Jeffrey asked him, "Has the car been here all the time you were gone?"

"How the fuck would I know that?" Norton snapped.

Jeffrey let this slide. He walked to the car, noting the lock was down on both doors. The tires on the passenger's side looked fine and the hood of the car felt cool as he walked around it.

"Chief?" Frank called from the kitchen door. Hank Norton stood as Jeffrey walked back toward the house.

"What is it?" Norton asked. "Did you find something?"

Jeffrey walked back into the kitchen, spotting instantly what Frank had found. The word cunt had been carved on the inside door of the cabinet over the stove.

"I don't give a good goddamn about subpoenas," Jeffrey told Mary Ann Moon as he sped toward the college. He held the phone in one hand and drove with the other.

"One of my detectives is missing right now, and the only lead I've got is this list." He took a breath, trying to calm himself. "I have got to get access to those employment records."

Moon was diplomatic. "Chief, we have to go through protocol here. This isn't Grant County. We step on somebody's toes and it's not like we can make nice at the next church social."

"Do you know what this guys been doing to women here?" he asked. "Are you willing to take responsibility for my detective being raped right now? Because I guarantee you that's what's happening to her." He held his breath for a moment, trying not to let that image sink in.

When she did not respond, he said, "Someone carved something on a cabinet in her kitchen." He paused, letting her absorb that. "Do you want to take a guess as to what that word is, Ms. Moon?"

Moon was silent, obviously thinking. "I can probably talk to a girl I know in records over there. Twelve years is a long time. I can't make guarantees they'll keep something like that handy. It's probably on microfiche at the state records building."

He gave her his cell phone number before ringing off.

"What's the dorm number?" Frank asked as they drove through the gates of the college.

Jeffrey took out his notepad, flipping back a few pages. "Twelve," he said. "She's in Jefferson Hall."

The Town Car fishtailed as he stopped in front of the dormitory. Jeffrey was out the door and up the steps in a flash. He pounded his fist on the door to number twelve, throwing it open when there was no answer.

"Oh, Jesus," Jenny Price said, grabbing a sheet to cover herself. A boy Jeffrey had never seen before jumped up from the bed, slipping on his pants in one practiced movement.

"Get out," Jeffrey told him, walking toward Julia Matthews's side of the room. Nothing had been moved since he had been here last time.

Jeffrey did not imagine Matthews's parents felt much like going through their dead daughters things.

Jenny Price was dressed, more bold than she had been the day before. "What are you doing here?" she demanded.

Jeffrey ignored her question, searching through clothes and books.

Jenny repeated the question, this time to Frank.

"Police business," he mumbled from the hallway.

Jeffrey turned the room upside down in seconds. There had not been much to begin with, and as with the search before, nothing new turned up. He stopped, looking around the room, trying to find what he was missing. He was turning to search the closet again when he noticed a stack of books by the door. A thin film of mud covered the spines. They had not been there the first time Jeffrey had searched the room. He would have remembered them.

He asked, "What are those?"

Jenny followed his gaze. "The campus police brought those by," she explained. "They were Julia's."

Jeffrey clenched his fist, wanting to pound something. "They brought them by here?" he asked, wondering why he was surprised. Grant Tech's campus security force was comprised of mostly middle-aged deputy dogs who hadn't a brain between them.

The girl explained, "They found them outside the library."

Jeffrey forced his hands to unclench, bending at the knee to examine the books. He thought about putting gloves on before touching them, but it was not as if a chain of custody had been maintained.

The Biology of Microorganisms was on top of the stack, flecks of mud scattered along the front cover. Jeffrey picked up the book, thumbing through the pages. On page twenty-three, he found what he was looking for. The word CUNT was printed in bold red marker across the page.

"Oh my God," Jenny breathed, hand to her mouth.

Jeffrey left Frank to seal off the room. Instead of driving to the science lab where Sibyl worked, he jogged across the campus, going the opposite direction he had gone with Lena just a few days ago. Again, he took the stairs two at a time; again, he did not bother to wait for an answer to his knock outside Sibyl Adams's lab.

"Oh," Richard Carter said, looking up from a notebook. "What can I do for you?"

Jeffrey leaned his hand on the closest desk, trying to catch his breath. "Was there anything," he began, "unusual the day Sibyl Adams was killed?"

Carters face took on an exasperated expression. Jeffrey wanted to smack it off him, but he refrained.

Carter said in a self-righteous tone, "I told you before, there was nothing out of the ordinary. She's dead, Chief Tolliver, don't you think that I'd mention something unusual?"

"Maybe a word was written on something," Jeffrey suggested, not wanting to give too much away. It was amazing what people thought they remembered if you asked them the right way. "Did you see something written on one of her notebooks? Maybe she had something she kept close by that someone tampered with?"

Carter's face fell. Obviously, he remembered something. "Now that you mention it," he began, "just before her early class on Monday, I saw something written on the chalkboard." He crossed his arms over his large chest. "Kids think it's funny to pull those kinds of pranks. She was blind, so she couldn't really see what they were doing."

"What did they do?"

"Well, someone, I don't know who, wrote the word cunt on the blackboard."

"This was Monday morning?"

"Yes."

"Before she died?"

He had the decency to look away before answering, "Yes."

Jeffrey stared at the top of Richard's head for a moment, fighting the urge to pummel him. He said, "If you had told me this last Monday, do you realize Julia Matthews might be alive?"

Richard Carter did not have an answer for that.

Jeffrey left, slamming the door behind him. He was making his way down the steps when his cell phone rang. He answered on the first ring. "Tolliver."

Mary Ann Moon got right to the point. "I'm in the records department right now, looking at the list. It's everybody who worked on the first-floor emergency department, from the doctors to the custodians."

"Go ahead," Jeffrey said, closing his eyes, blocking out her Yankee twang as she called out the first, middle, and last names of the men who had worked with Sara. It took her a full five minutes to read them all. After the last one, Jeffrey was silent.

Moon asked, "Anybody on there sound familiar?"

"No," Jeffrey responded. "Fax the list to my office if you don't mind." He gave her the number, feeling as if he had been punched in the stomach. His mind conjured the image of Lena again, nailed to a basement floor, terrified.

Moon prompted, "Chief?"

"I'll have some of my guys cross-reference it with voter polls and the phone book." He paused, debating whether or not to go on. Finally, good breeding won out. "Thank you," he said. "For looking that list up."

Moon did not give him her customary abrupt good-bye. She said, "I'm sorry the names didn't ring any bells."

"Yeah," he answered, checking his watch. "Listen, I can be back in Atlanta in around four hours. Do you think I can get some time alone with Wright?"