Karin Slaughter - Fractured

The curtain pulled back. Both parents stood, silent, probably numb. Simon was the first to move. He reached out and pressed his hand against the glass. Will wondered if he was remembering what it felt like to hold his son's hand. Was that the sort of thing fathers did? At the park, out in public, fathers and sons were always playing ball or tossing Frisbees, the only contact between them a rustle of the hair or a punch on the arm. This seemed to be how dads taught their boys to be men, but there had to be a point, maybe early on, when they were able to hold their hands. One tiny one engulfed by one big one. Adam would have needed help crossing the street. In a crowd, you wouldn't want him to wander off.

Yes, Will decided. Simon Humphrey had held his son's hands.

Gail turned to Will. She wasn't crying, but he sensed a familiar reserve, a kindred spirit. She would be at the hotel later tonight, maybe in the shower or sitting on the bed while her husband went for a walk, and then she would allow this moment to crash over her. She would be back in front of that window, looking at her dead son. She would collapse. She would feel her spirit leaving her body and know it might never return.

For now, she said, "Thank you, Agent Trent," and shook his hand.

He led them down the hallway, asking them about the hotel where they would stay, giving them advice on where to have supper. He was aware of how foolish the small talk sounded, but Will also knew that the distraction would help them make it through the building, to give them the strength they needed to leave their child in this cold, dark place.

They had rented a car at the airport, and Will went with them as far as the garage. Through the glass panel in the door, he watched Gail Humphrey stumble. Her husband caught her arm and she shrugged him off. He tried again and she slapped at him, yelling, until he wrapped his arms around her to make her stop.

Will turned away, feeling like an intruder. He took the stairs up the six flights to his office. At half past eight, everyone but the skeleton crew had already gone home for the day. The lights were out, but he would have known his way even without the faint glow of the emergency exit signs. Will had a corner office, which would have been impressive if it hadn't been this particular corner. Between the Home Depot across the street and the old Ford Factory next door that had been turned into apartment buildings, there wasn't much to look at. Sometimes, he convinced himself that the abandoned railroad tracks with their weeds and discarded hypodermic needles offered something of a parklike view, but daydreaming only worked during the day.

Will turned on his desk lamp and sat down. He hated nighttime on days like this, where there was nothing he could do but catch up on paperwork while he waited for other people to bring him information. There was an expert in Tennessee who specialized in detecting fingerprints on paper. Paper was tricky and you only got a couple of tries developing prints before the process ruined the evidence. The man was driving down first thing in the morning to look at the notes. The recording of the ransom call was being hand-delivered to the University of Georgia's audiology lab, but the professor had warned them it would take many hours to isolate the sounds. Charlie was working late at the lab trying to process all the evidence they had collected. Tips from the hotline were being followed up on, cops sifting through the pranksters and nutjobs, trying to find a viable lead.

Will had paperwork to do on all of this, but instead of turning to his computer, he sat back in his chair and stared at his blurred reflection in the dark window. They were coming up on thirty-six hours since Abigail Campano had come home to find her life turned upside down. Two people were still dead. One girl was still missing. And, still, not a single suspect was in sight.

He didn't understand the ransom demand. Will was no rookie. He had worked kidnapping cases before. He had worked abduction cases. There were basic tenets to both. Kidnappers wanted money. Abductors wanted sex. He could not reconcile the brutal way in which Kayla Alexander had been killed with the phone call this morning demanding one million dollars. It just did not add up.

Then there was the fight between Abigail and Paul Campano. Angie had been right: Paul was cheating on his wife. Apparently, he liked young blondes, but did that include his own daughter, and possibly Kayla Alexander? Amanda had told Will to get the man's DNA. Maybe she was right, too. Add in Faith, who had managed to get Gabriel Cohen to talk, and that just left Will as the odd man out-literally-because he was the only one who brought absolutely nothing to this case.

Will turned back to his desk, knowing that overthinking the problem would not bring him any closer to a solution. His cell phone was laid out on his desk in two pieces. During his fight with Paul, the clamshell had snapped off and the screen had cracked. Will held the lid in place and taped it back onto the phone with several pieces of Scotch tape. The phone still worked. When he'd left the Campano house, he had been able to hold it together in order to check his voice mail. Faith Mitchell's messages had gotten progressively more important, her voice going up in excitement as she told him about the threatening notes Gabe Cohen had kept from them.

Will still wasn't sure she had made the right decision about keeping the kid out of the system, but he had to trust her instincts.

At least they had more information on the car now. A computer search of graduate students working at the Georgia Tech Research Institute in Ireland had revealed the name Farokh Pansing. After a few phone calls, they had located a cell phone number and woken the man up from what sounded like a very deep sleep. The physics major had given Will a loving description of the blue 1981 Chevy Impala he had left behind. No air-conditioning. No seat belts. The driver's door stuck when it rained. The engine leaked like a sieve. The undercarriage was so rusted out that, from the backseat, you could watch the road pass under your shoes. Because of its age, the state of Georgia considered the car a classic and it was therefore exempt from any emissions requirements. Farokh had sold the ancient car to Adam Humphrey for four hundred dollars. The state had no record of Adam ever applying for insurance or a tag.

They had issued a new alert on the Impala, but the warning only pertained to the state of Georgia. Emma Campano could easily be in Alabama or Tennessee or the Carolinas. Given the almost two days that had passed since her abduction, she could well be in Mexico or Canada.

Will's computer gave a chug like a train, indicating that the system was running. Will had been out of the office for two days. He needed to check his e-mail and file his daily reports. He put on the headphones and adjusted the microphone, preparing to dictate the report. After opening up a blank Word document, he pressed the start key, but found himself at a loss for words. He stopped the recorder and sat back in his chair. When he reached up to rub his eyes, he gasped from the pain.

Paul hadn't broken his nose, but he'd managed to whack it hard enough to move the cartilage. With the ransom recording to analyze and the threatening notes to rush to the lab, Will hadn't had time to look at himself in the mirror until about ten minutes before the Humphreys had shown up to identify their son. Will's nose had been broken several times in the past. It was already crooked enough. With the bruises, he looked like a bar brawler, which did not exactly engender trust in the Humphreys. The father had accepted his mumbled excuse about a rough football game the weekend before, but the mother had looked at him as if he had a giant "liar" sticker pinned to his head.