Will turned back around, the grin on his face dropping when he saw what was on his monitor. The photo had finished downloading. The boy was probably sixteen, his hair long to his collar, his mouth in a half-smile that came automatically from having a camera stuck in your face at every holiday or family outing. He held a signboard in front of his narrow chest, the skin of his fingertips ragged where he’d bitten his nails down to the quick. Will did not try to read the sign; he knew it told a name, a date of conviction, a charge. The eyes were what gave the boy away. A lot could change from fifteen to thirty-five, but the eyes were constant: the almond shape of the opening, the variation of color in the iris, the long, long lashes that were almost like a girl’s.
The photo from the rap sheet Will had been about to read was still at his elbow. He held it up, thinking that there was no mistaking that the boy on the screen had grown up to be the felon in the photo.
Will pasted Caroline’s mail into the speech program. He turned up the sound to his speakers, then clicked the menu bar and scrolled down to speak. The words were slow and metallic, their content enough to make him feel like he had been punched in the gut.
The program finished. Will did not need to hear it a second time. He grabbed his car keys.
Angie’s lieutenant had told Will she was at a liquor store on Cheshire Bridge Road. Will found the store easily enough, but Angie was not among the prostitutes leaning against the building.
He said, “I’m looking for someone.”
“Me, too, handsome.”
“No,” Will said. He knew Angie didn’t go by her real name when she did this, but she had never told him her chosen alias. “She’s about five-eight. Brown hair, brown eyes. Olive skin.”
“Sounds like me, sweetheart.” This came from a short platinum blonde with a gap between her front teeth so pronounced that she whistled when she talked.
Another one said, “You looking for Robin, baby?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted, turning to the older woman. She had a black eye that was made worse by the makeup she had spackled over it.
“I’m Lola.” She pushed herself away from the wall. “You her brother?”
“Yes,” Will managed, not bothering to explain. “I need to talk to her.”
“Give it a minute, honey,” Lola soothed him. “She went back to the pokey with a date about ten minutes ago. She should be finishing up about now.”
“Thank you,” Will said. He tucked his hands into his pockets, realizing it was cold. He had been in such a hurry to leave the house that he hadn’t even brought his coat.
Behind him, a car door slammed. A woman got out and while Will was watching, she reached between her legs, wiped herself and shook out her hand. She saw Will, then glanced back at the other girls, a question in her eyes.
Lola provided, “He’s Robin’s brother.”
The woman walked her hooker’s stroll past Will, giving him the once-over. “I had a brother like that, I would’a never left home.”
Will glanced at his watch. He started to pace to try to work out the tension that was coiling every muscle he had into a tight ball, but each second that passed with Angie not showing her face only served to make it worse.
She always did this. She always put herself right in the middle of trouble and did not give a damn that Will suffered the consequences. As long as he had known her, Angie had pushed people as hard as she could, constantly testing their limits. It was a game that would get her killed one day, and then Will would be the one sitting on the couch, some other cop the unlucky bastard who had to hold his hand and tell him that she had been found strangled, beaten, raped, murdered.
The girls had been trash-talking, but Will noticed they’d turned quiet. He heard a rustling from the woods and Angie came out, flashlight in her hand.
She looked at Will, then the girls, then back at Will. Her mouth was set, her eyes lit with fury. She turned on her heel, heading back into the woods, and Will followed her.
“Stop,” he said, trying to keep up. “Would you just stop?” She wouldn’t listen. All he could do was follow the beam of her flashlight.
About twenty feet into the woods, she turned on him. “What the fuck are you doing here?” Her tone was sharp as a knife. “I’m just your brother paying you a call.”
Angie looked over his shoulder and Will followed suit. He could clearly see the girls standing in front of the liquor store. They made no attempt to hide their interest.
She whispered hoarsely, trying to keep her voice down. “This is the wrong fucking place for this, Will. Lola already thinks something’s up.” He shoved John Shelley’s rap sheet in her face. She did a double take when she saw the photograph, and he could have sworn her eyes softened.
“Read it,” he ordered. “Read it to me so that I know I’ve got it right.” Angie shined the flashlight on the first page. He saw her eyes moving, reading the words. She looked up, said, “Will,” like he was being unreasonable. “Read it.”
She held the flashlight under her arm, training the beam on the first page, then flipping to the second and third.
Finally, she looked up again. “So?”
He wanted to shake her. “Did you read what it says?”
Taking her time, she turned back to the first page and read aloud in a bored tone, “ ‘Jonathan Winston Shelley, six-one, one hundred ninety-five pounds, brown hair, brown eyes. Prior record: theft by taking. Received May 10, 1986, Coastal State Prison, maximum security, special offender’s wing, age sixteen. Paroled July 22, 2005, age thirty-five. Registered sexual offender, pedophile.” “ She looked back up, repeated, ”So?“
“Read the last page,” he said, meaning the part he’d printed out from Caroline’s e-mail. Shelley’s rap sheet had been brief, just listing the highlights of his crimes, but the records Caroline had found filled in all the blanks in horrid detail.
“Read it,” he demanded.
She didn’t want to. He could tell that from the steely way she glared at him.
He asked, “You want me to read it for you?”
“I only get an hour break for supper.”
He snatched the pages from her hand, tried to find the right section. He was so angry that the words kept reversing on the page, their shapes morphing one into the other. He tried, “Ca…” Will felt a knife-sharp pain in the front of his temple. God damnit, he knew at least two of the words. “Jonathan Shelley.” He tried to pick out another one. “Drain. No, he-dead. He killed-”
Angie put her hand over his. She tried to take the report but he wouldn’t let go. “Come on,” she coaxed, gently, pulling the pages from his grasp.
Will clenched his fists as he stared at the ground. Christ. No wonder she couldn’t stand to be with him.
She spoke softly. “I’m sorry.”
He wanted to sink into the ground, just magically to somewhere else.
“I’m sorry.
“I read it before.”
“I know you did,” she told him, taking his hand again. “Look at me, Will. I’m sorry.”
He could not look at her.
“You want me to read it out loud?”
“I don’t care what you do.”
“Will.”
He knew he was sounding petulant, but couldn’t stop. “I really don’t.”
The flashlight had fallen to the ground and she reached down to pick it up, still holding on to him. She shined the light on the pages and read, “ ‘On June 15, 1985, Shelley sexually assaulted Mary Alice Finney, a fifteen-year-old white female, then removed her tongue with a serrated kitchen knife, resulting in her death. In addition, Shelley made several deep bite marks in the victim’s flesh and urinated on the body. Shelley’s bloody fingerprints were found at the scene and on the body. The murder weapon was found in Shelley’s bedroom closet. Known drug addictions: heroin, cocaine.”’‘
“Angie,” was all he could say.
She was silent, letting a couple of cars pass before she said, “Remember I told you that Michael Ormewood came by here that one time?”
He was sick of hearing about Ormewood. If he never heard the man’s name again, Will would die a happy man.
Angie said, “He told us to look out for a recently released sex offender named John Shelley. He said he was really a bad guy and to stay away from him.” She looked down at the rap sheet. “Michael went to Decatur High School. He must have grown up in the area.”
“Did you manage to ask him about his childhood years while you were going down on him?”
“Do you want me to go down on you, too, Will? Is that what this is about?”
He slapped her hand away. “Stop it.”
She told him, “I read his personnel file.”
“You’re real interested in Michael for some reason. Why is he different? What makes him so special?”
“You’re not listening to what I’m saying.” She was talking to him like he was a child and he did not like it. “Michael went to Decatur High School, so he must have lived in the area. He was a few years older than John, but he would have heard about the crime. He would have known the details about the tongue. Why didn’t he mention it to you? Why didn’t he say, ”Hey, this reminds me of something that happened about twenty years ago right down the street from me.“ ”
Will was too upset to even consider the question.
She said, “John told me that someone was blackmailing him.”
Will laughed. “You think that Michael Ormewood knows there’s a guy out there raping and murdering women, taking out their tongues, but instead of arresting the doer, Michael’s blackmailing him? For what? What could John Shelley possibly have that Michael Ormewood would want?”
“How do you explain Michael telling me to look out for John Shelley? How do you explain his not mentioning this same thing happening to a girl in the same neighborhood where he grew up?”
Will tried to make her see reason. “How do you explain the other girls?”
“What other girls?”
“Last year, two girls were sexually assaulted by a man wearing a black ski mask. Both of them had their tongues bitten off.”
Her lips parted in surprise.
“John Shelley’s been out seven months,” Will told her. “Both girls lived thirty, forty minutes away from here.” She was silent, so he added, “Julie Cooper’s fifteen. The other girl was only fourteen. What do these crimes have in common? What’s the link here?”
Angie said, “You know perps have their way of doing things. Why would he deviate? Why would he cut off some and bite off the others? Why would he go from little girls to a grown woman?”
Will recalled Michael’s answer to this question, but he did not share it with Angie.
She asked, “Why didn’t you tell me about the other cases before?”
“When, Angie? Over dinner? Maybe when we were holding hands, taking a long stroll in the park?”
“You could have told me.”
“Why?” he asked. “Who knew you’d end up screwing around with a convicted pedophile?”
Her head jerked up. “I haven’t slept with him.”
“Yet.”
Angie gave a heavy sigh.
“Here’s an indisputable fact: Shelley raped and killed a fifteen-year-old girl. He cut out her tongue.”
“He’s not…” She looked back at Shelley’s photograph. “Whatever he did, he’s not that guy anymore.”
“Julie Cooper was fifteen,” Will told her. “He raped her in an alley behind a movie theater. He bit off her tongue.”
Angie shook her head.
“Anna Linder was fourteen. They found her in Stone Mountain Park the next day. She was holding her tongue in her hand like a security blanket. They had to pry it from her fingers.”
Angie still did not respond.
“Cynthia Barrett, Angie. Cynthia Barrett was fifteen.”
“Michael’s neighbor.”
Will shrugged. “So what?”
“Tell me this: How do they know each other? How did Michael know to warn me off him in the first place?” She indicated the liquor store with an angry wave of her hand. “You weren’t there when he did it. There’s something between them. Michael hates the guy.”
“What else am I missing here?” Will asked. “Because what it sounds like to me is that you’re so pissed at Michael Ormewood that you can’t see straight. Why is that, Angie? Why can’t you get this asshole out of your system?”
He could see the fury in her eyes, knew she was remembering the millions of times he had asked her this before.
Her voice was eerily calm when she said, “Did you ask Michael how old his wife was when he met her?” She didn’t let him respond. “She was fifteen, Will. He was twenty-five.”
“Did he rape her and bite out her tongue?” Will asked. “Because, unless he did, I don’t see why that makes a bit of difference.”
“I’m telling you, John didn’t do this.”
“I’ll ask him myself when I bring him in.”
“No.” She grabbed his arm as if she could physically stop him. “I’ll do it.”
Will could only stare at her. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“The minute you put those cuffs on him, he’s shutting down.”
“You don’t know that.”
“He’s a con. Of course he’ll shut down. He won’t so much as fart until his lawyer shows up, and then the lawyer will tell you to go fuck yourself.”
“You’re not going to control this.”
“What’s the charge? Jaywalking?” She raised her eyebrows, as if she expected an answer. “You can bring him in for questioning, but what do you have? You can search his place, but what are you going to tell the judge when you ask for the warrant? ”He did it twenty years ago, Your Honor, so maybe, probably, possibly he could have done it again now?“ ” Angie crossed her arms. “Last time I checked, unless you’re the president of the United States, you need some kind of evidence to throw a guy in jail.”
Will did not answer because he knew that she was right.
“Do you have John’s fingerprints on anything? Any witnesses? Anybody who saw anything?”
Jasmine, Will thought. Maybe she saw something. If she did, she was probably at the bottom of a lake right now.
Angie summed it up: “No forensic evidence, no witnesses and no case. You’re right, Will. Let’s go out and arrest him right now, why don’t we:
“He could be stalking his next victim,” Will said, not adding that Angie could very well be the next woman he set his sights on.
“If you arrest him now, you’ll have to kick him in twenty-four hours, and if it
is
Shelley who’s doing this, then he’ll know you’re on to him and he’ll go so deep underground that you’ll never find him again.”