Fractured (4 page)

Will checked on Paul. The man still stood frozen at the top of the stairs. His big, meaty hands were clasped in front of his chest like a nervous old woman waiting for bad news. Will didn't know what exactly he could see, if the distance softened some of the violence or made it worse.

Will told him, "She was beaten. I can see what looks like two knife wounds. One's just below her breast. The other is above her belly button."

"She got it pierced last year." Paul gave a strained laugh. Will looked back at him and Paul took this as a sign to continue. "She and her best friend went to Florida and came back with…" He shook his head. "You think shit like that's funny when you're a kid, but when you're a parent and your daughter comes home with a ring in her belly…" His face crumpled as he fought emotions.

Will turned his attention back to the girl. There was a silver ring looped through the skin of her belly button.

Paul asked, "Was she raped?"

"Probably." He'd said the word too fast. The sound hung in the stagnant air.

"Before or after?" Paul's voice shook. He was more than familiar with the dark deeds men were capable of.

The blood on her abdomen and chest was smeared, indicating someone had lain on top of her after the worst of the beating was over. Still, Will told him, "The coroner will have to answer that. I can't tell."

"Are you lying to me?"

"No," Will answered, trying not to look at the handprint, to let the guilt eat him up inside so that he ended up being the one to tell this man the horrible truth about his daughter's violent, degrading death.

Suddenly he felt Paul behind him.

Will stood, blocking him. "This is a crime scene. You need to-"

Paul's mouth dropped open. He slumped against Will like all the air had left his body. "It's not…" His mouth worked, tears welling into his eyes. "It's not her."

Will tried to turn the man away from the sight of his daughter. "Let's go downstairs. You don't need to see any more of this."

"No," Paul countered, his fingers digging into Will's arm. "I mean it. It's not her." He shook his head back and forth, vehement. "It's not Emma."

"I know this is hard for you."

"Fuck you, with what you know!" Paul pushed himself away from Will. "Has anybody ever told you that your daughter is dead?" He kept shaking his head, staring at the girl. "That's not her."

Will tried to reason with him. "Her navel is pierced like you said."

He shook his head, his words choking in his throat. "It's not-"

"Come on," Will coaxed, pushing him back a few steps, trying to keep him from contaminating the scene any more than he already had.

Paul's words came out in an almost giddy rush. "Her hair, Trash. Emma's got longer hair than that. It goes down to her back almost. And she's got a birthmark on her right arm-Emma does. Look, there's nothing there. There's no birthmark."

Will checked the arm. Except for the blood, the skin was a perfect white.

"Right arm," Paul insisted, annoyed. He pointed to the other arm "She's got a birthmark." When Will did not respond, he took out his wallet. Receipts and papers fell onto the floor as he dug around inside. "It's weird, shaped like a handprint. The skin's darker there." He found what he was looking for and handed Will a photograph. Emma was much younger in the picture. She was wearing a cheerleading outfit. One arm was cocked to her hip, holding a pom-pom. Paul was right; the birthmark looked as if someone had wrapped his hand around her arm and left a print.

Still, Will said, "Paul, let's not-"

"Abby! It's not her. It's not Emma!" Paul was laughing, elated. "Look at her arm, Trash. There's nothing there. This isn't Emma. It's gotta be Kayla. They look alike. They trade clothes all the time. It's got to be her!"

Abigail ran upstairs, Faith fast behind her.

"Stay back." Will blocked their way, holding out his arms like a crossing guard, physically pushing Paul back. The man was still smiling a fool's grin. All he was thinking was that his daughter wasn't dead. His mind hadn't made the next leap.

"Keep them here," Will told Faith. She nodded, stepping in front of the parents. Carefully, Will walked back toward the dead girl. He crouched down again, studying the shoe prints, the spray on the wall. Crossing the dead girl's body was a fine arc of blood that caught his attention. It went just under her breasts like a finely drawn line. Will hadn't noticed it the first time, but right now, he would have bet his pension that the blood had come from the kid downstairs.

"It's not her," Paul insisted. "It's not Emma."

Faith began, "It's hard sometimes when you lose someone you love. Denial is understandable."

Paul exploded. "Would you listen to me, you stupid bitch? I'm not going through the twelve steps of grief. I
know
what my fucking daughter looks like!"

Leo called, "Everything okay up there?"

"It's under control," Faith said, sounding like the exact opposite was true.

Will looked at the dead girl's bare feet. The soles were clean, seemingly the only part of her body that didn't have some pattern of blood on it.

He stood up, asking Abigail, "Tell me what happened."

She was shaking her head, unable to let herself hope. "Is it Emma? Is that her?"

Will took in the faint streaks of dark red on the skirt of Abigail's white tennis dress, the transfer patterns across her chest. He kept his voice firm, even though his heart was thumping hard enough to press against his ribs. "Tell me exactly what happened from the moment you got here."

"I was in my car-"

"From the stairs," Will interrupted. "You came up the stairs. Did you go to the body? Did you come into this area?"

"I stood here," she said, indicating the floor in front of her.

"What did you see?"

Tears streamed down her cheeks. Her mouth moved, trying to get out words as her eyes scanned the dead body. Finally, she said, "I saw him standing over her. He had a knife in his hand. I felt threatened."

"I know you felt like your life was in danger," Will assured her. "Just tell me what happened next."

Her throat worked. "I panicked. I stepped back and fell down the stairs."

"What did he do?"

"He came after me-came down the stairs."

"Did he have the knife in his hand?" She nodded.

"Was it raised?"

She nodded again, then shook her head. "I don't know. No. It was at his side." She tightened her hand to her side to show him. "He was running down the stairs. It was at his side."

"Did he raise the knife when he got to the bottom of the stairs?"

"I kicked him before he got to the bottom. To throw him off balance."

"What happened to the knife?"

"He dropped it when he fell. I- He hit me in the head. I thought he was going to kill me."

Will turned around, looked at the shoe prints again. They were scattered, chaotic. Two people had stepped in the blood, walked back and forth, struggled. "Are you sure you didn't come into the hallway up here at all?"

She nodded her head.

"Listen to me very carefully. You didn't walk around up here? You didn't go to your daughter? You didn't step in any blood?"

"No. I was here. Right here. I stopped at the top of the stairs and he came toward me. I thought he was going to kill me. I thought…" She put her hand to her mouth, unable to continue. Her voice cracked as she asked her husband, "It's not Em?"

Will told Faith, "Keep them both right here," as he headed down the stairs.

Leo was standing in the front doorway, talking to one of the uniformed patrolmen. He asked Will, "What's going on?"

"Don't wait for Pete," he ordered, stepping over the body. "I need an ID on this guy right now." He found Abigail Campano's shoes in the parlor under the coffee table. The tread was a court zigzag, not a waffle pattern. Except for a couple of scuff marks on the toes, there wasn't a trace of blood on them.

In the foyer, Leo was taking a pair of latex gloves from his pocket. "The nosey neighbor across the street says she saw a car parked in the driveway a couple of hours ago. Could be yellow, could be white. Could be four doors, could be two."

Will checked the dead man's sneakers. Waffle pattern, dried blood caked in the tread. He said, "Give me those." Leo handed him the gloves and Will put them on. "You got your pictures, right?"

"Yeah. What's going on?"

Carefully, Will peeled up the dead man's T-shirt. The material was still soaking wet where it had bunched up at the waist, and it left an odd, pinkish hue on the exposed skin.

Leo asked, "You wanna tell me what you're doing?"

There was so much blood that it was hard to see anything. Will gently pressed the abdomen, and a narrow slit opened up in the flesh, black liquid oozing out.

"Shit," Leo hissed. "Did the mother stab him?"

"No." Will saw how it must have happened. The young man kneeling beside the body upstairs, a knife plunged into his chest. He would have pulled out the knife, arterial blood spraying over the dead girl's body. The man would've tried to stand, staggering to get help even as his lung collapsed. That's when Abigail Campano had appeared at the top of the stairs. She saw the man who had killed her daughter. He saw the woman who could possibly save them all.

Leo looked up the stairs, then back at the dead kid, finally understanding. "Shit."

Will snapped off the gloves, trying not to think about all the lost time. He went to the bloody bare footprint, saw that the weight had been on the ball of the foot when it was made. There was a small cluster of blood droplets on the bottom stair-six of them.

Will talked it out for Leo's benefit as much as his own. "Emma was unconscious. The killer carried her over his shoulder." Will narrowed his eyes, putting the pieces together. "He stopped here at the bottom of the stairs to catch his breath. Her head and arms were hanging down his back. The blood drops on the bottom tread are almost perfectly round, which means they fell straight down." Will pointed to the footprint. "He shifted her weight forward. Her foot touched the floor-that's why it's facing up the stairs instead of toward the door. After carrying her down the stairs, he had to readjust the body so that he could carry her out the front door."

Leo tried to cover himself. "The mother's story held up. There was no way I could-"

"It doesn't matter." Will glanced up. Abigail and Paul Campano were staring over the railing, watching, disbelieving. "Does Kayla have a car?"

Abigail spoke hesitantly. "She drives a white Prius."

Will took out his phone and hit the speed dial. He told Leo, "Try to nail down the old lady on the car-show her a photo array if you have to. Check all 9-1-1 calls coming out of the area in the last five hours. Get your guys to recanvass the neighborhood. There were a lot of joggers out earlier who are probably back home by now. I'll notify highway patrol; there's an on-ramp to the interstate less than a mile from here." Will put the phone to his ear just as Amanda picked up. He didn't waste time with pleasantries. "I need a team here. It looks like we've got a kidnapping."

CHAPTER TWO

EMMA CAMPANO'S BEDROOM was almost as big as Will's entire house. He hadn't had his own room as a kid. He hadn't really had his own anything until he turned eighteen and the Atlanta Children's Home gave him a pat on the back and a check from the state. His first apartment was a box, but it was his box. Will could still remember what it felt like to leave his toothbrush and shampoo in the bathroom without having to worry someone else would swipe them-or worse. Even to this day, there was a certain joy he felt from opening the refrigerator and knowing that he could eat anything he wanted.

He wondered if Paul got a similar feeling when he walked through his multimillion-dollar home. Did his chest puff out with pride when he saw the dainty antique chairs and the obviously expensive canvases that hung on the walls? When he locked the front door at night, did he still get that sense of relief that no one had managed to take it all away from him? There was no arguing that the man had made a good life for his family. With the pool out back and the screening room in the basement, you'd never guess he had spent his early years perfecting the role of a juvenile delinquent.

Paul had never been quick, but he was street smart and even as a kid, he knew how to make a dollar. Abigail was obviously the brains in the family. She was right behind Will in figuring out what had really happened that morning in the Campano home. Will had never in his life seen someone so stricken with horror as when the woman realized that she had probably killed an innocent man- worse, an innocent man who might have been trying to help her daughter. She'd become hysterical. A doctor had been called to sedate her.

Typical Paul, he was working the angles before his wife's head hit the pillow. He'd taken out his cell phone and made two calls: one to his attorney and one to his influential father-in-law, Hoyt Bentley. Ten short minutes later, Will's own cell phone had started ringing. Once again, the governor had contacted the director of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, who had pressed Amanda, and she in turn had pressed Will.

"Don't fuck this up," Amanda had told him in her usual supportive way.

The procedure in kidnapping cases was simple: have a cop with the family at all times and have the family by the phone for the ransom call. Even as the doctor stuck a needle in her arm, Abigail Campano had still refused to leave her home. There was a guest suite in the carriage house. After making sure the apartment was not part of the crime scene, Will had sent the parents there along with Hamish Patel, a GBI hostage negotiator. Paul had bristled about being assigned a babysitter, which meant he either had something to hide or thought he could control the situation without the police getting in his way.

Knowing the way Paul worked, it was probably a little of both. He had been so uncooperative during questioning that Will was actually looking forward to the lawyer showing up so the man could tell his client it was okay to give a straight answer. Or maybe Hamish Patel could work some of his magic. The hostage negotiator had been trained by Amanda Wagner when she'd led the GBI's rapid extraction team. He could pretty much talk the fleas off a dog.

Again following procedure, Will had put out an APB on Kayla Alexander's white Prius and issued a Levi's Call, Georgia's version of the Amber Alert, for Emma Campano. This meant that all the highway message boards in Atlanta as well as radios and television sets in Georgia would carry some sort of warning asking folks to come forward if they saw the car or the girl. Will had also set up traces on all the family telephones and cell phones, but he doubted there was a ransom call coming any time soon.

His gut told him that whoever had taken Emma Campano didn't want her for money. One look at Kayla Alexander told that story. The young woman had been beaten and raped by a sadist who had probably enjoyed every minute of it. There was only one reason to take a hostage from the scene, and it wasn't for cash. All Will could do at this moment was hope that he found something- anything-that pointed the way to the man before he killed again.

Will stood out in the hallway as he watched the crime-scene tech taking photos of Emma Campano's bedroom. He was trying to get a sense of who she was, but nothing stood out except for the fact that she was a tidy young woman. Neatly folded clothes that were waiting to be put up lined the top of a velvet bench with silk tassels and the books on the shelves were stacked in straight rows. Some sort of floral air freshener gave the room a sickly sweet smell. Outside the window, a small wind chime tinkled from a rare summer wind.

Though Emma's personal mark did not stand out, there was no mistaking the space belonged to a very fortunate teenage girl. The four-poster bed had a bright pink coverlet with purple sheets and heart-shaped pillows. The walls were painted a soothing, light lilac that complemented the geometrically patterned shag rugs on the hardwood floor. There was a flat panel television mounted over a large fireplace. Two comfortable-looking chairs were by the window. A book was pressed open on the arm of one-a romance from the look of it. Two purses had been thrown onto the other chair. A backpack was on the floor, stuffed with schoolbooks and loose papers. Two pairs of identical flip-flops had been kicked off by the door. One set was a larger size than the other.

That at least explained why the girls were barefoot.

The tech took a couple more photographs, the flash filling the room. He asked Will, "Anything specific you want me to cover?"

"Can you test the fluid on the bed?" The sheets were bunched up in a knot. The dark purple material made signs of sexual activity obvious.

"I need to get the kit out of my truck," the tech said. "You need anything else?"

Will shook his head and the man left. Outside, a heavy door slammed, making the familiar thumping sound that Will always associated with death. He walked to the window and saw Pete Hanson standing behind the coroner's van, hand flat to the back door as he took a moment to pay his respects to the dead bodies inside. Pete had given Will a preliminary rundown, but they wouldn't have hard facts until the autopsies were performed tomorrow morning.

The Atlanta Police Department had moved from a primary to supportive role now that there was a kidnapping involved. Leo Donnelly was probably calling his accountant at the moment, trying to figure out if he could take early retirement. Will had tossed him the task of tracking down Kayla Alexander's parents and telling them that their daughter had been murdered. That seemed punishment enough, though Amanda might have something to say about that.

Will tugged on a pair of latex gloves as he prepared to search Emma's room. He started with the two purses on one of the chairs. Methodically, Will searched each one. He found pens, tampons, candy, loose change at the bottom-exactly what you'd expect to find in any woman's handbag. The leather wallets in each were identical, both with the same designer logo on them, and he assumed the girls had bought them on a shopping trip together. They each had a Visa card with their name on it. Their driver's license photos showed images of two remarkably similar-looking girls: blond haired, blue eyed. Emma Campano had obviously been the prettier of the two, but there was a defiant tilt to Kayla

Alexander's chin that made Will think she was the one who'd gotten all the attention.

Not anymore. The news crews were still swarming outside. Will was sure every station had broken into regular programming with the story. Thanks to the endless and annoying commercials, the Campano name was well-known to Atlantans. Will wondered if the family's notoriety would help or hinder the case. He also wondered what was happening to Emma Campano right now. Will looked at her picture again. Maybe he was reading too much into it, but there seemed to be an air of reticence about her, as if she expected the photographer to find fault instead of beauty.

"Adam David Humphrey," Faith Mitchell said. Like Will, she was wearing a pair of latex gloves. Also like Will, she was holding an open wallet and a driver's license in her hands. This one belonged to the dead man downstairs. "He's got an Oregon State license. No car registered in his name in either state. The principal at the girls' school has never heard of him and he was never a student there." She handed Will the plastic ID card. Will squinted his eyes at the tiny letters. "One of the guys back at the station is trying to get in touch with the local sheriff up there. The address makes it hard."

He patted his pockets, looking for his glasses. "Why is that?"

Her tone was almost as condescending as Amanda's. "Rural route?"

"Sorry, I left my reading glasses at the office." A rural route with a box number would not necessarily correspond with a physical address. Unless the Humphreys were well-known in town, this added another hoop to jump through before the dead boy's parents could be informed. Will sat back on his heels, studying the license photo of Adam Humphrey. He was a good-looking kid in a geeky sort of way. His mouth was twisted into a grin and his hair was longer in the photo, but there was no mistaking that Adam Humphrey was the man lying dead downstairs. "He's older than I thought."

"Nineteen is still young."

"What's he doing in Atlanta?" Will answered his own question. "College."

Faith checked through the wallet, calling out what she found. "Six dollars cash, a photograph of an older couple-probably grandparents. Wait a minute." The gloves were too long for her fingers, making it difficult for her to dig around. Will waited patiently until she pulled out a photograph. "Is this Emma?"

He compared the photo against the licenses he had found in the two purses. Emma was happier in the picture from the wallet, her mouth open in laughter. "It's her."

Faith looked at them both, then nodded her agreement. "She looks younger than seventeen."

Will said, "Adam's got a thing for Emma, not Kayla. So why is Kayla dead?"

She put the photo back into the wallet and dropped them both in a plastic evidence bag. "Maybe she got in the way."

Will nodded, though the vicious manner in which the girl had been raped and killed made him think there was more to it than that. "We'll know more when Pete does the autopsy. Do the parents want to see her body?"

"The parents don't even know yet." Will's mouth opened to ask why the hell not, but she talked over him. "The school principal told Leo that the Alexanders are on a three-week vacation in New Zealand and Australia. They left emergency contact numbers for their hotels. Leo called the manager at the Mercure Dunedin. He promised he'd get the parents to call as soon as they get back from sightseeing, whenever that might be. There's an eighteen-hour time difference, so it's already tomorrow morning for them." Faith added, "I sent a cruiser to their house on Paces Ferry. No one was home."

"They couldn't have left their daughter alone for three weeks."

"She was seventeen years old. She was old enough to take care of herself." Her face flushed as she seemed to realize that the exact opposite was true.

"Did Abigail Campano give you anything when you talked to her?"

"It was a different conversation. We both thought her daughter was dead."

Will recalled, "She's the one who told you that Kayla would probably be at school."

"Right. She even said, ‘At least Kayla is safe.' "

"Did Leo ask the principal about the girls skipping?"

"She confirmed it's been a problem. Students aren't allowed off campus during lunch, but some of them sneak out and come back in before the bell rings. There's a hole in the security cameras behind the main class building and the kids take advantage of it."

"Send some extra cruisers to the school. Until we know there's no connection, I want to make sure we keep a close eye on the rest of the students. Also, let's try to get a dump on the Alexanders' phone. There has to be an aunt or a family friend who's been checking in on her. Send a uniform to knock on the neighbors' doors. It's coming on suppertime. People should be getting home by now."

She had tucked the wallet under her arm as she wrote down his instructions in her notebook. "Anything else?"

He looked at the book bag, all the papers spilling out of it. "Send someone up here who can work fast to go through all these notes. Tell Leo to talk to the school principal again. I want a list of Kayla and Emma's known acquaintances. If any of the teachers are still at school, tell him to talk to them, see what the girls were like, who they hung out with, then I'll go back at them tomorrow after they've had the night to think about it. The girls were truants, so they might be hanging out with kids from other schools." He stopped, going back to the dead kid downstairs. Finding out who Adam was and what he was doing in Atlanta was the only tangible lead they could follow.

He took out one of his business cards and handed it to her. "Call back that sheriff in Oregon and give him my cell number. Tell him to call me as soon as he gets anything on Adam Humphrey's parents. For now, I want you focused on finding out why Adam was in Atlanta. Track down the college angle first."

She shook her head. "He'd have a college ID on him if he was in school."