J. Bertrand - Pattern of Wounds

“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 settings 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.

“I didn’t think it would be her,” I say. “This isn’t a woman’s kind of crime. Or a professor’s.”

He sneers. “A person who’d force Shakespeare on kids will stoop to anything, man.”

I start in Simone’s room, retracing the ground I covered a week ago. Bascombe goes through the cabinets in the attached bath.

“This isn’t looking too good for Lauterbach’s serial killer theory,” I say.

He looks at me. “Have you found anything? ’Cause I haven’t.”

“Keep looking.”

After finishing upstairs we move to the ground floor. In the kitchen, Hill sits by the open glass doors, blowing cigarette smoke through the gap. When he sees me, Castro sets a coffee mug on the island and steps away from it, not wanting to look too cozy.

“It would be a lot easier,” I say, “if you just told us where the laptop is.”

She gives me a dry, reptilian smile. “For all I know it is here somewhere. But I haven’t seen it. I assumed you people had already checked.”

“Castro, come with me. We’re gonna have to pull all these books off the shelf.”

Hill follows us into the book-lined living room but offers no protest as I follow through on the threat, dislodging the books four and five at a time, dropping them on the floor.

“I didn’t have you pegged as a Philistine,” she says. “Are you planning to take them out front and burn them when you’re done?”

Ignoring this, I continue the search while Aguilar pulls cushions off the couches, unzips the covers, and runs his hands inside. Castro leaves after a while to assist Hanford upstairs, passing the lieutenant on the landing. Bascombe pulls me aside and speaks softly into my ear.

“If this turns out the way it’s looking, my advice is to make yourself scarce. Hedges says he’s gonna use your skin as a rug in front of his fireplace.”

The sun shines brightly outside before I’m ready to give up. The forensics techs are huddled on the curb along with Aguilar, and Bascombe waits at the threshold. I’m the last one out, still dazed at the lack of a result. The laptop was here. The email originated from here. But we’ve gone through the place with a fine-tooth comb and come up with nothing.

Dr. Hill follows me out like I’m a late-staying guest.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t be of more assistance,” she says.

Bascombe heads straight for his car, and after a pause Aguilar follows. I thank Castro and Hanford for their help.

“Look at this,” Hanford says, turning the screen of his smartphone so I can see. “I’m on her wireless network. Meaning anyone out here on the street could access it. He didn’t have to be inside the house. He could’ve pulled up in front, got the laptop out, and sent his message. Then he just drove away.”

“That’s great,” I say. “Thanks for sharing. I wish that had occurred to you a little sooner.”

“I’m sorry.”

The two techs stand there speechless, Hanford overwhelmed by what he must consider to be his own failure, not mine. I don’t have the heart to leave him writhing.

“No, don’t be. You’ve done a great job. I’m the one who screwed up. Well, boys, enjoy your Saturday. If anybody needs me, I’ll be lying in front of the fireplace.”

Their puzzled looks give me only the slightest satisfaction.

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 12–12:48 P.M.

Stephen Wilcox emerges through the elementary school’s glass double doors, the corduroy collar of his waxed cotton jacket turned up against the drizzle. He lopes along with his hands in his pockets, his chin jutting forward like a ship’s prow, zigzagging through a cluster of campaign supporters stationed at the perimeter of the school’s circular drive. He checks both ways before stepping into the street, making for the same Land Rover Discovery he’d bought used in 1999 around the time I first met him. He doesn’t notice me leaning against the hood, my heel hitched on the bumper.

“Doing your civic duty?” I ask.

He walks right by, yanking the driver’s door open and climbing in. I go around to the passenger side before he can activate the lock, hauling myself into the cracked leather seat.

“You look like the lord of the manor in this thing.”

“I don’t remember asking you to tag along.”

“Don’t kick me out just yet,” I say. “At least let me tell you why I’m here.”