“Detective Kaplan.” Hair sweaty at the temples and racquet in hand, Michael Williams stares at my scarred skin as if I owe him an explanation.

“All done here,” I say to Student A, and murmur, “Not a word,” as I stride past. Michael is looking between me and the now-empty locker, and I think something like panic streaks across his face.

Outside the gym, I’m weighing my options.

I should call this in. Teddy will be pissed. Truman furious. But it’s a good find. Still, I risk them patting me on my head—Thank you very much, we’ll take it from here. Go back to sleep until we can tolerate looking at your wounded flesh.

I could call Dara. Have her run the phone as a favor. Her guys are pretty good at breaking passwords. She could have the call logs to me tonight if I pressed her. But by now, she’ll have heard about the fire. She might ask questions or send the logs to the office fax machine, ripe for Teddy, or worse, Oliver to pick up.

I look at the gray-white sky, the students with their bright, determined faces as they barrel in and out the gym doors, others on benches cramming in a last-minute study session as they wait for the bus.

Or, I think, I could buy a charger and do it myself.

Mine.

Twelve

Friday, December 6, noon

Thirty minutes later, I’m tucked into a corner booth at Walker’s, coffee cup in hand, and charging the phone on a wall outlet.

I don’t touch Jay’s folder. I’m dying to reexamine all the bits of paper but will leave it for the document examiner. It’s amazing what they can do. All the crime shows these days are about hacking someone’s computer or accessing CCTV cameras to trace their movements. Zooming in, enhancing photos so even the grainiest image reveals the perpetrator—we’ve got him—and the ensuing police chase. But a simple handwritten note can give you lots of interesting information. Each letter (uppercase, lowercase, the ways they loop and link together), punctuation, spelling mistakes, lazy scrawls, hard indents, and impressions—it all gives you something. It’s not just comparing handwriting samples to identify the author; a document examiner can look at a piece of paper and tell you the guy’s mood, the kind of desk he wrote on, even if he’s writing under the influence of alcohol, illness, or duress. So I leave the notes tucked away for fear of contaminating them further.

It takes less than a minute for the phone to have enough juice to light up. One unread message. Password protected. Four-number combination. Go.