“What are the symptoms?”
“It depends on the type of infection, whether or not it gets into the bloodstream. You could be looking at anything from fever and chills to organ failure and brain damage.” She repeated her question. “Who was shot?”
“Lena.” Will held up his hand and pointed to the palm. “Here on the side.”
Sara felt her heart sink, though not for Lena. She was more than capable of taking care of herself. “Frank shot her?”
He shrugged. “It’s likely. Did you see the cut on his arm?”
She shook her head again.
“I think he ripped it open on some metal that was sticking out of the garage door.”
Sara put her hand on the counter, needing the support. Frank had stood right in front of her and said that Tommy had cut him with the knife. “Why would he lie about that?”
“He’s an alcoholic, right?”
She shook her head, but this time it was more from her own confusion. “He never drank on the job before. At least not that I ever saw.”
“And now?”
“He was drinking yesterday. I don’t know how much, but I smelled it on him when I got to the station. I just assumed that he was shaken up because of Brad. That generation …” She let her voice trail off. “I guess I glossed it over because Frank’s from a time when it was all right to take a couple of drinks during the middle of the day. My husband would’ve never tolerated it. Not while Frank was on duty.”
“A lot has changed since he died, Sara.” Will’s voice was gentle. “This isn’t Jeffrey’s police force anymore. He’s not here to keep them in line.”
She felt tears come to her eyes. Sara wiped them away, laughing at herself. “God, Will. Why am I always crying around you?”
“I’m hoping it’s not my aftershave.”
She laughed halfheartedly. “What now?”
Will knelt down and started rummaging through the box of evidence. “Frank knows Allison has a car. Lena didn’t. Lena knows Allison didn’t live in the garage. Frank doesn’t.” He found a woman’s wallet and opened the clasp. “It’s odd that they’re not working together on this.”
“Frank made it clear he’s finished with her. My personal vendetta aside, he has ample reason to cut her loose.”
“I gather they’ve been through a lot. Why cut her off now?”
Sara couldn’t think of an answer. Will was right. Lena had done a lot of things in her career that Frank had covered for. “Maybe this is just the last straw. Tommy is dead. Brad was badly injured.”
“I talked to Faith on the ride over. There’s no Julie Smith that she can find. The cell phone number you gave me was for a throwaway purchased at a Radio Shack in Cooperstown.”
“That’s about forty-five minutes away.”
“Tommy and Allison must’ve had throwaways, too. Neither one has a record of a phone. We’ll need their numbers before we can track back where the phones were purchased, but that’s not going to make much of a difference, I think.” He held up the knife Frank had given them. “This doesn’t appear to have blood on it. Would they clean it during surgery?”
“They’d throw iodine on it, but they wouldn’t clean it like this.” She studied the weapon. “You’d expect blood around the hilt.”
“You would,” he agreed. “I’m going to have the local field agent do a lab run for me. Can I leave some samples here so he can take everything when you’re done?”
“Nick Shelton?”
“You know him?”
“He worked with my husband all the time.” She offered, “I’ll call him when I’m finished.”
Will held up the suicide note and stared at the words. “I don’t understand this.”
“It says ‘I want it over.’ ”
He gave her a sharp look. “Thank you, Sara. I know what it says. What I don’t understand is who wrote it.”
“The killer?” she tried.
“Possibly.” Will sat back on his heel, staring at the line of text that ran along the top section of the paper. “I’m thinking there’s two people out there—the killer and the 911 caller. The killer did his thing with Allison, and the caller is trying to get him in trouble for it. And then Julie Smith was trying to get Tommy off the hook by enlisting your help.”
“It sounds a lot like you’ve taken him off your list of suspects.”
“I thought you didn’t like to make assumptions.”
“I’m fine when other people do it.”
Will chuckled, but he kept his gaze on the note. “If the killer wrote this, who’s he telling he wants it over?”
She knelt down to look over his shoulder. “The handwriting doesn’t look like Tommy’s.” She pointed to the “I” at the beginning of the sentence. “See this? In Tommy’s confession, he used a formal capital with—” Sara realized how useless her words were to him. “Okay, think about it this way: if the first stroke of the ‘I’ is like a stem, and there are branches … Well, not branches, more like bars …” She let her voice trail off. Trouble visualizing the shape of letters was at the core of his language problem.
“It’s frustrating,” Will agreed. “If only he had written something easier. Like a smiley face.”
Sara was saved a response by Will’s phone ringing.
“Will Trent.” He listened for at least a solid minute before saying, “No. Keep canvassing. Tell him I’ll be there in a few minutes.” He closed the phone. “This day just keeps getting worse.”
“What’s wrong?”
“That was Lena. We’ve got another dead body.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Will followed Sara in his car as she drove to the campus. He was starting to recognize landmarks, houses with fences and play sets that were familiar enough for him to remember the turns. The campus was new territory, and like most schools, it seemed to follow no particular design. Buildings had been added on when the money was there to construct them. Consequently, the campus sprawled over several acres like a hand with too many fingers.
He had spent all morning with Lena Adams, and he thought he could read her mood by now. Her tone on the telephone had been strained. She was getting to the breaking point. Will wanted to press her a little harder but there was no way he could have Lena meet him at the crime scene right now. Sara had made it obvious that she wasn’t going to be in the same room with the woman she believed killed her husband. Right now, Will needed Sara’s forensic eye more than he needed Lena’s confession.
He dialed Faith’s number as he steered his car around the curve of the lake. Will saw the boathouse Lena had pointed out to him earlier. Canoes and kayaks were stacked up against the building.
“You’ve got me for three more hours,” Faith said by way of greeting.
“We’ve got a second victim. They think his name is Jason Howell.”
“That’s good news.” Faith was hardly the optimistic type, but she was right. A new victim meant a new crime scene, a new set of clues to follow. They had absolutely no useful information on Allison Spooner. The aunt was nowhere to be found. Allison hadn’t made any connections at home or school. The only person who seemed to mourn her loss was Lionel Harris from the diner, and he was hardly a close friend. But Jason Howell’s death would surely open up new leads. A second body meant a second course of investigation. Find one detail, one person or friend or enemy, that tied together both Allison Spooner and Jason Howell, and usually that detail could lead to the murderer. Even the most careful killer made mistakes. Two crime scenes meant twice as many mistakes.
Faith told him, “You’re going to have a hard time getting a warrant for all the names of the students in that dorm building.”
“I hope the college will be compliant.”
“I hope this baby comes out clutching a bag full of gold.”
She had a point. Colleges were notorious for their desire for privacy. “Where are we on the warrant for Allison’s room?”
“You mean the real one?” She seemed to be enjoyi
ng this. “I faxed it to the station about ten minutes ago. There’s no landline to the Braham house, so that’s a dead end. Did you get anything from the autopsy?”
He told her about Allison’s injury. “It’s unusual that the killer stabbed her through the back of the neck instead of slicing through the front.”
“I’ll run it through ViCAP right now.” She meant the FBI’s Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, a database designed to detect similarities in criminal behavior. If Allison’s killer had used this method before, ViCAP would have a record of the case.
Will asked, “Can you give Nick Shelton a call, too? He’s the local field agent here. Sara knows him. I want him to run some stuff to the Central lab for me. Sara’s going to let him know when she’s got everything ready.”
“What else?”
“I still need that audiotape of the 911 call. I want Sara to listen to the voice and see if it belongs to our Julie Smith.”
“Can you say a sentence that doesn’t have ‘Sara’ in it?”
Will scratched his jaw, his fingers finding the scar that ran down his face. He felt jittery again, much as he’d felt when he’d been talking to Sara in the basement of the funeral home.
She said, “You know that Charlie is at Central this week?”
“No.” Charlie Reed was on Amanda’s team. He was the best forensics guy Will had ever worked with. “Central’s an hour away from here.”
“You want me to give him a call and see if he can come out?”
Will thought about the garage, the crime scene in the woods. He was working two cases now—one against Lena Adams and Frank Wallace and another against the man who had killed Allison Spooner and possibly their new victim. “I told the local chief I was bringing out a team. Might as well follow through on it.”
“I’ll give him a call,” Faith offered. “ViCAP shows no similar hits on a killer using a knife to cut from the rear through the carotid sheath, the carotid, the jugular, or the carotid and jugular. I cross-referenced the twist, too. No MO matches.”
“I guess that’s good news.”
“Or really bad news,” she countered. “That’s a clean kill, Will. You don’t do that your first time out. I have to agree with Sara on this one. I don’t see your retarded kid doing this.”
“Intellectually disabled.” Now that Sara had pointed it out, the word was starting to grate. Will supposed he should feel some solidarity with Tommy Braham since they both had a problem. “Call me when you hear from Charlie.”
“Will do.”
Will closed his phone to end the call. Ahead, Sara’s SUV took a turn up a circular drive that led to a three-story brick building. She parked behind a campus patrol car at the front entrance. The rain was still unrelenting. She pulled up the hood of her jacket before running up the steps to the entrance.
Will got out of his car and ran up after her, his shoes kicking up puddles. His socks hadn’t dried since he’d stepped into the lake this morning. They were in the process of rubbing a large blister on his heel.
Sara waited for him in a small alcove between two sets of glass doors. The sleeves of her jacket were dripping wet. She knocked on the doors. “No one is in the patrol car out front.” She cupped her hands to the glass. “Is someone supposed to be here?”
“The security guard was told to remain in the building until we got here.” Will punched a few buttons on the keypad by the door. The LCD screen remained blank. He turned around, trying to find a camera.
“Back door’s open.”
Will looked through the glass. The building was wider than it was deep. A set of stairs faced the front door. A long hallway shot off to the side. At the back of the building, an exit sign glowed softly over the open fire door.
Sara asked, “Where are the police?”
“I told Lena not to call anyone.”
Sara turned to look at him.
“She got the call on her cell phone. Apparently, the campus police have her as an after-hours contact.”
“She didn’t call Frank?”
“No. Funny, right?”
“ ‘Funny’ isn’t the word I’d use.”
Will didn’t respond. Sara’s personal ties were clouding her view. She wasn’t looking at this as a criminal investigation. With two suspects, you always worked one against the other to see who would flip first to get the better deal. Self-preservation generally won out over loyalty. The garage where Tommy lived painted a grim story for Frank and Lena. At this point, it was just a matter of who would talk first.
Sara looked back through the glass door. “Here he is.”
Will saw a small black man making his way up the hall. He was young and skinny, the shirt of his uniform puffing out like a woman’s blouse. He gripped his cell phone close to his chest as he approached them. With the other hand, he waved his key card over a pad by the door. The lock clicked open.
Sara rushed in. “Marty, are you all right?”
Will could see why she was worried. The man’s face was ashen.
“Dr. Linton,” the man said. “I’m sorry. I was just outside trying to catch my breath.”
“Let’s sit down.” Sara helped him to a bench by the door. She kept her arm around his shoulders. “Where’s your inhaler?”
“I just used it.” He reached his hand out to Will. “Sorry for my state. I’m Marty Harris. I think you met my grandfather this morning.”
“Will Trent.” Will shook his hand. The man’s grip was weak.
Marty waved his phone in the air. “I was talking to Lena about what happened.” He coughed. The color was slowly returning to his face. “I’m sorry, it just got me worked up again.”
Will leaned his back against the wall. He tucked his hands into his pockets. He had figured out a long time ago that showing his irritation tended to get the exact opposite result he was looking for. “Can you tell me what you told Detective Adams?”
He coughed a few more times. Sara rubbed his back. “I’m all right now,” he told her. “It’s just hard to recollect is all. I’ve never seen anything like that in my life.”
Will fought to keep his patience. He looked up and down the hallway. The lights were still off, but his eyes were adjusting. There wasn’t a camera on the front door. He guessed the entrance keypad was meant to catch students and visitors going into the building. There was a camera over the fire exit in the back, though, and he could see it was tilted up toward the ceiling.
“It was like that when I got here,” Marty told him. He put his phone in his shirt pocket and pushed his glasses up his nose.
“When was that?”
“About thirty minutes ago, I guess.” Marty looked at his watch. “It seems like it’s been a lot longer than that.”
“Can you tell me what happened?”
He patted his hand to his chest. “I was making my rounds. I do that every three hours. With the students gone for the holiday, I wasn’t checking the dorms. We do drive-bys to make sure the front and back doors are okay, but we don’t go in.” He coughed into his hand before continuing. “I was at the library when I noticed one of the windows on the second floor was open. The second floor to this building.” He paused for breath. “I figured the wind must’ve pulled it open. Those old windows never shut tight. With the rain, there’d be a lot of water damage if I didn’t do something about it.” He paused again. Will could see he was sweating despite the fact that the building was cold. “I went up there and saw him, and …” He shook his head. “I called the emergency number.”
“Not 911?”
“We got a direct number we’re supposed to call if something happens on campus.”
Sara explained, “The dean doesn’t like bad publicity.”
“Can’t get more bad than this.” Marty gave a harsh laugh. “Lord, what was done to that boy. The smell is the worst part. I don’t think I’ll ever get it out of my breath.”
Will asked, “Did you come in through the front door or the back door?”
“Front.
” He indicated the fire exit. “I know I shouldn’t’a gone out the back, but I needed air.”
“Was the back door locked?”
He shook his head.
Will saw the red warning signs plastered all around the door. “Does the alarm go off when it’s opened?”
“Students usually bypass the alarm the first week they’re here. We can’t keep up with them. The minute we hook it up, they disconnect it again. Lots of engineers and computer folks in this place. They look at it as a challenge.”
“They bypass the alarm for fun?”
“It’s easier to get to the library that way. The back entrance for the cafeteria is there, too. They’re not supposed to go through the loading docks because of safety concerns, but they sneak back through anyway.”
Will pointed to the camera mounted over the door. “Is that the only camera in the building?”
“No, sir, and like I said, it was tilted up like that when I got here. There’s another one on the second floor that’s been tilted up, too.”
Will saw how easy it would be to get into the building undetected. As long as you knew where the camera was, you could stand underneath it and use a broom handle or something similar to push it up, then go on your merry way. Still, he asked, “Do you have footage from the cameras?”
“Yes, sir. It’s all sent to a central building on campus. I don’t have the key, but my boss, Demetrius, is on the way. Should be here in an hour or two.” He told Sara, “He’s in Griffin with his daddy’s people.”
Will asked, “What about exterior cameras?”
“The cold got to ’em. They’re all out. Half are frozen solid, the rest cracked like walnuts. We had one fall on a student’s car the other day. Broke the back windshield.”
Will rubbed his jaw. “Does anyone else know the cameras are out?”
He thought about it. “Demetrius, the dean, maybe some other people if they happened to look up. Some of the damage is pretty obvious even from the ground.”
“I saw the keypad by the door. Is that the only way to get in through the front?”
“Yeah, and I already checked the logs. I can run a system diagnostic on the keypad. No one’s been in or out the front door since Saturday afternoon. The only key card not scanned out belongs to Jason Howell. The room he’s in is registered to that name, too.” He told Sara, “I don’t know why he’d stay here. Heat’s off. Campus is shut down. Library closed at noon on Sunday. I thought this place was deserted.”
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