Page 43 of We Are All Guilty Here

Dale said nothing.

“Tell me about the Glock 20 that’s registered in your name.” Lionel waited, but Dale didn’t respond. “We didn’t find it in your house or your car. Where is it?”

Dale’s head tilted down. He stared at the empty cup on the table.

“This isn’t looking good for you, man.” Lionel paused a moment. “You’re not stupid. You know how bad this looks.”

Emmy watched Lionel lean in again. She hadn’t noticed before, but Dale’s posture had changed dramatically over the last few minutes. He was no longer sitting ramrod straight. He’d slouched into the chair. His shoulders had rolled inward. He was shutting down.

According to the textbooks, this was the most dangerous time during an interview. There were only three things that could happen now: he would confess, he would ask for a lawyer, or he would go completely numb.

Dale whispered, “It wasn’t me.”

“Okay, buddy, I hear ya. But let me sum up where we’re at,” Lionel said. “Two kidnapped girls. You know them both. Blood at the scene indicates a gunshot wound. Your Glock is missing. You scrubbed down your car with bleach. You don’t have an alibi for last night. You were caught downloading child porn from your laptop this morning.”

Dale shook his head, muttering, “It’s not my laptop.”

Lionel asked, “Did you know computers keep a record every time a user logs in?”

Dale’s head popped up. He obviously had no idea. He sat up straighter in the chair, tried to get his confidence back. “Passwords can be stolen.”

“The last time your laptop was accessed was on May twelfth of this year. The contents of the Sacred Concertos folder were viewed for twenty-one minutes during your lunch hour.”

“Everyone has lunch at—”

“No, listen.” Lionel held up a finger to stop him. “We’ve got the CCTV camera showing you going into the auditorium three minutes before the log-in and leaving four minutes after the log-out. You were in there for twenty-eight minutes. Then on May twenty-fourth, same pattern. You go into the auditorium at lunch, log in for twenty-four minutes, log out, then the camera catches you leaving the auditorium.”

Emmy held her breath, leaning forward in her chair, silently begging Dale to finally crack.

“The—” Dale cleared his throat. “The hallway camera is broken.”

“That was true until recently,” Lionel said. “But the camera behind the ticket counter in the lobby has always worked fine.”

Emmy watched the color drain from Dale’s face. He gripped his hands together in his lap. The arrogance had finally melted from his features. He looked scared.

She mumbled, “Finally.”

“Dale,” Lionel said, “we’re going to keep looking at that CCTV and we’re going to match it to the log-ins and that’s how we’re going to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that you accessedyourschool laptop during school hours to masturbate to child pornography.”

Dale started to shake his head. “No.”

“Let me tell you what I think really happened this morning,” Lionel said. “You were bleaching down your car, thinking through all the weak points that could trace the girls back to you, and you panicked about the laptop.”

“No,” Dale insisted.

“You knew the town was crawling with cops. You knew it was only a matter of time before they talked to the girls’ teachers. You were scared one of them might find the laptop, or that somebody from the school would remember seeing it shoved behind the filing cabinet.”

“Not mine.”

“You knew the serial number would be traced back to you. You knew if anybody saw the files on that laptop, you would be connected to the kidnapping, because what are the odds that a pedophile who jerks off to pictures of exploited and vulnerable children isn’t the same raping murderer who abducted two little girls he’s known for two years?”

“They’re not little girls. They’re practically adult women.”

“You telling me you like them younger?”

“I’mtelling youthat you’re wrong.” Dale’s tone had changed. He was angry. “If your insane theory is true—and it’s not, by the way—why wouldn’t I just take the laptop and destroy it?”

Lionel chuckled, like the answer was easy. “Because you think you’re smart, Dale. Because you already went through all the bullshit excuses about the laptop in your head—I lost it. I don’t remember who I gave it to. I accidentally dropped it in thetoilet—and you realized that the only solution was to erase the hard drive and hope that would be the end of it.”

---