The Woods (Page 29)

“No,” Lucy said, moving back to her desk.

“When you receive an e-mail, you know how there’s all this gobbledygook about paths and ESMTP and Message IDs?”

“Pretend I do.”

“Basically it shows how the e-mail got to you. Where it went, where it came from, what route via what Internet mail service to get from point A to point B. Like a bunch of postmarks.”

“Okay.”

“Of course, there are ways of sending it out anonymously. But usually, even if you do that, there are some footprints.”

“Great, Lonnie, super.” He was stalling. “So can I assume you found some of these footprints in the e-mail with that journal attached?”

“Yes,” Lonnie said. He looked up now and managed a smile. “I’m not going to ask you why you want the name anymore.”

“Good.”

“Because I know you, Lucy. Like most hot chicks, you’re a major pain in the ass. But you’re also frighteningly ethical. If you need to betray the trust of your class—betray your students and me and everything you believe—there must be a good reason. A life-or-death reason, I’m betting.”

Lucy said nothing.

“It is life or death, right?”

“Just tell me, Lonnie.”

“The e-mail came from a bank of computers at the Frost Library.”

“The library,” she repeated. “There must be, what, fifty computers in there?”

“About that.”

“So we’ll never figure out who sent it.”

Lonnie made a yes-and-no gesture with a head tilt. “We know what time it was sent. Six forty-two P.M. the day before yesterday.”

“And that helps us how?”

“The students who use the computer. They need to sign in. They don’t have to sign in to a particular computer—the staff did away with that two years ago—but in order to get a computer, you reserve it for the hour. So I went to the library and got the time sheets. I compared a list of students in your class with students who had signed up for a computer during the hour between six and seven P.M. the day before yesterday.”

He stopped.

“And?”

“There was only one hit with a student in this class.”

“Who?”

Lonnie walked over to the window. He looked down at the quad. “I’ll give you a hint,” he said.

“Lonnie, I’m not really in the mood—”

“Her nose,” he said, “is brown.”

Lucy froze. “Sylvia Potter?”

His back was still to her.

“Lonnie, are you telling me that Sylvia Potter wrote that journal entry?”

“Yes,” he said. “That’s exactly what I’m telling you.”

On the way back to the office, I called Loren Muse.

“I need another favor,” I said.

“Shoot.”

“I need you to find out all you can about a phone number. Who owned the phone. Who the guy called. Everything.”

“What’s the number?”

I gave her the number Raya Singh had told me.

“Give me ten minutes.”

“That’s it?”

“Hey, I didn’t become chief investigator because I have a hot ass.”

“Says who?”

She laughed. “I like when you’re a little fresh, Cope.”

“Don’t get used to it.”

I hung up. My line had been inappropriate—or was it a justifiable comeback to her “hot ass” joke? It is simplistic to criticize political correctness. The extremes make it an easy target for ridicule. But I’ve also seen what it’s like in an office workplace when that stuff is allowed to go on. It can be intimidating and dark.

It’s like those seemingly overcautious kid-safety rules nowadays. Your child has to wear a bike helmet no matter what. You have to use a special mulch in playgrounds and you can’t have any jungle gym where a kid could climb too high and oh yeah, your child shouldn’t walk three blocks without an escort and wait, where is your mouth guard and eye protection? And it is so easy to poke fun at that stuff and then some wiseass sends out a random e-mail saying, “Hey, we all did that and survived.” But the truth is, a lot of kids didn’t survive.

Kids did have a ton of freedom back then. They did not know what evil lurked in the darkness. Some of them went to sleepaway camp in the days when security was lax and you let kids be kids. Some of those kids sneaked into the woods at night and were never seen again.

Lucy Gold called Sylvia Potter’s room. There was no answer. Not surprising. She checked the school phone directory, but they didn’t list mobile numbers. Lucy remembered seeing Sylvia using a BlackBerry, so she e-mailed a brief message asking Sylvia to call her as soon as possible.

It took less than ten minutes to get a response.

“You wanted me to call, Professor Gold?”

“I did, Sylvia, thank you. Do you think you could stop by my office?”

“When?”

“Now, if that’s possible.”

Several seconds of silence.

“Sylvia?”

“My English lit class is about to start,” she said. “I’m presenting my final project today. Can I come by when I’m done?”

“That would be fine,” Lucy said.

“I should be there in about two hours.”

“Great, I’ll be here.”

More silence.

“Can you tell me what this is about, Professor Gold?”

“It can keep, Sylvia, don’t worry about it. I’ll see you after your class.”

“Hey.”

It was Loren Muse. I was back in the courthouse the next morning. Flair Hickory’s cross would start in a few minutes.

“Hey,” I said.

“You look like hell.”

“Wow, you are a trained detective.”

“You worried about this cross?”

“Of course.”

“Chamique will be fine. You did a helluva job.”

I nodded, tried to get my head back into the game. Muse walked next to me.

“Oh,” she said, “that phone number you gave me? Bad news.”

I waited.

“It’s a throwaway.”

Meaning someone bought it with cash with a preset number of minutes on it and didn’t leave a name. “I don’t need to know who bought it,” I said. “I just need to know what calls the phone made or received.”

“Tough to do,” she said. “And impossible through the normal sources. Whoever it was, he bought it online from some fly-by-night posing as another fly-by-night. It’ll take me a while to track it all down and apply enough pressure to get records.”