Fractured

CHAPTER NINE

FAITH STOOD OUTSIDE the morgue, her finger pressed into one ear to block out the noise as she talked to Ruth Donner on her cell phone. Tracking down Kayla Alexander's former nemesis had been somewhat easier than speaking in front of a group of terrified teenagers. In retrospect, Olivia McFaden's relieving her of the podium had been somewhat reminiscent of Travis and Old Yeller in the woodshed.

Still, Faith had managed to persuade Olivia McFaden to put her in touch with Ruth Donner's mother. The woman had given Faith an earful about Kayla Alexander, then volunteered her daughter's cell phone number. Ruth was a student at Colorado State. She was studying early childhood education. She wanted to be a schoolteacher.

"I couldn't believe it was Kayla," Ruth said. "It's been all over the news here."

"Anything you could think of would help," Faith said, raising her voice over the whir of a bone saw. She went up the stairs to the next landing, but she could still hear the motor. "Have you seen her since you left school?"

"No. Truthfully, I haven't had much contact with anybody since I left."

Faith tried, "Can you think of anyone who might want to hurt her?"

"Well, I mean…" Her voice trailed off. "Not to be cruel about it, but she wasn't very well liked."

Faith bit back the "no shit" that wanted to come, asking instead, "Did you know her friend Emma?"

"Not really. I saw her with Kayla, but she never said anything to me." She remembered, "Well, sometimes she would stare at me, but you know how it is. If your best friend hates somebody, then you have to hate them, too." She seemed to realize how childish that sounded. "God, it was all so desperate when I was in the middle of it, but now I look back and wonder why the heck any of it mattered, you know?"

"Yeah," Faith agreed, feeling in her gut that this was a dead end. She had checked flight manifests going in and out of Atlanta for the last week. Ruth Donner's name had not shown up on any airline manifests. "You have my number. Will you call me if you remember anything?"

"Of course," Ruth agreed. "Will you let me know if you find her?"

"Yes," Faith promised, though updating Ruth Donner wasn't high on her list of priorities. "Thank you."

Faith ended the call and tucked her phone into her pants pocket. She went back down the stairs, the scent of burned bone wafting up to meet her. Despite her earlier bravado with Will Trent, she hated being in the morgue. The dead bodies didn't bother her so much as the atmosphere, the industrial processing of death. The cold marble tile that wrapped floor to ceiling to deflect stains. The drains on the floor every three feet so that blood and matter could be washed away. The stainless steel gurneys with their big rubber wheels and plastic mattresses.

Summer was the medical examiner's peak period, a particularly brutal time of year. Often, you would find ten or twelve bodies stacked in the freezer. They lay there like pieces of meat waiting to be butchered for clues. The very thought brought an almost unbearable sadness.

Pete Hanson was holding up a pile of bloody, wet intestines when Faith walked in. He smiled brightly, giving her his usual greeting. "The prettiest detective in the building!"

She willed her stomach not to heave as he dropped the intestines onto a large scale. Despite being underground, the room was always disgustingly warm in the summer months, the compressor on the freezer pushing heat into the confined space faster than the air-conditioning could keep up with it.

"This one was full as a tick," Pete mumbled, writing down the number from the scale.

Faith had never met a coroner who wasn't eccentric in one way or another, but Pete Hanson was a special kind of freaky. She understood why he'd been divorced three times. The perplexing question was how he had found three women out there in the world who had agreed to marry him in the first place.

He motioned her over. "I take it there are no breaks if you're gracing me with your presence?"

"Nothing yet," she told him, glancing around the morgue. Snoopy, an elderly black man who had assisted Pete for as long as Faith had worked homicide, but whose real name she had still never learned, gave her a nod as he rolled Adam Humphrey's face back along his skull, pressing the skin into the crevices. His bony fingers worked meticulously, and Faith was reminded of the time her mother had made her a Halloween costume, her firm hands smoothing pieces of material onto the Butterick pattern.

Faith made herself look away, thinking that between this and the heat, there was no way she was going to leave this room without tasting something awful in the back of her throat. "What about you?"

"Same bad luck, I'm afraid." He took off his gloves and put on a fresh pair. "Snoopy's covering it up, but I found a pretty bad smack to the right side of Humphrey's head."

"Fatal?"

"No, more of a glancing blow. The scalp remained intact, but it would've made him see stars."

He walked over to a large soup pan with a ladle sticking out of it. She had arrived at the worst part of the autopsy. Stomach contents. The smell was vicious, the sort of scent that ate into the lining of your nose and back of your mouth, so that the next day you woke up thinking you had a sore throat.

"Now, this," Pete said, using a long set of tweezers to hold up what looked like a large crystal of salt. "This is obviously gristle, common to most fast-food hamburgers."

"Obviously," Faith echoed, trying not to be sick.

"Think of that the next time you go to McDonald's."

Faith was fairly certain she was never going to eat again.

"I would guess the young man had some type of fast food at least thirty minutes prior to death. The girl had French fries but seems to have passed on the burger."

She said, "We didn't find any fast-food bags in the trashcans or the house."

"Then perhaps they ate on the run. Worst possible thing for digestion, by the way. There's a reason why there is an obesity epidemic in this country."

Faith wondered if the man had looked in a mirror lately. His gut was so large and round that he looked pregnant under the billows of his surgical gown.

Pete asked, "How's Will doing?"

"Trent?" she asked. "I didn't realize you knew him."

He took off his gloves, motioning for Faith to follow him. "Excellent detective. It must be a nice change working with someone who is, shall we say, more cerebral than your usual bunch."

"Hm," she said, unwilling to pay Will a compliment, even though Pete was right. There were only three women in Atlanta Homicide Division. There had been four when Faith first got there, but Claire Dunkel, a thirty-year veteran, had taken retirement the first week Faith had been on the squad. Her parting advice was, "Wear a skirt every once in a while or you'll start to grow testicles."

Maybe that's why Faith was having such a hard time gelling with Will Trent. For all his faults, he actually seemed to respect her.

He hadn't once drawn a ludicrous connection between Faith's hair color and her mental abilities, nor had he scratched himself repeatedly or spat on the floor-all things Leo Donnelly usually did before his second cup of coffee.

Pete untied his surgical gown, revealing a shirt that was of the loud Hawaiian variety. Faith was glad to see that he was wearing shorts. Beneath the gown, the sight of his hairless legs, bare but for the black socks he'd pulled up to his knees, had been alarming.

"Horrible situation with your mother," Pete said. Faith watched him punch the soap dispenser and lather up his hands. "It's one of those cases where ‘just doing my job' seems like a lame excuse, isn't it?"

"Yes," she agreed.

"Though I've been in this building for many years, and I've seen a lot of things happening that shouldn't. I certainly wouldn't volunteer any information, but if someone asked me directly, I would feel compelled to tell them the truth." He smiled at her over his shoulder. "I suppose that would make me what you guys call a ‘rat.' "

She shrugged.

"Will is a good man who had to do a dirty job. I can relate to that." He pulled a handful of paper towels off the stack and dried his hands as he walked to his office.

"Sit," Pete said, indicating a chair by his desk.

Faith sat on the stack of papers in the chair, knowing Pete didn't expect her to move them. "What do you have so far?"

"Nothing of consequence, I'm afraid." He retrieved a paper bag from the small refrigerator in the corner. Faith concentrated on finding a clean page in her notebook as he took out a sandwich. "The girl was stabbed at least twenty-seven times. I would assume from angle and trajectory that the wounds match the kitchen knife you found at the crime scene. The killer was most likely on his knees, superior to the body, when he attacked her."

Faith wrote furiously, knowing he would not pause to let her catch up.

"There was bruising around her thighs and some tearing in the vaginal canal. I found traces of cornstarch, which indicates a condom was used, but we can assume from the sperm that the condom tore, as often happens with rough sex. Also, I noted some faint bite marks around the breasts. I would say this was more consistent with consensual sex, though that's really just speculation on my part."

He unwrapped his sandwich and took a bite, chewing with his mouth open as he continued. "You can certainly leave those kinds of marks by raping a woman, but then again, if you were feeling a little eager and the woman was willing, you could make an argument that the marks were left not by rape, but during a particularly ardent session of lovemaking. I wouldn't be surprised if, after a couple of bottles of tequila and some dancing, the current Mrs. Hanson happily exhibited the same sort of trauma."

She tried not to shudder. "The bite marks, too?"

There was a loud snap as Pete clamped his dentures together, and Faith wrote nonsense words in her notebook, praying he would stop. "So, you're saying that the girl wasn't raped."

"And as I told Agent Trent at the crime scene, there was semen in the crotch of the panties, indicating that after having sex, she put on her underwear and stood up. Now, unless the perpetrator raped her, made her dress and stand up, then chased her down the hall and killed her, then pulled down her panties again, then I would say that she was not raped. At least not during the attack."

Faith noted this word for word in her notebook.

Pete took another bite of his sandwich. "Now, as for cause of death, I would say there are three likely candidates: blunt-force trauma, the pierced jugular and just plain old shock. The nature of the attack was intense. There would have been a cascade effect with the body. There comes a time when the brain and the heart and the organs just throw up their hands and say, ‘You know what? We can't take this anymore.' "

Faith dutifully recorded his words. "Which one is your money on?"

He chewed thoughtfully, then laughed. "Well, an armchair coroner might go for the jugular!"

Faith managed a chuckle, though she had no idea why she was encouraging him.

"The jugular was sliced. I would say that, in and of itself, the cut was fatal, but it would've taken time-say three to four minutes. My official report will reflect the more likely culprit: massive shock."

"Do you think she was conscious during the attack?"

"If the parents ask you that question, I would tell them unequivocally that she was instantly rendered unconscious and felt absolutely no pain." He took a bag of potato chips out of the paper sack, leaning back in his chair as he opened them. "Now, the boy, not so much."

"What's your best guess?"

"It jibes with Will's theory. I can't believe how well he reads a crime scene." Pete popped a potato chip into his mouth, seemingly lost in thoughts of Will Trent's expertise.

"Pete?"

"Sorry," he said, offering her a potato chip. Faith shook her head, and he went on. "I haven't culled all my notes, but I think I have a clear picture." He sat up in the chair and drank from the Dunkin' Donuts cup on his desk. "Physically, he presents pretty straightforward. I already told you about the head wound. The stab to the chest alone was enough to kill him. I would imagine it was through pure adrenaline that he managed to put up the struggle he did. The knife punctured his right lung-easy math, we're looking for a left-handed killer-bypassing the bronchial trunk. We can assume the victim removed the knife, which exacerbated the negative airflow. The lung is vacuum sealed, you see, and a puncture deflates it much as a balloon being pierced by a pin."

Faith had dealt with a victim who'd died of a collapsed lung before. "So, unless he managed to get help, he only had a few minutes."

"Well, here's the funny thing: he would've been panicked, his breathing would have been shallow. When a lung collapses, it's like a self-fulfilling prophecy. You gulp for air, and the more you breathe, the worse it gets. I'd say that the panic bought him some extra time."

"What's the cause of death?"

"Manual strangulation."

Faith wrote down the words, underlining them. "So, Abigail Campano actually did kill him."

"Exactly." Pete picked up his sandwich again. "She killed him right before he died."

THE INTERIOR OF the morgue had spotty cell reception at best. Faith used this as an excuse to leave Pete to finish his lunch by himself. She dialed Will Trent's number as she walked toward the parking garage for some air. Faith needed to tell him about Mary Clark and Ruth Donner. She also wanted to talk about Kayla Alexander some more. The picture she was getting of the girl was not a pretty one.

Will's phone rang several times before she was sent to voice mail.

"Hi, Will-" Call-waiting beeped and she checked the screen, reading the words "Cohen, G." Faith put the phone back to her ear, not recognizing the name. "I'm just leaving the morgue and-" Her phone beeped again and Faith finally realized who was calling. "Call me," she said, then switched the line over. "Hello?"

"It's Gabe." His voice sounded far away, though she guessed he was still at Tech.

"What can I do for you?"

He was silent, and she waited him out. Finally, he told her, "I lied to you."

Faith stopped walking. "About what?"

His voice was so low she had to strain to hear him. "I thought she was younger."

"Who?"

"I've got…" His words trailed off. "I need to show you something Adam had. I should've shown you before, but I…"

She started to jog, heading toward the Mini. "What do you have of Adam's?"

"I have to show you. I can't tell you on the phone."

Faith knew that was bullshit, but she also knew that Gabe Cohen was ready to talk. She would dance like a monkey if it got the truth out of him. "Where are you?"

"The dorm."

"I can be there in fifteen minutes," she said, unlocking the door.

"You're coming?" He sounded surprised.

"Yes," she said, switching the phone to her other ear as she put the key in the ignition. "Do you want me to stay on the phone with you while I drive over?"

"I'm okay," he said. "I just…I've got to show you this."

She glanced over her shoulder and swerved the Mini out of the space so sharply that it squealed up on two wheels. "I'll be right there, okay? Just stay right where you are."

"Okay."

Faith had never driven so fast in her life. Part of her wondered if Gabe was just stringing her along, but there was always the slim chance that he had something important to tell her. She called Will Trent's cell phone again, leaving another message, telling him to meet her at the dorm. Her heart raced as she blew through red lights, nearly causing a bus to slam into another car, heading into oncoming traffic to whip around construction crews. On campus, she didn't bother to look for legal spaces, again parking the Mini in the handicapped section. She flipped down the visor and jumped out of the car. By the time she reached Towers Hall, she was panting from exertion.

Faith bent over at the waist, trying to catch her breath. She opened her mouth, taking in big gulps of air, cursing herself for not being in better shape. She let a minute pass, then hit the handicapped plate and headed up the stairs, taking them two at a time. There was the distant thump of music, but the building felt empty. It was the middle of the day; most kids were in class. She trotted past Adam's room, expecting Gabe to be in his own dorm, but the door to 310 was cracked open.

Faith pushed the door the rest of the way open, noting that the police tape sealing off the room had been cut. Adam's things had been boxed up. The mattress was bare, the television and game set gone. Black fingerprint powder was smeared all around the room where they had dusted for prints.

Gabe sat on the bare floor, his back to one of the beds, his book bag beside him. His elbows were on his knees, his head pressed against the cast on his arm. His shoulders shook. Still, Faith could not forget the angry man who had threatened to call security on her yesterday. Was that the real Gabriel Cohen, or was this crying child closer to his real self? Either way, he had something to tell her. If Faith had to play along with his game to get the information, then that was how it was going to be.

She rapped her knuckles lightly on the open door. "Gabe?"

He looked up at her with swollen, red eyes. Fresh tears rolled down his cheeks. "Adam told me she was young," he sobbed. "I thought, like, fourteen or something. Not seventeen. The news said that she was seventeen."

Faith used his book bag to prop open the door before sitting beside him on the floor. "Tell me from the beginning," she said, trying to keep her voice calm. Here was proof that Adam had talked to Gabe about Emma.

"I'm sorry," he cried. His lip trembled, and he put his head down, hiding his face from her. "I should have told you."

She should have felt sorry for the kid, but all Faith could think was that Emma Campano was somewhere crying, too-but there was no one there to comfort her.

"I'm sorry," he repeated. "I'm so sorry."

Faith asked him, "What did you want to tell me?"

His body shook as he struggled with his emotions. "He met her online. He was on this video Web site."

Faith felt her heart stop mid-beat. "What sort of Web site?"

"LD." Faith had known the answer before he opened his mouth. Learning disabilities. Will Trent's instincts had been right yet again.

Gabe told her, "Adam went online with her all the time, like, for a year."

"You said it was a video site?" she asked, wondering what else the kid had been hiding.

"Yeah," Gabe answered. "A lot of them weren't really good at writing."

"What learning disorder did Adam have?"

"Behavioral stuff. He was homeschooled. He didn't fit in." Gabe glanced up at her. "You don't think that's why he was killed, do you?"

Faith wasn't sure about anything at this point, but she assured him, "No. Of course not."

"She seemed younger than she was, you know?"

Faith made sure she understood. "That's why you didn't tell me that you knew Adam was seeing Emma? You thought she was underage and you didn't want to get him into trouble?"

He nodded. "I think he had a car, too."

Faith felt her jaw clench. "What kind? What model?"

He took his time answering-for effect or from genuine emotion, she could not tell. "It was an old beater. Some graduate student was transferring to Ireland and he posted it on the board."

"Do you remember the student's name?"

"Farokh? Something like that."

"Do you know what the car looked like?"

"I only saw it once. It was this shitty color blue. It didn't even have air-conditioning."

Adam would have had thirty days to register the car with the state, which might explain why they hadn't pulled up anything on the state's system. If they could get a description, then they could put it on the wire and have every cop in the city looking for it. "Can you remember anything else about it? Did it have a bumper sticker or a cracked windshield or-"

He turned petulant. "I told you I only saw it once."

Faith could practically feel the irritation in her voice, like an itch at the back of her throat. She took a deep breath before asking, "Why didn't you tell me about the car before?"

He shrugged again. "I told my girlfriend, Julie, and she said… she said that if Emma's dead, it's my fault for not telling you. She said she never wants to see me again."

Faith guessed that that was what was really bothering him. There was nothing more self-involved than a teenager. She asked, "Did you ever meet Emma in person?"

He shook his head.

"How about her friend Kayla Alexander-blond girl, very pretty?"

"I'd never even heard of her until I turned on the news." Gabe asked, "Do you think I did a bad thing?"

"Of course not," Faith assured him, hoping she managed to keep the sarcasm out of her voice. "Do you know the Web site Adam and Emma used?"

He shook his head. "He had it on his laptop, but then his laptop got stolen."

"How did it get stolen?"

Gabe sat up, wiping his eyes with his fist. "He left it out at the library when he went to pee, and when he came back, it was gone."

Faith was hardly surprised. Adam might as well have put a "take me" sign on it. "Did you ever see what name he used on the site? Did he use his e-mail address?"

"I don't think so." He used the bottom of his shirt to wipe his nose. "If you put in your e-mail address, then you get all kinds of trolls for spam and shit."

She had assumed as much. Compounding the problem, there were probably nine billion Web sites for people with learning disabilities, and those were just the American ones. She reminded him, "When you called me, you said you had something to show me. Something that belonged to Adam."

Guilt flashed in his eyes, and she realized that the other stuff- the Web site, the car, the fear about Emma's age-was just preamble to the information that had really compelled him to call her.

Faith struggled to keep the urgency out of her tone. "Whatever it is that you have, I need to see it."

He took his sweet time relenting, making a show of leaning up on his heels so he could dig his hand into the front pocket of his jeans. Slowly, he pulled out several pieces of folded white paper. He explained, "These were slipped under Adam's door last week."

As he unfolded the three pages, all she could think was that between the creases, smudges and dog-eared corners, the paper had been handled many, many times.

"Here," Gabe said. "That's all of them."

Faith stared in shock at the three notes he'd spread out on the floor between them. Each page had a single line of bold, block text running horizontally across it. Each line heightened her sense of foreboding.

SHE BE LONGS TOME!!! RAPIST!!! LEV HER ALONG!!!

At first, Faith didn't trust herself to speak. Someone had tried to warn Adam Humphrey away from Emma Campano. Someone had been watching them together, knew their habits. The notes were more proof that this was not a spur of the moment abduction. The killer had known some if not all of the participants.

Gabe had his own concerns. "Are you mad at me?"

Faith could not answer him. Instead, she gave him back her own question. "Did anyone else touch these besides you and Adam?"

He shook his head.

"What order did they come in-do you remember?"

He switched around the last two sheets before she could stop him. "Like that."

"Don't touch them again, okay?" He nodded. "When did the first one come?"

"Monday last week."

"What did Adam say when he got it?"

Gabe was no longer being emotional about his answers. He seemed almost relieved to be telling her. "First, we were like, you know, it was funny, because everything is spelled wrong."

"And when the second one came?"

"It came the next day. We were kind of freaked out. I thought Tommy was doing it."

The asshole dormmate. "Was he?"

"No. Because I was with Tommy the day Adam got the third note. That was when his computer was stolen, and I was like, ‘What the fuck? Is somebody stalking you or what?' " Gabe glanced at her, probably looking for confirmation on his theory. Faith gave him none, and he continued, "Adam was pretty freaked out. He said he was going to get a gun."

Faith's instincts told her that Gabe was not blowing smoke. She made her tone deadly serious. "Did he?"

Gabe looked back at the notes.

"Gabe?"

"He was thinking about it."

"Where would he get a gun?" she asked, though the answer was obvious. Tech was an urban campus. You could walk ten blocks in any direction and find meth, coke, prostitutes and firearms in any combination on any street corner.

"Gabe?" she prompted. "Where would Adam get a gun?"

Again, he remained silent.

"Stop screwing around," she warned him. "This is not a game."

"It was just talk," he insisted, but he still wouldn't look her in the eye.

Faith no longer tried to hide her impatience. She indicated the notes. "Did you report these to campus security?"

His chin started to quiver. Tears brimmed in his eyes. "We should've, right? That's what you're saying. It's my fault, because Adam wanted to, and I told him not to, that he'd get in trouble because of Emma." He put his head in his hands, shoulders shaking again. She saw how thin he was, how his ribs pressed into the thin T-shirt he wore. Watching him, listening to him cry, Faith realized that she had read Gabe Cohen completely wrong. This was no act on his part. He was genuinely upset, and she had been too focused on the case to notice.

His voice cracked. "It's all my fault. That's what Julie said. It's all my fault, and I know you think that, too."

Faith sat there, not knowing what to do. The truth was, she was mad at him, but also at herself. If Faith had been better at her job, she would have spotted this yesterday. The time lost was down to her. Gabe had probably had these notes in his pocket when he challenged her less than twenty-four hours ago. Blaming him for her own failure would not get them any closer to finding Emma Campano, and right now, that was all that mattered.

She sat back on her heels, trying to figure out what to do. Faith could not tell how fragile the young man was right now. Was he just another teenager caught up in his emotions or was he playing up the situation for her attention?

"Gabe," she began, "I need you to be honest with me."

"I am being honest."

Faith took a moment, trying to find the best way to phrase her next question. "Is there something else you're not telling me?"

He looked up at her. There was suddenly such sadness in his eyes that she had to force herself not to look away. "I can't do anything right."

His life had been turned upside down over the last couple of days, but she knew he was talking about more than that. She told him, "I'm sure that's not true."

"Adam was my only friend, and he's dead-probably because of me."

"I promise you that's not true."

He looked away, staring at the bare mattress across from him. "I don't fit in here. Everybody's smarter than me. Everybody's already picking fraternities and hanging out. Even Tommy."

Faith was not stupid enough to offer Jeremy as his new best friend. She told Gabe, "It's hard to adjust to a new school. You'll figure it out eventually."

"I really don't think I will," he said, sounding so sure of himself that Faith could almost hear an alarm going off in her head. She had been so concerned about the information Gabe had withheld that she had lost sight of the fact that he was just a teenager who had been thrown into a very bad situation.

"Gabe," Faith began, "what's going on with you?"

"I just need to get some rest."

She knew then that he wasn't talking about sleep. He had not called her to help Adam, he had called to help himself-and her response had been to push him around like a suspect she was interrogating. She made her voice softer. "What are you thinking about doing?"

"I don't know," he answered, but he still would not make eye contact with her. "Sometimes, I just think that the world would be a better place if I was just…gone. You know?"

"Have you tried anything before?" She glanced at his wrists. There were scratch marks that she hadn't noticed before, thin red streaks where the skin had been broken but not punctured. "Maybe tried to hurt yourself?"

"I just want to get away from here. I want to go…"

"Home?" she suggested.

He shook his head. "There's nothing there for me. My mom died of cancer six years ago. My dad and me…" He shook his head.

Faith told him, "I want to help you, Gabe, but you need to be honest with me."

He picked at a tear in his jeans. She saw that his fingernails were chewed to the quick. The cuticles were ragged and torn.

"Did Adam buy a gun?"

He kept picking at his jeans. He shrugged his shoulders, and she still did not know whether to believe him.

She suggested, "Why don't I call your father?"

His eyes widened. "No. Don't do that. Please."

"I can't just leave you alone, Gabe."

His eyes filled with tears again. His lips trembled. There was such desperation in his manner that she felt like he had reached into her chest and grabbed her heart with his fist. She could have kicked herself for letting it get to this point.

She repeated, "I'm not going to leave you alone."

"I'll be okay."

Faith felt caught in an untenable position. Gabe was obviously a troubled young man, but he could not be her problem right now. She needed to get the threatening notes to the lab to see if there were any usable fingerprints on them. There was a student in Ireland who had sold his car to Adam-a car that had probably been used to transport Emma Campano from the Copy Right. There were two sets of parents who would identify their dead children tonight. There was a mother and a father on the other side of Atlanta waiting to find out whether or not their daughter was still alive.

Faith took out her cell phone and scrolled through her recent calls.

Gabe asked, "Are you going to arrest me?"

"No." Faith pressed the send button on the phone. "I'm going to get you some help, and then I have to go do my job." She didn't add that she was going to search every item in his room, including the computer he'd let Adam borrow, before she left campus.

Gabe sat back against the bed, an air of resignation about him. He stared at the mattress opposite. Faith resisted the impulse to reach out and tuck a stray strand of hair behind his ear. Pimples dotted his chin. She could see stubble on his cheek where he had missed a spot shaving. He was still just a child-a child who was very lost and needed help.

Victor Martinez's secretary answered on the second ring. "Student Services."

"This is Detective Mitchell," she told the woman. "I need to speak to the dean immediately."