Fractured (3 page)

Will rephrased his earlier question. "How did she die?"

"She's a fucking mess-face like raw hamburger, blood everywhere. I'm surprised the mother even recognized her." Leo paused, obviously seeing Will wanted a more concrete answer. "My guess? He beat her, then stabbed her to death."

Again, Will looked at the dead man on the floor. His palms were covered with dried blood, not what you would expect from a closed fist beating someone repeatedly, or, for that matter, a hand holding a knife. The knees of his black jeans looked dark, too, as if he had knelt in something wet. His T-shirt was bunched up just below his ribs. A fresh bruise spread down into the waist of his pants.

Will asked, "Was the mother injured?"

"Scratches on the back of her arms and hands, like I said before. There's a pretty deep cut on the palm from the glass on the floor." Leo catalogued, "Lots of bruises, busted lip, some blood in her ear. Maybe a sprained ankle. I thought it was broke, but she moved it." He rubbed his mouth, probably wishing there was a cigarette in it. "I called an ambulance, but she said she wasn't leaving until her daughter's removed."

"She say it like that, ‘removed'?"

Leo mumbled a curse under his breath as he pulled a spiral-bound notebook out of his pocket. He flipped to the right page and showed it to Will.

Will frowned at the indecipherable scrawl. "Did you fingerprint a chicken?"

Leo turned the notebook back around and read aloud, " ‘I will not leave my daughter here. I am not leaving this house until Emma leaves.' "

Will rolled the name around in his head, and the girl started to become a person to him rather than just another anonymous victim. She had been a baby once. Her parents had held her, protected her, given her a name. And now they had lost her.

He asked, "What's the mother saying?"

Leo flipped the notebook closed. "Just the bare facts. I'd bet my left one she was a lawyer before she got knocked up and gave it all up for the good life."

"Why is that?"

"She's being real careful about what she says, how she says it. Lots of ‘I felt this' and ‘I feared that.' "

Will nodded. A plea of self-defense relied solely on a person's perception that he or she was in imminent danger of death at the time of the attack. Campano was obviously laying the groundwork, but Will didn't know if that was because she was smart or because she was telling the truth. He looked down at the dead man again, the blood-caked palms, the soaked shirt. There was more here than met the eye.

Leo put his hand on Will's shoulder. "Listen, I gotta warn you-"

He stopped as the pocket doors slid open. Amanda stood beside a young woman. Behind them, Will could see another woman sitting on a deep couch. She was wearing a white tennis outfit. What must have been her injured foot was propped up on the coffee table. Her tennis shoes were on the floor underneath.

"Special Agent Trent," Amanda said, sliding the doors closed behind her. "This is Detective Faith Mitchell." Amanda looked Leo up and down like a bad piece of fish, then turned back to the woman. "Special Agent Trent is at your disposal. The GBI is more than happy to offer you any and all help." She raised an eyebrow at Will, letting him know that the opposite was true. Then, maybe because she thought he was stupid, she added, "I need you back in the office within the hour."

The fact that Will had anticipated this very thing happening did not make him any more prepared. His car was parked back at city hall. Donnelly was going to be stuck on the scene until they cleared it and any one of the beat cops outside would love a chance to get Will Trent alone in the back of a squad car.

"Agent Trent?" Faith Mitchell seemed annoyed, which made Will think he'd missed something.

He asked, "I'm sorry?"

"Yeah, you are," she mumbled, and Will could only blink, wondering what he had missed.

Leo didn't seem to find anything unusual about the exchange. He asked the woman, "The mother say anything?"

"The daughter's got a best friend." Like Leo, Faith Mitchell carried a small spiral-bound notebook in her pocket. She paged through it to reference the name. "Kayla Alexander. The mother says we can probably find her at school. Westfield Academy."

Will recognized the expensive private high school on the outskirts of Atlanta. "Why wasn't Emma in school?"

Faith answered Leo, though Will had asked the question. "There've been some truancy issues in the past."

Will was hardly an expert, but he couldn't imagine a teenage girl skipping school without taking her best friend along with her. Unless she was meeting her boyfriend. He looked at the stairs again, wishing that he could go up and examine the scene. "Why wasn't the mom here today?"

Faith said, "She's got some weekly thing at her club. She usually doesn't get back until three."

"So, if someone was watching the house, they'd know that Emma was here alone."

Faith told Leo, "I need some air." She walked out the door and stood at the edge of the porch with her hands on her hips. She was young, probably in her early thirties, of average height, and pretty in the way that thin blond women were naturally thought to be pretty-but there was something that kept her from being attractive. Maybe it was the scowl that had been on her face or the flash of raw hatred in her eyes.

Leo mumbled an apology. "Sorry, man. I was trying to tell you-"

Across the foyer, the pocket doors slid open again. Abigail Campano stood at the entrance, leg bent at an angle so she wouldn't put weight on her hurt ankle. Unlike Faith, there was something radiant about her blond hair and perfect, milky white skin. Even though her eyes were swollen from crying, her lip still bleeding where it had been busted open, the woman was beautiful.

"Ms. Campano," Will began.

"Abigail," she softly interrupted. "You're the agent from the GBI?"

"Yes, ma'am. I'd like to offer my condolences."

She stared at him in confusion, probably because she still hadn't come to terms with her daughter's death.

"Can you tell me a little bit about your daughter?"

The blank stare did not go away.

Will tried, "You told Detective Donnelly that she had been skipping school lately?"

She nodded slowly. "Obviously, she managed to…" Her voice trailed off as she looked at the dead man on the floor. "Kayla got her into skipping last year. She'd never done anything like that before. She was always a good girl. Always trying to do the right thing."

"There were other problems?"

"It all seems so inconsequential." Her lips trembled as she held back her emotions. "She started talking back, doing her own thing. She was trying to be her own person, and we still wanted her to be our little girl."

"Other than Kayla, did Emma have any friends? Boyfriends?"

Abigail shook her head, wrapping her arms around her waist. "She was so shy. She didn't make new friends easily. I don't know how this could have happened."

"Does Kayla have a brother?"

"No, she's an only child." Her voice caught. "Like Emma."

"Do you think you could make a list of the other kids she hung out with?"

"There were acquaintances, but Emma always picked one person to…" Again, her voice trailed off. "She had no one but Kayla, really." There was something to her tone that was so final, so certain about her daughter's aloneness in the world, that Will could not help but feel some of her sadness. He also hoped to God that Leo was making plans to talk to this Kayla. If she was as much an influence in Emma Campano's life as her mother indicated, then she probably knew a lot more about what had happened here today than anyone else did.

Will asked Abigail, "Is there anyone who might have a grudge against you or your husband?"

She kept shaking her head, transfixed by the sight of the dead man lying in her foyer. "It all happened so fast. I keep trying to think what I did…what else I could have…"

"I know you've been asked this before, but are you sure you don't recognize the man?"

Abigail's eyes closed, but he imagined that she could still see her daughter's murderer. "No," she finally answered. "He's a stranger to me."

Suddenly there was a man screaming from the front of the house. "Get the fuck out of my way!"

Will heard scuffling outside, cops yelling for someone to stop, then Paul Campano barreled up the front steps like a man on fire. He rammed Faith Mitchell out of his way as he burst into the house. A uniformed patrolman caught her as she stumbled back, perilously close to the edge of the porch. Neither of them looked happy, but Leo waved his hand, telling them to let it go.

Paul stood in the foyer, fists clenched. Will wondered if this was something genetic-that you were either the type of person who clenched your fists all the time or you weren't.

"Paul…" Abigail whispered, rushing to him.

Even holding his wife, Paul kept his hands fisted.

Faith was obviously still bristling. Her tone was clipped. "Mr. Campano, I'm Detective Mitchell with the Atlanta Police Department. This is Detective Donnelly."

Paul wasn't interested in introductions. He was staring at the dead man over his wife's shoulder. "Is that the fucker who did this?" His voice turned to a growl. "Who is he? What's he doing in my house?"

Faith and Leo exchanged a look that Will would've missed if he hadn't been watching them for his own cues. They were partners; they obviously had a shorthand, and it looked like this time Faith was taking the short straw.

She suggested, "Mr. Campano, let's go out on the porch and talk about this."

"Who the fuck are you?" Paul glared at Will, his beady eyes almost swallowed by the extra weight on his face.

Will shouldn't have been surprised by the question, or even the way it was phrased. The last time Paul Campano had talked to him this way, Will was ten years old and they were both living in the Atlanta Children's Home. A lot had changed since then. Will had gotten taller and his hair had gotten darker. The only thing that changed about Paul was he seemed to have gotten heavier and meaner.

Leo supplied, "Mr. Campano, this is Agent Trent with the GBI."

Will tried to talk Paul down a little, to make him feel like he could help. "Do you know if your daughter had any enemies, Mr. Campano?"

"Emma?" he asked, glaring at Will. "Of course not. She was only seventeen years old."

"How about you?"

"No," he snapped. "No one who would do…" He shook his head, unable to complete the sentence. He looked back at the dead killer. "Who is this bastard? What did Emma ever do to him?"

"Anything you can give us will help. Maybe you and your wife could-"

"She's up there, isn't she?" Paul interrupted, looking up. "My baby's upstairs."

No one answered him, but Leo took a couple of steps toward the stairs to block the way.

Paul said, "I want to see her."

"No," Abigail warned, her voice shaking. "You don't want to see her like that, Paul. You don't want to know."

"I need to see her."

"Listen to your wife, sir," Faith coaxed. "You'll get to see her soon. You just need to let us take care of her right now."

Paul barked at Leo, "Get the fuck out of my way."

"Sir, I don't think-"

Leo took the brunt of his anger. Paul slammed him into the wall as he bolted up the stairs. Will ran up after the man, almost knocking into him as Paul stopped cold at the top of the landing.

He stood frozen, staring at his daughter's lifeless form at the end of the hallway. The girl was at least fifteen feet away, but her presence filled the space as if she were right there beside them. All the fight seemed to drain out of Paul. Like most bullies, he could never sustain any one emotion.

"Your wife was right," Will told him. "You don't want to see her like this."

Paul went quiet, his labored breathing the only audible noise. His hand was to his chest, palm flat as if he was saying the pledge of allegiance. Tears brimmed in his eyes.

He swallowed hard. "There was this glass bowl on the table." His voice had gone flat, lifeless. "We got it in Paris."

"That's nice," Will said, thinking that never in a million years could he imagine Paul in Paris.

"It's a mess up here."

"There are people who can clean it up for you."

He went silent again, and Will followed his gaze, taking in the scene. Leo was right about downstairs being worse than up, but there was something even more sinister and unsettling in the air up here. The same bloody shoe prints were here, crisscrossing the white carpeting up and down the long hall. Streaks of blood slashed across the white walls where either the knife or a fist had arced over the body, repeatedly punching or plunging into the flesh. For some reason, the most troubling part to Will was the single red handprint on the wall directly over the victim's head where her attacker had obviously rested his weight as he raped her.

"Trashcan, right?"

Paul Campano wasn't looking for the garbage. He had called Will "Trashcan" when they were children. The memory put a lump in Will's throat. He had to swallow before he could answer. "Yeah."

"Tell me what happened to my daughter."

Will debated, but only for a moment. He had to turn sideways to get past Paul and go into the hallway. Careful not to disturb anything, he stepped into the crime scene. Emma's body was parallel to the walls, her head facing away from the stairs. As he walked toward her, Will's eyes kept going back to the handprint, the perfect formation of the palm and fingers. His gut roiled as he thought about what the guy had been doing when he left the impression.

Will stopped a few feet from the girl. "She was probably killed here," he told Paul, knowing from the pool of blood soaking into the carpet that the girl had not been moved. He crouched down by the body, resting his hands on his knees so that he wouldn't accidentally touch anything. Emma's shorts were bunched around one ankle, her feet bare. Her underwear and shirt had been yanked out of the way by her attacker. Teeth marks showed dark red against the white of her breasts. Scrapes and bruises trailed up the insides of her thighs, swollen welts showing the damage that had been done. She was thin, with shoulder-length blond hair like her mother and broad shoulders like her dad. There was no telling what she had looked like in life. Her face was beaten so severely that the skull had collapsed on itself, obscuring the eyes, the nose. The only point of reference was the mouth, which gaped open in a toothless, bloody hole.