Karin Slaughter - Fractured

"And when the second one came?"

"It came the next day. We were kind of freaked out. I thought Tommy was doing it."

The asshole dormmate. "Was he?"

"No. Because I was with Tommy the day Adam got the third note. That was when his computer was stolen, and I was like, ‘What the fuck? Is somebody stalking you or what?' " Gabe glanced at her, probably looking for confirmation on his theory. Faith gave him none, and he continued, "Adam was pretty freaked out. He said he was going to get a gun."

Faith's instincts told her that Gabe was not blowing smoke. She made her tone deadly serious. "Did he?"

Gabe looked back at the notes.

"Gabe?"

"He was thinking about it."

"Where would he get a gun?" she asked, though the answer was obvious. Tech was an urban campus. You could walk ten blocks in any direction and find meth, coke, prostitutes and firearms in any combination on any street corner.

"Gabe?" she prompted. "Where would Adam get a gun?"

Again, he remained silent.

"Stop screwing around," she warned him. "This is not a game."

"It was just talk," he insisted, but he still wouldn't look her in the eye.

Faith no longer tried to hide her impatience. She indicated the notes. "Did you report these to campus security?"

His chin started to quiver. Tears brimmed in his eyes. "We should've, right? That's what you're saying. It's my fault, because Adam wanted to, and I told him not to, that he'd get in trouble because of Emma." He put his head in his hands, shoulders shaking again. She saw how thin he was, how his ribs pressed into the thin T-shirt he wore. Watching him, listening to him cry, Faith realized that she had read Gabe Cohen completely wrong. This was no act on his part. He was genuinely upset, and she had been too focused on the case to notice.

His voice cracked. "It's all my fault. That's what Julie said. It's all my fault, and I know you think that, too."

Faith sat there, not knowing what to do. The truth was, she was mad at him, but also at herself. If Faith had been better at her job, she would have spotted this yesterday. The time lost was down to her. Gabe had probably had these notes in his pocket when he challenged her less than twenty-four hours ago. Blaming him for her own failure would not get them any closer to finding Emma Campano, and right now, that was all that mattered.

She sat back on her heels, trying to figure out what to do. Faith could not tell how fragile the young man was right now. Was he just another teenager caught up in his emotions or was he playing up the situation for her attention?

"Gabe," she began, "I need you to be honest with me."

"I am being honest."

Faith took a moment, trying to find the best way to phrase her next question. "Is there something else you're not telling me?"

He looked up at her. There was suddenly such sadness in his eyes that she had to force herself not to look away. "I can't do anything right."

His life had been turned upside down over the last couple of days, but she knew he was talking about more than that. She told him, "I'm sure that's not true."

"Adam was my only friend, and he's dead-probably because of me."

"I promise you that's not true."

He looked away, staring at the bare mattress across from him. "I don't fit in here. Everybody's smarter than me. Everybody's already picking fraternities and hanging out. Even Tommy."

Faith was not stupid enough to offer Jeremy as his new best friend. She told Gabe, "It's hard to adjust to a new school. You'll figure it out eventually."

"I really don't think I will," he said, sounding so sure of himself that Faith could almost hear an alarm going off in her head. She had been so concerned about the information Gabe had withheld that she had lost sight of the fact that he was just a teenager who had been thrown into a very bad situation.

"Gabe," Faith began, "what's going on with you?"

"I just need to get some rest."

She knew then that he wasn't talking about sleep. He had not called her to help Adam, he had called to help himself-and her response had been to push him around like a suspect she was interrogating. She made her voice softer. "What are you thinking about doing?"

"I don't know," he answered, but he still would not make eye contact with her. "Sometimes, I just think that the world would be a better place if I was just…gone. You know?"

"Have you tried anything before?" She glanced at his wrists. There were scratch marks that she hadn't noticed before, thin red streaks where the skin had been broken but not punctured. "Maybe tried to hurt yourself?"

"I just want to get away from here. I want to go…"

"Home?" she suggested.

He shook his head. "There's nothing there for me. My mom died of cancer six years ago. My dad and me…" He shook his head.

Faith told him, "I want to help you, Gabe, but you need to be honest with me."

He picked at a tear in his jeans. She saw that his fingernails were chewed to the quick. The cuticles were ragged and torn.

"Did Adam buy a gun?"

He kept picking at his jeans. He shrugged his shoulders, and she still did not know whether to believe him.

She suggested, "Why don't I call your father?"

His eyes widened. "No. Don't do that. Please."

"I can't just leave you alone, Gabe."

His eyes filled with tears again. His lips trembled. There was such desperation in his manner that she felt like he had reached into her chest and grabbed her heart with his fist. She could have kicked herself for letting it get to this point.

She repeated, "I'm not going to leave you alone."

"I'll be okay."

Faith felt caught in an untenable position. Gabe was obviously a troubled young man, but he could not be her problem right now. She needed to get the threatening notes to the lab to see if there were any usable fingerprints on them. There was a student in Ireland who had sold his car to Adam-a car that had probably been used to transport Emma Campano from the Copy Right. There were two sets of parents who would identify their dead children tonight. There was a mother and a father on the other side of Atlanta waiting to find out whether or not their daughter was still alive.

Faith took out her cell phone and scrolled through her recent calls.

Gabe asked, "Are you going to arrest me?"

"No." Faith pressed the send button on the phone. "I'm going to get you some help, and then I have to go do my job." She didn't add that she was going to search every item in his room, including the computer he'd let Adam borrow, before she left campus.

Gabe sat back against the bed, an air of resignation about him. He stared at the mattress opposite. Faith resisted the impulse to reach out and tuck a stray strand of hair behind his ear. Pimples dotted his chin. She could see stubble on his cheek where he had missed a spot shaving. He was still just a child-a child who was very lost and needed help.

Victor Martinez's secretary answered on the second ring. "Student Services."

"This is Detective Mitchell," she told the woman. "I need to speak to the dean immediately."

WILL STOOD BEHIND Gail and Simon Humphrey as they waited in front of the viewing window. The setup was the sort that was always shown on television and in movies: a simple curtain hung on the other side of the glass. Will would press a button, and the drape would be slowly drawn back, revealing the cleaned-up victim. The sheet would be tucked up to the chin in order to cover the baseball stitches holding together the Y-incision. Cue the mother slumping against her husband.

But the camera couldn't capture everything. The pungent smell of the morgue. The distant whine of the giant freezers where they stored the bodies. The way the floor seemed to suck at the soles of your shoes as you walked toward that window. The heaviness of your arm as you reached out to push that button.