“Picking over the corpse, as you call it, is how cops solve cases. I don’t want to have to do that for another one of your students. I sure as hell don’t want to have to do it for you.”
“Andrea isn’t a case, Jace. She committed suicide. The police aren’t responsible for determining why.”
“We are if her death has a bearing on another, on-going investigation.”
So that, too, was part of the equation. Jace had implied Andrea’s suicide hadn’t been an isolated act. Not a coincidence that just happened to have occurred during the same week someone had attacked Lindsey. Twice.
“You still think all this is connected?”
“All this?”
“Me and the church fires, maybe.” She had already conceded that because Jace was the lead investigator on those, they must have something to do with the attacks on her. “But Andrea? I told you that doesn’t make any sense.”
“Maybe not, but at least read this.” He again indicated the screen with a tilt of his head. “All of it. All the comments.
Then
tell me it makes no sense.”
Despite her reluctance, she knew that eventually she would have to do what he’d asked. If not tonight, then another night when she couldn’t sleep. Alone. In a house that had become anything
but
the sanctuary it should be.
“Not with you here.” She didn’t want him looking over her shoulder, examining her every expression, reading into them things that she didn’t want him to see. “Go get some sleep, Jace. I promise I’ll wake you when I’ve read it all.”
T
he fact that he didn’t hear the bedroom door open indicated the depth of his exhaustion. It wasn’t until Lindsey called his name that he began to climb out of the pit of sleep. By the time she said it again, the events of last night flooded back into his consciousness. Adrenaline roared into his system, bringing him awake and upright at almost the same time.
Lindsey must have been leaning over the bed. When he bolted up, the Glock he’d laid beside the pillow clutched in his right hand, she began backing away, her eyes wide.
“What’s wrong?” he demanded.
Wordlessly, she shook her head, staring at the weapon.
No threat, he realized belatedly. That wasn’t why she was here. Which meant…“You read it?”
She nodded, her eyes leaving the Glock to dart to his face.
“And?”
He lowered the semiautomatic. His impression had always been that everyone down here was comfortable around guns. Based on Lindsey’s reaction that wasn’t true. Or maybe she just wasn’t accustomed to having them pointed at her.
“She didn’t do it.”
Jace examined the sentence, trying to figure out the context, given that there were a couple of scenarios where the phrase “didn’t do it” might apply.
“Didn’t do what?” he asked carefully.
“That blog. Or any of them. Anything on that page. I’d bet my life that isn’t Andrea’s writing.”
The wording was unfortunate, considering the stakes, but he ignored the unintended irony. “Writing a blog is a very different animal from writing an essay.”
“I know. But there are all kinds of indications of authorship. In any kind of writing. The phrasing. Vocabulary. A lot of other things I probably couldn’t explain to someone who doesn’t read papers for a living. I’ve read Andrea’s work for more than a year. She didn’t write that filth.”
He had set out to show Lindsey the image she had of her student as shy and retiring wasn’t accurate. Now she was telling him that the person portrayed in the online profile he’d found wasn’t just a different side of the girl she’d known. It had actually been created by someone else.
“Are you sure?”
It wasn’t that he didn’t believe her. She seemed too sure for him to doubt what she claimed as her area of expertise. He just needed some time to understand the implications.
“She didn’t write it, Jace. I know.”
“And the picture?”
Her eyes changed, losing their surety. “I…don’t know. Photo-shopped maybe? Andrea’s head on some other girl’s body?”
Could it be determined if that had been done from a picture on the Web? He knew there were plenty of people who could tell about an actual photograph, but he didn’t know how difficult that kind of manipulation, if it were well done, would be to spot on a computer screen.
“I don’t know, but now that you mention it…”
He let the sentence trail as he got out of bed and crossed the room to the hall. When he reached the doorway to the second bedroom, he discovered his computer had gone to sleep while they’d been talking. He walked over and jiggled the mouse, only to find that Lindsey had clicked out of the site he’d left her to read. Her way of dealing with its graphic nature?
He sat down in the desk chair, still warm from contact with her body, and brought it up again. Even after a careful examination of the picture of Andrea, at this resolution he couldn’t tell if it had been manipulated or not.
Whoever had put this up had to have a modicum of technical know-how. Most high-school kids these days had quite a bit, and he would be willing to bet some of Lindsey’s students would qualify as experts. There were always a few who got off on this kind of stuff.
He couldn’t think of anyone he could call on in the sheriff’s department to verify her suspicions about the picture. A few of the deputies fancied themselves computer experts, but he didn’t know if that expertise would spill over into determining if an image had been doctored.
“She wasn’t that kind of person,” Lindsey said from behind him. “Did you read all of that garbage?”
“Enough.”
She moved nearer, so that she was standing in his peripheral vision. He glanced up at her, but her eyes were focused on the screen. She leaned down and toward the monitor, examining the image.
“Could this be a prom picture?” he asked. “Or a shot from a modeling portfolio? She have aspirations in that direction?”
Without straightening, Lindsey turned her head. They were eye-to-eye, their faces in closer proximity than they’d ever been before. The urge to lean forward the few inches that separated them and put his lips against hers was almost undeniable. It seemed he could feel them under his. Soft and warm and open to his kiss.
“I don’t know.” She straightened, breaking the spell. “If she did, she never said anything to me about them.”
“I’ll ask her mother.”
“Don’t show her this, Jace. Not now.”
“You don’t think she might be aware of this already?”
“I can’t imagine her knowing and not doing something about it. I can’t imagine any mother letting this stay up.”
Then she hadn’t been exposed to the kind of parents he’d met. He’d known women who would have written that stuff about their daughters. And who would then have sold them to the highest bidder to satisfy their addictions.
“Andrea wouldn’t do the kinds of things described here,” Lindsey said. “I know you didn’t know her, but…she really was shy. That,” she nodded at the monitor. “That wasn’t her.”
“Then someone put the site up in her name.”
“Can they do that?”
“All the time. These places don’t require an ID. Anybody can get a space and then fill it with whatever they want.”
“But why would they do that to Andrea? Why write things that vicious? All that sexual detail. As if she were nothing but a…” She stopped again, clearly unwilling to characterize the dead girl in the way she’d been represented on the site.
“As a joke,” Jace suggested. “Hazing. Or bullying.”
“It ought to be against the law.”
Her tone said he was in charge of that. He doubted she wanted to hear all the reasons local law enforcement couldn’t police both the Internet and the streets.
“It takes a while for the law to catch up with the technology, which is changing too rapidly.”
“Do you think this had something to do with her death? That and the pregnancy rumor, maybe? Or that this is where that rumor originated? You did know about that, right?”
“Several people told me. Would she have come to talk to you about something like that?”
“About being pregnant? Or the site?”
“Either. Both.”
“I don’t know. All I know is she
didn’t
talk to me.”
“The kids ever talk at school about these profile sites?”
“Of course. Somebody will say something about what they’ve put up. Pictures or something. A blog. Some of them maintain their own sites, too, I think, separate from the group ones.”
“Would you be comfortable asking your students about this?”
“Andrea’s profile?” She had started shaking her head before she finished her answer. “All that would do is point it out to people who
haven’t
seen it. Do you think we can get them to take it down? Considering the circumstances.”
Considering the fact Andrea was dead.
Jace knew he could lean on the owners to accomplish that.
After
he’d leaned on them to find who’d put this up.
“I’ll see what I can do. In the meantime I’d appreciate your help with your kids. If you don’t want to ask all of them, then choose a couple you trust. Ask if this particular profile was being talked about at school. If they all knew about it. Or maybe more importantly, if Andrea did. Will you do that?”
He could ask those questions, of course, but they would be more forthcoming with Lindsey. Oftentimes, if a suspect trusted the interrogator, he’d add things he
wasn’t
asked.
“I’ll be glad to. As soon as it’s down,” she said, her tone adamant. “I’m not going to take a chance on word getting out about this and having hundreds of people rush to view it.”
He wasn’t sure how quickly he could accomplish what she wanted. But Lindsey wouldn’t have an opportunity to interact with her students until Monday anyway. Which reminded him of something else he needed to ask.
“You recognize any of the names attached to the comments?”
“Most of them don’t
have
names. Just a nickname or a picture. Or some kind of icon. Those that did, the names were so common I couldn’t connect them with any particular student.”
“We need to make a list of them anyway.”
“I can do that.”
“And you’ll talk to the kids about how many people knew about this?”
“I’ll ask, but I’ll be selective.”
“Could you call them this weekend? Talk to them over the phone, maybe?”
“As soon as you get this filth about Andrea taken down.”
He’d dropped Lindsey back at home on his way to the address David Campbell had given him over the phone. There had been half a dozen things about last night he knew he needed to follow up on. With the couple of hours of sleep he’d managed to grab while Lindsey read through the profile he’d shown her, he believed he’d remembered most of them.
First on his agenda was an interview with the kid who, according to the principal, had been charged with cutting off the lights. Campbell had assured Jace that his instructions had been clear that only the lights on the field were to be killed.
The principal had asked about Lindsey, saying that he’d tried to call her last night and had not gotten an answer. Jace had been noncommittal about the reason for that.
In his opinion, it was no one’s business where Lindsey spent the night. With her concerns about her neighbors, however, and his own uncertainty about the culture of school politics in this district, he’d not been inclined to reassure her boss about her safety by telling him the truth.
He pulled up in front of a neat two-story colonial, checking the address on the mailbox against what he’d written in his notebook. According to Campbell, Steven Byrd was one of the most dependable kids in the senior class. A fine, upstanding young man who had applied to Duke and had a very good chance of being accepted.
And yet he can’t manage to carry out a simple order without screwing it up?
Putting his cynicism on hold, Jace climbed out of his car and walked up to the front door. He pressed the bell and then waited, idly examining the neatly trimmed shrubbery along the front of the house.
He turned when the door opened. The boy who stood just inside the threshold was heavyset, with a shock of brown hair in need of a trim. Behind the thick glasses he wore, the blue eyes widened when he saw Jace, a reaction that he quickly controlled.
“Steven Byrd?”
“That’s right.”
Jace removed his badge holder from the front pocket of his jacket, flipping it open to show his ID. “Detective Nolan. I’d like to talk to you.”
The kid took his case, making a show of studying it.
“May I come in?” Jace asked when he finally handed it back. “I have some questions I think you can provide answers to.”
“Is this about what happened last night?”
“That’s right.”
“Could we talk out here?” The boy took a step toward Jace, pulling the door almost closed behind him. “My mom’s asleep. She works nights.”
“She work last Tuesday?”
There was no reaction this time except a slight puzzlement when the kid repeated, “
Tuesday
night?”
“PTA meeting at the school.”
The kid looked relieved. “She went before work.”
“And where did
you
go Tuesday night?”
“I didn’t go anywhere. I was studying.”
If Steven Byrd had been involved in putting the rattlesnake in Lindsey’s hamper, nothing about his face gave him away. Jace didn’t believe anyone this age could be that good an actor. Or that practiced a liar.
“I understand you’re the one who cut off the lights at the stadium last night.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Who told you to do that?”
“Renee asked me if I could do it, and I said sure.”
“Renee?”
“Renee Bingham. She’s the head cheerleader.”
“You talk to Mr. Campbell before you cut the lights?”
“Just Renee. She said she’d talked to him, and he’d said it was okay. They wanted to do the candlelight thing for Andrea.”
“What did she tell you about the lights, Steve? Exactly.”
“Just to cut them off. She said she’d signal me from the field when it was time. She said to watch her after the band got through, and she’d cue me when I was supposed to kill them.”
“She didn’t tell you
just
the stadium lights?”
“No, sir. I understood her to say all of them.”
“You remember her exact words?”
“Can you cut off all the lights? Something like that.” He seemed less certain this time. “To tell you the truth, I didn’t think it was important enough to memorize what she said.”
For some reason that touch of sarcasm infuriated Jace. Maybe it was his exhaustion. Or the fact that, despite denying the need to fill the prescription for pain meds he’d been given last night, the burns on his chest and arms hurt like hell.
“You
did
hear what happened at the ticket booth while those lights were out?”
“Yes, sir.”
Apparently the kid was bright enough to read Jace’s face. The tone he’d used seconds ago was missing this time.
“Somebody set fire to it. With Ms. Sloan inside,” Jace went on as if he hadn’t spoken. “So I’m thinking that the instructions you received might be important enough for you to try and remember the exact words.”
“I think that’s what she said. I’m sure of it. ‘Cut off all the lights.’ That’s what I did. If Mr. Campbell told her something else, you need to talk to Renee.”
“Yeah? So you think she’s the one who got it wrong.”
“Yes, sir,” the boy said, refusing to back down. “And I’m sorry about what happened to the booth. Ms. Sloan is my favorite teacher. Believe me, if I’d had any idea anything like that was going to happen—”
His eyes briefly considered the burn on Jace’s cheek before they met and then held on his. There didn’t seem to be any attempt at deception in their clear blue depths.