Fractured (6 page)

Amanda always thought in terms of how she could frame a case for the prosecutor. "Bringing the knife to the crime scene shows intent. Go on."

"There's dried blood on the glass outside the front door. Whoever broke it already had blood on his or her hand-it's on the outside of the pane. I'd guess it would take someone with an arm that was around three feet long to reach in through that window and unlock the front door."

"So, no forced entry-the girls let their attacker into the house. Whoever busted the glass obviously wanted to make it look as if he broke in." Amanda mumbled, "I suppose we have
CSI
to thank for his stupidity."

"Or someone smart enough to make it look stupid."

She raised an eyebrow. "Possibly. Do you think we should be looking at the father more closely?"

"He sells cars and he's a jerk. I'm sure there's a long list of enemies, but this feels deeply personal. Look at Kayla Alexander. Whoever killed her was furious. If you're a hired gun, you go in, take out the target and leave. You don't spend time beating her and you don't use a knife."

"What was your conversation like with Paul Campano?"

"He doesn't seem to know a lot about her life," Will said. Thinking back on the interview, he realized that this fact seemed to be the genesis of Paul's anger. It was as if he had never met his own daughter. "The mother had to be sedated. I'll go back at her first thing tomorrow."

"Do we know if Alexander was raped?"

"Pete isn't sure yet. Bruising would indicate yes, and there's sperm in her vagina, but it's also on the crotch of her panties."

"So, she stood up and put on her underwear at some point after intercourse. Let's see if the sperm comes back to our other victim, if that's what we're calling corpse number two for the moment." Amanda pressed her finger to her lip as she thought this through. "What about the mother? Hysterics, sedation. Pretty dramatic stuff and it conveniently takes her out of the spotlight."

"I think she's genuinely horrified about what's happened and she's scared she's going to be arrested for killing someone in cold blood."

Amanda looked at the dark, congealed pool where the body had lain. "Good defense if you ask me. Let's go back to the father. Maybe he was molesting the daughter."

Will felt his body break out in a sudden cold sweat. "He wouldn't do that."

Amanda studied him. "Do you have a previous relationship with this person that I should know about?"

"What did he say?"

She gave him a sharp smile. "You don't have the luxury of not answering my question."

Will felt his jaw working and made himself stop. "It was a long time ago."

Amanda seemed to realize Charlie was at her feet, picking through carpet fibers with a pair of tweezers. She murmured to Will, "A discussion for another time."

"Yes, ma'am."

Amanda's tone went back to normal. "Charlie, can you walk me through this?"

Charlie finished what he was doing and stood up with a groan, rubbing one of his knees as if he needed to work some life back into it. He pulled down his mask again. "We lucked out with the blood. The female decedent is B-negative, the male decedent is O-negative. The carpet here"-he indicated the shoe prints-"shows almost exclusively B, indicating the female decedent."

"Charlie." Amanda stopped him. "Just paint me a story. Adam and Kayla. Go."

He allowed a smile at the situation. "This is all supposition, of course, but we might assume Kayla was chased down this hallway, toward the back staircase. The killer caught up with her about here." He indicated a distance of about three feet behind them. "We found a significant patch of hair, part of the scalp still attached, here." He pointed to another spot on the carpet. "From this we might conclude that she was jerked back by her hair and fell onto the floor. Possibly, this is the point at which she was raped-or not. The probability that she died here is very high."

Amanda looked at her watch again. Like Will, she hated the fact that forensics worked in the couched language of "possibly" and "most likely" instead of dead certainty. She asked, "Is this the part where we get past assumptions and down to hard science?"

"Yes, ma'am," Charlie answered. "As I said before, the blood types make it easier. Kayla was beaten and stabbed here. You can see the cast-off pattern on the wall." He indicated slashes of dark blood. "The killer was in a frenzy, probably furious from chasing her or maybe from seeing her with another man-Adam, you could suppose."

Will asked, "How long would the attack have taken?"

Charlie looked at the walls, the stained floor. "Forty to fifty seconds. Maybe a full minute or two if rape occurred."

"Does anything in the pattern suggest that someone tried to stop him?"

Charlie put his hand to his chin, studying the blood. "No, actually. These arcs are fairly perfect. If he'd been interrupted or someone tried to stop his arm from swinging, we would see more variation. This is extremely uniform, almost like a machine going up and down."

Will supplied, "The coroner says Kayla was stabbed at least twenty times, maybe more."

Charlie moved on to the footprints. "There was definitely a lot of activity after she was dead. You can see from the two sets of footprints that two people-one of them with shoes matching Adam's-walked back and forth here."

"Do you see signs that they struggled?"

Charlie shrugged. "It's hard to say because of the carpet. On a smoother surface, I could tell you where the weight of the foot was, if someone was caught off balance or pressing forward to fight with someone else."

Amanda said, "Best guess."

"Well…" Charlie shrugged again. "It seems probable in the greater context of the scene that there was a struggle. What I can definitely tell you is that at some point, Adam was on his knees beside the body. We've got the blood pattern on his jeans as well as the tops of his shoes. I have a theory that he reached out"-Charlie stretched his arm out near the bloody handprint-"and leaned his hand against the wall as he put his ear to Kayla's mouth."

Will stopped him. "Why do you say that?"

"He's got a light spray of B-negative just around here." He indicated his own ear. "There's also that spray of O-negative on Kayla's abdomen, which you pointed out to me earlier. I'd draw the same conclusion as you-he removed the knife from his own chest while he was bending over her. In fact, we found a mixture of both blood types on the weapon."

"Any fingerprints?"

"Just one set. Preliminarily, we'll say they're Adam's, but they'll have to confirm that at the lab. There were also markings on the knife handle that look consistent with someone wearing latex gloves."

Amanda told Will, "Throw wearing surgical gloves in with him bringing the knife to the scene and we've got premeditated murder."

Will didn't point out that they would have to find the killer before they could charge him. "What about the footprint downstairs?"

"That's where it gets interesting," Charlie began. "Type O-positive."

Amanda said, "Different from the two victims."

"Exactly," Charlie confirmed. "We found several spots on the stairs, a couple more up here. My guess is that whoever the blood belongs to was unconscious. As Will and I suggested, she was carried down the stairs. Either the abductor had to stop at the bottom to reposition her or she came to and started to struggle. Somehow, her foot touched the ground at that one spot."

Will told Amanda, "I've asked Charlie to Lumenol the house top to bottom. I'm curious about where Emma Campano was while her friend was being attacked."

"It follows that she was unconscious somewhere."

"Not here," Charlie supplied. "At least, not by what the blood tells us."

Will said, "We've had a lot of mistakes made today. I want to make sure that footprint downstairs belongs to Emma Campano. She's got a ton of shoes in her closet. Maybe you can get a latent?"

"It's a long shot, but I can certainly try."

Amanda asked, "Did you find any sperm in this area?"

"Nothing."

"But Kayla Alexander had sperm on and in her person."

"Yes."

She told him, "I want a rush DNA comparison against both Adam Humphrey and Paul Campano. Check the master bathroom for hair or any tissue you can find that might belong to the father." She looked at Will, as if waiting for him to object. "I want to know who this girl has been having sex with, consensual or otherwise." She didn't wait for a response, turning on her heel after tossing a "Will?" over her shoulder.

He followed her down the back stairs and into the kitchen. Will tried to get ahead of her on the blame game. "Why didn't you tell me Faith Mitchell's mother was part of my investigation?"

She started opening and closing drawers. "I assumed you would use your brilliant detective skills to make a connection between the two last names."

She was right, but Evelyn Mitchell hadn't been a priority for him for a long time. "Mitchell is a common name."

"I'm glad we have that settled." Amanda found what she was looking for. She held up a kitchen knife, looked at the silver bee on the handle. "Laguiole. Nice."

"Amanda-"

She placed the knife back in the drawer. "Faith will be your partner going forward on this investigation. We've pissed off the Atlanta Police Department enough this year without pulling another major case from them, and I'd rather partner you with a goat than put Leo Donnelly on this."

"I don't want her."

"I don't care," she shot back. "Will, this is a major case I'm handing you. You're thirty-six years old now. You're never going to move up if-"

"We both know this is as far as I'm going to get." He didn't give her room to disagree. "I'm never going to do PowerPoint presentations or stand in front of a chalkboard filling in a timeline."

She pursed her lips, staring at him. He wondered why the disappointment in her eyes bothered him so much. As far as he knew, Amanda didn't have any children or even a family. She wore a wedding ring sometimes, but that seemed to be more for decoration than declaration. For all intents and purposes, she was as much an orphan as he was. Sometimes, he thought that she was like the dysfunctional, passive-aggressive mother he'd never had-a fact which made Will glad that he had grown up in the children's home.

She said, "It's dry erase now. You don't get chalk on your hands."

"Oh, well…sign me up."

She smiled ruefully. "How do you know Paul Campano?"

"I knew him when I was ten years old. We didn't get along."

"Is that why he doesn't want to talk to you?"

"It could be," Will admitted. "But I think my knowing him might also be a way in."

"Hoyt Bentley has posted a fifty-thousand-dollar reward for information leading to his granddaughter's safe return. He wanted to come out of the gate with half a million, but I managed to talk him down."

Will didn't envy her the task. Men like Bentley were used to being able to buy their way out of anything. A more lucrative reward would have backfired in so many ways, including bringing out every fruitcake in the city.

"I bet you they're going to hire their own people to stick their noses into this."

Will recognized a sucker bet when he saw one. Atlanta's wealthy had a bevy of private security forces at their disposal. Hoyt Bentley had enough money to buy every last one of them. "I'm sure Paul and his father-in-law think they can take care of this themselves."

"I hope whoever they hire knows the difference between paying off a CEO's mistress and negotiating a ransom."

Surprised, Will said, "Do you think there will be a ransom demand?"

"I think there will be several-none of them from our kidnapper." She crossed her arms, leaning against the counter. "Tell me what's bothering you."

Will didn't have to think in order to answer her question. "Two teenage girls, at least one teenage boy, alone in a house during the middle of the day. The parents don't know where any of them are. They say their daughter has changed lately, that she's been acting out. Somebody had sex in that bed upstairs. Where were Emma and Adam when Kayla was being butchered? Where was Emma when Adam was stabbed?We have toask whether ornot Emma Campano is a victim or an offender."

Amanda let that sink in, considering the possibilities. "I'm not saying you're wrong," she finally told him. "But there's a big difference between being a rebellious teenager and being a coldblooded killer. Nothing about the scene points to anything ritualistic. I'm not saying you're wrong to consider the possibility, but let's just treat this as a straight abduction until we find something that points to more nefarious origins."

Will nodded.

"What's your game plan?"

"Charlie's going to be here all night, so anything big forensic-wise should be on your desk first thing in the morning. We've got APD pulling parking tickets in the area for the last week. I've got a two-man unit checking storm drains to see if anything was ditched-another weapon, some clothing, whatever. I want to talk to some folks at the school where these girls went and see if they have any enemies-and spread that out to the Alexanders, too. I think it's sketchy they left their kid alone for three weeks while they're half a world away. Do you have an ETA on the dogs?"

"Barry Fielding was on a training run up in Ellijay when I called," she told him, referring to the director of the GBI canine unit. "He should be here with a team within the next half hour." She returned to something Will had said earlier. "Let's go back two months on those parking tickets in the area. Go ahead and pull 9-1-1 calls, too. There can't be that many, but touching on what you said about the kids being alone here today, if this has been an ongoing thing…" She let Will fill in the blank: Don't stop questioning what Emma Campano's role was in all of this. "What are you going to be doing?"

"I'm going to go to the school myself to get a better idea of who these girls are. Were. I also want to talk to the mother. She was out of it today. Maybe she'll be more helpful tomorrow."

"She's a lot stronger than she looks."

"She strangled a man with her bare hands. I don't think you need to tell me to watch out for her."