Abigail was obviously thinking of these things. She could barely touch the girl, seemed to have to force herself to hold Emma’s hand. Faith herself could not even meet the mother’s eyes. How could you mourn the death of your child when she was still alive?
Abigail spoke softly. “She’s awake.”
Slowly, Faith walked over. They had tried to question the girl on the way to the hospital, firing questions at her one after the other. Emma had lain on the gurney, her eyes staring blankly at the ambulance ceiling, her answers coming out in monosyllabic bites. She had gotten progressively agitated until she was cowering against the rails, the impact of her ordeal slowly sinking in. She had become so hysterical that they had sedated her so that she would not hurt herself. Her reaction was strikingly similar to her mother’s.
“Hi, honey,” Faith began. “Do you remember me?”
The girl nodded. Her eyelids were heavy, though the medication had long worn off. The clock on the heart monitor read 6:33 a.m. Light peeked out around the edges of the metal blinds over the window. The sun had risen unnoticed as she slept.
They had figured out quickly that it was the men who set her off. The male paramedics touching and prodding, even Will trying to hold her hand, had made her panic like a trapped animal. Emma could not stand the sight of any of them, could not tolerate the male doctors. Even her own father upset the girl so much that she became physically ill.
Faith asked Emma, “You sure you want to do this?”
She nodded.
“I need to ask you some questions,” Faith told her. “Do you think you can talk to me?”
She nodded again, wincing at the pain when she moved.
Abigail’s fingertips touched her daughter’s arm. “If it’s too much—”
“I want to,” Emma insisted, her voice strained, like a person much older than her few years.
“Tell me what you remember,” Faith urged, knowing that the girl had probably been doing everything she could to forget.
“It was Kayla,” she said, her tone certain. “We heard her screaming. Adam went out in the hall, and I saw the man stab him.”
“Warren?”
She nodded.
Abigail reached for the glass of water beside the bed. “Drink something, honey.”
“No,” she refused. “I need to say.”
Faith was surprised at her courage, but then she remembered that twice now, Emma Campano had been written off for dead and twice the girl had fought back. “Tell me what happened.”
“Adam told me to hide in the closet.” She paused, some of her resolve breaking. “The next thing I remember, I was in the room, and the man was on top of me.”
Faith asked, “Did he say anything to you?”
“He said that he loved me.” She glanced quickly at her mother. “I told him that I did, too. He was nicer when I did.”
“That was smart,” Faith told her. “You did what you needed to do to keep him from getting angry.”
“Are you sure …” The girl squeezed her eyes shut. The heart monitor beeped. Cold air came out of the vent over the bed. “You’re sure he’s dead?”
“Yes,” Faith told her, putting all the certainty she could in her voice. “I saw him myself. He died last night.”
She kept her eyes tightly closed.
“Are you sure that no one else came?” Faith asked. This had been the first question put to the girl, and she was just as unequivocal in her answer then as she was now.
“No.”
Faith could not let it go. She had to be sure. “Warren didn’t talk about anyone he was working with? No one came into the room with you?”
Her eyes were still closed. Faith thought that she had fallen asleep, but the girl’s head moved slowly from side to side. “No one,” she said. “I was completely alone.”
Abigail reached out, but pulled back her hand, not knowing where she could touch her daughter, which spots would cause comfort or pain. She admitted as much, saying, “I don’t know what to do.”
Faith took the woman’s hand and wrapped it around her daughter’s. “You already lost her once. It’s up to you to make sure you don’t lose her again.”
Faith could see Will and Amanda standing at the end of the hallway outside Emma’s room. Both of them looked up at her expectantly. She shook her head, letting them know that Evan Bernard was still in the clear.
Amanda took out her phone and Will said something to stop her. Faith could not hear his voice and, frankly, she did not care. She went back to the row of plastic chairs lining the hallway and sat down with a groan. Her exhaustion was so deep that she felt dizzy. Sleep was all she needed, just a few minutes and then she could go with Will to scour Warren Grier’s apartment again. They would turn the man’s office upside down at the Copy Right, interview everyone who had ever known him or come into contact with him. Mary Clark had remembered Warren and Bernard together. There was bound to be someone else out there who knew even more than she did.
Faith’s head jerked up as she caught herself dozing. Her phone was ringing. She took it out of her pocket, checking the caller ID. It was Victor again. He was nothing if not persistent.
“You gonna get that?” Will asked.
Faith looked up at him. He looked as tired as she felt. “He’ll call back.” She tucked the phone back into her pocket. “What was that about?”
He slumped into the chair beside her, his long legs blocking the hallway. “The prosecutor says the judge won’t deny bail.” He rubbed his eyes. “Bernard’s going to be out on the streets before noon.”
“Did yelling at Amanda help?”
“It’s easier to blame her for all the evil things that happen in the world.” He put his face in his hands, exhaustion slowing down every move. “What did I miss on this, Faith? How can we keep him locked up?”
Faith thought about what was behind the door across the hall. Warren was dead, but there was still someone out there who should be punished for the crime. They had to make a case against Bernard. Will was right—he had to be punished.
She asked, “What did Amanda say?”
“She’s moving on. Emma is back, we’ve got one dead prisoner and a lawsuit from the Alexanders to deal with. This case has basically been downgraded because we have a living victim.” He shook his head. “What kind of job is this where a dead seventeen-year-old is more important than a living one?”
“My boss hasn’t taken me off this yet,” Faith told him. “I’ll work with you as long as they let me.”
“Well, that’s the other thing.”
Faith could hear the trepidation in his voice and it shot a cold chill through her. “Did Amanda find out about the gray powder?”
He looked at her, confused. “Oh,” he said, understanding. “No, worse than that. Amanda is going to ask you to be my partner.”
Faith was so tired that she was certain she had heard wrong. “Your partner?”
“I understand if you don’t want to do it.”
“It’s not that,” she said, still not sure she’d heard correctly. “Your partner?” she repeated. “Amanda’s been keeping me off every important event in this case,” Faith said, thinking the missed press conference was just the icing on the cake. “Why would she want me on her team?”
Will had the grace to look guilty. “That was actually me keeping you out of the loop,” he admitted. “But not on purpose. Honest.”
She was too tired to manage anything but an exasperated, “Will.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, holding out his hands in an open shrug. “But, listen, it’s best you know what you’d be getting into.”
“This is the last thing I expected,” Faith admitted. She was still unable to wrap her head around the offer.
“I told you about the crappy dental.” He held up his hand, showed her the scar from the nail gun. “And keep in mind that Amanda doesn’t take prisoners.”
Faith rubbed her face. She let the enormity of the situation sink in. “I keep hea
ring those clicks in my ear from Warren dry-firing on you.” She paused, not trusting herself to speak. “He could have killed you.” She added, “And I would have killed him.”
Will tried for levity. “You seemed pretty cool to me.” His voice went up in a falsetto as he mimicked, “ ‘Drop it, motherfucker!’ ”
She felt her cheeks redden. “I guess my inner Police Woman came out.”
“Pepper Anderson was a sergeant. You’re a detective.”
“And you are pathetic for knowing that.”
He smiled, rubbing his jaw. “Yeah, you’re probably right.” He waited a few seconds before saying, “I mean it, Faith. I won’t take it personally if you say no.”
She cut to the heart of the matter. “I don’t know if I can do this kind of job every day. At least with the murder squad, we know where to look.”
“Boyfriend, husband, lover,” Will said, a familiar refrain. “I’m not going to lie. It takes the life out of you.”
She thought of Victor Martinez, his many phone calls. Jeremy was finally out of the house. She had met a man who might possibly be interested in her despite the fact that she was painfully ill-prepared for an adult relationship. She’d finally managed to get some grudging respect around the homicide squad, even if their highest compliment so far was, “You’re not that stupid for a blonde.”
Did Faith want to invite more complications into her life? Shouldn’t she just coast through on her detective’s shield, then work private security like every other retired cop she knew?
Will glanced up and down the hallway. “Did Paul just disappear?” he asked, and she realized it was a question meant to put them back on more comfortable footing.
Faith was glad for the familiar ground. “I haven’t seen him.”
“Typical,” he remarked.
Faith turned in her chair to look at Will. His nose was still bruised, a sliver of blue tracing beneath his right eye. “Did you really grow up in foster care?”
He didn’t register the question. His face stayed blank.
“I’m sorry,” she apologized, just as he answered, “Yes.”
Will leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. Faith waited for him to say something, but he seemed to be doing the same thing with her.
She blurted out, “Moms I’d like to fuck.”
“What?”
“That first day with Jeremy. You asked me what a MILF is. It stands for ‘Moms I’d Like to Fuck.’ ” He narrowed his eyes, probably trying to put it into context. He must have remembered, because he said, “Ouch.”
“Yeah,” Faith agreed.
Will clasped his hands together. He twisted around his watch and checked the time. Instead of making a comment, pulling some small talk out of the air, he simply stared at the floor. She saw that his shoes were scuffed, the hem of his pants caked with dirt from climbing under the fence to the North Avenue house.
“What did Warren say to you?” she asked. “I know that he said something. I saw the way your face changed.”
Will kept staring at the floor. She thought he was not going to answer, but he did. “Colors.”
Faith did not believe him any more now than she had before. “He told you the colors on the file folders?”
“It’s a trick,” he answered. “Remember what Bernard said, about how dyslexics are good at hiding their problem from other people?” He looked back at her. “The colors tell you what’s inside the folders.”
With all that had happened in the last few hours, Faith had almost forgotten her earlier revelation about Will’s inability to read. She thought about the psych evaluation Will had shoved in Warren’s face, the way he had pressed his finger to each differently colored dot as he called out the findings. Will had never looked at the words. He had let the colors guide him.
“What about the last sheet?” she asked. “Warren was functionally illiterate. He had some ability to read. Why couldn’t he see that it was a dress-code memo?”
Will kept his eyes trained at the wall opposite. “When you get upset, it’s harder to see the words. They move around. They blur.”
So Faith wasn’t crazy, after all. Will did have some sort of reading problem. She thought about the way he always patted his pockets, looking for his glasses, when there was something to read. He hadn’t noticed the rural route address on Adam Humphrey’s license or read the Web page on Bernard’s computer that talked about teacher retirement. Still, she had to admit if you stacked him up against Leo Donnelly or any other man in the homicide division, he came out the better cop.
She asked, “What other tricks would Warren use?”
“A digital recorder. Voice recognition software. Spell-check.”
Faith wondered if she could have been any more blind. She was supposed to be a detective and she had missed all of the obvious signs right under her nose. “Is that why Warren fixated on the colors?” she asked. “Did he see the different colors on your file folders and figure out you—”
“Colors,” Will interrupted. “He said the colors.” A big, sloppy grin spread across his face. “That’s what Warren was trying to tell me.”
“What?”
He stood up, excitement replacing exhaustion. “We need to go to the copy center.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Will walked down through the cells, not looking at the crime-scene tape covering the open doorway where Warren Grier had hanged himself. He could feel the cold stares of the prisoners follow him to the end of the hall. There were the usual sounds of jail: men talking trash, other men weeping.
Evan Bernard was in one of the larger holding cells. Men who raped young girls were always targeted by other prisoners. The ones who were attached to sensational cases could pretty much kiss their lives good-bye. The transgendered cell was the only safe place for a man like Bernard. The women were usually arrested for crimes of circumstance: stealing food, public vagrancy. Most of them were too feminine to get construction work and too masculine to turn tricks. Like Evan Bernard, they would have been torn apart in the general population.
The teacher had his hands hanging outside the bars, his elbows on the supports. The cell was a large one, at least fifteen feet wide. Beds were stacked three high across the space. As he walked up, Will noticed that the women were all huddled around a single bunk, as if they, too, could not stand the sight of Evan Bernard.
Will had a sheet folded up under his arm. The material was thick prison issue, bleached and starched to within an inch of its life. When he propped it up between the bars, it stayed that way.
Bernard made a point of looking at the sheet. “Poor kid. The girls are crazy upset.”
Will glanced into the cell. The girls looked ready to rip him apart.
Bernard said, “I’m not talking to you without my lawyer present.”
“I don’t want you to talk,” Will said. “I want you to listen.”
He shrugged. “Nothing else to pass the time.”
“Do you know how he did it? How he strangled himself?”
“I assumed he was the victim of some sort of police brutality.”
Will smiled. “Do you want to know or not?”
Bernard raised his eyebrow, as if to say, Go on.
Will took down the sheet, unfolding it. He explained as he worked. “It’s hard to figure out, right? It doesn’t make sense that you can asphyxiate yourself just sitting on the floor.” He looped the sheet through his hand, wrapping the material around his arm.
“What you do is, you tie one end around the doorknob, and then you loop it around your neck like this.” Will jerked the sheet tight, his skin pressing out between the folds. “You kneel down with your head close to the knob, and then you start breathing really fast and really hard until you hyperventilate.”
Bernard smiled, as if he finally understood.
“And then, just before you pass out, you kick your legs out from underneath yourself.” Will pulled the sheet away. “And then you wait.”
“It wouldn’t take lo
ng,” Bernard said.
“No, just a few minutes.”
“Is that why you came down here, Mr. Trent, to tell me this tragic tale?”
“I came down here to tell you that you were right about something.”
“You’ll have to narrow that down for me. I’ve been right about so many things.”
Will looped the sheet through the bars, letting the material hang down either side. “You told me that dyslexics were good at developing tricks so that they can blend in with everybody else. True?”
“True.”
“It got me to thinking about Warren, because that day he went to Emma Campano’s house, there were lots of things for him to remember.” Will listed them out. “What time Kayla was going to let him into the house. Where Emma’s room was. How many pairs of gloves to bring. Where to transfer her from one car to the other.”
Bernard shook his head. “This is fascinating, Mr. Trent, but what on earth does it have to do with me?”
“Well,” Will began, digging in his jacket pocket for his digital recorder. “Since Warren couldn’t write down lists, he made recordings.” Bernard shook his head again. He wouldn’t have recognized the recorder because it belonged to Will. “Warren used his cell phone to make recordings,” Will explained. “He transferred them to compact discs that he kept filed along with customer artwork at the copy store.”
Bernard seemed less sure of himself.
“Blue, red, purple, green,” Will repeated. “That was the sequence he used for his discs.” He clicked on the player. Evan Bernard’s voice was easily distinguishable. “No, Warren, the rope and tape will be in the trunk. Kayla will give you the keys.”
Warren mumbled, “I know, I know.”
On the tape, Bernard was obviously agitated. “No, you don’t know. You need to listen to what I’m saying. If you do this right, none of us will get caught.”
A girl’s voice they had verified was Kayla Alexander’s, said, “You want me to write it down for you, Warren? You want me to make a list?”
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