Karin Slaughter - Blindsighted

He gave her his cell phone number before ringing off.

"What's the dorm number?" Frank asked as they drove through the gates of the college.

Jeffrey took out his notepad, flipping back a few pages. "Twelve," he said. "She's in Jefferson Hall."

The Town Car fishtailed as he stopped in front of the dormitory. Jeffrey was out the door and up the steps in a flash. He pounded his fist on the door to number twelve, throwing it open when there was no answer.

"Oh, Jesus," Jenny Price said, grabbing a sheet to cover herself. A boy Jeffrey had never seen before jumped up from the bed, slipping on his pants in one practiced movement.

"Get out," Jeffrey told him, walking toward Julia Matthews's side of the room. Nothing had been moved since he had been here last time.

Jeffrey did not imagine Matthews's parents felt much like going through their dead daughters things.

Jenny Price was dressed, more bold than she had been the day before. "What are you doing here?" she demanded.

Jeffrey ignored her question, searching through clothes and books.

Jenny repeated the question, this time to Frank.

"Police business," he mumbled from the hallway.

Jeffrey turned the room upside down in seconds. There had not been much to begin with, and as with the search before, nothing new turned up. He stopped, looking around the room, trying to find what he was missing. He was turning to search the closet again when he noticed a stack of books by the door. A thin film of mud covered the spines. They had not been there the first time Jeffrey had searched the room. He would have remembered them.

He asked, "What are those?"

Jenny followed his gaze. "The campus police brought those by," she explained. "They were Julia's."

Jeffrey clenched his fist, wanting to pound something. "They brought them by here?" he asked, wondering why he was surprised. Grant Tech's campus security force was comprised of mostly middle-aged deputy dogs who hadn't a brain between them.

The girl explained, "They found them outside the library."

Jeffrey forced his hands to unclench, bending at the knee to examine the books. He thought about putting gloves on before touching them, but it was not as if a chain of custody had been maintained.

The Biology of Microorganisms was on top of the stack, flecks of mud scattered along the front cover. Jeffrey picked up the book, thumbing through the pages. On page twenty-three, he found what he was looking for. The word CUNT was printed in bold red marker across the page.

"Oh my God," Jenny breathed, hand to her mouth.

Jeffrey left Frank to seal off the room. Instead of driving to the science lab where Sibyl worked, he jogged across the campus, going the opposite direction he had gone with Lena just a few days ago. Again, he took the stairs two at a time; again, he did not bother to wait for an answer to his knock outside Sibyl Adams's lab.

"Oh," Richard Carter said, looking up from a notebook. "What can I do for you?"

Jeffrey leaned his hand on the closest desk, trying to catch his breath. "Was there anything," he began, "unusual the day Sibyl Adams was killed?"

Carters face took on an exasperated expression. Jeffrey wanted to smack it off him, but he refrained.

Carter said in a self-righteous tone, "I told you before, there was nothing out of the ordinary. She's dead, Chief Tolliver, don't you think that I'd mention something unusual?"

"Maybe a word was written on something," Jeffrey suggested, not wanting to give too much away. It was amazing what people thought they remembered if you asked them the right way. "Did you see something written on one of her notebooks? Maybe she had something she kept close by that someone tampered with?"

Carter's face fell. Obviously, he remembered something. "Now that you mention it," he began, "just before her early class on Monday, I saw something written on the chalkboard." He crossed his arms over his large chest. "Kids think it's funny to pull those kinds of pranks. She was blind, so she couldn't really see what they were doing."

"What did they do?"

"Well, someone, I don't know who, wrote the word cunt on the blackboard."

"This was Monday morning?"

"Yes."

"Before she died?"

He had the decency to look away before answering, "Yes."

Jeffrey stared at the top of Richard's head for a moment, fighting the urge to pummel him. He said, "If you had told me this last Monday, do you realize Julia Matthews might be alive?"

Richard Carter did not have an answer for that.

Jeffrey left, slamming the door behind him. He was making his way down the steps when his cell phone rang. He answered on the first ring. "Tolliver."

Mary Ann Moon got right to the point. "I'm in the records department right now, looking at the list. It's everybody who worked on the first-floor emergency department, from the doctors to the custodians."

"Go ahead," Jeffrey said, closing his eyes, blocking out her Yankee twang as she called out the first, middle, and last names of the men who had worked with Sara. It took her a full five minutes to read them all. After the last one, Jeffrey was silent.

Moon asked, "Anybody on there sound familiar?"

"No," Jeffrey responded. "Fax the list to my office if you don't mind." He gave her the number, feeling as if he had been punched in the stomach. His mind conjured the image of Lena again, nailed to a basement floor, terrified.

Moon prompted, "Chief?"

"I'll have some of my guys cross-reference it with voter polls and the phone book." He paused, debating whether or not to go on. Finally, good breeding won out. "Thank you," he said. "For looking that list up."

Moon did not give him her customary abrupt good-bye. She said, "I'm sorry the names didn't ring any bells."

"Yeah," he answered, checking his watch. "Listen, I can be back in Atlanta in around four hours. Do you think I can get some time alone with Wright?"

There was another hesitation, then, "He was attacked this morning."

"What?"

"Seems the guards at the lockup didn't think he deserved his own cell."

"You promised to keep him out of the general population."

"I know that," she snapped. "It's not like I can control what happens when he goes back inside. You of all people should know those good old boys operate by their own rules."

Considering Jeffrey's behavior yesterday with Jack Wright, he was in no position to defend himself.

"He'll be out of it for a while," Moon said. "They cut him up pretty bad."

He muttered a curse under his breath. "He didn't give you anything after I left?"

"No."

"Is he sure it's somebody who worked in the hospital?"

"No, as a matter of fact."

"It's somebody who saw her at the hospital," Jeffrey said. "Who would see her at the hospital without working there?" He put his free hand over his eyes, trying to think. "Can you pull patient files from there?"

"Like charts?" She sounded dubious. "That's probably pushing it."

"Just names," he said. "Just that day. April twenty-third."

"I know the day."

"Can you?"

She obviously had covered the mouthpiece on the phone, but he could still hear her talking to someone. After a few beats, she was back on the line. "Give me an hour, hour and a half."

Jeffrey suppressed the groan that wanted to come. An hour was a lifetime. Instead, he said, "I'll be here."

LENA heard a door open somewhere. She lay there on the floor, waiting for him, because that's all she could do. When Jeffrey had told her Sibyl was dead, Lena's main focus had been on finding out who had killed Sibyl, on bringing him to justice. She had wanted nothing more than to find the bastard and send him to the chair. Those thoughts had so obsessed her from day one that she had not had time to stop and grieve. Not one day had been spent mourning the loss of her sister. Not one hour had gone by where she had stopped and taken the time to reflect on her loss.