The Stranger You Seek - By Amanda Kyle Williams Page 0,76

work at the university with a vascular surgeon developing artificial skin and artificial heart valves for vessel grafts. “Everyone knew Charlie’s impact in artery design and artificial tissue would be substantial. He was going to save a lot of lives.”

I thought about that and felt terribly sad. The next attachment was a lawsuit. Charles E. Ramsey v. Wells Fargo in the State of Georgia, County of Fulton, City of Atlanta. I scanned the original petition, and found what I had already learned about Charlie. An armored truck had run a light and struck him while he crossed the street on a walk signal at Tenth and Peachtree. There was a weak Answer on file denying responsibility but soon after that the case was settled.

I went back to the complaint that Charlie’s lawyers had filed in Fulton County and took a closer look at reports from the physicians, which detailed months of physical therapy, pain, problems with cognition, memory, and reasoning, sensory-processing difficulties—sight, hearing, smell—communication and comprehension problems, depression, anxiety, personality changes, aggression, acting out, and social inappropriateness all due to traumatic brain injury. Some issues might or might not be temporary; others were permanent disabilities. There were still a lot of unknowns about the brain, about whether it was capable of healing itself over time. The petition also talked about loss of income, career, and any semblance of normal family life. He’d lost everything and then they’d handed him a couple of million dollars to shut him up. I didn’t think he’d been able to enjoy it much. I thought about the day he talked about how quickly life can change. Was Charlie bitter enough to kill? Perhaps. But did he still have enough brain power left to pull off this kind of crime, to leave a scene clean? It would mean being fully lucid. Was Charlie that? I didn’t think so and I didn’t think the signature characteristics of these scenes—the stabbing to sexual areas and other staging elements—fit with Charlie. And there was no physical connection to Florida where the murders began. Or did they begin in Florida? How many more people had fallen victim to this killer who had not yet been connected? I thought about the day we ate together at my table. I clean fish real fast. Was Wishbone that simple? Was I just overthinking it?

I called Neil back. “Can you check the New York area, particularly Ithaca and central New York, for murders involving sexual assaults and stabbings during the years Charlie was at school there?”

“Already on it,” Neil said.

I needed to know more about Charlie Ramsey, where he lived, how he lived. I looked at the windows over Peachtree Street. It was dark now, the late summer sun was gone. Must be about nine. What the heck.

23

I had driven past the town houses where Charlie lived every couple of days since they were built three years ago. They faced DeKalb Avenue, which ran straight from downtown Atlanta into Decatur, where my parents lived, but I hadn’t known Charlie lived there, of course. We’d all assumed that with Charlie’s special issues there would be financial problems too. Had we assumed or had this seed been planted? I tried to remember how I came to this idea and the notion he lived in public housing. Charlie had told me once that a local church had accepted him into an employment program. Perhaps I’d made the leap from there to arranged housing. A lot wasn’t adding up with Charlie. I thought about this. He’d need a job whether he needed money or not to become a functioning part of the community. Part of his diagnosis included emotional problems. I assumed he was in therapy. It made sense he would need assistance to get work. Not that easy for a guy with a crooked walk and a slur, I imagined.

I was sitting on the street in the car I use for surveillance purposes, a white Plymouth Neon. There are about a million of them in Atlanta and no one looked twice. The Neon might not be a great choice for a perfectly manicured Buckhead community, but it did the job within the diverse, infilled city limits of Atlanta. The white paint was graying and the hood was slightly dinged up, which made the car even less remarkable. I’d run up under the spare tire on an SUV at a stoplight while driving and texting. Lesson learned.

I wasn’t alone out here tonight. Two of Rauser’s detectives, Balaki and