CHAPTER TWO

Emma Campano’s bedroom was almost as big as Will’s entire house. He hadn’t had his own room as a kid. He hadn’t really had his own anything until he turned eighteen and the Atlanta Children’s Home gave him a pat on the back and a check from the state. His first apartment was a box, but it was his box. Will could still remember what it felt like to leave his toothbrush and shampoo in the bathroom without having to worry someone else would swipe them—or worse. Even to this day, there was a certain joy he felt from opening the refrigerator and knowing that he could eat anything he wanted.

He wondered if Paul got a similar feeling when he walked through his multimillion-dollar home. Did his chest puff out with pride when he saw the dainty antique chairs and the obviously expensive canvases that hung on the walls? When he locked the front door at night, did he still get that sense of relief that no one had managed to take it all away from him? There was no arguing that the man had made a good life for his family. With the pool out back and the screening room in the basement, you’d never guess he had spent his early years perfecting the role of a juvenile delinquent.

Paul had never been quick, but he was street smart and even as a kid, he knew how to make a dollar. Abigail was obviously the brains in the family. She was right behind Will in figuring out what had really happened that morning in the Campano home. Will had never in his life seen someone so stricken with horror as when the woman realized that she had probably killed an innocent man—worse, an innocent man who might have been trying to help her daughter. She’d become hysterical. A doctor had been called to sedate her.

Typical Paul, he was working the angles before his wife’s head hit the pillow. He’d taken out his cell phone and made two calls: one to his attorney and one to his influential father-in-law, Hoyt Bentley. Ten short minutes later, Will’s own cell phone had started ringing. Once again, the governor had contacted the director of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, who had pressed Amanda, and she in turn had pressed Will.

“Don’t fuck this up,” Amanda had told him in her usual supportive way.

The procedure in kidnapping cases was simple: have a cop with the family at all times and have the family by the phone for the ransom call. Even as the doctor stuck a needle in her arm, Abigail Campano had still refused to leave her home. There was a guest suite in the carriage house. After making sure the apartment was not part of the crime scene, Will had sent the parents there along with Hamish Patel, a GBI hostage negotiator. Paul had bristled about being assigned a babysitter, which meant he either had something to hide or thought he could control the situation without the police getting in his way.

Knowing the way Paul worked, it was probably a little of both. He had been so uncooperative during questioning that Will was actually looking forward to the lawyer showing up so the man could tell his client it was okay to give a straight answer. Or maybe Hamish Patel could work some of his magic. The hostage negotiator had been trained by Amanda Wagner when she’d led the GBI’s rapid extraction team. He could pretty much talk the fleas off a dog.

Again following procedure, Will had put out an APB on Kayla Alexander’s white Prius and issued a Levi’s Call, Georgia’s version of the Amber Alert, for Emma Campano. This meant that all the highway message boards in Atlanta as well as radios and television sets in Georgia would carry some sort of warning asking folks to come forward if they saw the car or the girl. Will had also set up traces on all the family telephones and cell phones, but he doubted there was a ransom call coming any time soon.

His gut told him that whoever had taken Emma Campano didn’t want her for money. One look at Kayla Alexander told that story. The young woman had been beaten and raped by a sadist who had probably enjoyed every minute of it. There was only one reason to take a hostage from the scene, and it wasn’t for cash. All Will could do at this moment was hope that he found something—anything—that pointed the way to the man before he killed again.

Will stood out in the hallway as he watched the crime-scene tech taking photos of Emma Campano’s bedroom. He was trying to get a sense of who she was, but nothing stood out except for the fact that she was a tidy young woman. Neatly folded clothes that were waiting to be put up lined the top of a velvet bench with silk tassels and the books on the shelves were stacked in straight rows. Some sort of floral air freshener gave the room a sickly sweet smell. Outside the window, a small wind chime tinkled from a rare summer wind.

Though Emma’s personal mark did not stand out, there was no mistaking the space belonged to a very fortunate teenage girl. The four-poster bed had a bright pink coverlet with purple sheets and heart-shaped pillows. The walls were painted a soothing, light lilac that complemented the geometrically patterned shag rugs on the hardwood floor. There was a flat-panel television mounted over a large fireplace. Two comfortable-looking chairs were by the window. A book was pressed open on the arm of one—a romance from the look of it. Two purses had been thrown onto the other chair. A backpack was on the floor, stuffed with schoolbooks and loose papers. Two pairs of identical flip-flops had been kicked off by the door. One set was a larger size than the other.

That at least explained why the girls were barefoot.

The tech took a couple more photographs, the flash filling the room. He asked Will, “Anything specific you want me to cover?”

“Can you test the fluid on the bed?” The sheets were bunched up in a knot. The dark purple material made signs of sexual activity obvious.

“I need to get the kit out of my truck,” the tech said. “You need anything else?”

Will shook his head and the man left. Outside, a heavy door slammed, making the familiar thumping sound that Will always associated with death. He walked to the window and saw Pete Hanson standing behind the coroner’s van, hand flat to the back door as he took a moment to pay his respects to the dead bodies inside. Pete had given Will a preliminary rundown, but they wouldn’t have hard facts until the autopsies were performed tomorrow morning.

The Atlanta Police Department had moved from a primary to supportive role now that there was a kidnapping involved. Leo Donnelly was probably calling his accountant at the moment, trying to figure out if he could take early retirement. Will had tossed him the task of tracking down Kayla Alexander’s parents and telling them that their daughter had been murdered. That seemed punishment enough, though Amanda might have something to say about that.

Will tugged on a pair of latex gloves as he prepared to search Emma’s room. He started with the two purses on one of the chairs. Methodically, Will searched each one. He found pens, tampons, candy, loose change at the bottom—exactly what you’d expect to find in any woman’s handbag. The leather wallets in each were identical, both with the same designer logo on them, and he assumed the girls had bought them on a shopping trip together. They each had a Visa card with their name on it. Their driver’s license photos showed images of two remarkably similar-looking girls: blond haired, blue eyed. Emma Campano had obviously been the prettier of the two, but there was a defiant tilt to Kayla Alexander’s chin that made Will think she was the one who’d gotten all the attention.

Not anymore. The news crews were still swarming outside. Will was sure every station had broken into regular programming with the story. Thanks to the endless and annoying commercials, the Campano name was well-known to Atlantans. Will wondered if the family’s notoriety would help or hinder the case. He also wondered what was happening to Emma Campano right now. Will looked at her picture again. Maybe he was reading too much into it, but there seemed to be an air of reticence about her, as if she expected the photographer to find fault instead of beauty.

“Adam David Humphrey,” Faith Mitchell said. Like Will, she was wearing a pair of latex gloves. Also like Will, she was holding an open wallet and a driver’s license in her hands. This one belonged to the dead man downstairs. “He’s got an Oregon State license. No car registered in his name in either state. The principal at the girls’ school has never heard of him and he was never a student there.” She handed Will the plastic ID card. Will squinted his eyes at the tiny letters. “One of the guys back at the station is trying to get in touch with the local sheriff up there. The address makes it hard.”

He patted his pockets, looking for his glasses. “Why is that?”

Her tone was almost as condescending as Amanda’s. “Rural route?”

“Sorry, I left my reading glasses at the office.” A rural route with a box number would not necessarily correspond with a physical address. Unless the Humphreys were well-known in town, this added another hoop to jump through before the dead boy’s parents could be informed. Will sat back on his heels, studying the license photo of Adam Humphrey. He was a good-looking kid in a geeky sort of way. His mouth was twisted into a grin and his hair was longer in the photo, but there was no mistaking that Adam Humphrey was the man lying dead downstairs. “He’s older than I thought.”

“Nineteen is still young.”

“What’s he doing in Atlanta?” Will answered his own question. “College.”

Faith checked through the wallet, calling out what she found. “Six dollars cash, a photograph of an older couple—probably grandparents. Wait a minute.” The gloves were too long for her fingers, making it difficult for her to dig around. Will waited patiently until she pulled out a photograph. “Is this Emma?”

He compared the photo against the licenses he had found in the two purses. Emma was happier in the picture from the wallet, her mouth open in laughter. “It’s her.”

Faith looked at them both, then nodded her agreement. “She looks younger than seventeen.”

Will said, “Adam’s got a thing for Emma, not Kayla. So why is Kayla dead?”

She put the photo back into the wallet and dropped them both in a plastic evidence bag. “Maybe she got in the way.”

Will nodded, though the vicious manner in which the girl had been raped and killed made him think there was more to it than that. “We’ll know more when Pete does the autopsy. Do the parents want to see her body?”

“The parents don’t even know yet.” Will’s mouth opened to ask why the hell not, but she talked over him. “The school principal told Leo that the Alexanders are on a three-week vacation in New Zealand and Australia. They left emergency contact numbers for their hotels. Leo called the manager at the Mercure Dunedin. He promised he’d get the parents to call as soon as they get back from sightseeing, whenever that might be. There’s an eighteen-hour time difference, so it’s already tomorrow morning for them.” Faith added, “I sent a cruiser to their house on Paces Ferry. No one was home.”

“They couldn’t have left their daughter alone for three weeks.”

“She was seventeen years old. She was old enough to take care of herself.” Her face flushed as she seemed to realize that the exact opposite was true.

“Did Abigail Campano give you anything when you talked to her?”

“It was a different conversation. We both thought her daughter was dead.”

Will recalled, “She’s the one who told you that Kayla would probably be at school.”

“Right. She even said, ‘At least Kayla is safe.’ ”

“Did Leo ask the principal about the girls skipping?”

“She confirmed it’s been a problem. Students aren’t allowed off campus during lunch, but some of them sneak out and come back in before the bell rings. There’s a hole in the security cameras behind the main class building and the kids take advantage of it.”

“Send some extra cruisers to the school. Until we know there’s no connection, I want to make sure we keep a close eye on the rest of the students. Also, let’s try to get a dump on the Alexanders’ phone. There has to be an aunt or a family friend who’s been checking in on her. Send a uniform to knock on the neighbors’ doors. It’s coming on suppertime. People should be getting home by now.”

She had tucked the wallet under her arm as she wrote down his instructions in her notebook. “Anything else?”

He looked at the book bag, all the papers spilling out of it. “Send someone up here who can work fast to go through all these notes. Tell Leo to talk to the school principal again. I want a list of Kayla and Emma’s known acquaintances. If any of the teachers are still at school, tell him to talk to them, see what the girls were like, who they hung out with, then I’ll go back at them tomorrow after they’ve had the night to think about it. The girls were truants, so they might be hanging out with kids from other schools.” He stopped, going back to the dead kid downstairs. Finding out who Adam was and what he was doing in Atlanta was the only tangible lead they could follow.

He took out one of his business cards and handed it to her. “Call back that sheriff in Oregon and give him my cell number. Tell him to call me as soon as he gets anything on Adam Humphrey’s parents. For now, I want you focused on finding out why Adam was in Atlanta. Track down the college angle first.”

She shook her head. “He’d have a college ID on him if he was in school.”

“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 Morrison’s. The local supplier says he sells millions of them a year just in the metro area.”

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 to ask whether or not 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 cold-blooded 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.”

Amanda looked around the kitchen, appraising the stainless steel gleaming from every corner, the granite countertops. “This is not going to turn out well, Will.”

“You think the girl is already dead?”

“I think if she’s lucky she is.”

They were both silent. Will couldn’t guess what was on Amanda’s mind. For his part, he was thinking how ironic it was that Paul had everything they could only dream about when they were kids—family, wealth, security—and yet one violent intervention by fate had managed to sweep it all away. You expected that kind of thing to happen when you were living in an orphanage, kids stacked twelve to a room in a house that was no larger than a shoebox. You didn’t expect it living smack-dab in the middle of Mayberry.

Movement outside the kitchen window caught Will’s attention. Faith Mitchell looked grim as she walked along the back patio by the pool. She opened one of the French doors, asking, “Am I interrupting?”

Amanda demanded, “What’ve you got?”

The young woman closed the door and walked into the kitchen, looking almost contrite. “Adam Humphrey was a student at Georgia Tech. He lives in Towers Hall on campus.”

Amanda pumped her fist in the air. “This is your break.”

Will told Faith, “Call campus security. Have them check the room.”

“I did,” she answered. “The door was locked, but the room was empty. I’ve got a number to call when we get on campus. The dean wants to talk to legal before they give us access to the room, but he says that’s just a formality.”

“Let me know if I need to find a judge.” Amanda glanced at her watch. “It’s coming on four o’clock now. I’m late for a closed door with the mayor. Call me the minute you have anything.”

Will crossed the room to leave. Then he realized that he still didn’t have a car. He realized Amanda was still here, leaning against the counter, waiting for him to do exactly what she wanted.

Faith asked, “Do you want me to go wait outside the Alexander house to see if the parents have anyone checking in on Kayla?”

Will thought about Adam Humphrey’s dorm room, all the papers and notes that would have to be catalogued, all the drawers and shelves that would have to be searched.

He said, “You’re going to come to Tech with me.”

Her expression turned from surprised to cautious. “I thought I was only doing scut work.”

“You are.” Will opened the door she’d just closed. “Let’s go.”