing that I said mattered.
MEGAN: And Ms. Price, do you know where your brother John kept his collection of guns?
LARUA: I asked him to get rid of them. I assumed that he had.
MEGAN: We think there's more guns out there. I ran a credit check, and found a storage unit that was leased in your name. The fees were paid by money order.
LAURA: I didn't know anything about it. You think I'm an awful mother, don't you?
MEGAN: I think you're a woman who's lost her son, who feels responsible.
LAURA: My son murdered a teacher. He killed all those children. How do I live with that?
[Cut to: Hallway.]
LARRY: The banality of evil is only banal to those who never see it.
AMITA: My senior year a student showed up at school with a gun. He held two kids hostage.
LARRY: What happened?
AMITA: Eventually he let them go. Then he climbed up to the roof and jumped.
LARRY: It's a different world than the one I grew up in.
CHARLIE: Any structural discrepancies we had hoped to find... We're not finding them. Now, given the rate that my calculations show these shooters moved...
[He turns to the two policemen standing nearby.]
CHARLIE: Hey, hey guys, you know what? I'll tell what, you guys mind if I borrow your walkie-talkies?
[They hand them over.]
CHARLIE: Thank you. Thanks.
[He hands one to Larry and keeps the other.]
LARRY: What... what are you thinking here, Charles?
CHARLIE: You suggested I test my equations in the field. Time me.
[He begins walking.]
[Charlie follows the path of the shooter, pausing at every point a killing was made, using his walkie-talkie as a substitute for a gun.]
CHARLIE (into walkie-talkie): Okay, Larry. Time.
LARRY (over walkie-talkie): Uh, fifty-eight seconds. Charles, what is it?
CHARLIE: I need to talk to Don.
[Cut to: FBI office.]
COLBY: We searched that storage locker that Justin Price rented. Found some unused ammo. But if was storing guns there once, they're not there now. But we did find this. Take a look.
DON: It's a security schedule.
COLBY: Yeah, it shows that the metal detectors were down at the southwest entrance of the school on the morning of the shooting.
DON: All right, so they knew exactly where to enter.
COLBY: Yeah, we found downloaded blueprints of the school, too.
[They walk into another room. A video game of some sort is playing on the screens.]
DON: Hey. What's this?
DAVID: It's a home-made "modded" video game we took off of Justin Price's laptop.
MEGAN: He was playing with Paul Elins the night before the shooting.
DON: What do you think, it was some kind of dress rehersal?
DAVID: Only they weren't the only ones playing. We have evidence that other DMG kids were online as well.
[Shots of the video game. It appears to be the school, viewed in a first person format. The virtual arm of the player can be seen holding a gun as the player patrols the halls and shoots people.]
CHARLIE: Hey guys, there's a problem with the RFID data that I need to show you guys.
DON: All right, put it up.
[A school blueprint replaces the video game on the screens.]
CHARLIE: Okay, I managed to map the movements of the students. Now, these red dots, these are the students, and the black Xs, those are the shooters. Now, during the first two minutes of the attack, the students behaved as one would expect.
COLBY: All right, well then what's the problem?
CHARLIE: Eventually, a group of students actually started moving toward shooter number two.
DAVID: Maybe there was a dead end over there or something.
CHARLIE: No, no, I walked those halls. There was no dead end, David. Check this out. These are the locations and the times of death of our murdered victims. Now, according to the data, the time between the murder of vicitm number four and the murder of victim number seven was thirty-three seconds. However, I retraced the steps of shooter number two and I found that where victim number four was murdered to where victims number five, six, and seven were murdered, took twice that amount of time.
DON: So what's that mean?
CHARLIE: We know that shooter number one took out these three victims, and we know shooter number two took out these two...
MEGAN: What about the other three vicitms?
CHARLIE: There's only one explanation for the abberation in the anomaly and that is that you guys aren't just looking for a missing gun. Guess what? You're looking for a third shooter.
[Fade out.]
[Fade in: School parking lot. Megan and David pull in, get out of the car, and meet up with the principal.]
PRINCIPAL: Agent Reeves. My secretary says that you think there was a third shooter.
MEGAN: I'm afraid that's what it looks like.
PRINCIPAL: Well, first these shootings, then Justin Price gunned down. Now you say another one of my kids is involved? Where does this end?
MEGAN: I think as soon as we find this third gunman.
PRINCIPAL: I want to reopen school. Get the kids back to some kind of normal routine. I can see now that's not possible.
DAVID: Mr. Northrup, right now we need your cooperation.
MEGAN: We need the files of everyone associated with the DMG.
PRINCIPAL: That might be a problem.
DAVID: What do you mean? Why?
PRINCIPAL: Well, the parents of these children feel that their kids are being unfairly singled out. They've hired lawyers and they make it clear that they won't consent.
MEGAN: So you're saying we need a court order?
PRINCIPAL: I'm afraid that's what it's going to take.
[He walks away.]
MEGAN: There may be another way.
DAVID: How?
MEGAN: Construct the information from public records. Milatary personnel have the same access as colleges.
DAVID: Transcripts, activities, club memberships...
MEGAN: Justin Price had a criminal record, maybe one of the members of the DMG does, too.
DAVID: Anything in the public record we can use the Patriot Act to get at. Eight dead, twelve wounded. I'd call that an act of domestic terrorism.
[Cut to: Charlie's office.]
MEGAN: More files, sorry team.
[She sets down a box.]
AMITA: Oh, it's okay. Charlie promised to take a look at the data for my solar physics presentation.
MEGAN: Thank you. And you still think you can do this in one day?
CHARLIE: Yeah, using my Support Vector Classifier, yeah, sure. See, the algorighm's gonna go through it all, okay, grades, activities, diciplinary actions to evaluate traits ascribed to the FBI's School Shooter Profile.
MEGAN: Still seems like a really tall order.
LARRY: You know, Michaelangelo always said that his sculptures already existed, it was mearly up to him to release them from their prison.
CHARLIE: Yeah, well, what he means is that this process is a lot like that of a sculptor. Preserving only what's relevent to the image he seeks, a sculptor chips away at a block.
[Footage of a block of material being carved into an image.]
VO: CHARLIE: Well, in this case, this algorithm tells the computer which details from the public records to keep and which to "chip away at" -- which to discard as irrelevent -- until slowly an image appears from this massive block of data which, you know, if we're lucky, correlates with an already existing image:
[End footage.]
CHARLIE: The profile of our random school shooter.
MEGAN: Well, I know a lot of women who'd like to get ahold of your algorithm and run it against the personals to find the perfect man.
CHARLIE (trying to be subtle): Oh, hey, you know, you said we were supposed to do something earlier, remember?
AMITA: What?
CHARLIE: You said it, we're supposed to do it. Let's go.
AMITA (realizing Charlie wants to get Megan alone with Larry): Right.
CHARLIE: See ya.
AMITA: Right. Bye.
[They leave.]
MEGAN: What was that about?
LARRY: Merely a very crude attempt at lending privacy.
[He sighs.]
LARRY: At the risk of sounding embarrassingly misguided, would you care to join me for dinner? Or a show, perhaps? Or maybe even some terpsichorean pleasure?
MEGAN (smiling): I don't know what the third one means, but dinner sounds nice.
LARRY: Okay.
[She chuckles.]
MEGAN: On one condition, though: you have to take me for a ride in the car.
LARRY: Delighted.
MEGAN: Call me.
LARRY: I will. I will call you.
[She chuckles again and leaves. Larry looks after her.]
[Cut to: Outside FBI building.]
DAVID: Charlie said he's halfway through his analysis. So far, he's got no hits.
DON: We're stuck without those student files, I can tell you that.
DAVID: What about the court orders?
DON: The kids' lawyers are hemming and hawwing, so it may take the judge another day.
COLBY: I'm hoping this may help. I found on the school's ISP and the deleted files an email sent out a day before the attack CCing all the members of the DMG telling them to be careful at school the next morning. Guess who sent it.
DON: What, Gregory Deitrich?
COLBY: Yeah.
DON: There you go.
COLBY: I'm gonna give it to the judge, and I'm hoping if we push we might be able to get a warrant for his file in the next couple hours.
DON: All right, do it. Pick up the kid. But let's be careful now, all right?
[Cut to: Charlie's office. He's once again working on the large grid. Larry enters.]
LARRY: Still revisiting high school, Charles?
CHARLIE: Just mapping our shooters' third route. You got a date, huh? You don't seem too excited.
LARRY: Mine is an inner frenzy. Like some highly agitated molecular brew. I can't even settle on a restaurant.
CHARLIE: Well, you know, Italian's always romantic.
LARRY: The kinetics of angel hair and red sauce, it's a bit too much of a challenge, I'm afraid. Plus, I think I prefer not to wear a bib.
[Charlie laughs.]
CHARLIE: I think you need to loosen up, you know? Free your molecules and your ass will follow.
LARRY: Oh, yeah. Sound advice.
[He notices something on the grid and gets up to look at it. Amita enters.]
AMITA: I just ran Gregory Deitrich's student file through analysis. He's the leader of the DMG. He scored off the charts on the FBI's School Shooter Profile.
CHARLIE: Hey, our algorithm came through, my man.
[Larry doesn't respond.]
CHARLIE: Larry -- still debating the complexities of capellini.
LARRY: No, I'm just considering the complexities of shooter three's route. If your main goal was simply to shoot other students, why such a convoluted path?
AMITA (slightly sarcastic): I don't know. Insanity, maybe?
LARRY: No, no. Even a crazy person can get from point A to point B.
[Cut to: Inside FBI building.]
MEGAN: Two months ago, Gregory Deitrich made an online purchase of an 'Evil Twin' kit.
DON: What is that?
MEGAN: It's a hacking device to tap into WIFI networks and steal senstitive data
DON: So, what? So they can get blueprints and securty schedules, stuff like that?
MEGAN: Exactly like that. Our guys detected a WIFI breach at the high school's security database a week after Deitrich bought the device.
DON: Traced it to him?
MEGAN: Yeah, the kid's not so smart, after all.
COLBY: Further proof of that. Surveillance just saw him running into his house like a man on a mission.
MEGAN: Ah, the lawyer must've tipped him off. He's making his move.
[Cut to: Oustide of Deitrich's house. Camera pans over and we see an undercover FBI vehicle parked across the street.]
COLBY: I just can't my head around this whole high school shooting thing, you know? I mean, I came from a small town. There's two hundred kids in my high school, not twenty-one hundred. Everybody knew everybody. If some punk was running around with pile of guns and bad intentions, we'd know about it.
DAVID: I don't get it either, man. Where I grew up, this kind of stuff didn't happen. Don't get me wrong, man, kids got shot but... It was over something, you know? A pair of sneakers, insult, drugs... It was definately stupid, but looking at those kids shot in their own school... Wouldn't have thought about it at the time, but...
[David sighs.]
DAVID: Maybe we were luckier than we though growing up where we did.
COLBY: Yeah.
[A door slams in the backround.]
DAVID: There he is.
[Deitrich comes out of his house with a duffel bag.]
DAVID: Five bucks says he runs.
COLBY: Yeah? Ten bucks says I catch him.
[They get out of the vehicle.]
[Greg opens his trunk to put the bag in. He looks over his shoulder and spots Colby and David, and begins to run. As they chase him, he tosses the duffel bag off to the side.]
COLBY (shouting): I got the kid!
DAVID (shouting): I got the bag!
[Colby continues to chase Greg. A cop car pulls onto the street. David picks up the discarded bag. The cops get out of the car as Colby tackles Greg.]
COLBY: You should've spent a little more time in P.E., kid.
DAVID (holding a gun retrieved from the bag): Going hunting, Gregory?
GREG: I got nothing to say!
COLBY: Yeah, that one's new. Stand up, let's go.
[Fade out.]
[Fadie in: FBI office.]
LAWYER: My client already told you, he had nothing to do with the attack on the schoo.
MEGAN: Your client was in posession of a semi-automatic weapon. A gun that was part of a collection of guns owned by Justin Price's uncle.
LAWYER: Which doesn't prove a thing unless that gun was used in the attack.
DON: Why'd you have it?
LAWYER: You don't have to answer that.
GREG: No. No, it's okay. I want to answer him. Justin gave me the gun. We'd go off into the woods. We'd fire off a couple rounds at cans and stuff.
MEGAN: And while you were out there, no one ever mentioned going and shooting up the school.
LAWYER: That I won't let him answer.
DON: You bought a device to hack into the school's database to steal blueprints. We have your name right here. We traced it to you. It's your name, isn't it?
GREG: Those blueprints were for my game. For authenticity.
DON: For authenticity? What do you - Wake up. These are kids you went to school with. They were shot in cold blood. Authenticity.
GREG: It wasn't me!
MEGAN: But you hated them, didn't you?
GREG: Look, why don't you guys try living with it every day? The way they look at you, like - like you're not even there.
MEGAN: So you took your revenge.
GREG: It was Paul and Justin.
MEGAN: But you wish it was you, don't you?
LAWYER: I think we're done here.
[Cut to: Viewing room.]
MEGAN: His lawyer's right, you know. The gun we found on him isn't a match for our missing weapon.
COLBY: You're not gonna like this much, either. His email story holds up. That warning that was sent out to the other DMG members, it was sent from his account but it originated from the school library.
DON: So he sent it from the school.
COLBY: Not unless he was in two places at once. His school ID badge says he cut out early that day. His ATM card and a security cam photo says he was making a withdrawal the same time the email was sent.
DON: I mean, he created the game, he's the leader. All this goes down and he's got nothing to do with it? I don't buy that.
[Cut to: Charlie's office. Larry knocks and enters.]
LARRY: Charlie, your advice -- "Free your molocules"? I made a reservation for Megan and I at an Ethiopian restaurant.
CHARLIE: Ethiopian, on Fairfax. Thinking outside the box.
LARRY: Wish me well.
CHARLIE: Hey, you know, uh, you were right. Shooter number three's route doesn't conform to any predictable pursuit-evasion result. I'm thinking that I must be missing a variable.
[He spots a package on the desk. The bar code fades into a picture of a school ID card, fading into a device showing students' locations.]
[Cut to: FBI office.]
CHARLE: Up until now -- I gotta be honest -- I think we've been looking at this school shooting the wrong way. Let's take a look at the route taken by our first two shooters.
[On the screen we see a red dot and a green dot moving through a blueprint of the school, leaving colored lines behind them.]
CHARLIE: Their movement is methodical. They are pursuing students in a logical progression. Now, let's take a look at our third shooter.
[A blue dot begins to move along the screen.]
CHARLIE: Appears here, for the next minute makes his way through the school, killing victims, until vanishing here. Most likely changed clothes. Shooter number three's route is circuitous. It's inefficient.
MEGAN: Yeah, but it's a random shooting spree. Doesn't it make sense that he would choose a random path?
CHARLIE: Intuitively, yes. But, well, mathematically, no. Mathematicians apply path minimization to analyze this kind of predator-prey dynamic.
DON: What exactly is that?
CHARLIE: The snake purues the mouse.
[We see footage of a snake chasing a mouse.]
VO: CHARLIE: The mouse runs, the snake is relentless and tracks every step. And when it runs into obstacles, it finds the quickest, most economical way around them. Now, using path minimization, we can predict the snake's path because the snake only has one thing on its mind: finding the most efficient point A to point B between it and its dinner.
[End footage.]
COLBY: So, shooter number three is just a lousy snake, or what?
CHARLIE: Shooter number three's route was definately not determined by path minimization.
MEGAN: So, what then?
CHARLIE (holding device): Maybe this. Now we know that the school uses RFID chip technology to take attendance. Tells teachers when students are in class and when they're absent. Keeps track of students using PDA.
DAVID: Right, names and locations of students show up on the screen.
COLBY: The DMG kids, we know they have the capability of breaking in to the school's security system.
DON: Yeah, so why couldn't they hack into the RFID?
CHARLIE: They definately weren't taking attendance.
MEGAN: Charlie's right. Can you bring up the model for shooter number three? Look at the behavior in the model.
DAVID: He's letting the students go right by him without even taking a shot.
MEGAN: Because he's targeting specific students -- the quarterback, the skateboarder, and the swim team captain.
DON: And the system would tell him exactly where they are.
[Charlie nods.]
[Cut to: Ethiopian restaurant. A man pours wine.]
LARRY: Oh, that... no. That's sufficient, thank you. So the last time I had Ethiopian food, I was at a conference on Bondi Accretion in Addis Ababa.
[Megan laughs.]
LARRY: What? Oh, am I being tedious?
MEGAN: No, no, tedious would be a week at Quantico studying note-taking skills at a crime scene. Oh, speaking of which, I heard you and Charlie went down to the school.
LARRY: Yeah. It was horrific. I just kept thinking all the while, you know, if I could only corral a wormhole and go back in time, just talk to these young men before they did it.
MEGAN: And what would you say to them?
LARRY: I would say that high school is a ephemeral. And I don't know if the meek inherit the Earth, but Bill Gates and the Google guys... You know, they did all right.
MEGAN: You seem to have done well.
LARRY: No. Well, now, but in high school? Oh, I don't think you and I would've been at the same table. In fact, I wasn't permitted a table.
[Megan laughs.]
MEGAN: I was kind of a mess in high school.
LARRY: Yeah? That surprises me.
MEGAN: It was a surprise to most people, particularly my parents who could, you know, barely show their face at the country club for awhile.
LARRY: Oh no, country club. You're one of those.
[Megan laughs.]
MEGAN: Social register, too.
LARRY: You're full of surprises, you know that? So this FBI thing, why did you become a G man?
[She laughs again.]
MEGAN: Well, it's a little more complicated, but I have three older sisters, and I was my father's last chance at having a son. I could play every ball game known to man. As I got older, it just got harder to switch gears. In fairness, I should say the FBI's given me the greatest sense of equilibrium I've ever felt... on most days.
LARRY: You do seem a little distracted tonight.
MEGAN: It's just the case. You know, Charlie's math proves that our main suspect does fit the shooter profile for a school shooting. But his math also shows us that our shooter number three wasn't on a killing rampage.
LARRY: You know, I'm failing to see the inconsistancy.
MEGAN: The first two shooters fit the profile of a school shooter, they show unbridled rage. This third shooter... was calculated. It was a planned attack. It's indicitive of a whole other motive.
LARRY: You know, in cosmology, when faced with logical inconsistancies, I like to fall back on an old chestnut: If you don't like the answer, ask a different question.
[Megan smiles.]
[Cut to: Outside FBI building.]
DON: Six a.m. I get a call from Charlie saying we've got some new angle on the case.
MEGAN: It was something Larry said to me over dinner last night.
DON: Wait, wait. You and Larry had dinner last night?
MEGAN: Oh, God. Moving on. He just got me thinking. You and I both have our doubts that Deitrich is the third shooter.
DON: Right.
MEGAN: So what if we need to look at this in reverse? What if we need to study the victimology? Shooter number three picked all of his targets for a specific reason. There has to be a reason why.
DON: Oh, I see. So, what? Just have Charlie do what he was doing with the suspects, but do it with the victims?
MEGAN: Yeah. If we can find the common denominator, it might take us back to the killer.
DON: Yeah, yeah. All right, that's good. Where'd you have dinner?
[Cut to: FBI office.]
CHARLIE: So, I ran a cluster analysis on the student files of our three victims -- Rob Holt, skateboard dude. Thomas Caballo, quarterback. And Lewis Ives, swim team capitan. The two jocks share numerous commonalities, they're both seniors, both captains of their squad.
COLBY: What about skateboard dude?
CHARLIE: Well, his only commonality is that his name appeared in an investigation of steriod abuse by student athletes. He was a suspected supplier.
DAVID: Some of the students mentioned that. School investigated, but nothing came of it.
DON: Any other correlations?
CHARLIE: All three names appeared in a police report of a keg party that got so rowdy the neighbors complianed, however there were a dozen students on that report. None of them were victims, none of them had any apparent relationship to the victims.
COLBY: Yeah, but still. Maybe something happened at the party.
MEGAN: Yeah, something enough to motivate a killer.
DON: You got a list of kids at the party? Can you put it up?
CHARLIE: Yeah.
DAVID: We just need to find a connection between these names and one of the DMG kids.
DON: Karen Camden.
COLBY: Wait a minute, she was on the police report?
MEGAN: She has a connection to all the DMG kids.
DAVID: Yeah, she wrote a story about them for the school paper.
MEGAN: She knows them really well. She knows they were having violent fantasies.
COLBY: Yeah, but why would she want to take part in this attack?
MEGAN: I don't know, but it might explain why they spared her. Not just because she gave them props in the school newspaper...
DON: Absolutely. Maybe she's in on it.
[Fade out.]
[Fade in: Inside FBI building.]
MEGAN: Karen Camden purchased a WIFI PDA three weeks ago.
DON: Okay, so that would allow her to track anyone in school, right?
MEGAN: Mm-hmm.
COLBY: Her credit card showed a bunch of charges to a motel in the Valley. The manager ID'd her and Justin Price.
MEGAN: Oh, a pretty girl could get a teenage boy to do a lot of things. Especially if he's not used to the attention.
COLBY: And if he has the inclination, look at Pamela Smart. She got one to kill her husband for her.
DON: So, what? She seduces Price, uses him, and blows him off?
MEGAN: She could've even gotten him to shoot Paul Elins, his own friend. She could've made up the whole murder-suicide pact.
COLBY: She probably knew they were fantasizing about then shootings and then just pushed them over the edge -- and becomes the third shooter.
DON: Why? What's the motive?
MEGAN: Well, the best guess, we look at the victims. The answer's probably gonna lay there.
DAVID: School steroid scandal article was written by Karen Camden.
COLBY: I thought that investigation went nowhere?
DAVID: No prosecutions, though some of the team captains lost their college scholarships.
DON: Yeah? Just to get even, huh?
[Cut to: Camden home.]
JOAN CAMDEN: Karen's not a violent person. She'd never do anything like this.
MEGAN: Yeah, but something happened at that party, didn't it? Something that changed your daughter.
COLBY: Ms. Camden, we have eight people dead and twelve more in the hospital. If you know the reason for this, we need you to speak.
[Karen enters.]
KAREN: They raped me. Becky was the one who set it up. She invited me to that party. Helped Rob Holt, Mr. Skateboard Cool, slip something in my drink. Then Jake Porter raped me, and the others watched and took pictures.
[Joan stands and goes to her daughter.]
JOAN: Oh, God, Karen. God, honey.
KAREN: I wrote that story about the steroids. They blamed me for messing up their scholarships.
MEGAN: Why didn't you press charges?
KAREN: They were the stars of the school. It'd be my word against theirs.
MEGAN: Karen, eight people are dead, that you went to school with every day.
COLBY: I'm gonna need you to put your hands behind your back.
KAREN: I'm sorry, Mom, I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
[Cut to: School gym. Wrestling and cheerleading practice.]
DAVID: Jake Porter?
JAKE: Yeah?
COLBY: Take your headgear off, tough guy, we want to talk to you.
JAKE: What's this about?
DAVID: You're under arrest for the rape of Karen Camden.
JAKE: What're you talking about?
MEGAN: We spoke to Karen and she gave us a statement about what happened at the party.
JAKE: You're talking about the same girl who shot up the school with her psycho-geek pals, right? Everyone's talking about how she's the one who engineered the whole thing. You're telling me you believe Karen Camden? The girl's a whack job. It'll be my word against hers.
MEGAN: Yeah, it would've been. Except for Rob Holt's cell phone. Your moron friend took a picture of you with his phone.
DAVID: Let's go, turn around.
JAKE: I'm not going anywhere with you guys.
COLBY: Yeah, you are. You're coming with us.
[Jake shakes off Colby's attempt at grasping his wrist.]
JAKE: Get off me, man!
[Colby throws him down onto the wrestling mat. He begins to cuff him.]
MEGAN: What is it with guys and dirty pictures?
COLBY: Stand up.
[Cut to: Eppes' house.]
CHARLIE: Where's Big Papa?
DON: The caterer.
CHARLIE: Ah, getting serious.
DON: Yeah, I just think he doesn't want to have to cook, you know.
[Close up of newspaper article about the shooting.]
CHARLIE: You never get enough?
DON: Look, what do you want from me? I like seeing how they spin it, you know?
CHARLIE: You think anybody really knows how any of this stuff happens?
DON: Definately not.
CHARLIE: I know that when I was in high school, I was so... uh, angst-ridden.
DON: Yeah, but, I mean, you didn't shoot anybody.
CHARLIE: No, but there were days when I want to do, you know, real... real damage to... to you.
DON: To me? Hey, buddy, take your best shot. Come on.
[Charlie laughs.]
DON: Wait, I'll help you out, I'll get on my knees.
[He kneels. Charlie stands.]
DON: Come on.
CHARLIE: I'm not a kid anymore.
DON: Come on. All right, tough guy, let's go. Maybe we should step outside.
[They fake-jab at each other. Charlie holds Don back with a hand to his forehead.]
CHARLIE: All right.
DON: Let's go.
CHARLIE: How bout now? How bout now?
DON: You ain't got nothing. All right, all right, all right. How bout we just get a pizza?
CHARLIE: No, I don't wanna go out, man. I just got home. There's a lovely pot roast in the fridge.
DON: Aw, it's a week old. Come on.
CHARLIE: How do you know that? Of course, you eat here more than I do.
DON: I'll pay, how's that?
[Fade to black.]
