Pattern of Wounds

by J. Bertrand

  I did say something, but it was not to her liking. She gave me a slap on the cheek and said, You want me to tell Mama so she can wash your mouth out with soap? If suffocation was my other option, then yes, I would have taken the soap. But I kept my mouth shut this time. Okay, then. You’re forcing me to do it.

  She didn’t press hard enough at first. I turned my face to catch a pocket of air, and I remember thinking I could hold out forever, that nothing she could do would break me. Then she readjusted her grip, getting a good seal over my nose and mouth. After a few seconds I really panicked, bucking so hard that Tammy came off the bed and cracked her lip on the toy chest next to the dresser. I scrambled out of bed, but with her on the floor between me and the door, I didn’t know where to go.

  Tammy got to her feet and touched her fingers to her lip to check for blood. Then she saw me crouched for action in my underwear and started to laugh. Never mind. We’re even now. If you wanna take it out on anybody, it’s Moody’s fault for running away. She came over and tried to ruffle my hair, pretending like she was one of the adults. I would have popped her right there, only the braves don’t hurt women, and I was still scared of her, too.

  None of this is on her website, of course. Her account of Moody’s disappearance omits me entirely—not that I’d have it any other way. She writes in her best approximation of a journalistic tone, citing the time when her parents left, their return, the initial call to the police station. Teenage runaways not being a departmental priority at that time, my uncle rousted a sergeant he knew out of bed, which resulted in the arrival of a single squad car. Some men from the neighborhood organized a search, driving in two cars from our house all the way to Heights Boulevard, but no one spotted Moody. Maybe he’d run away, but more likely he was at a friend’s house or even with a girl. That’s what they told themselves to justify getting to bed.

  Throughout her account, Tammy refers to other victims of Dean Corll, noting the similarities in police response. Like so many of their parents, it never occurred to Moody’s that he’d been abducted for purposes of torture and murder by a local sex deviant and his teenage accomplices. Even my uncle, with his policeman’s knowledge of the world, didn’t imagine anything like that.

  But Tammy says otherwise. In her version, she had heard rumors in the neighborhood. She had noted the strange epidemic of runaways, boys her brother’s age and younger who were among us one day and gone the next. She knew from the beginning that her brother had been taken, and was tireless in searching for him. For the past thirty-six years she has thought of nothing else. Or so she claims.

  In fact, the assumption was always that Moody had run off. He’d been working at the gun shop one day a week—a fact that made me as jealous as the ten-speed did—and after he left, so did a nickel-plated Smith & Wesson Model 66. The bike was never seen again, either, though I recall my uncle joking that he wouldn’t get very far on that. I could have told him what happened to the bike, but I didn’t, not for many years.

  Why Moody had run off was a topic of speculation early on. Not knowing left each of his parents free to shoulder the blame. My aunt upped her intake of bourbon and lowered her Sunday attendance, letting the rest of us off the hook entirely. My uncle bottled up the frustration and didn’t let it out until three years later when with my own eyes I saw him shoot a man down. A black man with an unloaded shotgun who’d walked into the gun store by mistake, not realizing the jewelry store was one door down. My uncle got the drop on him and could have let him run. But he didn’t.

  Only Tammy remained unscathed. The one true thing in her online account is this: I remember right away that she insisted on Moody’s being dead. At dinner one night (before we stopped having dinner together as a family), she suggested that we have a big funeral for him, volunteering to organize everything and to sing during the ceremony. Her mother went pale and got up from the table. Her father dabbed his lips with a handkerchief, looking at us both with a hangdog expression, then followed after her to the bedroom.

  “Roland,” Charlotte says. “What are you doing?”

  She stands in the doorway, silhouetted from behind, then moves closer when she sees what’s on the screen. Leaning over my shoulder, her necklace gracing my skin, she scrolls down the page, making a clucking sound with her tongue.

  “What in the world are you reading this for?”

  “Research.”

  She kisses me on the temple. “Well, don’t research too long.”

  She leaves a trace of scent on the air behind her, and I feel almost blessed to have this woman in my life. Almost as if in marrying her I’ve ducked a terrible destiny, though not entirely. Perhaps it’s just that in Charlotte, despite our problems, I have someone to share the pain with, a partner in suffering.

  Before closing the laptop, I skim through my email inbox, deleting the junk and the forwards and the solicitations for porn. My finger hits the key automatically, the messages disappearing as I read them. The name in one address catches my eye, then vanishes.

  SIMONE_WALKER

  I open the trash folder to make sure I read that right. The address is real. The message title sends a chill through me: THE RUMORS OF MY DEATH . . .

  I open the message.

  HI DETECTIVE,

  GUESS WHAT HAPPENED. IM DEAD THATS WHAT.

  THE RUMORS WERE NOT EXAGGERATED ONE BIT.

  DO YOU LIKE MY NAKED BODY. I CAUGHT YOU LOOKING.

  MAN THAT WAS COLD. SEE YOU SOON.

  LOVE, SIMONE

  SATURDAY, DECEMBER 12 — 12:22 A.M.

  The car pulls up on the curb outside and through the blinds I see two men getting out. Eric Castro, my go-to source when I want special favors from the crime scene unit, and a squat, curly-haired guy in an inside-out T-shirt who looks like he’s about to wake up any minute. I open the door before Castro can knock.

  “Shh,” I say. “My wife’s asleep upstairs.”

  After creeping into the office on tiptoes and shutting the French doors behind us, Castro introduces me to Quincy Hanford, dubbing him a computer genius. I shake hands with the genius and motion him into my chair. The email is still on-screen.

  “I want to know two things,” I say. “First, is this legit? Anybody can make up an email address, and the victim’s name has been all over the papers. Second, if it is legit, I want to know if we can trace it back to the source.”

  Hanford skims his finger over the trackpad, pulling down a menu, and suddenly the email converts into code.

  “Okay,” he says. “Looking at the long header info gives us the IP address. That’s the easy part. I’m going to forward this to myself, if that’s all right.”

  “Fine. What’s the hard part?”

  “Castro says your vic’s laptop was stolen from the scene, is that right? So what you really want to know is whether this email is from the offender. Is he now using her computer to initiate some kind of cat-and-mouse game with the investigating officer?”

  Cat-and-mouse game. I query Castro with a raised eyebrow—Is this guy for real?—and he replies with a nod of reassurance.

  “That’s what I’m asking,” I say.

  “Do you know your victim’s email address?”

  “I can easily find out.”

  “You might want to do that, then. If she was using this address prior to her death, then your first question is pretty much answered. As far as where he sent it from, that’s where things get tricky.” He opens a new web browser, types in an address, then pastes the IP number into a field. “I can do this more easily from my own computer, but let’s see what we can get for free.” The web page refreshes with a location map of southeast Texas, a thumbtack marking Houston. “So that tells us something. The IP is local, and there’s the provider. You have a good relationship with Comcast?”

  “Does anyone?” I ask. “Don’t get me started on Comcast.”

  Castro grins in sympathy. “They’re unbelievable. I tried upgrading to HDTV—”

  “I’m just kidding,”
Hanford says, without a trace of mirth. “What you need is a good relationship with a judge. I have some contacts over there, but I’m guessing they’ll want to see a subpoena before letting anything go.”

  “What will they be able to tell us?”

  Hanford seesaws his hand back and forth. “Sometimes they come back with a little, sometimes with a lot. Best case scenario would be that your killer sent this from his living room using his own network, and they come back with a name and address.”

  “That’ll work.”

  “Don’t hold your breath or anything. That’s a best case scenario, like I said.”

  “Detective March understands all that, Quincy.” From Castro’s impatient tone, I can tell he’s anxious for his friend to make a good impression. “If the killer really is using her laptop, that means he’s mobile and time is of the essence.”

  I check my watch. “It’s half past midnight, boys. Getting you two out of bed is one thing, but I’m not making any late night calls to a judge.”

  “Tell you what,” Hanford says, rising from the chair. “Let me work on this and give you a call later on. Maybe I can make something happen through back channels.”

  “Music to my ears.”

  I usher them out with whispered promises to stay by the phone. As the door closes, Charlotte calls from the top of the stairs.

  “Do I hear voices down there?”

  “Just the TV,” I say. “I’ll be up in a little while.”

  I return to my office, pull up a saved file to use as a template, and start typing up a subpoena for the cable company and a search warrant just in case, leaving the location and specifications blank.

  Two hours later, Hanford calls my cell number with news. When he said he had contacts, the man wasn’t kidding. I can tell from the tautness in his voice that he’s outdone himself.

  “This gets pretty complicated,” he says.

  “We can cut to the chase.”

  “It’s kind of impressive, though. They’ve got the email server set up to call a real-time blacklist service—a third-party spam blocker—and that communication actually gives us a snapshot in time. If you get a subpoena, you can have a look at that snapshot.”

  “Okay,” I say, a little disappointed.

  A tone of triumph enters his voice: “And when you do, here’s what it’s going to tell you. The static IP belongs to the router in the victim’s house. Dr. Joy Hill is the cable customer, and this message came through her router.”

  “You really are a genius. I owe you one.”

  “So what you’ll need to do is, get your judge to sign off on the subpoena and a search warrant for the premises. You can—”

  “Thanks, Quincy. I can take it from here.”

  Now he’s the disappointed one, but I don’t have time to comfort him. I get him off the phone with profuse thanks and dial Bascombe, and when he doesn’t answer I go for Hedges, whose home number is programmed into my phone. I get voicemail, redial, get voicemail again, and redial. When he answers, he doesn’t sound happy to hear from me.

  “This is important or I wouldn’t have called.”

  The deeper I get into the story—the email, the forensic results, Dr. Hill’s network—the more awake Hedges gets, and the more agitated.

  “You’re doing this intentionally,” he says in a half whisper, half hiss.

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “What part of ‘hold off on this’ did you not understand? Come Monday morning, you can do your worst, but—”

  “Sir, I didn’t do anything. I received an email from my victim’s missing computer, and when a judge signs off on the paperwork, I’ll be able to prove it originated from Dr. Hill’s house. How am I not supposed to act on that?”

  I hear his feet pounding, a door shutting behind him, and then he’s free to dispense with the whispers. “This is the story you want running on election day, March? Is that what you’re telling me? If this is your way of taking a shot at me, you better get one thing straight: when I hit back you’ll be down on the mat.”

  “Election day . . . I forgot about that.”

  “Of course you did. And now that I’ve reminded you, I’m guessing it makes no difference. Wait one day and I’ll support you on this.”

  “I can’t, sir. The longer I wait, the more time she has to dispose of the laptop.”

  “Does this have to be adversarial? Couldn’t you just ask her for consent to search? You got the husband to consent without a warrant.”

  “And if she says no, then what? The last thing I want to do is get on your bad side, but if I don’t follow this up immediately, I’m not doing my job. I promise you there won’t be any leaks to the media. They’ll have their hands full anyway staking out the polling places. This will not come back on you, sir. You have my word on that.”

  He lets out a long sigh. “It better not, March.”

  “Thank you, sir. I’ll email the warrant—”

  “Don’t thank me yet. I’m gonna back you on this. I’m gonna make the necessary calls and if need be irritate some very important people. And if the end result is, you seize your missing laptop and charge a suspect, then fine. You rolled the dice and won. But, March, if you don’t charge a suspect, if you don’t close this case for good, then I’m gonna whip you like a dog until you beg for mercy. Understood?”

  “Like a dog, sir. Understood.”

  I slip upstairs to grab my coat, kissing Charlotte on the forehead before I go. The night air is cool and wet enough for the streetlamps along the road to have golden haloes. From the car I call Aguilar and leave another message for Bascombe.

  Ten minutes later, I pull up just in front of the neighbor’s Maserati down the street from Joy Hill’s house, waiting for a green light from the boss.

  In the dawn’s early light, I present a bleary-eyed and possibly hung-over Dr. Hill with the hastily printed and even more hastily signed warrant, hand-delivered a few minutes earlier by Lt. Bascombe himself. Aguilar is with us and so are Castro and Hanford, last-minute invites in case any technical challenges arise.

  “You expect me to read this?” Hill says. “I’ll need my glasses.”

  “You can read it while we execute the search.”

  She lets us inside, pulling a terry-cloth robe tighter around her frame. “Should I make some coffee?”

  “If you like. Officer Castro here will keep you company in the kitchen.”

  Castro does a lousy job concealing his disappointment.

  We start upstairs, working our way from one end of the house to the other, opening drawers and emptying the contents of boxes, sifting through clothing and papers and the unlocked metal filing cabinets in Dr. Hill’s office. Bascombe stands around most of the time, arms crossed, smoldering in silence, leaving me to imagine the conversation he had with Hedges before arriving. Aguilar shines a flashlight under Hill’s bed, dragging a couple of plastic storage boxes into the light.

  While I busy myself with the bookshelves in the upstairs office, the lieutenant breathes down my neck. “You think there’s a computer hidden in one of these books?”

  “I just thought—”

  “I know what you thought, but the search warrant I brought over doesn’t say anything about The Kingwood Killing, so unless you have another one I don’t know about . . .”

  “Just making sure there’s nothing hidden behind the books.” I pull a few out at random and shine a light through the gap, eliciting a huff from Bascombe.

  Hanford eyes the laptop on the desk, but it’s the same one I remember from a week ago and doesn’t match the description of Simone Walker’s white plastic MacBook. He crouches under the desk and announces the router is down there.

  “Can you use that somehow to locate the laptop?” I ask.

  He looks at me like I’m a dinosaur fresh from prehistory, but then his eyes light up. “As a matter of fact . . .” Seating himself at Hill’s computer despite Bascombe’s grunt of protest, he starts clicking through preference set
tings with increasing intensity. “I’m checking to see who’s currently logged into the network.” More clicks, and then a sigh of disappointment. “Never mind. The only user on the network is this machine here. But let me check the router log.”

  The three of us gather behind him, waiting as he works.

  “Yes, here it is.” His finger runs down a column of data. “I’m betting that MAC address belongs to Simone Walker’s laptop, and it was on the network for about twenty minutes last night, logging off just before twelve.”

  “So it’s around here somewhere,” I say. “Make a copy of that information.”

  “I can make a forensic image of the system.”

  “Sounds great. Now let’s find that laptop.”

  The end of a case feels like the last moments of a race. You see the tape stretched across the finish line and you push yourself hard, knowing it will all be over before you know it. Mentally I’m already reading Dr. Hill her rights, already sweating her in an interview room. All my doubts about her disappear and the right questions come to me unbidden. I can already see the hooded eyes cutting sideways, unable to bear my gaze, and hear the nervous self-absorbed chatter. She’ll think she’s smarter than us, that she can talk her way out of anything, a conceit I will take advantage of in a thousand little ways, coaxing her to reveal more and more until her guilt is impossible to deny.

  Aguilar works his way through a linen closet in the hall while I look over his shoulder.