Nearly Found (10 page)

T
HE NEXT MORNING
, I found Anh alone in the library studying before school. I set my books down and eased into the chair beside her. I should have been grateful we could just be in the same room studying together. I didn’t really need her to help me with the fingerprints.

But I missed the sound of her voice on the phone. The way she teased me about the Einstein shrine in my bedroom. I missed arguing with her over who would wash the petri dishes in lab, and I missed the geeky stuff we did together, like making Mentos volcanoes out of two-liter bottles in the parking lot of the Bui Mart after school.

“Can we talk?”

Anh closed her book, her hand still in it, holding her place like she might change her mind.

“Never mind,” I said, my voice close to breaking. I scooped up my books. “It was a bad idea. I’m sorry—”

Anh let her textbook fall shut, reaching fast for my hand. Her grip tasted like every summer day we hadn’t spent together. “I miss you,” she whispered.

I made a noise somewhere between a giggle and a cry. “Want to see something cool?”

• • •

Anh met me at the Bui Mart after school. She waved at her brother, Bao, without making eye contact, and we both zipped through the store aisles, grabbing the supplies we needed off the shelves with a frenetic energy.

“I’m all out of peppermint Mentos,” Bui said dryly, turning back to his
People
magazine. “And if you get Cherry Coke on my car again, I’ll make you scrub the urinal for a month.”

Anh ignored him and reached for a can of spray foam. I shook my head and picked up a roll of duct tape instead. We rounded the end of the aisle, almost knocking over TJ’s uncle.

Billy Wiles was red-nosed and sullen. There were dried yellow sweat rings on the collar of his undershirt. People said he had tried to find a job after the trial. That he’d used the last of the money from TJ’s trust fund to buy the beat-up Chrysler sedan parked outside his trailer. But for a long time, the media reporters wouldn’t leave him alone, and he eventually gave up. He rarely came out of his trailer anymore except to buy his beer and some food, and I tried not to stare at him as he made his way to the walk-in cooler in the back.

Anh didn’t seem fazed by him, and Bao just waved like Billy was any other regular customer. Which I guess he was. If you didn’t count the fact that his brother was a felon and his nephew murdered four people in cold blood. Maybe I shouldn’t be so critical. I guess, in a way, TJ had betrayed Billy too.

He took his six-pack, a can of hash, and a loaf of bread to the counter, and paid for it with a wad of singles and some loose change. Anh and I finished our shopping, and when the counter was empty, we dumped a tube of Super Glue, the duct tape, a bag of plastic clothespins, and a roll of wire down. Then Anh threw a bag of Ho Hos on the pile with sideways smile in my direction.

Bao’s brows drew together. He closed his magazine and studied our purchases while Anh made a neat list on a three-by-five card of everything we were taking from store inventory.

“The only thing we’re missing is the coffee can,” she said.

“We sell coffee,” Bao said.

“Not in metal cans,” I pointed out.

Bao’s dreams of earning an MIT degree died when he gave up college to help his parents run the store, but his inner geek was alive and well. “What are you up to?” he asked, sounding slightly amused.

“None of your business,” Anh answered without glancing up from her list.

Bao turned to me. I couldn’t tell if his frown seemed more curious or judgmental, which was the way he’d looked at me since June. “Tell me what she’s up to and I’ll buy you a Yoo-hoo.” When I hesitated, he threw a vanilla Zinger on the counter. But it was the simple fact that he was talking to me, that made me want to tell him everything.

“Cyanoacrylate fuming chamber,” I said.

Bao’s eyebrows shot toward the ceiling and he turned back to Anh. “That’s so freaking cool. Can I watch?”

“No!” Anh said, shoving our supplies in a paper bag and ushering me toward the door.

“Why not?”

“Does ammonium nitrate synthesis ring any bells?”

“Oh, come on! That was an accident!”

“You caught Mom’s curtains on fire, and I got grounded for a month!”

“You have to admit, the pyrotechnics were pretty cool.”

Anh rolled her eyes and pushed me out the door. “He’s hazardous to my health. Let’s go.”

We crossed the intersection at Route 1 and Anh glanced back at the Bui Mart windows when we hit the corner of Sunny View Drive.

“Will he be mad?” I asked. As much as Anh pretended not to care about her brother’s opinions, I knew she did.

“He’ll get over it.”

“Have you?” the question slipped out. Her footsteps slowed, and I was afraid of her answer.

“I’m not sure,” she said. “I don’t think the things that happened to us are the kinds of things we’re supposed to get over. I think they’re the kinds of things we’re just supposed to get through. All I know is that I want things to be like they were.”

“Me too.” The thin breath I’d been holding eased out of me.

“Give Bao time. He’s coming around.”

“What about Jeremy?” I asked. It felt strange, to have to ask Anh how Jeremy was feeling.

“Don’t take his silence too personally. He’s had a lot on his mind.”

“You mean with the notes?”

Anh paused. “What notes?”

Shoot.
“Jeremy didn’t tell you?”

A crease pulled at Anh’s brow. “Tell me what?”

I filled Anh in on the three mysterious messages, and the fact that TJ’s father was out on parole. She was quiet when I told her about the note in Jeremy’s room. “I’m sorry. I thought you knew.”

“It’s okay,” she said, but I could tell that it wasn’t. “Jeremy and I haven’t had much time to talk lately. His dad hasn’t been letting us spend time together outside of school.” She stared at the gravel, as if she was ashamed. “Who do you think wrote the notes?” she asked.

I didn’t want to worry her. “Probably one of Vince’s friends,” I lied. “But it can’t hurt to rule out TJ’s dad. If I can find a set of prints, I can run them through the database at work and make sure Reggie Wiles isn’t a possible match.”

“What if he is?” Anh stopped walking.

I turned. “Then I’ll talk to Gena and Alex. They’ll know what to do.” It was the right answer. Going to the police is what a good person did when they were in trouble. It was exactly the opposite of what I’d done before. Which was the whole reason Anh’s family had been so angry with me. And if I had concrete evidence that Reggie Wiles had been in my trailer, then Gena would have to believe me.

We made a quick stop at Mrs. Moates’s trailer and negotiated a dollar and some loose change for one of the old thirty-nine-ounce metal Walmart coffee cans I’d seen storing random crap on her yard sale table last week. Back at my trailer, I dragged a chair from the kitchen and propped the front door open for ventilation. Anh dumped everything out onto the kitchen table. I washed and dried the empty can, and set it on top of an old rusted hot plate we never used. It was a perfect fit.

Next, Anh and I strung wire across the top of the open can, and I clipped my sandwich-sized Ziploc bag to the wire with a clothespin, careful not to crease it.

Anh looked confused. “I thought we were looking for fingerprints on a photograph.”

“Super Glue only works on nonporous surfaces. But whoever left the photograph touched this bag.”

I added ten drops of Super Glue to the inside of the can, then huffed a long hot breath inside it before sealing the plastic lid with duct tape. I turned on the heating element and waited. Fumes began to roll beneath the clear lid. Anh and I bumped heads trying to peek through it, and it felt good to be sitting at my kitchen table laughing with her again. When condensation began to form, we turned off the heat, used potholders to carry the can out on the porch, and leaned our faces away as we pried open the lid.

I pinched the corners of the bag and held it against the dark backdrop of my neighbor’s trailer. The white crystals formed several distinct print patterns. Now all I had to do was let it dry, transfer them to a card, and scan them through AFIS without getting caught. I could do it after school tomorrow.

Anh leaned over my shoulder to look. She sucked in an awed breath. The fumes clung to her hair and she smelled like the chemistry lab at school. “That is the coolest experiment we’ve ever done,” she said. “Can I keep the coffee can? I’m going to see how much Bao will pay me for it.”

I handed her the fuming chamber with a smile. “Only if we split the profits.”

“Deal.” Anh packaged up the supplies and sealed the can. “So, where’s Reece? I haven’t seen him around.”

Hearing his name hurt all over again. Reece loved that I was smart, and how excited I got over stupid, geeky things. He used to set a timer and watch me solve the Rubik’s cube, to see which algorithms yielded the fastest time. He’d laughed like crazy when we got in a marshmallow fight, and I beat him with a catapult I’d made out of a mousetrap and a plastic spoon. And I’d never forget the look of amazement on his face, that stifling hot day back in August during a power outage at Gena’s house, when I made ice cream out of her milk, cream, and sugar, by lowering the freezing point of the ingredients with salt. We’d all sat in her kitchen, spooning it out of the plastic bag, and when Reece had kissed me, his lips were cold and sweet.

That Reece would have loved watching this experiment. I hesitated before answering. “He’s at a different school this year. Principal Romero wouldn’t let him come back.”

“Does he know about all this?”

“No. Not all of it. Are you going to tell Jeremy about Reggie’s parole? I sort of left that out when I talked to him.” If Anh told him I’d been holding information back, he’d be pissed at me, and we’d be back to square one when I finally felt like maybe we were on the road to fixing things.

Anh balled up a wad of used duct tape. She looked torn. “I probably shouldn’t keep it from him.”

“Why do you think Jeremy didn’t tell you about the notes?”

“Probably because he didn’t want me to freak out and jump to ridiculous conclusions.”

I raised an eyebrow.

“I know. I know,” she sighed. “I see your point. Jeremy has enough to worry about. Okay, we’ll keep this between us for now. But promise me you’ll let me know about the fingerprints.”

“I’ll know by Friday.”

Anh carried her new toy to the door. I moved the chair out of her way and held it open for her. “We don’t have to wait until Friday to talk, right?” she asked. “I mean, you could call. Or something.”

I smiled. “Or something.”

Anh walked backward away from my trailer, her own smile bright in the fading light as she waved good-bye.

T
HE NEXT AFTERNOON,
I ducked out of seventh period early and took the bus to the lab. I found Raj in the break room, chatting up an evidence courier, the firearms examiner, and the pretty blond DNA examiner’s assistant from the second floor.

He excused himself when I walked into the room, looking smug as he glanced at his watch. “Ditching class, Leigh? You’re not due in for a couple hours.”

“Early dismissal. No homework. Thought I’d come in and help out.” I had at least three hours of studying to do and a paper to write. “Want me to work on that stack of latent print records?”

Raj looked anxiously over his shoulder and lowered his voice. “You can’t do that. You don’t have access. You’d need a password.”

Clearly, Raj was not planning on letting me use his. I bit my lip. Telling him I remembered the string of numbers he’d used to log in last time would probably not go over well.

“Can’t you just log me in?”

He eyed me skeptically.

“What? You promised me donuts. I’m motivated.”

He broke into a smile. “As much as I would love to never scan another fingerprint card again, I can’t. Besides, I don’t have time to run you upstairs. Doc has a body delivery in about twenty minutes and he’ll probably need a hand. How about helping me with some evidence returns while I wait?”

“Evidence returns?” I winced.

“Don’t look so glum. It won’t take long. Just administrative chain-of-custody stuff. After that, there’s a cart full of glassware in the DNA lab that needs sterilizing, and some autopsy tools that need to be returned to the Fridge.”

I dragged my feet as I followed Raj to the mailroom, and only half listened as he explained that evidence was sorted in bins by case number, not by name, showed me how to log the evidence out of the lab, and told me how to figure out where it needed to be transported.

Then he dropped a bin on the table in front of me, jolting me back to task, and gestured that it was my turn to demonstrate that I’d actually been listening.

I reached inside and began pulling out the contents. Then paused. The bag containing the switchblade was cold and heavy, and I quickly set it down. This was Lonny’s knife. I’d seen it before, when he’d held it to Emily Reinnert’s throat the night TJ was charged with murder.

“You know that Jane Doe they brought in on your first day? The one with the blue hair?”

I started at Raj’s voice. The room slid back into focus.

“She was killed on August twenty-ninth. Doc thinks it happened sometime between nine and ten p.m. This is the evidence from her case.” He emptied the rest of the contents from the bin. “Doc matched the ligature marks on the victim’s neck to a piece of rope found in the suspect’s trash can. The lab found strands of blue hair on it. We’re waiting on some lab results, but we’re pretty sure it’s the murder weapon.”

“That doesn’t make any sense. Why would the rope still be in his trash can two weeks after she was murdered?”

“He probably watched the news and panicked when he saw her body had been found, then tried to get rid of the rope before he got caught. Criminals will do pretty stupid things to avoid getting busted with evidence . . . swallow drugs, toss guns out of car windows, throw murder weapons in their own trash cans.” Raj looked down at the pile of evidence and shook his head, like he’d seen it all so many times before, there was no point in examining it any closer. “Clearly, this guy isn’t too bright. The asshole’s cell phone was the icing on the cake. He’d taken pictures of the victim minutes after he killed her. Cops found the phone in his car when they searched it. That’s how Doc was able to estimate the time of death so closely. The time stamps on the photos were right around ten o’clock, and her skin still had some color, which suggests
pallor mortis
hadn’t set in yet.”

No. This all sounded too easy.

I know a set-up when I see it,
Lonny had said to me once. And this didn’t add up. The sloppiness of the crime. The obvious loose ends. Lonny was smart. Careful.

My hands are clean,
he’d said, proud of his ability to conceal his crimes from the police. If he’d actually killed Adrienne Wilkerson, he wouldn’t have left any trace.

I picked up the paper evidence bag containing the lighter and studied the label. It described a brass Zippo, engraved with the letters
LJ.
I set it down hard on the counter.

“But you said the prints on this lighter didn’t match the guy in lockup.”

“
One
of the prints didn’t match, but that’s not all that unusual. It could have been left by one of the investigators.”

“But then it would have been eliminated by AFIS.”

Raj shrugged.

“What ever happened to innocent until proven guilty?”

“You weren’t here when they dropped off the evidence. You didn’t talk to the cops who brought the guy in. The guy’s got a rap sheet longer than Lieutenant Nicholson’s man bits.”

“That doesn’t mean he’s guilty of
this
crime.”

“No, the evidence does.” He shoved the bin toward me. I turned my back to him to rifle through it.

“So one print doesn’t match,” he went on. “The lighter still belongs to him. The rope was found on his property. And the phone was registered to an account in his name. The car they found the phone in? Also registered in his name. And it was parked in his driveway. How much more proof do you need?”

“What about DNA tests? Have they looked for the killer’s DNA on the corpse, or on the rope? What about tire marks or footwear impressions at the dumpsite? Or prints from the car? Or—”

“Too expensive,” Raj interrupted. “And the detective didn’t need it. Besides, DNA tests can take months to process. They have enough to convict him without it.”

He slapped a label on a shipping box and stretched packaging tape over the seams.

“But what if he didn’t do it? You can’t assume he murdered her just because his lighter was found near the body. I thought you were a scientist.”

“I’m also a realist. He had photos of the body on his phone! Face it. He’s a conviction waiting to happen.”

Lonny was right about one thing. He’d already been found guilty by everyone who mattered.

“If we’re done in here, I’m going to wash glassware.” I shoved my hands in my pockets and left Raj alone in the mailroom with the sealed box of evidence.

Minus one piece.

The black evidence bag containing Lonny’s smart phone pressed against my hip as I climbed the back stairs to the Latent Prints lab. I walked fast, skipping every other step, sweat beading down my back.

I didn’t steal it. I was only borrowing it. They’d already processed the evidence for the police. Checked it for prints and copied the photos. All I needed to do was search for something the investigators and examiners missed. Then return it before anyone realized the chain of custody had been broken.

I snuck quietly into the Latent Prints lab. The black paper still lined the window from Raj’s flashlight experiment on Tuesday, but I left the lights off so no one would notice them under the door. I leaned with my back against it, staring at the evidence bag in my hand. There were photos on the phone of Adrienne’s dead body—her blue skin and purple lips and the angry bruises around her neck. My finger hovered over the seal, but I couldn’t make myself open it.

I just needed some time. I would come back and check the photos when I was certain I was alone. If the phone never left the lab, was the chain of custody really broken? Or was the phone merely misplaced? But where to hide it?

I looked from cabinet to cabinet. All were well used. The only place Raj wasn’t ever likely to see was . . .

The bottom of the box of fingerprint cards. He’d been working through it for months, and at the rate he was going, I had weeks, maybe longer, until he got to the bottom of that stack. I tucked the cell phone deep inside the box, careful to make sure it was covered.

Heart still racing, I dropped into the rolling chair in front of the AFIS machine. I logged in, mimicking the password keystrokes Raj used before. I was in!

I dug around in my lanyard pouch for the pieces of the plastic bag I’d fumed for fingerprints with Anh, then dusted them with black powder. I typed my own name into the search field and laid the transferred prints into the comparison microscope at The Monster’s side. One by one, I eliminated my own prints. An index finger. A partial thumb. Until I was left with a set of prints that weren’t mine.

I typed “Reginald Wiles” into the search field. Waited for a crisp, clear full set of prints to appear on the screen. I enlarged the image, enhanced the focus. I counted ridges under my breath, looked for matches in the shape and direction of the whorls, finding nothing. The prints weren’t a match. Whoever had put the article in my bag hadn’t been TJ’s father.

This couldn’t be right, could it? I’d seen a strange man in Sunny View on two separate occasions. But looking back, I’d never really gotten close enough to be certain they were the same man at all. I wasn’t even sure what Reggie Wiles would look like after five years in prison. My gut had been telling me it was Reggie, but there was no arguing with the facts. The fingerprints on the bag weren’t his.

So if it wasn’t Reggie Wiles who’d left the note in my room, then who was it?

I checked the clock. Raj would probably be done helping Doc in the Fridge soon. I stashed my fingerprint samples inside my lanyard pouch and stuffed the half-empty container of black powder in my backpack, so he wouldn’t find it and become suspicious. Then I logged out of AFIS, clearing the screen just as I heard a card key slide over the scanner. I threw on the lights, and was already across the room, clutching an empty glassware bin with white knuckles by the time Raj poked his head in the door.

“Oh good, you’re still here,” he said, short of breath. There was sweat on his forehead, like he’d run up the two flights of stairs and his smile curled toward the side of devilish. “There’s something downstairs you’re going to want to see.”

• • •

I followed Raj to the Fridge.

“They brought him in a few hours ago,” he said. “They’re calling him the Golf Course Corpse. Someone dug him up last night and left the bones on the Belle Green golf course in plain sight. Doc’s requesting a forensic anthropologist from the Smithsonian to confirm the age of the bones and cause of death.” He paused, one hand on the door. “Are you sure you’re going to be okay in here?”

I was sweaty and flushed, still shaking from the close call in the lab upstairs. He probably thought I had a weak stomach. I pushed him out of the way to open the door myself. “I’ll be fine.”

On a gurney in the middle of the room were mud-brown bones. I walked closer and saw that they were laid out in a disconnected pattern, assuming the loose shape of a human skeleton.

“Isn’t he amazing?” Raj whispered, circling it.

I cautiously breathed through my nose. But the corpse didn’t smell sweet and putrid, the way I’d imagined. Instead, it smelled earthy, like a pile of overturned dirt and wet leaves. The bones seemed benign, peaceful, except for a section of broken and jagged pieces that had once been his skull.

“What happened to his head?” I asked, bending to peek at the remains.

“Probably a homicide. Looks like someone brained the guy and buried the body to keep from getting caught. But who knows who dug him up? Doc thinks the victim is an adult male, between twenty-five and forty years of age, in the ground at least three years. Detectives think probably five. We can’t confirm that yet.”

I winced. “Would a blow to the head really do this much damage to the skull?”

“Not one,” Raj said. “This was multiple hits. Someone was seriously pissed at this guy. Probably some rich country-club schmuck who cheated on his wife. They found him under a false front on the golf course.”

“What’s a false front?”

“It’s a slope on the green. But it angles the wrong way. If your ball lands on it, it rolls away from the hole, instead of toward it. They’re designed into the greens to make them more challenging.”

“Belle Green, you said?”

“Yup. The groundskeeper found the exposed grave and called the police early this morning. Whoever dug up the remains wanted them to be found. But that’s not even the weirdest part. Check this out.” Raj pulled on a pair of lab gloves and leaned over the bones. “Can you see this?” He pointed to a spot on the anterior side of one of the femurs.

I squatted until I was eye level with the lightly colored scratches in it. “What are those? Scavenger marks?” I asked, remembering my conversation with Doc Benoit in the Bone Locker.

“Get closer,” Raj nudged with an excited grin.

The scratches were numbers.

90179257433275. A fourteen-digit number had been lightly etched in the victim’s bone. “What does it mean?”

Raj snapped off his gloves. “That’s what detectives are trying to figure out. It’s too long to be a social security number or a phone number. Their best guess is that it’s some form of tracking or serial number. But a number this long might take some time to crack.”

“It looks fresh.” The bones were covered in dirt, but there was no dirt inside the grooves where the cuts were made. It seemed reasonable to assume those numbers were carved after the body was exhumed. “Why would someone do that?”

“Clearly, whoever dug up the body wanted to leave some kind of message.”

“Then why not just come out and say what they wanted to say? Why write it in code?”

Raj thought about that for a minute. He dumped his gloves in the biohazard bin with a nostalgic smile. “When I was a kid, my older brother and I used to leave each other secret messages. We had this whole encrypted system for communicating. The beautiful part was that we could leave the messages anywhere—right out in the open, so they were easy to find. And no matter where we left them, my parents could never figure out what they said. My guess is, someone wanted to make sure the message was found, but the message wasn’t intended for just anyone to read. It was intended for someone specific. Which makes this whole case even more incredible.”