Faith told him, “You’re going to have a hard time getting a warrant for all the names of the students in that dorm building.”
“I hope the college will be compliant.”
“I hope this baby comes out clutching a bag full of gold.”
She had a point. Colleges were notorious for their desire for privacy. “Where are we on the warrant for Allison’s room?”
“You mean the real one?” She seemed to be enjoying this. “I faxed it to the station about ten minutes ago. There’s no landline to the Braham house, so that’s a dead end. Did you get anything from the autopsy?”
He told her about Allison’s injury. “It’s unusual that the killer stabbed her through the back of the neck instead of slicing through the front.”
“I’ll run it through ViCAP right now.” She meant the FBI’s Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, a database designed to detect similarities in criminal behavior. If Allison’s killer had used this method before, ViCAP would have a record of the case.
Will asked, “Can you give Nick Shelton a call, too? He’s the local field agent here. Sara knows him. I want him to run some stuff to the Central lab for me. Sara’s going to let him know when she’s got everything ready.”
“What else?”
“I still need that audiotape of the 911 call. I want Sara to listen to the voice and see if it belongs to our Julie Smith.”
“Can you say a sentence that doesn’t have ‘Sara’ in it?”
Will scratched his jaw, his fingers finding the scar that ran down his face. He felt jittery again, much as he’d felt when he’d been talking to Sara in the basement of the funeral home.
She said, “You know that Charlie is at Central this week?”
“No.” Charlie Reed was on Amanda’s team. He was the best forensics guy Will had ever worked with. “Central’s an hour away from here.”
“You want me to give him a call and see if he can come out?”
Will thought about the garage, the crime scene in the woods. He was working two cases now—one against Lena Adams and Frank Wallace and another against the man who had killed Allison Spooner and possibly their new victim. “I told the local chief I was bringing out a team. Might as well follow through on it.”
“I’ll give him a call,” Faith offered. “ViCAP shows no similar hits on a killer using a knife to cut from the rear through the carotid sheath, the carotid, the jugular, or the carotid and jugular. I cross-referenced the twist, too. No MO matches.”
“I guess that’s good news.”
“Or really bad news,” she countered. “That’s a clean kill, Will. You don’t do that your first time out. I have to agree with Sara on this one. I don’t see your retarded kid doing this.”
“Intellectually disabled.” Now that Sara had pointed it out, the word was starting to grate. Will supposed he should feel some solidarity with Tommy Braham since they both had a problem. “Call me when you hear from Charlie.”
“Will do.”
Will closed his phone to end the call. Ahead, Sara’s SUV took a turn up a circular drive that led to a three-story brick building. She parked behind a campus patrol car at the front entrance. The rain was still unrelenting. She pulled up the hood of her jacket before running up the steps to the entrance.
Will got out of his car and ran up after her, his shoes kicking up puddles. His socks hadn’t dried since he’d stepped into the lake this morning. They were in the process of rubbing a large blister on his heel.
Sara waited for him in a small alcove between two sets of glass doors. The sleeves of her jacket were dripping wet. She knocked on the doors. “No one is in the patrol car out front.” She cupped her hands to the glass. “Is someone supposed to be here?”
“The security guard was told to remain in the building until we got here.” Will punched a few buttons on the keypad by the door. The LCD screen remained blank. He turned around, trying to find a camera.
“Back door’s open.”
Will looked through the glass. The building was wider than it was deep. A set of stairs faced the front door. A long hallway shot off to the side. At the back of the building, an exit sign glowed softly over the open fire door.
Sara asked, “Where are the police?”
“I told Lena not to call anyone.”
Sara turned to look at him.
“She got the call on her cell phone. Apparently, the campus police have her as an after-hours contact.”
“She didn’t call Frank?”
“No. Funny, right?”
“‘Funny’ isn’t the word I’d use.”
Will didn’t respond. Sara’s personal ties were clouding her view. She wasn’t looking at this as a criminal investigation. With two suspects, you always worked one against the other to see who would flip first to get the better deal. Self-preservation generally won out over loyalty. The garage where Tommy lived painted a grim story for Frank and Lena. At this point, it was just a matter of who would talk first.
Sara looked back through the glass door. “Here he is.”
Will saw a small black man making his way up the hall. He was young and skinny, the shirt of his uniform puffing out like a woman’s blouse. He gripped his cell phone close to his chest as he approached them. With the other hand, he waved his key card over a pad by the door. The lock clicked open.
Sara rushed in. “Marty, are you all right?”
Will could see why she was worried. The man’s face was ashen.
“Dr. Linton,” the man said. “I’m sorry. I was just outside trying to catch my breath.”
“Let’s sit down.” Sara helped him to a bench by the door. She kept her arm around his shoulders. “Where’s your inhaler?”
“I just used it.” He reached his hand out to Will. “Sorry for my state. I’m Marty Harris. I think you met my grandfather this morning.”
“Will Trent.” Will shook his hand. The man’s grip was weak.
Marty waved his phone in the air. “I was talking to Lena about what happened.” He coughed. The color was slowly returning to his face. “I’m sorry, it just got me worked up again.”
Will leaned his back against the wall. He tucked his hands into his pockets. He had figured out a long time ago that showing his irritation tended to get the exact opposite result he was looking for. “Can you tell me what you told Detective Adams?”
He coughed a few more times. Sara rubbed his back. “I’m all right now,” he told her. “It’s just hard to recollect is all. I’ve never seen anything like that in my life.”
Will fought to keep his patience. He looked up and down the hallway. The lights were still off, but his eyes were adjusting. There wasn’t a camera on the front door. He guessed the entrance keypad was meant to catch students and visitors going into the building. There was a camera over the fire exit in the back, though, and he could see it was tilted up toward the ceiling.
“It was like that when I got here,” Marty told him. He put his phone in his shirt pocket and pushed his glasses up his nose.
“When was that?”
“About thirty minutes ago, I guess.” Marty looked at his watch. “It seems like it’s been a lot longer than that.”