Karin Slaughter - Fractured

Faith bent over at the waist, trying to catch her breath. She opened her mouth, taking in big gulps of air, cursing herself for not being in better shape. She let a minute pass, then hit the handicapped plate and headed up the stairs, taking them two at a time. There was the distant thump of music, but the building felt empty. It was the middle of the day; most kids were in class. She trotted past Adam's room, expecting Gabe to be in his own dorm, but the door to 310 was cracked open.

Faith pushed the door the rest of the way open, noting that the police tape sealing off the room had been cut. Adam's things had been boxed up. The mattress was bare, the television and game set gone. Black fingerprint powder was smeared all around the room where they had dusted for prints.

Gabe sat on the bare floor, his back to one of the beds, his book bag beside him. His elbows were on his knees, his head pressed against the cast on his arm. His shoulders shook. Still, Faith could not forget the angry man who had threatened to call security on her yesterday. Was that the real Gabriel Cohen, or was this crying child closer to his real self? Either way, he had something to tell her. If Faith had to play along with his game to get the information, then that was how it was going to be.

She rapped her knuckles lightly on the open door. "Gabe?"

He looked up at her with swollen, red eyes. Fresh tears rolled down his cheeks. "Adam told me she was young," he sobbed. "I thought, like, fourteen or something. Not seventeen. The news said that she was seventeen."

Faith used his book bag to prop open the door before sitting beside him on the floor. "Tell me from the beginning," she said, trying to keep her voice calm. Here was proof that Adam had talked to Gabe about Emma.

"I'm sorry," he cried. His lip trembled, and he put his head down, hiding his face from her. "I should have told you."

She should have felt sorry for the kid, but all Faith could think was that Emma Campano was somewhere crying, too-but there was no one there to comfort her.

"I'm sorry," he repeated. "I'm so sorry."

Faith asked him, "What did you want to tell me?"

His body shook as he struggled with his emotions. "He met her online. He was on this video Web site."

Faith felt her heart stop mid-beat. "What sort of Web site?"

"LD." Faith had known the answer before he opened his mouth. Learning disabilities. Will Trent's instincts had been right yet again.

Gabe told her, "Adam went online with her all the time, like, for a year."

"You said it was a video site?" she asked, wondering what else the kid had been hiding.

"Yeah," Gabe answered. "A lot of them weren't really good at writing."

"What learning disorder did Adam have?"

"Behavioral stuff. He was homeschooled. He didn't fit in." Gabe glanced up at her. "You don't think that's why he was killed, do you?"

Faith wasn't sure about anything at this point, but she assured him, "No. Of course not."

"She seemed younger than she was, you know?"

Faith made sure she understood. "That's why you didn't tell me that you knew Adam was seeing Emma? You thought she was underage and you didn't want to get him into trouble?"

He nodded. "I think he had a car, too."

Faith felt her jaw clench. "What kind? What model?"

He took his time answering-for effect or from genuine emotion, she could not tell. "It was an old beater. Some graduate student was transferring to Ireland and he posted it on the board."

"Do you remember the student's name?"

"Farokh? Something like that."

"Do you know what the car looked like?"

"I only saw it once. It was this shitty color blue. It didn't even have air-conditioning."

Adam would have had thirty days to register the car with the state, which might explain why they hadn't pulled up anything on the state's system. If they could get a description, then they could put it on the wire and have every cop in the city looking for it. "Can you remember anything else about it? Did it have a bumper sticker or a cracked windshield or-"

He turned petulant. "I told you I only saw it once."

Faith could practically feel the irritation in her voice, like an itch at the back of her throat. She took a deep breath before asking, "Why didn't you tell me about the car before?"

He shrugged again. "I told my girlfriend, Julie, and she said… she said that if Emma's dead, it's my fault for not telling you. She said she never wants to see me again."

Faith guessed that that was what was really bothering him. There was nothing more self-involved than a teenager. She asked, "Did you ever meet Emma in person?"

He shook his head.

"How about her friend Kayla Alexander-blond girl, very pretty?"

"I'd never even heard of her until I turned on the news." Gabe asked, "Do you think I did a bad thing?"

"Of course not," Faith assured him, hoping she managed to keep the sarcasm out of her voice. "Do you know the Web site Adam and Emma used?"

He shook his head. "He had it on his laptop, but then his laptop got stolen."

"How did it get stolen?"

Gabe sat up, wiping his eyes with his fist. "He left it out at the library when he went to pee, and when he came back, it was gone."

Faith was hardly surprised. Adam might as well have put a "take me" sign on it. "Did you ever see what name he used on the site? Did he use his e-mail address?"

"I don't think so." He used the bottom of his shirt to wipe his nose. "If you put in your e-mail address, then you get all kinds of trolls for spam and shit."

She had assumed as much. Compounding the problem, there were probably nine billion Web sites for people with learning disabilities, and those were just the American ones. She reminded him, "When you called me, you said you had something to show me. Something that belonged to Adam."

Guilt flashed in his eyes, and she realized that the other stuff- the Web site, the car, the fear about Emma's age-was just preamble to the information that had really compelled him to call her.

Faith struggled to keep the urgency out of her tone. "Whatever it is that you have, I need to see it."

He took his sweet time relenting, making a show of leaning up on his heels so he could dig his hand into the front pocket of his jeans. Slowly, he pulled out several pieces of folded white paper. He explained, "These were slipped under Adam's door last week."

As he unfolded the three pages, all she could think was that between the creases, smudges and dog-eared corners, the paper had been handled many, many times.

"Here," Gabe said. "That's all of them."

Faith stared in shock at the three notes he'd spread out on the floor between them. Each page had a single line of bold, block text running horizontally across it. Each line heightened her sense of foreboding.

SHE BE LONGS TOME!!! RAPIST!!! LEV HER ALONG!!!

At first, Faith didn't trust herself to speak. Someone had tried to warn Adam Humphrey away from Emma Campano. Someone had been watching them together, knew their habits. The notes were more proof that this was not a spur of the moment abduction. The killer had known some if not all of the participants.

Gabe had his own concerns. "Are you mad at me?"

Faith could not answer him. Instead, she gave him back her own question. "Did anyone else touch these besides you and Adam?"

He shook his head.

"What order did they come in-do you remember?"

He switched around the last two sheets before she could stop him. "Like that."

"Don't touch them again, okay?" He nodded. "When did the first one come?"

"Monday last week."

"What did Adam say when he got it?"

Gabe was no longer being emotional about his answers. He seemed almost relieved to be telling her. "First, we were like, you know, it was funny, because everything is spelled wrong."