Fractured (5 page)

"If he came here all the way from Oregon, then it was probably for something specific: law, medicine, art. Start with the big schools first, then move on to the little ones. Emory, Georgia State, Georgia Tech, SCAD, Kennesaw…There has to be a list online."

She was incredulous. "You want me to call every college and university in the city, track down the registrar who's probably already gone for the day, and ask them to tell me without a warrant whether or not they've got Adam Humphrey on their rolls?"

"I do."

The scowl she had given him before had nothing on her expression now.

Will was fed up with her attitude. "Detective Mitchell, I think your anger is commendable, but the fact that I banged up six of your guys for skimming off of drug dealers doesn't mean a hell of a lot to the parents who lost their kids today or the ones who are waiting to find out whether or not their daughter is still alive, and since the Atlanta Police Department mishandled this case from the get-go, and since the only reason you are still involved in this case is because I need people to do my scut work, I expect you to follow directions no matter how mundane or ludicrous my requests seem to you."

She pressed her lips together, fury burning in her eyes as she tucked the photograph back into the wallet. "I'll bag this as evidence and start calling the schools."

"Thank you."

She made to go, then stopped. "And it was seven."

"What?"

"The cops. It was seven that you banged up, not six."

"I stand corrected," was all Will could think to say. She turned on her heel and left the room.

Will let out a deep breath, wondering how long it was going to take before he kicked Faith Mitchell off this case. Then again, it wasn't like he had the whole police department behind him, so maybe he wasn't in a position to be choosey. Even though Faith seemed to despise him as much as the next cop, she was still following orders. There had to be something said for that.

Will stood in the middle of the room, trying to decide what to do next. He looked down at the rug, the circular patterns that resembled something out of a 1970s James Bond movie. Emma Campano should be his priority right now, but the confrontation with the Atlanta detective still nagged at him. Something rattled loose in his brain and he finally understood.

Seven, Faith Mitchell had said. She was right. Six cops had been fired, but one more had also been affected by the scandal. A police commander named Evelyn Mitchell had been forced to retire. Because Evelyn's daughter was a detective on the force, Faith Mitchell had naturally caught Will's attention. She had a fairly solid record, but her promotion five years ago to detective had raised a few eyebrows. Twenty-eight was a little young for the gold shield, but it was hard to prove that any favoritism had been shown. Nepotism aside, Will hadn't found anything warranting a deeper dig into Faith Mitchell's life, so he had never met the woman in person.

Until now.

"Crap," Will groaned. If there was anyone he'd met today who came by their hate honestly, it was Evelyn Mitchell's daughter. That must have been what Leo had been trying to tell Will when everything started to fall apart-or maybe he'd assumed Will already knew. The investigation had ended several months ago, but Will had worked on at least a dozen more cases since then. Other than being aware of the wall of hate surrounding him at the Campano house, his focus had been on the crime at hand, not the particulars of a case that had been resolved months before.

There was nothing Will could do about it now. He went back to his search, checking the drawers, the cabinets that held the sorts of things you would expect to find in a teenage girl's room. He checked under the bed, then between the mattress and the box spring. There were no secret notes or hidden diaries. All her underclothes were what you would expect, which was to say there was nothing overtly sexy that might indicate Emma Campano was exploring a wilder side of life.

Next, Will went to the closet. From all appearances, the Campano house was thoroughly modernized. You couldn't get blood from a stone, though, and the closet in Emma Campano's room was as the architect had originally intended, which was to say that it was roughly the size of a coffin. Clothes hung packed so tightly that the rod was sagging. Shoes lined the floor, row after row-so many of them that they were double stacked in places.

Among the Mary Janes and tennis shoes were black knee-high boots and impossibly high heels. Likewise, the light-colored blouses were punctuated by dark black jackets and black shirts with strategically placed rips held together by safety pins. Altogether, they looked like something you'd wear in the military if you were stationed in Hell. Will had worked cases with teenagers before. He guessed Emma was going through some sort of stage that compelled her to dress as a vampire. The pastel sweater sets would indicate her parents were not pleased with the transformation.

Will checked the top shelves, feeling under sweaters, taking down boxes of more clothes and methodically searching through each one. He checked pockets and purses, finding blocks of cedar and sachets of lavender that made him sneeze.

He got down on his hands and knees to search the bottom of the closet. There were several rolled-up posters in the corner, and he opened each one. Marilyn Manson, Ween and KoRn-not the sort of groups he would expect a wealthy blond teenager to be listening to. The corners were all ripped, as if someone had torn them down. Will rolled the posters back up then checked Emma's shoes, moving them around, making sure nothing was hidden inside or under them. He found nothing to report home about.

As he turned from the closet, he was struck by the faint smell of ammonia. There was a dog bed beside him, probably meant to serve the ancient Labrador that Leo had mentioned. There were no obvious stains on the yellow bed. Will unzipped the liner, pressing his gloved fingers into the stuffing. This yielded nothing, except for making his gloved hands smell faintly of dog and urine.

Will heard Amanda's voice downstairs as he was zipping up the bed. She was coming up the back stairs and, from the sound of it, she was talking on her cell phone.

He took off the dog-smelling gloves and changed into a fresh pair, then returned to the girls' purses, dumping them out on the floor, searching them again. Emma's cell phone had been located on a charger in the kitchen downstairs. Kayla had her own designer bag and Visa card. She certainly had a cell phone somewhere.

He sat back on his heels, feeling like he was missing something. Will had searched the room in a grid pattern, sectioning each piece, even digging his gloved fingers into the shag carpet under the bed and finding nothing more startling than a piece of Jolly Rancher watermelon candy that crinkled under his touch. He had checked under furniture and felt along the bottom of drawers. He'd flipped all the rugs over.

Nothing.

Where had Emma been while Kayla was being attacked? What had the girl been doing while her best friend was possibly being raped, certainly being beaten and murdered? Was Will looking at this the wrong way? Having often been on the receiving end of Paul's anger at the children's home, Will knew firsthand that the Campano blood ran pretty hot. Did that sort of thing skip a generation, or was it passed down directly? The mother had said that her daughter changed lately, that she had been acting out. Could she have been involved in Kayla's murder? Was Emma not a victim but a participant?

He looked around the room again-the stuffed teddy bears, the stars on the ceiling. Will would certainly not be the first man who had been fooled by the stereotype of an angelic young woman, but the scenario that called for Emma being one of the bad guys didn't feel right.

Suddenly, he realized what was missing. The walls were bare. Emma's room had obviously been professionally decorated, so where was the art, the photographs? He stood up and checked for nail holes where pictures had hung. He found five, as well as scratches where frames had scraped the paint. He also found several pieces of tape that on close inspection revealed torn pieces of the posters from the closet. He could easily imagine Abigail Campano being outraged to find a picture of a breast-augmented, genitalia-neutral Marilyn Manson marring this otherwise perfect girl's room. He could also see a teenage girl taking down all the framed art the decorator had chosen in retaliation.

"Trent? When you have a minute?"

Will stood, following the sound out into the hall.

Charlie Reed, a crime-scene tech who had worked for Amanda almost as long as Will, was at the end of the hallway. Now that the body had been removed, the man was cleared to go about the careful cataloguing of blood and evidence. Dressed in the special white body suit to prevent cross-contamination of the scene, Charlie would spend the next several hours on his hands and knees going over every square inch of the scene. He was a good investigator but his resemblance to the cop in the Village People tended to put people off. Will made a point of specifically requesting Charlie on all his cases. He understood what it meant to be an outsider, and how sometimes it made you work even harder to prove people wrong.

Charlie pulled down his mask, revealing a finely sculpted handlebar mustache. "This was under the body." He handed Will an evidence bag containing the broken, bloody guts of a cell phone. "There's a shoe print on the plastic that's similar to the print we found downstairs, but not the shoe we found on the second victim. I'd guess our abductor nailed it with his foot, then the girl fell on it."

"Was there a transfer pattern on the body?"

"The plastic cut open the skin on her back. Pete had to peel it off for me."

Through the bag, Will made out the shattered phone. Still, he pressed his thumb on the green button and waited. There was no power to the device.

"Switch out the SIM card in your phone," Charlie suggested.

"Sprint," Will told him, recognizing the silk-screened logo on the back of the silver phone. The phone didn't use a SIM card. The only way to access any information stored on the device would be to have a technician hook it up to a computer and pray. Will said, "It must belong to either the kid downstairs, Kayla or somebody else."

"I'll rush it through the lab once we get prints," Charlie offered, holding out his hand for the phone. "The IMEI has been scratched off."

The IMEI was the serial number that cell phone networks used to identify a particular phone on the grid. "Scratched off on purpose?"

Charlie studied the white sticker near the battery casing. "Looks rubbed off from use to me. It's an older model. There's duct tape residue on the sides. I'd guess it was falling apart long before it was crushed. Not what I'd expect a teenage girl to carry."

"Why is that?"

"It's not pink and it doesn't have Hello Kitty stickers all over it."

He had a point. Emma Campano's phone had a bunch of pink, plastic charms dangling from the case.

Will said, "Tell the lab this has priority over the computer." They had found a MacBook Pro downstairs that belonged to Emma Campano. The girl had enabled FileVault, encryption software so secure that not even Apple could unlock it without the password. Unless Emma had used something simple like the name of the family dog, nothing short of the NSA could break it open.

Charlie said, "I found this over by the table." He held up another plastic bag that contained a brass key. "Yale lock, pretty standard. No usable fingerprints on it."

"Was it wiped down?"

"Just used a lot. There aren't any prints to lift."

"No keychain?"

Charlie shook his head. "If you had it in your pocket and you were wearing baggy pants, it could easily come out during a struggle."

Will looked at the key, thinking that if it had a number or address on it, his job would be so much easier. "Mind if I hold on to this?"

"I've already catalogued it. Just make sure it gets back to evidence."

"Will?" Amanda had been hovering behind him. "I talked to Campano."

He pocketed the key Charlie had found, trying to hide his sense of dread along with it. "And?"

"He wants you off the case," she said, but didn't seem to think that was worth discussing. "He says that they've had some problems with Emma lately. She was a good girl, the perfect child, then she got mixed up with this Kayla Alexander sometime last year and everything went to hell."

"In what way?"

"She started skipping school, her grades started to fall, she started listening to the wrong music and dressing the wrong way."

He told her about what he'd found in Emma's room. "I'm guessing they made her take down the posters."

"Typical teenager stuff," Amanda said. "I wouldn't trust the father so much on where the blame lies. I have yet to meet a parent who admits that his own child is the bad apple." She tapped her watch, her signal that they were wasting time. "Tell me what progress we've made."

Will told her, "The deceased male is Adam Humphrey. He's got an Oregon driver's license."

"He's a student?"

"Detective Mitchell is calling local colleges to see if he's registered. We're still trying to track down Alexander's parents."

"You know the key to breaking this is going to be finding a second person who knows at least one of our victims."

"Yes, ma'am. We're running dumps on all the telephones. We just need a lead to follow."

"GHP is pulling a negative," she said, meaning the Georgia Highway Patrol. "White is a popular color for the Prius, but there aren't that many on the road. Unfortunately, we're heading into rush hour, so it's not going to get easier."

"I've got uniforms pulling video from every ATM and store-front on Peachtree as well as anything in the Ansley Mall area. If the Prius left either way, we might get an image we can work with."

"Let me know if you need more feet on the ground." She rolled her hand, meaning for him to continue.

"The knife doesn't match anything in the kitchen or the carriage house, which points to the killer bringing it with him. It's pretty cheap-wooden handle, fake gold grommets-but it's obviously sharp enough to do some damage. The brand is for commercial use only. It's the kind of thing you'd find at Waffle House or Morrisons. The local supplier says he sells millions of them a year just in the metro area."