“So his prints were on file from his background check? Damn. I hate to think a teacher got killed just because he liked to dress funny.”
“He had another set of prints on file, too. The guy was also a pedophile, Bill. He had an arrest record for aggravated sexual battery.”
I sat bolt upright in my chair. “Jesus Christ,” I said. “I thought that wasn’t supposed to be possible. I thought the whole point of the background investigations and fingerprint checks was to keep people like that from working with kids.”
“It is,” he said, “and it did. Sort of. The system worked, within its limits. The guy was a teacher first, and a pedophile second. At least, that’s the order in which he was printed. Reality is, he probably became a teacher so he’d have easy access to kids. But he’d never been caught at the time he was hired.”
“How much information did you get?”
“Enough to know the basics and start tracking down the details. Guy’s name was Craig Willis; thirty-one years old. He applied for a teaching job three years ago-in Knoxville, by the way, not Chattanooga. Got hired just down Middlebrook Pike from you, at Bearden Middle School.” I felt my insides go cold. That was the school my son had attended. Jeff was there three de cades ago-he was a student at Bearden Middle around the time this Craig Willis was born-but the coincidence brought the danger closer to home somehow. “He taught English and social studies for two years,” Art went on. “Then, last summer, he was arrested for molesting a ten-year-old boy at a day camp where he was a counselor.”
“That’s terrible,” I said. “How come I don’t remember reading about that in the newspaper?”
“Wasn’t in the newspaper,” said Art. “His lawyer-guess who? — managed to keep it all very quiet.”
“Grease?”
“None other. He got a gag order on the arrest information, claiming his client would suffer irreparable damage if the arrest were made public, and then he got the case dismissed on a technicality-apparently the arresting officer was so upset he manhandled Craig and forgot to read him his rights. But the judge refused to expunge the arrest record, and the school system dropped him like a hot potato. He moved to Chattanooga last fall.”
I was almost afraid to ask, but I did. “And what was he doing in Chattanooga?”
I heard Art draw a long, deep breath, which he exhaled in a slow, angry hiss. “He had just opened a karate school. Like teaching, only better, for his purposes-doesn’t require a background check. And it’s mostly boys in the classes.”
I thought at once of my grandsons, who were five and seven-and who were both taking karate lessons in West Knoxville. “God help us,” I said.
“Maybe he did,” Art replied. “They say he moves in mysterious ways. Maybe it was a mother’s prayer that steered some queer-hater with a violent streak to cross paths with our boy Craig when he was all dolled up like a tart.”
“See, I don’t buy that,” I said. “I think the buck stops here on earth; good and evil arise from the choices we make, the things we do. I don’t pretend to understand why some people are motivated to do wonderful things, while others are driven to commit unspeakable acts. But I think we’re the ones who do the deeds, and we’re the ones who deserve what ever credit or blame comes due.”
“Mostly I agree,” said Art. “Couldn’t be a cop if I didn’t believe in holding people accountable. Anyhow, it sure adds an interesting twist to this case.”
“Did you call Chattanooga yet-the detective, or Jess?”
“Nope. You found the skin that gave me the prints, so you earned the first call. I’ll phone Jess right now.”
“Wait. One more question before you go.”
“Shoot.”
“I’m assuming you still haven’t gotten any hits on that thumbprint you got from Craig’s severed penis?”
“Right.”
“So the killer’s prints aren’t in the AFIS database either in Tennessee or at the FBI?”
“Maybe not,” he said, “but then again, even if the print’s right, the size could be wrong.”
“Huh?”
“We can’t be certain that the size of the pecker when I printed it was the same as the size when the killer grabbed it,” he said. “So I need to shoot some enlargements and reductions of the thumbprint, send those in, too. What I send in has to be within ten percent of the size of the prints on file, or AFIS won’t see it as a match.”
“You know,” I said, “it would be quite a coup to ID both the victim and the killer from the prints on a husk of skin and an amputated penis.”
“Yeah,” he said, “don’t think I haven’t thought of that. But that would take a real stroke of luck. Maybe more luck than I’ve ever had before, all put together.”
“We make our own luck,” I said. “I believe that, too. ‘Chance favors the prepared mind.’ Louis Pasteur.”
“The pasteurized-milk dude?”
“The same.”
“He say that to explain how he came up with the idea?”
“No,” I said, “he said it years before he came up with the idea. The idea proved his point, you might say.”
“Looks that way,” Art agreed. “Speaking of ideas, I’ve got an idea the Chattanooga PD or the ME’s office will release Willis’s name either today or tomorrow.”
“Probably,” I said. “They’re bound to be feeling some pressure to show they’re making progress on the case.”
“I figure the Knoxville media will pick up the story, too,” he said, “since Willis lived in Knoxville till a few months ago.”
“But of course,” I sighed. “Local angle on a kinky case.”
“I keep thinking about the parents of that kid,” said Art. “This is going to dredge up some intense feelings for them. Rip the scab right off the wound-if they’ve even managed to get as far as scabbing over. Maybe the newspaper isn’t the best way for them to hear about it.”
I tried to put myself in the position of the parents. I imagined my son Jeff and his wife Jenny; I pictured what it would be like for them if Tyler or Walker had been sexually abused by a trusted adult, and how they might feel if they read about the abuser’s death in the paper. “That would be intense,” I said, “but not necessarily negative. Might be the best news in the world to them. Might be just what they need to set it behind them and get on with their lives.”
“You don’t ever set this sort of thing behind you,” Art said. “It’s a lot like the death of a child; it haunts you forever. The pain dulls after a while, but it doesn’t take much-a birthday, a scene in a TV show, a crayon drawing you find in the bottom of a drawer-to put a sharp edge on it all over again.”
I suddenly realized what he wanted to do. “You’re planning to go tell the kid’s parents yourself?”
“Not exactly,” he said. “Not me. We.”
“We? You and me? Why?”
“We ID’d the body,” he said. “That makes us the logical messengers. We’re witnesses to the death, in a way; we’re the two people who can say, with firsthand knowledge and absolute certainty, ‘The man who molested your son is dead, and here’s how he died.’ Besides,” he added, “telling them is the decent thing to do, and we’re the only decent guys I can think of at the moment.”
I could think of several, but I knew Art well enough to know that his mind was made up. And his reasoning, if not strictly logical, was emotionally compelling. “Okay,” I yielded. “When?”
“Tiffany doesn’t get home from school and cheerleader practice for another couple hours,” he said. “How about I pick you up at your office in half an hour? That gives me time to call the folks in Chattanooga.”
“You want me to be waiting down by the end-zone tunnel?”
“I’ll call you when I’m turning onto Stadium Drive,” he said. “That should give you time to wash bone cooties off your hands and come downstairs.”
Half an hour later, he called
back. “Okay, I just turned off Neyland onto Lake Loudoun Drive, and I’m turning onto Stadium now. Hey, what’s going on in Thompson-Boling Arena? I see a ton of media trucks.”
“A creationist rally,” I said miserably. “I mean, ‘intelligent design.’ Oh, and thanks for rubbing salt in the wound.”
“Sorry,” he said. “I’ll use lemon juice next time. Or maybe lemon meringue pie.” He snorted with laughter.
“Bye,” I said, and hung up. I made a pit stop in the bathroom that adjoined my office-a useful vestige of Stadium Hall’s former life as a dormitory-then locked up and headed down the stairwell.
Just as I walked out of the building, Art rounded the end of the stadium and stopped at the chain-link gate to the end-zone tunnel. He was driving an unmarked gray Impala I hadn’t seen before. Unlike the battered white sedan he usually drove, this car had glossy paint and clean upholstery, and the interior did not reek of spilled coffee and stale cigarette smoke, the way police cars often do. “Nice wheels,” I said. “How’d you rate a fine steed like this?”
“Blackmailed the chief,” he said. “Not on purpose, though. He asked me last week how the undercover work was going, and I said, ‘Pretty good, Chief; by the way, I see you’re doing a little undercover research on adult web sites yourself.’ Hell, I was just messing with him, but he turned red and broke into a sweat. Next thing you know, I get a call from the motor vehicle pool telling me to come swap my old beater for this thing. I guess you were right,” he added.
“About what?”
“Chance does favor the prepared mind.”
“I don’t think Internet porn and accidental blackmail were what Louis Pasteur had in mind when he said that.”
“No, but it makes me feel better about driving the car if I can quote something highbrow to justify my accidental good fortune.”