Karin Slaughter - Fractured

Will tapped the space bar on his computer and used the mouse to click on the e-mail icon. He slipped the headphones on and listened to his e-mails. The first three were spam, the second was from Pete Hanson, telling him the basic information Faith had already relayed about the autopsies of Adam Humphrey and Kayla Alexander.

The third e-mail was from Amanda Wagner. She had called apress conference for six-thirty the next morning. Will guessed she had been following the news as closely as he had. Absent anything else to cover, the reporters had started targeting the parents, picking apart their lives, slowly pointing the finger back at the victims. The press would be in for a disappointment if they thought they'd be able to talk to the Campanos tomorrow. Amanda was a master at controlling the press. She would parade out Paul and Abigail for the cameras, but she would do all the talking. Will couldn't think how she would manage to put a muzzle on Paul, but he'd seen her pull too many rabbits out of her hat in the past to worry about logistics.

Amanda's e-mail ended curtly. "You are to be in my office directly after the press conference," the computer read. Will gathered she had heard about Paul Campano bashing his face in.

Will pressed play again, listening to Amanda's terse message as if he could divine some nuance. The program allowed you to assign different voices to people. Pete sounded like Mickey Mouse. Amanda was Darth Vader. Sitting alone in his dark office, the sound gave Will an involuntary shudder.

Then it gave him an idea.

He opened up Pete's e-mail again and selected a different voice to read the text. He went through each option, listening to the nuances. Will realized he was doing this the wrong way. He opened a new e-mail and clicked in the text area, then took out his digital recorder and selected the file that had the kidnapper's voice on it.

He held the player up to the microphone and let it dictate the text:

"Is this the mother?"

Then Abigail, stuttering, "Y-yes…This is Emma's mother. Is Emma all right? Can I talk to Emma?"

"I have your daughter."

"What do you want? Tell me how to get Emma back."

"I want one million dollars."

"Okay…When? Where? Just tell me what you want."

"I will call you tomorrow at ten-thirty a.m. with details."

"No-wait! How do I-"

Will cut off the recording, excitement taking hold. Playing back each line, he isolated the kidnapper's sentences and deleted Abigail's. Next, he went through each voice option, searching for one that sounded similar to the kidnapper's.

The last one in line was the one he used for Amanda Wagner. His finger hovered over the mouse. He clicked the button. The headphones sent out a foreboding, deep voice.

"Is this the mother?"

Will looked up, sensing he was not alone. Faith Mitchell stood in the doorway.

He jumped up, yanking off the headphones as if he had something to be guilty about. "I thought you were going home."

She walked into his office and sat down. The desk lamp cast her in a harsh light. She looked older than her thirty-three years. "What are you doing?"

"The audiotape of the ransom demand," he began, then figured he could just as easily show her. He picked up his digital recorder and pressed play. "This is the audio." Will kept his thumb on the button, listening along with Faith to the kidnapper's phone call this morning, Abigail Campano's terrified responses. He stopped it at the same place as before. "Now this is something I just did in my computer. It's got one of those speaking options for lazy people where it reads stuff to you." He moved the mouse over to the start button, saying, "I didn't even remember I had it on here. I guess it's some ADA thing." He pulled out the headphone jack so the speakers would play. "Ready?"

She nodded.

He pressed play, and the kidnapper's words came out of the computer speakers in the Darth Vader voice.

"Is this the mother?"

"Jesus Christ," she murmured. "It's almost exactly the same."

"I think he must have written the sentences and prerecorded them coming out of the computer speakers."

"That's why the sentence construction's so simple. There aren't any contractions."

Will looked at the computer screen as he repeated them back from memory. "I have your daughter. I want one million dollars. I will call you this time tomorrow with details."

He picked up the phone and called Hamish Patel, who was driving the tape up to the University of Georgia in Athens.

Hamish sounded as excited as Will felt. He told Will, "If you manage to keep your job, you might actually break this case."

Will made excuses. He didn't want to think about what Amanda had in store for him tomorrow morning, but he imagined she was concocting a special kind of hell for the agent who had gotten into a fight with the father of a kidnapping victim. The GBI was planning another sex sting at the Atlanta airport. Will might be stuck in a bathroom stall on the B Concourse, waiting for a married father of three to tap his foot and ask for a blow job.

He rang off with Hamish and told Faith, "They're going to check into it. These guys deal with computers and audio enhancement all of the time. I'm sure they would've figured it out in ten seconds."

"Saves them ten seconds then," she pointed out. "I can't help but think where we'd be if I'd been able to get Gabe to talk yesterday."

"He wasn't ready," Will told her, though there was no way of knowing whether or not that was true. "Maybe if you'd pushed him yesterday, he would have gone over the edge without telling us anything."

"What do you think about the notes?"

"Someone-probably the kidnapper-was trying to warn or threaten Adam."

" ‘She belongs to me,' " Faith quoted. "That's a pretty definitive statement."

"It supports the kidnapper knowing Emma, at least."

"What about the way they were written?"

Will nodded, as if he knew what she was talking about. "That's a good point. What do you think about it?"

She tapped her finger to her mouth as she considered it. "Either the person who wrote them is dyslexic or they're trying to make it seem like they are."

Will felt the glimmer of pride from a few moments ago disappear like a flash of lightning. The notes were misspelled. He had missed an important clue because of his own stupidity. What else had he missed? What other evidence had gone by the wayside because Will couldn't wrap his head around them?

Faith asked, "Will?"

He shook his head, not trusting himself to speak. He would have to call Amanda, tell her what he had missed. She had a way of finding out these things on her own. He didn't know how to handle it other than to confess and wait for the ax to fall.

"Go ahead and say it," Faith told him. "It's not like I haven't been wondering."

He clasped his hands under the desk. "Wondering what?"

"Whether or not Emma's involved in this."

Will looked down at his hands. He had to swallow past the lump in his throat. "It's possible," he admitted. He tried to refocus his attention, using a roundabout question to find out how Faith had arrived at Emma Campano being involved. "Kayla certainly knew how to inspire hate in people, but it's a huge leap, don't you think?"

"Kayla was such an awful person, and from the sound of it, Emma was one step up from her lapdog. She might have snapped."

"You think a seventeen-year-old girl is capable of doing all this-killing people, staging her own kidnapping?"

"That's the question, isn't it?" Faith leaned her elbows on his desk. "I hate to say this, but considering what Mary Clark said about her, if Emma was dead and Kayla was missing, I would have no problem believing Kayla was in on it."