Fractured

CHAPTER SIX

AT SIX FORTY-FIVE in the morning, Will parked his car in the teachers' parking lot of Westfield Academy. Rent-a-cops stood sentry in front of the buildings, their short-sleeved uniforms and matching shorts pressed into sharp creases. Well-marked security cars rolled through the campus. Will was glad to find the school on high alert. He knew that Amanda had requested the DeKalb County police send cruisers out to the area every two hours, but he also knew that DeKalb was overburdened and understaffed. The private security team would take up the gap. At the very least, they might help quell some of the sense of panic that was building-which was sure to get worse judging by the news vans and cameramen setting up across the street.

Will had turned off the television this morning because he couldn't take the hype. The press had even less to go on than the police, but the talking heads were analyzing every scrap of rumor and innuendo they could find. There were "secret sources" and conspiracy theories galore. Girls from the school had been on the national morning shows, their teary-eyed pleas for their dear friend's return somewhat undercut by their perfectly coiffed hair and expertly applied makeup. It took the focus off Emma Campano and put it squarely on the melodrama.

This time yesterday morning, Kayla and Emma had probably been getting ready for school. Maybe Adam Humphrey had slept in because he had a later class. Abigail Campano had been getting ready for her day of tennis and spa treatments. Paul had been on his way to work. None of them had known how little time they had left before their lives were forever changed or-worse-stolen.

Will could still remember the first case he had worked that involved a child. The girl was ten. She had been taken from her home in the middle of the night in a fake abduction staged by her father. The man had used his daughter to his satisfaction, snapped her neck and tossed her down a ravine in the woods behind the family's church. It takes only a few minutes for flies to find a corpse. They start laying their eggs immediately. Twenty-four hours later, the larvae hatch and begin to devour the organs and tissue. The body bloats. The skin turns waxen, almost incandes-cently blue. The smell is like rotten eggs and battery acid.

This was the state in which Will had found her.

He prayed to God this was not how he would find Emma Campano.

There was laughter from a few teachers as they made their way up the stairs to the main school building. He watched them go through the doors, smiles still on their faces. Will hated schools the way some people hated prison. That was really how Will had thought of school when he was a child: some kind of prison where the wardens could do whatever they liked. Other kids who had parents at least had some kind of buffer, but Will only had the state to look after him, and it wasn't exactly in the state's interest to go after a city's school system.

Will would be the one questioning the teachers today, and he broke out into a cold sweat every time he thought about it. These were educated people-and not educated at the crap correspondence schools where Will had gotten his dubious degrees. They would probably see right through him. For the first time since this all started, he was glad that Faith Mitchell was going to be with him. At least she would be able to deflect some of the attention, and the fact was that Westfield Academy had one dead student and one missing. Maybe the teachers would be too focused on the tragedy to scrutinize Will. At any rate, there were still a lot of questions that needed to be answered.

Because Westfield only offered high school level courses, all of the students were between the ages of fourteen and eighteen. Leo Donnelly had spent most of yesterday talking to most of the student body and come up with the sort of information you would expect from teenagers who've just found out that one classmate was brutally murdered and one was missing: both Kayla and Emma were well-loved, good girls.

If you could go back a week, however, the story might be different. Will wanted to talk to the teachers and find out what their take was on the two girls. He still wasn't getting a clear image of Emma Campano. You didn't turn into a school-skipper overnight. There were generally smaller transgressions that led to bigger ones. No one liked to speak ill of the dead, but in Will's experience, teachers didn't walk on eggshells when there was something that needed to be said.

Will glanced out the window, looking at the buildings. The private school was impressive, the sort of local school with a national reputation that Atlanta was known for. Before the Civil War, only the wealthiest Atlantans could afford to educate their offspring, and most of them sent their children to Europe for the luxury of a well-rounded education. After the war, the money dried up but the desire to educate was still there. Recently impoverished debutantes realized that they actually had marketable skills and started opening up private schools along Ponce de Leon Avenue. People may have bartered tuition with family silver and priceless heirlooms, but pretty soon the classrooms were full. Even after the Atlanta Public School System was established in 1872, wealthy Atlantans preferred to keep their children away from the riffraff.

The Westfield Academy was one of those private schools. It was currently housed in a series of old buildings that dated back to the early 1900s. The original schoolhouse was a clapboard style structure that resembled a barn more than anything else. Most of the later buildings were red brick and looming. The centerpiece was a marble-sided gothic cathedral that looked as out of place as Will's 1979 Porsche 911 did among the late-model Toyotas and Hondas in the teachers' parking lot.

Will was used to the car standing out. Nine years ago, he had spotted the burned-out shell of the 911 in an abandoned lot on his street. This was back when most of the houses in his neighborhood were of the crack variety and Will had slept with his gun under his pillow in case people knocked on the wrong door. No one had protested when he'd put wheels on the car and rolled it into his garage. He'd even found a homeless man who helped him push it up the hill for ten bucks and a drink from the hose.

By the time the crack houses were torn down and families had started to move in, Will had completely rebuilt the car. On weekends and holidays, he scoured junkyards and body shops looking for the right parts. He taught himself about pistons and cylinders, exhaust manifolds and brake calipers. He learned how to weld and Bondo and paint. Without the benefit of anyone's expertise, Will managed to return the car to its original glory. He knew that this was an accomplishment to be proud of, but somewhere in the back of his head, Will couldn't help but think if he'd been able to understand a clutch schematic or an engine diagram, he could have fixed the car in six months instead of six years.

It was the same with the Campano case. Was there something out there-something important-Will couldn't see because he was too stubborn to admit to his own weakness?

Will spread the morning newspaper over the steering wheel, taking another go at the Emma Campano story. Adam Humphrey's and Kayla Alexander's pictures were just below Emma's, all under the headline, "ANSLEY PARK TRAGEDY." There was a special pull-out section on the families and the neighborhood along with interviews from people claiming to be close friends. Actual news was sparse, and carefully hidden among the hyperbole. Will had started reading the paper at home, but his head, already aching from lack of sleep, nearly exploded from trying to decipher the tiny print.

Now, Will didn't have a choice in the matter. He had to know what was being said about the case, what details were in the public domain. Routinely, the police held back certain pieces of information that only the killer would know. Because so many Atlanta cops had been on the crime scene, there had been the inevitable leaks. Emma's hiding in the closet. The rope and duct tape in the car. The broken cell phone, crushed under Kayla Alexander's back. Of course, the big story was that the Atlanta Police Department had screwed it all up. The press, an organization known for routinely getting facts wrong, was not so forgiving where the police were concerned.

As Will held his finger under each word, trying to isolate it so he could understand the meaning, he was keenly aware that whoever had taken Emma Campano was probably reading the same story right now. Maybe the killer was getting a charge out of having his crimes on the front page of the Atlanta Journal. Maybe he was sweating over each word as much as Will, trying to see if there were any clues he had left behind.

Or maybe the man was so arrogant that he knew there was no way to link him to the crimes. Maybe he was out right now, trolling for his next victim even as Emma Campano's body rotted in a shallow grave.

There was a tap on the glass. Faith Mitchell was standing on the passenger's side of the car. She had his jacket in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other. Will reached over and unlocked the door for her.

"Can you believe that?" She angrily indicated the newspaper.

"What?" he asked, folding up the paper. "I just started reading it."

She shut the car door to keep in the air-conditioning. "A ‘highly placed Atlanta police officer' is quoted as saying that we botched the investigation and the GBI had to be called in." She seemed to realize who she was talking to and said, "I know we fucked up, but you don't talk about that sort of thing to the press. It doesn't exactly engender respect from the taxpayers."

"No," he agreed, though he thought it was curious she believed the source was from the APD. Will had actually made it that far into the story and assumed that the source was in the GBI and went by the name of Amanda Wagner.

"It would have been nice if they'd left out how wealthy the parents are, but I suppose you could figure that out from the name. Those car commercials are the most annoying thing on TV right now." She stared at him as if she was waiting for him to say something.

He said, "Yeah, they're pretty annoying. The commercials."

"Whatever." She held up his jacket. "You left this on my car."

He found his digital recorder, relieved to have it back. "These are great," he told Faith, knowing she had probably found it curious. "You wouldn't believe how bad my handwriting is."

She just stared at him again, and he felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up as he tucked the recorder into his pocket. Had she figured it out? If she listened to the recorder, all she would hear is Will's voice cataloguing information about the case so he could later dictate it into his computer and generate a report. Angie had said to watch out for Faith Mitchell. Had he already given himself away?

Faith's lips pressed together in a tight line. "I need to ask you something. You don't have to answer it, but I wish you would."

Will stared straight ahead. He could see teachers going into the main building with large thermoses of coffee and stacks of papers in their hands. "Sure."

"Do you think she's dead?"

His mouth opened, but more from relief than anything else. "Honestly, I don't know." He took his time putting his jacket on the backseat with the newspaper, trying to get some of his composure back. "I take it you didn't find anything earth-shattering last night in the dorm?" He had told her to call him if there were any leads.

She hesitated, as if she had to switch gears, then answered, "Not really. Nothing of interest in Adam's things except the pot, which I think we can agree is not very interesting?" Will nodded, and she continued, "We talked to every student in both halls. No one really knew Adam except for Gabe Cohen and Tommy Albertson, and considering the positive impression I made on both of them, they were reluctant to give any more information. I sent Ivan Sambor to talk to them-you know who he is?" Will shook his head. "Big Polish guy, doesn't take shit from anybody. Frankly, he scares the bejeezus out of me. He got the same story I got: they barely knew Adam, Gabe was crashing at his place because Tommy is an asshole. Even Tommy agreed with this, by the way."

She took out her spiral-bound notebook and flipped through the pages. "Most of the freshmen in Adam's dorm are in the same classes, but we can always go to each class and look for new faces. I reached all of his teachers but one, and all of them said the same thing: first week of class/nobody knows anybody/sorry he's dead/I don't even remember what he looks like. The one I couldn't get in touch with-Jerry Favre-is supposed to call me back today."

She flipped to another page. "Nuts and bolts: The security camera shows Adam leaving the dorm around seven forty-five yesterday morning. He's got an eight-o'clock class; the teacher verified he was there. Adam gave some kind of report the whole period, so there was no sneaking out. The card reader, which doesn't mean jack, by the way-you're not the only genius who figured out the handicap door trick-has him returning to the dorm at ten-eighteen a.m., which jibes with his class ending at ten. We have what's probably the back of his head on the camera. He changed clothes, then left again at exactly ten thirty-two. That's the last we have of him, unless you're holding something back."

Will felt surprise register on his face. "What would I hold back?"

"I don't know, Will. The last time I saw you, you were rushing to the copy center to go over Kayla Alexander's Prius. That's a pretty key piece of evidence, but we've been talking for almost ten minutes about everything but the weather and you haven't told me one damn thing."

"I'm sorry," Will answered, knowing that wasn't much of a consolation. "You're right. I should have told you. I'm not used to-"

"Working with a partner," she finished, her tone telling him that the excuse was getting old.

He could not blame her for being annoyed. She was working just as hard on this case as he was, and leaving her out was unfair. In as much detail as he could muster, Will told her about the Copy Right's security camera footage, the rope and duct tape Charlie had found. "According to the video, the dark car showed up at the parking garage at exactly eleven-fifteen yesterday morning. Two passengers got out-Adam and a stranger. Kayla Alexander's Prius drove up at twelve twenty-one. We can assume Emma was taken out of the trunk and transferred to the dark car. He was gone a little over a minute later." He summed up, "So, the last time we know Adam's whereabouts is eleven-fifteen a.m. in the parking deck of the Copy Right building."

Faith had been writing the times down in her notebook, but she stopped on this last point, looking up at Will. "Why there?"

"It's cheap, it's convenient to the house. There's no full-time attendant."

Faith provided, "The nosey neighbor told on them last year when they parked in the driveway. Using the garage was a good way to get around her."

"That was my guess," Will agreed. "We're doing background checks on all the Copy Right employees. The two girls came in for the evening shift while we were there-Frieda and Sandy. They really don't go into the garage. It's dark and they don't think it's particularly safe, which is probably true, especially considering the lack of any real security."

"What about the construction workers?"

"Amanda is going to spend today tracking them down. It's not just a matter of calling up the city and asking them for a list. Apparently, the workers just show up in the morning and they're told which fire to put out first. There are all kinds of subcontractors who use subcontractors, and before you know it, you've got day laborers and undocumented workers…it's a mess."

"Has anyone seen the car there before?"

"The parking deck is in the back of the building. Unless the Copy Right people happen to be looking at the security camera, they have no idea who's coming and going, and of course the tape is reused, so we don't have old footage to compare." He turned to face her. "I want to talk about our suspect. I think we need to get a clearer picture in our heads about who he is."

"You mean like a profile? A loner between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-five who lives with his mother?"

Will allowed a smile. "This was well coordinated. He brought the knife, the rope, the duct tape to the house. Someone let him in."

"So, you think this was really a kidnapping and Kayla and Adam got in the way?"

"It feels more personal than that," Will said. "I know I'm contradicting myself, but the scene was sloppy. Whoever killed Kayla wasn't in control. He felt real fury toward her."

"Maybe she said the wrong thing and it got out of hand."

"You have to have a conversation with someone to say the wrong thing."

"What about the second person on the Copy Right tape? Do you think that's the killer? It would make more sense if one of our victims knew him."

"Maybe," Will allowed, but that didn't feel quite right. "Adam left the dorm at ten thirty-two a.m. Somewhere between ten thirty-two and eleven-fifteen, he picked up both a car and a passenger. We've got a gap in the timeline where he's unaccounted for. That's…" Will tried to wrap his brain around the math, but he was too tired and his head was hurting so badly that his stomach ached. "I need more coffee. How many minutes is that?"

"Forty-five," Faith supplied. "We need to know where and how he got the car. No one we spoke with in the dorms last night either let Adam borrow a car or knows where he got access to one. I guess we could look at the security card reader again, cross-reference it with the times Adam was in the dorm?"

"It's something to consider." He nodded at her notebook.

"Let's come up with some questions. Number one, where is Adam's student ID?"

She started writing. "He might've left it in the car."

"What if the killer took it as a souvenir?"

"Or to use it to get into the dorm," she countered. "We need to alert campus security to cancel his card."

"See if there's a way they can leave it active but flag it somehow so we know if someone tries to use it."

"Good point." She kept writing. "Question number two, where did he get the car?"

"Campus is the obvious answer. Check to see if there were any stolen cars. Does Gabe Cohen or Tommy Albertson have a car?"

"Freshmen can't really park on campus, and it's impossible to find a safe place in the city to park, so if they have a vehicle, they tend to leave it at home. That being said, Gabe has a black VW with yellow stripes that his father drives. Albertson has a green Mazda Miata that he left back in Connecticut."

"Neither one of those fits the car on the video."

She stopped writing. "Adam could have a car we don't know about."

"He'd be keeping it from his parents, too. They said he didn't have one." Will thought about something Leo Donnelly had said yesterday. "Maybe he went off campus to get a car. Public transportation is in and out of there all day. Let's put a team on tracking down security cameras from buses. What's the nearest MARTA station?" he asked, referring to the city's bus and train system.

Faith closed her eyes, obviously thinking. "Midtown Station," she finally remembered.

Will stared out the window at the school parking lot. More faculty had shown up, and a few students were straggling in. "It'd take about twenty minutes to drive here, though. Then another twenty, twenty-five minutes to the parking garage."

"There's our forty-five minutes. Adam drove here to pick up Emma, then took her to the parking garage."

"The arm in the videotape," he said. "It was pretty small. I suppose it could have been a girl's hand that reached out and caught the keys."

"I've been assuming that Kayla drove Emma from school to the house in her Prius, and that Adam somehow met them there."

"Me, too," Will admitted. "Do you think it's possible Adam drove Emma to the garage, and then they both walked to the house?"

"The killer could've walked from Tech."

"He knew Adam's car was in the garage." Will turned to Faith. "If he knew he was going to take Emma Campano from the scene, he would have to have a place to keep her. Somewhere quiet and isolated-not in the city because the neighbors would hear. Not a dorm room."

"If he didn't dump the body."

"Why take her just to dump her?" Will asked, and the question was one that gave him pause. This was why he had wanted to talk through a profile of the suspect. "The killer came to the house with gloves, rope, tape and a knife. He had a plan. He went there to subdue someone. He left Adam's and Kayla's bodies at the house. If the goal was to kill Emma, he would have killed her there. If the goal was to abduct her, to take her away so that he could spend more time with her, then he accomplished his goal."

"And APD gave him plenty of time to do it," Faith added ruefully.

Will felt a sense of urgency building up at the thought. Less than twenty-four hours had passed since the girl had been taken. If her abductor had removed her from the scene so that he could take his time with her, then maybe Emma Campano was still alive. The question was, how much longer did she have?

He checked his cell phone, noting the time. "I've got to be at the Campanos at nine."

"Do you think they know something?"

"No," he admitted. "But I'm going to have to ask Paul for a DNA sample."

Faith's uneasy expression probably mimicked his own, but Amanda had told him to do it and Will really didn't have a choice.

He said, "Let's talk to the teachers, get a general sense of the girls. If they think there's anyone else in particular we need to talk to-a student or janitor-I'll leave you to do that. If nothing turns up, then I want you to go sit in on the autopsies. Adam Humphrey's parents will be in later this evening. We need to have some answers for them."

Her expression changed, and Will thought he was getting to know her well enough to see when Faith Mitchell was upset about something. He knew that her son was the same age as Adam Humphrey. Watching the eighteen-year-old being dissected would be horrible for anyone, but a parent would bring a special kind of pain to the experience.

He tried to be gentle, asking, "Do you think you can handle it?"

She riled, taking his question the wrong way. "You know, I got up this morning and I told myself that I was going to work with you and keep up a good attitude, and then you have the nerve to question me-a detective on the God damn homicide squad who steps over dead bodies almost every day of her life-about whether or not I can handle one of the basic requirements of my job." She put her hand on the door latch. "And while we're at it, asshole, where the hell do you get off driving a Porsche and investigating my mother for stealing?"

"I just-"

"Let's just do our jobs, okay?" She threw open the door. "You think you can do me that professional courtesy?"

"Yes, of course, but-" She turned to face him, and Will felt his mouth moving but there were no words coming out. "I apologize," he finally said, not knowing exactly what he was apologizing for, but knowing it couldn't possibly make things worse.

She exhaled slowly, staring at the coffee cup in her hand, obviously trying to decide how to respond.

Will said, "Please don't throw hot coffee at me."

She looked up at him, incredulous, but his request had worked to break the tension. Will took the time to give himself some credit. This wasn't the first time he'd had to extricate himself from a tenuous situation with an angry woman.

Faith shook her head. "You are the strangest man I have ever met in my life."

She got out before he could respond. Will took it as a positive sign that she didn't slam the door.