"Well." He sat on the edge of his desk. "The traditional definition of literacy concerns reading and writing abilities, the ability to use language, to speak in a fluent manner. Then, of course, you could take that out to the next logical step and use it to define a certain level of class or culture." He smiled, enjoying himself. "So, to say someone is illiterate, you would be employing the Latin, ‘il,' meaning not or without. Without reading skills, without fluency."
"Without class or culture?" Will asked, gathering from Evan Bernard's cockiness that he had expected the police to turn up on his doorstep. The arrest in Savannah was public record. The man had probably been wondering what was taking them so long.
As if to prove the point, there was a devious lilt to the teacher's tone. "One could say."
"That sounds a little different from the language you used yesterday."
"Yesterday I was in a meeting with my peers."
Will smiled at the dig. He was glad to find the man underestimating him. "What about someone who is functionally illiterate?"
"Strictly going by definition, it is as it sounds. A person who is able to function, or ‘pass' if you will, in the real world."
"And you're sure that's the sort of person who wrote those notes?"
"As I said on the phone, I'm not an expert."
"You're an expert in something, aren't you?"
He had the audacity to wink. "Let's just say that I know a little bit about a lot of things."
Will leaned against the closed door, casually crossed his arms. There was a security camera mounted in the corner on the wall opposite. Will knew that he was in the camera's frame, just as he knew that Evan Bernard had signed away his right to privacy when the school had installed the security system. It was to the teacher's benefit at the time, because it meant any spurious allegations of sexual misconduct could be quickly dismissed. On the other hand, it also meant that anything Bernard said or did right now was being recorded on equipment owned by the school, and as such, was completely admissible.
Will said, "I guess you're familiar with your rights. They read them to you when you were arrested in Savannah, right?"
His smile didn't falter. "That was two years ago, Mr. Trent, as I'm sure you know. She was fifteen, she told me she was twenty-one. You're barking up the wrong tree here. This is all just a misunderstanding."
"How's that?"
"I met her in a bar where alcohol is served. I assumed they checked her ID when they let her in."
"If you weren't guilty, why did you plead to reckless endanger-ment of a minor?"
He held up his finger. "Not a minor. That would be a felony. I was only charged with a misdemeanor."
Will felt a chill from his words. The man was not frightened of being accused, let alone being caught. "Evan, you need to start thinking about what your options are, the best course you can take to make this go easy for you."
Bernard adjusted his glasses, bringing out his teacher voice. "You're wasting your time here, Agent Trent. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got a class."
"Kayla was a good-looking girl," Will said. "I can see where it'd be hard to resist something like that."
"Please don't insult my intelligence," he said, picking up his briefcase off the floor. He started shoving in papers as he said, "I know my rights. I know I'm being recorded."
"Did you know you were being recorded two days ago when you left the school?"
For the first time, he looked nervous. "I'm allowed to leave campus during my off period."
"Where were you between the hours of eleven forty-five and one-thirty?"
"I drove around," he replied evenly. "It's the first few weeks of school. I had cabin fever. I just needed to get out."
"Get out where?"
"I drove into Virginia Highland," he said, referring to a local neighborhood with coffee shops and restaurants.
"Where did you go?"
"I don't remember."
"Where did you park?"
"I have no idea."
"Should I check for your red Volvo on the traffic cameras at Ponce de Leon and Briarcliff or Ponce and Highland?"
He didn't have an answer for that.
"Or did you cut through Emory? Should I check the traffic cameras there?" Will told him, "You might not have noticed, but the city has cameras at just about every major intersection in town."
"I was just driving around."
Will reached into his jacket pocket and took out a pad of paper and a pen that he had borrowed from the front office. "Write down your route, then I'll go check it out and we can talk this afternoon when school is over."
Bernard reached for the pen, then stopped himself.
Will asked, "Is there a problem? You said this was a misunderstanding, right? Just write out where you were. I'll have one of the patrolmen check it out, then we'll go over your story later."
The teacher took his own pen out of his jacket pocket and started to write. Will could see the nib of his fountain pen moving across the page in quick strokes. Bernard filled the first sheet, then turned to the next, writing more.
"That's enough," Will told him, taking back the tablet. He flipped from one page to the next, then back, before looking up at Bernard. "You teach normal kids, right? Not just the stupid ones."
He nodded, not correcting the gaffe.
Will pretended to read the pages, moving his eyes back and forth. "I just had a question for you, because I do this a lot. I ask people to write things down, and what I've found in the past is that the innocent people are usually so nervous that they forget things. They go back and forth and they scratch things out and they change words around. The guilty people just pick up the pen and start writing, and it's so easy for them because they're just making up shit as they go along."
Bernard put his pen back in his jacket pocket. "That's an interesting observation."
"Evan," Will said. "It's going to go a lot easier for you if we get Emma Campano back to her parents."
"I have no idea what you're talking about. I'm just as outraged as the next person that one of our students has been abducted from her home."
"Do you remember when you first started teaching?" Will asked. "The state did a background check on you, right? You had to go to the police station and give them your Social Security number and your address and then they took your fingerprints. Do you remember that?"
Bernard seemed to realize where this was going. His little game with the pen and wiping down the book had been for naught. "Vaguely."
"What's going to happen when the fingerprints from your card match the ones we found on the threatening letters you slid under Adam Humphrey's door?"
He seemed wholly unconcerned. "I imagine you'll be investigated for fabricating evidence."
"Even if Emma's dead, Evan, if you tell us where she is, a judge will look at that as a positive indication that you tried to do the right thing."
"That's your reality, not mine." He sat back in his chair, the smug look returning to his face.
"Kayla was a troublemaker. Everybody said that. Did she meet you outside of school? It wouldn't have been here, right? It would've been somewhere outside of school."
Bernard shook his head slowly from side to side, as if he felt sorry for Will.
"She's a good-looking girl. I mean, I know, man." Will felt his stomach clench like a fist. "I've been in this school ten minutes and I've already seen some girls…" He shrugged. "Different time, different place, I wouldn't say no."
Bernard took off his wire-rimmed glasses and used the tail of his shirt to clean the lenses. "Not that it's any of my business, but I'd be careful talking like that." He nodded toward the video camera in the corner. "People are watching."
"They were watching two days ago when you came running back to school, too."