"What?"
"You're not wearing a wedding band, Mr. Copeland."
"I'm not married."
"Divorced or widowed?"
"How do you know I'm not a lifelong bachelor?"
Raya Singh did not bother replying.
"Widowed," I said. I'm sorry.
"Thank you."
"How long has it been?"
I was going to tell her none of her goddamn business, but I wanted to keep her in my good graces. And damned if she wasn't beautiful. "Nearly six years."
"I see," she said.
She looked at me with those eyes.
"Thank you for your cooperation," I said.
"Why don’t you ask me out?" she asked.
"Excuse me?"
"I know you think I'm pretty. I'm single, you're single. Why don't you ask me out?"
"I don't mix my work life with my personal," I said.
"I came here from Calcutta. Have you been?"
The change in subjects threw me for a second. The accent also didn't seem to match that locale, but that didn't mean much nowadays. I told her I had never been, but I obviously knew of it.
"What you’ve heard," she said. "Its even worse."
Again I said nothing, wondering where she was going with this.
"I have a life plan," she said. "The first part was getting here. To the United States." "And the second part?" "People here will do anything to get ahead. Some play the lottery.
Some have dreams of being, I don't know, professional athletes. Some turn to crime or strip or sell themselves. I know my assets. I am beautiful. I am also a nice person and I have learned how-to be"-she stopped and considered her words-"good for a man. I will make a man incredibly happy. I will listen to him. I will be by his side. I will lift his spirits. I will make his nights special. I will give myself to him whenever he wants and in whatever way he wants. And I will do it gladly."
Oookay, I thought. We were in the middle of a busy street but I swear there was so much silence I could hear a cricket chirp. My mouth felt very dry. "Manolo Santiago," I said in a voice that sounded far away. "Did you think he might be that man?"
"I thought he might be," she said. "But he wasn't. You seem nice. Like you would treat a woman well." Raya Singh might have moved to ward me, I can't be sure. But she suddenly seemed closer. "I can see that you are troubled. That you don't sleep well at night. So how do you know, Mr. Copeland?"
"How do I know what?"
"That I'm not the one. That I'm not the one who will make you deliriously happy That you wouldn't sleep soundly next to me."
Whoa.
"I don't," I said.
She just looked at me. I felt the look in my toes. Oh, I was being played. I knew that. And yet this direct line, her lay-it-out-with-no-BS approach… I found it oddly endearing.
Or maybe it was the blinded-by-beauty thing again.
"I have to go," I said. "You have my number."
"Mr. Copeland?"
I waited.
"Why are you really here?"
"Excuse me?"
"What is your interest in Manolo's murder?"
"I thought I explained that. I'm the county prosecutor-"
"That's not why you’re here."
I waited. She just stared at me. Finally I asked, "What makes you say that?" Her reply landed like a left hook. "Did you kill him?" "What?" "I said-" "I heard you. Of course not. Why would you ask that?" But Raya Singh shook it off. "Good-bye, Mr. Copeland." She gave me one more smile that made me feel like a fish dropped on a dock. "I hope you find what you're looking for."
Chapter 12
Lucy wanted to Google the name "Manolo Santiago"- he was probably a reporter doing a story on that son of a bitch, Wayne Steubens, the Summer Slasher but Lonnie was waiting for her in the office. He didn't look up when she entered. She stopped over him, aiming for mild intimidation.
"You know who sent the journals," she said.
"I can't be sure."
"But?"
Lonnie took a deep breath, readying himself, she hoped, to take the plunge. "Do you know much about tracing e-mail messages?"
"No," Lucy said, moving back to her desk.
"When you receive an e-mail, you know how there's all this gobble-dygook 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 be tray 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 sleep away 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.