The Will Trent Series 7-Book Bundle

by Karin Slaughter

  Will’s shock registered on his face. He shook his head, insisting, “No, it can’t be the father.”

  “The father? No, Will, I’m telling you we got a hit from the sex-offender database.” She held up a Post-it note.

  Faith read the name, hissing, “Jesus, he was right under our nose.”

  Will seemed just as shocked as she felt. He asked the woman, “Do you have an address?”

  Faith told him, “We know where he is.”

  “His house,” Will said. “We need to check his house.”

  He was right. Faith took out her cell phone and dialed the switchboard. After giving her badge number, she told the operator, “I need ten-twenty-eight on a code forty-four.” She read the name from the Post-it note. “Patrick Evander Bernard.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Will slowed at a red light, looking both ways and blowing through the intersection in front of an angry driver.

  Amanda’s voice was clipped on the phone. “Bernard was picked up in Savannah two years ago for sex with a minor. She was fifteen. He roughed her up pretty badly—bite marks, tearing, bruising. The skin on her palms and knees was ripped open. He pretty much did what he wanted to her.”

  “Why isn’t he in jail?”

  “He pleaded it down to reckless endangerment and paid the fine.”

  Will sped up, passing a truck. “That’s a slap on the wrist. Why didn’t he go to trial?”

  “He met her in a bar. He claimed he took that as proof that she was twenty-one. The prosecutor was scared the jury would equate her sneaking into the bar with asking for trouble.”

  Will slammed on his brakes, nearly rear-ending a car that was stopped for another red light. “She deserves to be raped for having a fake ID?”

  “The parents didn’t pursue it. They didn’t want their daughter raped again by the court system and the media.”

  Will could understand their fear. Fewer and fewer rape cases were making it to trial for this very reason. The light changed and he pressed the gas pedal to the floor. “Why was his DNA in the system?”

  “It was processed through the rape kit when he was arrested.”

  “We need to get a copy of his fingerprints to Gordon Chew to match them against the thumbprint on the letter.”

  “We can’t do that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Part of his deal with the district attorney was that his record be expunged if he kept his nose clean for a year.”

  “But his DNA was still in the sex-offender database.”

  She mumbled a curse. “That’s our fuckup. He should have never ended up in there. He’s not a convicted sex offender. Legally, we have no right to use Evan Bernard’s DNA or his fingerprints as evidence.”

  “But if we get a match—”

  “Then a judge will throw it out before we even make it to trial.”

  Will felt the bottom drop out of his case. Unless the teacher was feeling particularly generous—or stupid—they could not get a sample of Evan Bernard’s DNA without a court order. A judge would not sign off on the order without probable cause that Bernard had committed a crime. Illegally obtained DNA was not probable cause.

  Will stated the obvious. “If we can’t use the DNA, we can’t link him to Kayla Alexander.” He saw the possibilities fall like dominoes. No Kayla, no crime scene. No probable cause, no arrest.

  No hope for Emma Campano.

  “Faith’s waiting outside Bernard’s apartment right now. His unit is on the first floor. All the blinds are open. She can see straight into the rooms. There’s a garage, but the car is gone. Without the DNA, we can’t do anything. She needs legal cause to go inside. I need you to link Bernard to one of these crimes, Will. Get me into that apartment.”

  Will jerked the steering wheel, swerving the car into the school’s parking lot. It felt like a lifetime since he’d been here, though only a day had passed. He thought of Emma Campano again, how a day could be an eternity for her, every second the difference between life and death. Bernard would know that they would come to Emma’s school. He would know that they would eventually find out about the arrest, just as he would know that the apartment was the first place they would look. He had to be keeping her somewhere remote—somewhere no one would hear Emma scream.

  Two cruisers were parked on the street, away from the school’s security cameras. Will jogged toward the front door, directing one team to go around the back of the building and the other to wait at the front. The rent-a-cops on the front steps seemed confused for a moment, but they knew better than to interfere.

  Will glanced across the street. The photographers were still there. CNN was doing a live news feed, the reporter’s back to the school as she gave absolutely no new information on the case. She would have some information soon enough. This would probably be the scoop of her career.

  Will told the security guard, “Get some more of your men around here. Keep the press off school property.”

  “Yes, sir,” the man replied, taking his walkie-talkie out of his pocket.

  Will took the steps up to the main building two at a time. He had already debated with Amanda about how to approach this. Emma Campano was in danger, but Evan Bernard could not hurt her while he was at school. Surprise was the only element they had in their favor. The fact that the ransom call was supposed to be made within the next half hour had sealed the deal. If they could catch him on the phone, that would be all the proof they would need.

  Will reached out to press the intercom button, but he was already buzzed in. Olivia McFaden waited for him on the other side of the door.

  She didn’t mince words. “There are two officers with guns in front of my school.”

  “There are two more in the back,” Will informed her, ushering her down the hallway by her arm. He led her into the same conference room they had used the day before. “I’m going to tell you some things and I need you to remain calm.”

  She jerked her arm away. “I run a high school, Mr. Trent. There’s not much you can say that would shock me.”

  Will did not feel the need to go into the fact that they had found Bernard’s sperm inside one of his dead students. Instead, he told the woman, “We have reason to believe that Evan Bernard was having a sexual affair with Kayla Alexander.”

  Apparently, she could be shocked. She sunk into one of the chairs. “My God.” She stood up just as quickly, her mind leaping to the next conclusion. Kayla had been murdered, but Emma was still missing. “He’s got students—” She was heading toward the door, but Will stopped her.

  “Is there a camera in his room?”

  She was still trying to absorb the news, but McFaden snapped out of her surprise quickly enough. “This way,” she said, leading him back into the hallway and to the main office. “Colleen,” she told the woman behind the desk. “Pull up Mr. Bernard’s classroom.”

  The woman turned to the bank of monitors and tapped some keys. There were six screens in all, each partitioned into smaller images from various cameras around the school. They were all in color, all showing crisp, clear images. Colleen pressed another key and Evan Bernard’s classroom filled the middle screen.

  There he was in his rumpled jacket and patchy beard, walking up and down the rows of desks, surrounded by teenagers. The class was a small one, maybe a dozen kids in all. They were mostly young girls, their knees clenched together under their desks, pens scribbling nimbly as they recorded Mr. Bernard’s every word. No one had their heads down on their desks. They seemed enraptured. Had the fifteen-year-old whom Evan Bernard met in Savannah looked at him the same way? Maybe she did until he raped her.

  Will asked, “Is there audio?”

  Colleen tapped another key. Sound came out of the speakers, Evan Bernard discussing the importance of The Awakening in American literature.

  Will asked, “When is his planning period?”

  The principal provided, “Right after lunch, so he gets about an hour and a half between classes.”

  “C
an you give me an exact time frame?”

  “Class ends at eleven forty-five. Evan wouldn’t have to be back until one-thirty.”

  Plenty of time, Will thought. Adam’s car was parked in the garage at eleven-fifteen. Paul Campano had made the 9-1-1 call at twelve-thirty.

  Will asked the secretary, “Do you archive footage?”

  “We have everything from every school year since we started recording in 1998,” Colleen told him. “What do you need?”

  “Two days ago,” Will said. “From eleven forty-five until one-thirty.”

  “Well, that’s easy.” She kept the image of Bernard on the monitor and pulled up the information on another screen. The woman knew how to work the keyboard and she had obviously figured out what they wanted, because she tracked Evan Bernard’s movements as he packed up his briefcase, left his classroom, walked down the hall, exited the building, got into his red Volvo C30 and drove away.

  Will tried not to get excited. “When did he return?”

  The parking lot was still on the monitor, and she fast-forwarded the camera until Evan Bernard’s Volvo showed back up. The car slid into the parking space, stopping on a dime. Bernard got out, glancing around nervously as he adjusted his tie. He ran toward the building. Will thought Colleen was still fast-forwarding, but he saw that the man was, in fact, jogging.

  “One thirty-two,” McFaden noted from the time stamp. “He was late for class.”

  The next frame showed Bernard running down the hall. “Back it up,” Will said. Something was different, and not just the man’s disheveled appearance.

  Colleen worked the keys and froze the frame on Evan Bernard as he jogged down the hall. He was looking right up at the camera. His hair was messed up, his tie skewed.

  Will asked, “Can you leave that there and pull up the image of him leaving the first time?”

  Colleen went to work, and he stared at the live image of Bernard in his classroom. The teacher was still pacing up and down between the desks, still droning on about literature.

  McFaden was still incredulous. “I don’t understand how this can happen. Mr. Bernard has been teaching with us for twelve years. There was nothing in his background—”

  “You did a check, right?”

  “Of course,” McFaden told him. “It’s state law. All school employees are screened by the police department before we can hire them.”

  “Oh, my Lord,” Colleen whispered. Will saw that she had captured the images of Bernard leaving the school and returning side by side. “He changed his clothes.”

  The shirts were the same color, but the style looked different. His pants went from black to khaki. Will remembered what Beckey from the lab had told him earlier. Kayla Alexander wasn’t the only source of DNA matching Evan Bernard. The seat swatch Charlie had cut out of the Prius had contained traces of Bernard’s sperm, too. Of course, none of that got them closer to linking Bernard to Emma Campano. Even if they found a way to get a DNA sample from the teacher, all they could prove was that the teacher had at some point had sex in the Prius with Kayla Alexander.

  The telephone on the desk rang. McFaden answered it, then handed the receiver to Will.

  Amanda demanded, “Why aren’t you answering your phone?”

  Will patted his pocket, feeling the pieces of plastic move around.

  Amanda didn’t wait for his answer. “Did you catch him?”

  Will looked at the monitor, Evan Bernard pacing the classroom. “We’re waiting until he makes the ransom call.”

  “He already made it,” she told him. “The proof of life was the same tape as yesterday, Will. I told him we had to have a new one or the deal is off.”

  “Is he going to call back?”

  “Four o’clock,” she said.

  Will checked the digital clock on the wall. Ten thirty-three. “I’ve been watching Bernard the whole time. He hasn’t left the classroom and he hasn’t made a call.”

  “Shit,” she hissed. “He’s got an accomplice.”

  Will knocked on Evan Bernard’s classroom door. The man seemed surprised to find him standing there.

  “Agent Trent? Come in.”

  Will shut the door behind him.

  “Actually, leave that open. I’ve got students coming.”

  “My partner’s keeping them out in the hall.”

  “I’m glad you’re here.” Bernard picked up a book off his desk. There were triangles and squares in various colors on the cover. “This is a copy of Emma’s reading textbook. I thought maybe you could use it.”

  “I just wanted to go over a couple of things you said.”

  “All right.” He put the book on the desk, then used his sleeve to wipe the cover, telling Will, “Sorry, I smudged it up a bit.”

  Will wasn’t concerned about fingerprints. “You seemed pretty certain that whoever wrote those notes was illiterate. I’m really not sure what you mean by illiterate, though. I mean, is it like dyslexia? Is that some sort of spectrum diagnosis where somebody can be at one end or the other?”

  “Well.” He sat on the edge of his desk. “The traditional definition of literacy concerns reading and writing abilities, the ability to use language, to speak in a fluent manner. Then, of course, you could take that out to the next logical step and use it to define a certain level of class or culture.” He smiled, enjoying himself. “So, to say someone is illiterate, you would be employing the Latin, ‘il,’ meaning not or without. Without reading skills, without fluency.”

  “Without class or culture?” Will asked, gathering from Evan Bernard’s cockiness that he had expected the police to turn up on his doorstep. The arrest in Savannah was public record. The man had probably been wondering what was taking them so long.

  As if to prove the point, there was a devious lilt to the teacher’s tone. “One could say.”

  “That sounds a little different from the language you used yesterday.”

  “Yesterday I was in a meeting with my peers.”

  Will smiled at the dig. He was glad to find the man underestimating him. “What about someone who is functionally illiterate?”

  “Strictly going by definition, it is as it sounds. A person who is able to function, or ‘pass’ if you will, in the real world.”

  “And you’re sure that’s the sort of person who wrote those notes?”

  “As I said on the phone, I’m not an expert.”

  “You’re an expert in something, aren’t you?”

  He had the audacity to wink. “Let’s just say that I know a little bit about a lot of things.”

  Will leaned against the closed door, casually crossed his arms. There was a security camera mounted in the corner on the wall opposite. Will knew that he was in the camera’s frame, just as he knew that Evan Bernard had signed away his right to privacy when the school had installed the security system. It was to the teacher’s benefit at the time, because it meant any spurious allegations of sexual misconduct could be quickly dismissed. On the other hand, it also meant that anything Bernard said or did right now was being recorded on equipment owned by the school, and as such, was completely admissible.

  Will said, “I guess you’re familiar with your rights. They read them to you when you were arrested in Savannah, right?”

  His smile didn’t falter. “That was two years ago, Mr. Trent, as I’m sure you know. She was fifteen, she told me she was twenty-one. You’re barking up the wrong tree here. This is all just a misunderstanding.”

  “How’s that?”

  “I met her in a bar where alcohol is served. I assumed they checked her ID when they let her in.”

  “If you weren’t guilty, why did you plead to reckless endangerment of a minor?”

  He held up his finger. “Not a minor. That would be a felony. I was only charged with a misdemeanor.”

  Will felt a chill from his words. The man was not frightened of being accused, let alone being caught. “Evan, you need to start thinking about what your options are, the best course you can take to
make this go easy for you.”

  Bernard adjusted his glasses, bringing out his teacher voice. “You’re wasting your time here, Agent Trent. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a class.”

  “Kayla was a good-looking girl,” Will said. “I can see where it’d be hard to resist something like that.”

  “Please don’t insult my intelligence,” he said, picking up his briefcase off the floor. He started shoving in papers as he said, “I know my rights. I know I’m being recorded.”

  “Did you know you were being recorded two days ago when you left the school?”

  For the first time, he looked nervous. “I’m allowed to leave campus during my off period.”

  “Where were you between the hours of eleven forty-five and one-thirty?”

  “I drove around,” he replied evenly. “It’s the first few weeks of school. I had cabin fever. I just needed to get out.”

  “Get out where?”

  “I drove into Virginia Highland,” he said, referring to a local neighborhood with coffee shops and restaurants.

  “Where did you go?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Where did you park?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Should I check for your red Volvo on the traffic cameras at Ponce de Leon and Briarcliff or Ponce and Highland?”

  He didn’t have an answer for that.

  “Or did you cut through Emory? Should I check the traffic cameras there?” Will told him, “You might not have noticed, but the city has cameras at just about every major intersection in town.”

  “I was just driving around.”

  Will reached into his jacket pocket and took out a pad of paper and a pen that he had borrowed from the front office. “Write down your route, then I’ll go check it out and we can talk this afternoon when school is over.”

  Bernard reached for the pen, then stopped himself.

  Will asked, “Is there a problem? You said this was a misunderstanding, right? Just write out where you were. I’ll have one of the patrolmen check it out, then we’ll go over your story later.”

  The teacher took his own pen out of his jacket pocket and started to write. Will could see the nib of his fountain pen moving across the page in quick strokes. Bernard filled the first sheet, then turned to the next, writing more.