He nodded, not correcting the gaffe.
Will pretended to read the pages, moving his eyes back and forth. “I just had a question for you, because I do this a lot. I ask people to write things down, and what I’ve found in the past is that the innocent people are usually so nervous that they forget things. They go back and forth and they scratch things out and they change words around. The guilty people just pick up the pen and start writing, and it’s so easy for them because they’re just making up shit as they go along.”
Bernard put his pen back in his jacket pocket. “That’s an interesting observation.”
“Evan,” Will said. “It’s going to go a lot easier for you if we get Emma Campano back to her parents.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about. I’m just as outraged as the next person that one of our students has been abducted from her home.”
“Do you remember when you first started teaching?” Will asked. “The state did a background check on you, right? You had to go to the police station and give them your Social Security number and your address and then they took your fingerprints. Do you remember that?”
Bernard seemed to realize where this was going. His little game with the pen and wiping down the book had been for naught. “Vaguely.”
“What’s going to happen when the fingerprints from your card match the ones we found on the threatening letters you slid under Adam Humphrey’s door?”
He seemed wholly unconcerned. “I imagine you’ll be investigated for fabricating evidence.”
“Even if Emma’s dead, Evan, if you tell us where she is, a judge will look at that as a positive indication that you tried to do the right thing.”
“That’s your reality, not mine.” He sat back in his chair, the smug look returning to his face.
“Kayla was a troublemaker. Everybody said that. Did she meet you outside of school? It wouldn’t have been here, right? It would’ve been somewhere outside of school.”
Bernard shook his head slowly from side to side, as if he felt sorry for Will.
“She’s a good-looking girl. I mean, I know, man.” Will felt his stomach clench like a fist. “I’ve been in this school ten minutes and I’ve already seen some girls …” He shrugged. “Different time, different place, I wouldn’t say no.”
Bernard took off his wire-rimmed glasses and used the tail of his shirt to clean the lenses. “Not that it’s any of my business, but I’d be careful talking like that.” He nodded toward the video camera in the corner. “People are watching.”
“They were watching two days ago when you came running back to school, too.”
He breathed on his glasses, as if there was a spot he needed to get. “I lost track of time. I was late for class.”
“Really? I assumed it was because you had to change your pants.”
He stopped, his shirttail still in his hand.
“Come stains are hard to wash out, aren’t they?” Will smiled. He couldn’t use the DNA from the rape kit, but it was perfectly legal for him to lie about finding another source. “Funny thing about come, Evan, it takes more than one washing to get it out.”
“You’re lying.”
Will counted it off for him. “I’ve got a dead girl with your sperm inside of her and your bite marks on her breast. I’ve got video showing you changed your pants.” Will didn’t think about the risk he was taking as he lied. “The same pants we found with your DNA all over them.”
“You can’t go through my garbage without a search warrant and you have no—”
Will forced himself not to smile, though he ached to tell the man he’d fallen into a trap. “Once the city puts the trash in the truck, I can roll around naked in it if I want.”
Bernard shrugged. “Kayla was seventeen. She consented. There’s nothing illegal about two adults having sex.”
Will chose his words carefully. “This wasn’t a recent thing. You’ve been seeing her for a while.”
“Are you asking that because Kayla’s birthday was two months ago?” He shook his head, as if he was disappointed that the trap was so obvious. “Our first time having sexual intercourse was two days ago.”
“She was a virgin?”
He gave a genuine laugh. “She was the sexual equivalent of McDonald’s.”
“We found your sperm in Kayla’s car.”
Again, he seemed unconcerned. “So we had sex in the car.”
“Oral? Anal?”
He raised an eyebrow—another trap he saw coming from a mile away. “I watch the news, Mr. Trent. I know that Georgia’s laws are very strict where sodomy is concerned.”
The arrogant prick thought he had it all wrapped up. “You expect me to believe you just had sex with Kayla Alexander two days ago, but you had nothing to do with her murder?”
“As you said yourself, I had to go home and change my pants. The last time I saw Kayla Alexander, she was alive and heading back to school.”
“So you left school, had sex with Kayla Alexander in her car, then came back to school.”
“What of it?”
Will could feel his own smile spread across his face. “I’ve got some more Latin for you, Evan.”
Bernard held out his hands in a wide shrug, indicating Will should fire away.
“In loco parentis,” Will said. “In place of the parent.”
Bernard’s hands were still out, but his expression had drastically changed.
“By law, you’re Kayla’s guardian—her acting parent—during school hours. According to the state, it’s illegal to have sex with anyone who is under your supervisory control, no matter what their age is.” He gave the same open shrug Bernard had used. “I don’t think fucking a minor in her car in the middle of a school day is something a parent is allowed to do.” Will added, “Even if it is the first time.”
Bernard’s mouth closed. His nostrils flared. Will could almost see him going over the last two minutes, desperately trying to figure out how he had walked into the trap. The man cleared his throat, but instead of addressing Will, he looked directly into the video camera, saying, “My name is Evan Bernard and I am requesting this interview to be terminated so that I can consult with my lawyer about these spurious allegations.”
“Tell me where Emma is, Evan.”
“I have nothing to say to you.”
“I know you didn’t do this by yourself. Tell me who you’re working with.”
“Mr. Trent, you seem to think you’re well versed in the law. I have just asked to speak to my lawyer. This interview is over.”
Will walked over to the door and let in the two cops who were standing outside. He told them, “Arrest him.”
“For what?”
“Sexual contact”—he turned around, making sure that Bernard was listening—“with a minor.”
Will went out into the hallway and leaned against the wall. He could hear the cops reading Evan Bernard his rights, the polite responses the teacher gave in turn, assuring them that he understood everything. The man did not scream or rail against the injustice, he simply seemed to be biding his time, waiting to be processed. It was as if, even as he was being handcuffed, the teacher still thought he held all the power.
If Bernard knew where Emma was being held, he did have all the power.
Will sank down onto his heels and put his face in his hands. He wanted Evan Bernard to resist arrest so that he would have to go back into that room and help the cops subdue him. He wanted to grab the man and throw him to the ground. He wanted to beat him the way Kayla Alexander had been beaten.
Instead, he pulled out his cell phone, holding the pieces together so he could make the call.
“Can I go in?” Faith asked, her words rushed. She had been standing outside Bernard’s house for the last hour, waiting for Will to give her the word that they had enough evidence for a warrant.
Will thought of the teacher, the smug look on his face, his certainty that he was going to get away with this. “Call the county,” he said. “T
ell them to pick up Bernard’s trash, then go through whatever they put in the truck. I want you to photograph every step you take.”
“What am I looking for?”
“A pair of black pants.”
“What about his apartment? Can I go in?”
Evan Bernard came out of his classroom, his hands cuffed behind his back, a cop on either side of him. Amanda would be angry at Will for not being the one to escort the prisoner outside, but he wasn’t up to smiling for the cameras. The Atlanta Police Department could have this photo op. Will would be better off spending his time looking for evidence that would convict the bastard.
For his part, Bernard’s composure had returned, and he looked down at Will with something like pity. “I hope you find her, Officer. Emma was such a sweet girl.”
He kept his head turned, watching Will even as he was being led up the hallway.
Faith asked, “Are you there?”
His hands shook as he struggled not to break the phone into more pieces. “Tear the fucking place apart.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Faith watched Ivan Sambor swing back the metal battering ram and slam it into Evan Bernard’s front door. The wooden jamb splintered in a satisfying way, the cheap dead bolt breaking in two as the metal door swung back on its hinges.
She had easily seen inside the apartment from the outside, but Faith walked through the four rooms with her gun drawn, checking the kitchen, the bathroom and the two small bedrooms. Her impression now was the same as when she had first arrived on the scene: Evan Bernard had known they were coming, known that his earlier arrest for sex with a teenage girl would come to light and that the obvious conclusion would be drawn between what happened on the coast and what happened to Kayla Alexander. Bernard had probably stripped the apartment the minute he had gotten home from school that first day.
Faith could smell bleach in every corner of the house. The closet doors had been left open, easily seen from the bedroom windows. There wasn’t a speck of dust anywhere—not on the kitchen table, the many bookshelves or, when out of curiosity she decided to check, the blades of the ceiling fans. Even the tops of the doors had been dusted.
Faith holstered her gun and called in Charlie Reed and his team. She leaned her shoulder against the door outside the second bedroom. The walls were pink. Blue and white clouds were painted on the ceiling. The furniture was cheap, probably secondhand, but it reminded Faith of a bedroom set she had seen in the Sears catalogue when she was a little girl. The small chest of drawers and the four-poster bed were laminated in white Formica with swirly, gold trim outlining the knobs and various other architectural details. Fluffy pink pillows were scattered on the bed. There was framed artwork of Winnie the Pooh with Tigger. It was the sort of room every girl dreamed about in the 1980s.
Outside, she heard Will Trent asking one of the cops where Faith was. He had probably blown through every light on the five-mile stretch between Westfield and Evan Bernard’s apartment.
Will’s jaw was clenched as he walked down the hallway. He had an air of fury about him, and seeing the girly bedroom did nothing to change his disposition. His throat worked as he took in the pink curtains and lace bedspread. Several seconds passed before he could speak. “Do you think he held her here?”
Faith shook her head. “It’s too obvious.”
Neither one of them walked into the room. Faith knew there would be no evidence in the white sheets, no telltale strands of hair in the freshly vacuumed carpet. Bernard had kept this showcase for his own benefit. She could imagine him coming into the room, sitting on the bed and living out his sick fantasies.
“It’s younger than seventeen,” Faith said. “The room, I mean. It’s the kind of stuff you’d buy for a ten-or eleven-year-old.”
“Did you get the pants?”
“They were in the garbage,” she told him. “Do you think we’ll get any DNA off them?”
“We’d better,” he said. “The second ransom call had the same proof of life from yesterday. Maybe the kidnapper got spooked because he saw us around the school.”
“Or she’s already dead.”
“I can’t accept that,” Will told her, his voice firm.
Faith chose her words carefully. “Statistically, children taken by strangers are killed within the first three hours of their abduction.”
“She wasn’t taken by a stranger,” Will insisted, and she wondered where he got his certainty. “The kidnapper prerecorded the part about calling back at four. He obviously needed more time. We’ll get the new proof of life then.”
“You can’t be certain of any of that, Will. Look at the facts. Evan Bernard’s not talking. We have no idea who his accomplice is. There’s not a chance in hell we’ll find something here to—”
“I’m not going to have this conversation with you.”
So they were back to him being the boss again. Faith bit her lip, trying not to let her sarcasm escalate the situation. He could live in fairyland all he wanted, but Faith was fairly certain that there would not be a happy ending to this story.
Will pressed the point. “I can’t believe she’s dead, Faith. Emma’s a fighter. She’s out there somewhere waiting for us to find her.”
The passion in his voice was unmistakable, and instead of feeling irritated, she now felt sorry for him.
He said, “I should’ve gotten more from Bernard. He was so smug, so sure that he was in control. I feel like I played right into his hands.”
“You got him to admit to having sex with Kayla.”
“He’s going to make bail in twenty-four hours. If his lawyer’s any good, he’ll get the trial postponed until no one remembers who Emma Campano is. Even with the parents pushing for a prosecution, he could end up walking.”
“He admitted on tape to having sex with her.”
“I hadn’t read him his rights. He could argue that I coerced him.” Will shook his head, obviously angry with himself. “I screwed it up.”
“He knew we were coming to his apartment,” Faith said. “This place is immaculate. He didn’t clean like this overnight. He prepared the space for us. He’s playing some kind of game.”
“I should have run a background check on him yesterday.”
“There was no reason to,” she countered. “We both assumed that the school had checked him out.”
“They did,” Will reminded her. “Just not recently.”
Charlie called from the other room, “Hey, guys.”
Faith and Will went into the master bedroom, which had a decidedly more masculine flair. The furniture was heavy, stained a dark charcoal and sitting low to the ground in a sterile, modern way. Over the bed was hanging a huge canvas of a blond-haired, blue-eyed girl. She was obviously young, though not so young that the painting could be deemed child pornography. It was certainly pornographic, though. The girl was naked, her chest thrust out, her legs wide open. There was a sexy twinkle in her eyes, a kittenish pout to her lips. Everything glistened unnaturally.
Charlie was sitting at a desk that was built into an armoire.
“His computer,” Charlie said. “Look at this.”
Faith saw that the monitor showed a live image of the second bedroom.
Will said, “The camera must be mounted in the Winnie the Pooh poster.”
“Christ,” Faith whispered. “Are there any files?”
Charlie was clicking through the directory. “I’m not seeing anything,” he told them. “We’ll have the forensic techs look at this, but it’s my guess that an external hard drive was used.” He pulled some loose cables out from behind the computer. “These would’ve recorded sound and video onto the drive. He could completely bypass the computer’s hard drive.”
“The main computer wouldn’t keep any records?”
Charlie shook his head, opening and closing files as he checked for anything incriminating. Faith saw spreadsheets, homework assignments.
She asked, “What about e-mail?”
“There are two a
ddresses on here. One is through the cable company for Internet service. All that’s on there is spam—Viagra offers, Nigerian money laundering, that sort of thing. There’s no address book, no sent mails, nothing. The other one looks like his school e-mail. I read through everything; they’re just correspondences with parents, memos from the principal. Nothing suspicious and nothing personal.”
“Could he have kept a new e-mail address on the hard drive?”
“You’d have to ask someone who knows more about computers than me,” Charlie said. “Blood and guts I can tell you about. Computers are just a hobby.”
Will said, “He wouldn’t put a camera in that room unless he was taping himself so he could watch it later. We need to find that hard drive.”
“I didn’t find anything in Adam’s room,” Faith reminded him. “His computer was stolen a week before the crime was committed.”
“What about Gabe Cohen?”
“Nothing jumped out,” Faith told him. “I checked his computer, but like Charlie said, I’m not an expert.”
“It’d be a stretch asking to see it again.”
She wondered if that was some kind of dig at her for not arresting Gabe Cohen. They were both frustrated and angry. She decided to let the comment pass. “Did you find anything in Bernard’s desk at school?”
“Nothing,” Will answered. “Maybe the accomplice is keeping the hard drive or a computer for him? Maybe there’s a laptop?”
“What about his car?”
“Cleaner than the house,” Will said. “Smells like bleach and vinegar.”
Charlie stated the obvious. “If you find the video files, that’s the smoking gun.”
Will said, “I’ll get copies of all his phone records, landline and cell.”
“This guy is smart,” Faith pointed out. “He’d have one of those pay-as-you-go lines. There’s no way we can trace them.”
“We’ve already fucked this up twice from making assumptions. Bernard is smart, but he can’t think of everything.” Will asked, “Charlie, can you check his Internet history?”
Charlie clicked the icon for the Internet browser. A page popped up with a scantily clad teenager doing a split over the words, “Barely Legal.” He opened the root directory. “Looks like he emptied the cache, but I can still recover some of the pages.” After a few more clicks, he found Bernard’s recently viewed pages. The first linked to Westfield Academy’s grading program. The next few were retail outlets you would expect a teacher to be interested in—Barnes & Noble, Wal-Mart. Apparently, Bernard had been searching for a copy of Wuthering Heights.
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