The Silent Wife (Will Trent #10) - Karin Slaughter Page 0,94
cards back at the station. Every cop had their own stack of FIs, an informal record of the names and details of suspicious characters who hadn’t yet earned an official police file.
“All right, let’s see.” Chuck removed the rubber band from the campus FIs. None of them were written in his own hand. He left that work to the guards underneath him who actually patrolled the campus. He shuffled through the cards until he found what he was looking for. “Here it is. There’s an asswipe who’s always skateboarding near the library. Tears up the metal railings on the stairs. Older kid, maybe late twenties. Floppy brown hair. Eyefucks all the girls, the younger the better, but who can blame him? There’s not a name. According to this, everybody calls him Little Bit. He’s a small-time weed dealer. None of the hard stuff.”
Rebecca Caterino was a college student. Jeffrey had not been surprised to smell pot in her dorm. If Daryl was her dealer, that would explain why the burner phone number had been disconnected. Dealers were always changing up their numbers.
Jeffrey took the FI card from Chuck. Little Bit. Skateboarder. Late twenties. Pot dealer. The information reflected everything he’d just been told.
Chuck rolled his chair across the room to retrieve his apple from the corner. He bit it between his teeth so he could use both hands to pull his way back to his desk. “That all you need, Chief?”
Jeffrey tried another name. “Thomasina Humphrey.”
Chuck’s face showed recognition. “Her.”
“Yeah, her. What do you know?”
Chuck looked at Lena for the first time. Then he looked away. “Just scuttlebutt, mostly. She disappeared. Kids talked the usual crazy shit. She joined a cult. She tried to kill herself. Who knows what really happened?”
Jeffrey would’ve bet that Chuck knew, but he’d already humiliated this man once today. There would be other cases they had to work on together. He had to leave Chuck with some dignity. “Do you have access to Humphrey’s details?”
“Maybe.” Chuck tapped some keys on his computer. He found a clean notecard. He wrote down an address and phone number. “This is where her final transcripts were sent. I don’t know if she’s still there.”
Jeffrey saw that the address was in Avondale, which lined up with what Sara had told him. Tommi had been one of her patients at the clinic. That was why Sibyl Adams had called her for help.
Chuck had the apple back in his mouth. “Next time, just say please.”
Jeffrey tucked the address in his coat pocket as he walked out the door.
He could feel Lena dogging his heels like a needy puppy.
“Chief,” she tried.
He stopped so abruptly that she bumped into him. “Have you gone through those unsolved rape reports like I told you?”
“I filed the requests with the other counties. They should be emailed to me no later than this afternoon. There are only twelve Grant County reports.”
“Only,” he repeated. “Those are twelve women, Lena. Twelve lives that were irrevocably altered. I don’t want to ever hear you say only about them ever again.”
“Yes, sir.”
“We live in a god damn college town. There are thousands of young women in and out of this campus every year. Do you genuinely think that all of them are liars? That they fucked some guy and regretted it, so there’s no need for you as a police officer to help them?”
“Chief, I—”
“Follow up on that subpoena I put in for Rebecca Caterino’s medical charts. We need to make this official. Let me know the minute Bonita Truong reaches the station. I want to talk to her as soon as possible. She is not to hear about Rebecca Caterino from anyone else but me.”
“Yes, Chief, but—” Lena mulled the but. “When are we going to tell people that it wasn’t an accident?”
“When I’m damn good and ready. Take out your notebook. Make a list.”
She fumbled at her pocket.
He didn’t wait for her. “Go back to Caterino’s dorm mates and see if there are any photographs of her wearing the hair clip. Do the same with Leslie Truong. She was missing a headband. They might have a photograph. Next, track down this Daryl Little Bit or whatever the hell his name is. We’ve got probable cause on the pot, so search him. If you find weed, arrest him. If you don’t, take him in for questioning. And you don’t go home tonight until you’ve summarized every single rape report from the tri-county area. I want it on my desk first thing.