Fractured (26 page)

"And I gather from the black eyes and swollen nose that you valiantly suffered his blows?"

Will tried, "If that's what Hamish says."

"Care to tell me why he took the swing in the first place?"

Will told her a favorable version of the truth. "The last thing I said to him before he hit me was that we needed a DNA sample."

"That puts it nicely back on me."

He asked, "Did Paul give the sample?"

"Yes, actually. So, either he's extremely arrogant or he's innocent."

Will would've bet on both, but he still could not believe that Paul had covered for him. He hadn't even hinted at the favor less than half an hour ago. Maybe this was the man's way of paying him back for being such a jerk all those years ago. Or maybe he was still the same old Paul who liked to settle his scores when the adults weren't watching.

"What about his affairs?"

"I called the dealership as soon as I got back to my office. If she doesn't get back to me by noon, I'll send a squad car to pick her up." Will had to add, "My gut tells me Paul doesn't have anything to do with this. Maybe if it was just a simple kidnapping-but it's not."

"We'll know soon enough," Amanda said. "I've fast tracked the comparison between Paul Campano and the DNA we found on Kayla Alexander. Beckey Keiper at the lab is going to call you as soon as the results are in."

"I sent a cruiser over to Emma's school," Will said, barely able to get past his shock. "Bernard should be calling us any minute."

"It's extremely ironic that our resident dyslexic can't tell us, isn't it?"

Will tried not to squirm in his chair. He had called his boss at home only one other time in the last ten years, and that was to tell her that a colleague had been killed. Last night, she had been even icier to him when he'd explained that he had been unable to see anything unusual about the notes someone, probably the killer, had slipped under Adam Humphrey's dorm room door.

He cleared his throat. "If you want my resignation-"

"When you leave this job it'll be with my foot up your ass, not slinking out the door like a wounded kitten." She sat back in her chair. "God dammit, Will."

"I'm sorry."

"Sorry doesn't cut it right now." She twisted the screw tighter. "Those letters are the first pieces of real evidence we have. ‘Leave her alone.' ‘She belongs to me.' Those are direct threats from our killer to one of our victims. If this is the work of someone with some kind of handicap-that's our blood in the water, Will. We should have been circling this information as soon as we got it."

"I'm aware of that."

"Where would we be right now in this case if you had followed up on the spelling yesterday afternoon instead of first thing this morning?" She didn't let him answer. "We're going on three days here. Three days. I don't have to tell you what that means."

"What else do you want me to say?"

For once, she seemed to be at a loss for words. The condition was fleeting. "We're burning daylight. When is this teacher supposed to call?"

"The cruiser should be there any minute."

"What time is Gordon Chew supposed to be here?"

She meant the fingerprint expert from Tennessee. "Around eight-thirty. He was going to drive down first thing this morning."

"He drove down last night," she said, but didn't elaborate. "What do we have?"

"A lot of nothing," Will told her. "Charlie found fibers and footprints at the Ansley Park house, but we need someone or something to match them to before we can use them." The gray dirt Charlie had found also came to mind, but he kept that information to himself, hoping against hope that something came of it. He cleared his throat before continuing. "The ransom call yesterday came from Kayla Alexander's phone. It bounced off a cell tower that covers most of north Atlanta on up to Kennesaw Mountain."

"We can try to triangulate the second call today, but I'm sure he watches enough television to know it takes time." She paused, thinking. "I didn't peg this for a kidnapping."

"Neither did I," Will said. "I'm still not sure I do."

"There was proof of life."

"I know."

"Both parents confirm that it was their daughter's voice on the phone. Are you still thinking that Emma Campano might be involved in this?"

"Something isn't sitting right," Will told her. "The scene was too sloppy."

"Charlie says that based on the blood and shoe-print evidence he believes that only four people were in the house during the time of the crime."

"I know."

Amanda added another point that he had yet to consider. "If you've got a thing for young girls, you don't leave one dead at the scene. You take them both with you."

"Kayla was a fighter. Maybe she wouldn't go peacefully."

Amanda held up her hands. "We can talk in circles like this all morning and it won't get us anywhere. I heard the proof of life from the call yesterday. The girl sounded terrified. Not movie terrified, not fake, this-is-how-I-think-I-should-sound-when-I'm-trying-to-sound-terrified terrified. She was making the sorts of noises you only make when you know that you are about to die."

Will let her words sink in. Amanda was right. They had both heard true fear before-more times than either of them cared to remember. Emma Campano had not been acting. There was an ungodly tremble to her voice, a harsh rasp to her breathing. You couldn't make that up. Absolute terror was a secret language you only learned by experience.

Will asked, "Was there any background noise on Emma's part of the tape?"

"They say it'll be noon at the soonest before they have anything substantive. Preliminarily, there's traffic noise, a dog barking. The girl was in an enclosed area when her part of the recording was made."

"So he drove her somewhere, took her out of the car, then made the recording."

"That tells us that the ransom demand wasn't an afterthought. We've seen how these guys work before. They get heated up, they take the girl, they rape her, they kill her, and
then
they make their plan. This was thought out from the beginning. Before he stepped foot in that house, he bought rope and duct tape. He found a knife. He had a place picked out where he knew he could take her."

"If I were a more optimistic person, I would say that proves she's still alive."

"That was yesterday," Amanda reminded him. "We'll know about today in a little over two and a half hours."

"Was the lab able to tell anything about the kidnapper's voice?"

"You were right about him taping it off a computer and playing it back over the phone." She read from one of the notes, " ‘The VoiceOver utility is a standard feature found in Apple Macintosh's universal access software. The voice selected by the caller is called Bahh.' " She looked up from the note. "So that narrows our suspect pool down to several million smug Apple computer owners."

"Kayla Alexander's parents should be-"

"They're back," she interrupted. "And you're not to go within a hundred miles of them without an attorney."

"Why?"

"They're filing lawsuits against Westfield Academy, the Campanos and the Atlanta Police Department. I'm sure as soon as they realize we're on the case, they'll slap us with one, too."

"On what grounds?"

"The school couldn't keep the girl from leaving, the Campanos couldn't keep the girl from dying and the police department couldn't find their asses if you drew them a map."

Caroline called from her office, "Evan Bernard is on line three."

Will told Amanda, "Please let me handle this."

"Are you trying to redeem yourself?"

"I'm trying not to piss off the man who's trying to help us."

"Don't be ridiculous." She pressed the speakerphone button. "Mr. Bernard, this is Amanda Wagner, I'm the deputy director of the special criminal apprehension team. I've got agent Will Trent here with me. Thank you so much for helping us this morning."

"No problem," he answered. "The policeman you sent came with his lights and siren blaring right up to the front door." He gave a forced chuckle. "I have to admit, it was a little disconcerting."

Amanda smiled her grandmotherly smile. "Consider it incentive to keep your nose clean."

Will shook his head at the silence on the other end of the line. He took over the call, asking, "Mr. Bernard, can you give us your impression of the letters?"

"I have to admit, I find them curious."

"Can you explain why?"

"The first one, which I would read as ‘she belongs to me,' just doesn't ring true. I told you yesterday that each dyslexic is different, and perhaps you'd be better off talking to a linguist for regional dialect and such, but in my opinion, you're dealing with a phonetic speller, not a dyslexic."

Will asked, "How can you be sure?"

"Well, I'm not." He made a thinking noise. "All I can speak from is my own experience. With a dyslexic, I would expect the letters to be mixed up, not just misspelled or run together. Transposition is the most notable characteristic. For instance, Emma continually transposed the ‘e' and ‘l' in help, spelling it ‘h-l-e-p.' "

Amanda did nothing to hide her impatience. "What about the other ones?"

"The second one, ‘rapist,' is correct, of course, but the third one, the ‘lev her along' for ‘leave her alone'-and again, let me qualify this by saying that each person is different-but the ‘along' seems odd. Typically, you would not expect to find the ‘g' there. It's what I would call a heavy letter, meaning it has a definitive sound within a word. You often see it used for ‘j' or a ‘j' used in its place, but you never see it just thrown in for no reason." He made the thinking noise again. "But then the ‘lev' gives me pause."

Will was having a hard time following all the spelling, but he still asked, "Why is that?"

"Because, generally, that's a dyslexic spelling. It's the word in its purest form. No run-on, no ‘g' thrown in for effect. I would assume that spell-check added it there."

"So, what's your opinion? Is someone trying to appear dyslexic or do they really have the disorder?"

"Well…" The man hesitated. "I'm not a doctor. I'm a reading teacher. But if you were to put a gun to my head, I'd say that you are looking at the work of an adult, probably of average intelligence, who simply never learned basic reading skills."

Will looked up at Amanda and found her staring back at him. They were both unused to getting straight answers. Just to clarify, Will asked, "You don't think this person has some sort of reading disability?"

"You asked for my honest opinion and I gave it to you. I would say that the person who wrote these letters never learned how to properly read or spell. At best, they're on a second- or third-grade level."

Amanda was obviously skeptical. "How is that possible?"

"I saw it more when I taught in the public school system, but, it happens. Kids with all kinds of reading problems can slip through the cracks. You try to help them, but there's nothing you can really do. That's one of the reasons I moved to Westfield."

In the background, they heard the class bell ring.

Bernard said, "I'm sorry, but I need to get to class. I can get someone to cover if you-"

"That's okay," Will told him. "Thank you for your time. If you could give those notes back to the patrolman who gave them to you?"

"Of course. Please call me if anything else comes up. I wish I could have been more help to you."

"You were very helpful," Will told him. "I would appreciate if you kept this conversation to yourself. We don't want to do anything to jeopardize Emma's situation."

"Of course not. I think our students are damaged enough by this tragedy as it is."

"Thank you very much, Mr. Bernard."

Amanda ended the call. "Did you follow any of that?"

"Yes," Will said. "Our letter writer is an adult of average intelligence who happens to be a functional illiterate."

"You don't know how refreshing I find it for an expert to give me their honest opinion."

Caroline came into the office with a file folder in her hand. "Background checks on the Copy Right employees, and Gordon Chew called to say he's running half an hour late."

Amanda did not bother to thank the woman. She opened the file and skimmed the pages, giving Will the highlights. "Everyone's clean except for Lionel Edward Petty, who has a drug conviction. During a traffic stop, they found two ounces of pot in his glove compartment."

"Was he hit with intent to distribute?" Will asked. Though it was discretionary, one ounce of marijuana would generally buy you a misdemeanor. Two ounces could be construed as drug trafficking.

Amanda told him, "He ratted out his dealer and they knocked it down to a fine and time served."

"Faith found some pot taped under Adam Humphrey's desk," Will said. "It's a tenuous connection, but the Copy Right is close to Tech. If he really was dealing, then he could easily walk to campus during his lunch hour."

"I'm sure there are dealers living right on campus who have that business all wrapped up." She closed the file folder. "I'm getting the runaround from the contractors who had construction crews outside the copy center. My gut says they were using illegals. Maybe we should go back and see if anyone in the store talked to the workers. There's a Hispanic girl who works the morning shift." She referenced one of the pages in the folder. "Maria Contreras. Maybe she had some contact with them. Maybe I'm racial profiling. Check the other girls, too. They may have flirted with the men." She started to hand the sheet to Will, then thought better of it.

He held out his hand. "I can give it to Faith."

She put the paper on the desk and slid it over, making her point loud and clear. "You need a partner, Will."

"You know I don't work well with others."

"You seem to be working fine with Faith Mitchell."

"Because she knows there's an end to it."

"Ah," she said. "There it is. The famous Trent self-esteem."

He bristled. "What does that mean?"

"I'm not your mama, Will, but it's time to grow a pair and stop feeling sorry for yourself because you have a disability."

He did not ask why she kept throwing his dyslexia back in his face if she thought his problem was so inconsequential. Amanda had built her career around knowing people's weak points and exploiting the hell out of them.