'I'll be happy to prepare it for you sometime,' said Sid, carefully eyeing the pale corpse as he continued to wash it down.
'Thanks,' said Mac.
'The trick is in the marinade,' said Sid. 'Marinate it too briefly and it fails to penetrate the flesh. Marinate too long and the spices overwhelm the texture of the bird.'
'Fascinating,' said Mac.
Sid reached down and moved Patricia Mycrant's left arm to expose the single wound in her armpit.
'This wound, almost surgically placed,' he said, 'dropped and nearly paralyzed her.'
Mac looked at the medical examiner and said, 'He knew what he was doing.'
Sid nodded and continued hosing down the body.
'Ah, what have we here,' he said, aiming the water at a clot along the left thigh.
Remnants of blood peeled away to reveal something deep red carved into the flesh.
'One more mystery,' said Sid.
Mac leaned in closer.
'Or a clue,' said Mac.
Cut into the dead woman's inner thigh was a distinct letter
In the small basement of the Wallen School, Bill Hexton sat in front of a black-and-white screen. Danny and Lindsay stood behind him.
Hexton looked less like a security guard than a student playing dress-up in tan slacks, a blue blazer and a loose-fitting blue and brown Wallen School tie.
'Been here long?' asked Danny.
'Not counting the six years I was a student at Wallen,' Hexton said, 'it's been three years. After I graduated, three years in the army, military police and then a little time in intelligence. Then right back here.'
Hexton looked military. Super-close-cropped haircut, clean shaven, shoulders back.
Images drifted by on the screen, corridors, gymnasium, a dining hall.
'No bathrooms,' said Hexton. 'Privacy issues. No classrooms. Academic freedom issues. You can see the images roll from one camera to the next. We've got sixteen cameras. We can't afford to record all sixteen all the time so we roll from one to the other.'
Both Lindsay and Danny knew the routine, but they listened patiently and watched the screen.
'There,' said Hexton. 'That's the corridor outside the chem lab just before nine this morning.'
'Slow it down,' said Danny, leaning in closer.
Hexton turned a knob on the console. Students, gray figures, moved in both directions down the hall. Some students started to enter the chemistry lab.
'Freeze that,' said Danny.
Hexton pressed a button. The image stopped moving.
'Can you identify the students going into the room?'
'Sure. But we know who was in the class,' said Hexton.
'Humor me,' said Danny.
Hexton shrugged, pointed to the students about to enter the classroom and identified each of them.
'Okay,' said Danny.
Hexton pressed a button and the image shifted to another corridor, another classroom, moving at normal speed.
'Can you jump forward, show the chem lab corridor and door when the class ended?' asked Danny.
'No problem,' said Hexton. 'Class would have ended at ten to ten, but Havel dismissed them halfway into the class.'
'You know why?' asked Lindsay.
Hexton shook his head 'no' as he watched images flash by, then slowed the tape down just before the white numbers at the top of the screen said nine-twenty.
The tape showed four students coming out of the lab. Then the image switched to the dining hall, where students were starting to trickle in.
'Find the next tape of the chem lab corridor,' said Danny.
Hexton found it. The corridor was empty. The chem lab door was closed. Hexton found tapes of the corridor for the next half hour and then the image of Wayne O'Shea entering the lab.
'O'Shea says he fainted,' said Lindsay.
'He could be lying,' said Danny.
'Good actor? He knew the camera might be on him,' said Lindsay. 'I don't see any blood on him.'
'I can't see O'Shea doing it,' said Hexton.
'I knew a ninety-pound, eighty-two-year-old Baptist Sunday school teacher named Eloise Pringleman who'd never raised her voice to anyone,' said Danny. 'One morning a large, young deliveryman with a small shipment of fax machine paper for the church used the word 'fuck' as a recurring adjective. Eloise asked him to stop. He didn't. Eloise picked up a pair of very sharp scissors and created one of the bloodiest crime scenes I've ever seen. We'd like to take your tapes from this morning.'
'I should check with the headmaster,' said Hexton. 'Student privacy issues.'
'No one outside of our lab is going to see them. You gonna make us get a warrant?' asked Danny.
'Guess not,' said Hexton. 'I'll tell the headmaster. Anything else I can do?'
'Find the students who were in Havel's class this morning and bring them to the dining hall,' said Danny. 'One at a time. And I'd like the files on all of them, as well as on O'Shea.'
'Lining up the students, no problem. Files? I'll need the headmaster's okay on that.'
'Do what you can,' said Danny.
'I'll take the tape,' said Lindsay.
Hexton stretched and nodded.
'Where's the headmaster?' asked Danny.
'Damage control,' said Hexton. 'Students' parents. Alumni. Havel's widow. And reporters, not yet but soon. It's a mess.'
'What can you tell us about Havel?'
'I had him for chemistry. Good teacher. Kept it interesting. Students liked him. He liked the students, seemed to be constantly amused by us. With some of the other teachers who were still around from when I was a student, it felt a little funny sort of being one of them, but Alvin made me feel comfortable, not just polite comfortable, but really comfortable from the first day. We had coffee, lunch once in a while. I'll miss him. Not just me. The teachers, staff, everyone liked him.'
'Not everyone,' said Danny.
In the student dining hall, Danny sat alone at a heavy wooden table, a Wallen School coffee cup in front of him, his tape recorder out, his open kit at his side. The lights were dim. The place reminded him of something out of Harry Potter.
The first student was sent in. Danny motioned for her to sit across from him. Danny wasn't comfortable. He had gone to a public school where there was a cafeteria, not a dining room, and the tables had been metal and benches had been bolted to the floor. At his school, the signs of teenage rage and rebellion had been evident in the obscenities scratched on benches and tabletops. There were no signs of even minor desecration in the Wallen School dining room.
'Annette Heights,' Danny said, motioning to the chair across from him. 'Mind if I tape our conversation?'
'No,' she said.
Danny had turned on the machine the moment she entered the room.
'Good. Then talk to me.'
