Karin Slaughter - Fractured

"Why not?"

"It's not evidence."

"It's sealed." She showed him the unbroken strip of tape with Charlie's initials on it.

Will didn't have an answer for her.

Faith was instantly suspicious. "What's going on here?"

"I stole it from the Campano crime scene. Charlie turned his back and I swiped it before he could catalogue it into the system."

She narrowed her eyes. "Is that recorder on?"

He took the player off his desk, opened the back and shook out the batteries. "The powder was found in the foyer. It's ripe for a cross-contamination argument. We were all in and out of the area. It could have been brought in by one of us. Hell, for all I know, it was, but-"

"But?"

"But maybe not. It doesn't match any of the soil around the house. It wasn't on Adam's shoes or the girls' shoes. It could have been brought in by the killer."

"That sounds like information you got from the person who collected the evidence."

"Charlie has no idea that I'm doing this."

She obviously did not believe him, but Faith did not press the point. "Hypothetically, what would I do with it?"

"Maybe reach out to someone at Tech?"

She vehemently shook her head. "I'm not getting my son involved in-"

"No, of course not," he interrupted. "I thought maybe you could talk to Victor Martinez?"

"Victor?" she echoed. "I barely know the man."

"You knew him well enough to call him about Gabe Cohen."

"That's different," she insisted. "He's head of student services. Taking care of Gabe Cohen is his job."

Will tried, "He wouldn't think the request was odd coming from you. If I called him out of the blue, there would be all kinds of formalities, red tape. We need to keep this quiet, Faith. If that powder leads us to an area we can search, and we find the man who did this…"

"Then the chain of evidence would be compromised and the arrest might get thrown out." She gave a heavy sigh. "I need to think about this, Will."

He had to make sure she understood the implications. "I'm asking you to break the law. You realize that?"

"It runs in the family, right?"

He could see her words were angrier than she'd intended, but he also knew that she had been struggling over the last day and a half to make the best of their marriage of convenience.

Will told her, "I don't want you to do something you can't live with, Faith. Just make sure you get the sample back to me if you decide against it."

She wrapped her hand around the vial and held it to her chest. "I'm going to go now."

"Are you-"

She kept the vial in her hand. "What are we doing tomorrow?"

"I've got a meeting first thing with Amanda. I'll meet you back here around eight o'clock. Gordon Chew, the fingerprint expert, is driving down from Chattanooga to see if he can find any latents on our notes." He glanced around the office, his parklike view. "If I'm not here by eight-fifteen, check the men's toilets at the airport."

FAITH SAT AT her kitchen table. Except for the nightlight on the stove, the room was bathed in darkness. She'd gotten out a bottle of wine, a glass, the orkscrew, but they all sat unused on the table in front of her. All those years, she had wanted nothing more than to have Jeremy old enough to move out of the house so she could have some semblance of a life. Now that he was gone, she felt like she had a gaping hole in her chest where her heart used to be.

Drinking wouldn't help. She always got maudlin with wine. Faith reached for the wineglass to put it away, but ended up knocking it over instead. She grabbed for it, but the rim bounced off the edge of the table, then shattered on the tile floor. Faith knelt down, picking up the sharp shards of the broken wineglass. She thought about turning on the lights the second before a sliver cut into her skin.

"Dammit," she muttered, putting her finger in her mouth. She walked over to the sink, let cold water pour over the wound. She turned on the light above the sink, watching the blood pool and wash away, pool and wash away.

Her vision blurred as tears welled into her eyes. She felt foolish at the melodrama, but no one was around to ask her why she was crying over what amounted to a nasty paper cut, so Faith let the tears come. Besides, she had plenty to cry about. Tomorrow morning would mark the third day since Emma had been taken.

What was Abigail Campano going to do when she woke up tomorrow? Would sleep bring some kind of amnesia, so that at first light, she would have to remember all over again that her baby was gone? What would she do then? Was she going to think about all the breakfasts she had made, all the soccer practices and school dances and homework she had helped with? Or would her thoughts move to the future rather than the past: graduation, weddings, grandchildren?

Faith took a tissue and wiped her eyes. She realized how faulty her thinking had been. No mother could sleep when her child was in danger. Faith had spent many sleepless nights of her own, and she'd known exactly where Jeremy was-or where he was supposed to be. She had worried about car accidents and underage drinking and, God forbid, some little girl he was seeing who might be just as stupid as Faith had been at that age. It was bad enough to have a son fifteen years her junior but a grandchild who was a mere sixteen years younger than that would have been crushing.

Faith laughed out loud at the thought, tossing the tissue into the trashcan. She should call her mother and commiserate, or at the very least apologize for the millionth time, but the person Faith really wanted right now was her father.

Bill Mitchell had died of a stroke seven years ago. The whole ordeal had been mercifully quick. He had clutched his arm and fallen down on the kitchen floor one morning, then died peacefully at the hospital two nights later. Faith's brother had flown in from Germany. Jeremy had taken off the day from school. Bill Mitchell had always been a considerate man, and even in death he managed to be mindful of the needs of his family. They were all in the room with him when he passed. They'd all had time to say good-bye. Faith did not think a day went by when she didn't think of her father-his kindness, his stability, his love.

In many ways, Bill Mitchell had handled his teenage daughter's pregnancy better than his wife. He had adored Jeremy, had relished the role of grandfather. It wasn't until much later that Faith found out the real reason Bill had stopped attending his weekly Bible study meetings and quit the bowling team. At the time, he'd said he wanted to be with his family more, to do some projects around the house. Now Faith knew that they had asked him to leave because of her. Faith's sin had rubbed off on him. Her father, a man so devout that he had once considered the ministry as a vocation, had never stepped foot in a church again, not even for Jeremy's baptism.

Faith wrapped a paper towel around her finger to catch the remaining trickles of blood. She turned on the lights and got the broom and dustpan from the pantry. She swept up the glass, then got out the stick vacuum to get the smaller pieces. She hadn't been home in two days, so the kitchen was messier than she usually kept it. Faith ran the vacuum over the tiles, angling the bristles into corners.

She rinsed off the dishes in the sink and put them in the dishwasher. She scoured the sink and put the dish towels in the washing machine along with a load of clothes that she found in her bathroom hamper. She was cleaning out the dryer lint trap when she remembered the uncomfortable moment with Will Trent, when just for a moment, she had thought he was asking her out on a date.