Karin Slaughter: Fractured

His eyes followed the curving line of the polished wooden stairs, seeing two sets of bloody tennis-shoe prints heading down but no other bare footprints. There were scuffs and deep ruts in the walls where shoes and body parts had dug out the plaster, indicating at least one person had fallen. The trip must have been brutal. Abigail Campano had known she was fighting for her life. For his part, the dead kid at the bottom of the stairs was no lightweight. The definition of his muscles was evident under the red T-shirt. He must have been shocked to find himself overpowered even as he pulled his last breath.

In his head, Will sketched a diagram of the house, trying to get his bearings. A long hallway under the stairs led to the back of the house and what looked like the kitchen and family room. There were two rooms off the front entrance, probably originally intended to be parlors to give the men separate space from the women. Pocket doors closed off one room, but the second, which looked to be used as a library, was open. Dark paneling dominated the open parlor. Bookshelves lined the walls and a fireplace with a deep hearth already had wood laid for a fire. The furniture was heavy, probably oak. Two large leather chairs dominated the space. Will assumed the other parlor was the opposite, the walls painted in white or cream and the furnishings less masculine.

Upstairs, there would probably be the usual layout to these old houses: five or six bedrooms connected by a long, T-shaped hallway with what would have originally been servants' stairs leading down to the kitchen in the back. If the other houses in the neighborhood were anything to go by, there would be a carriage house outside that had been converted to a garage with an apartment overhead. Measuring and mapping it all out for the reports would be a lot of work. Will was glad the task wouldn't fall to him.

He was also glad he wouldn't have to explain why the single bloody footprint on the foyer was heading up the stairs instead of running out the front doorway.

Leo came back into the house, obviously annoyed by the phone call. "Like I don't got enough people sticking their heads up my ass with this prostate thing." He indicated the scene. "You solve this one for me yet?"

Will asked, "Who does the green BMW on the street belong to?"

"The mother."

"What about the girl-does she have a car?"

"A black Beemer, if you can believe it, 325 convertible. Parents took it away when her grades started to slide." He pointed to the house across the street. "Nosey neighbor turned her in when she saw the car in the driveway during school hours."

"Did the neighbor see anything today?"

"She's even older than the dog, so don't get your hopes up." He gave a half shrug of his shoulder, allowing, "We've got somebody over there talking to her right now."

"The mother's sure she doesn't recognize the killer?"

"Positive. I had her look at him again when she was more calmed down. Never seen him before in her life."

Will looked back at the dead man. Everything was adding up but nothing made sense. "How'd he get here?"

"No idea. Could've taken the bus and walked from Peachtree Street."

Peachtree, one of the busiest streets in Atlanta, was less than ten minutes away. Buses and trains went back and forth over- and underground bringing thousands of people to the office buildings and shops along the strip. Will had heard of criminals doing more stupid things than timing a brutal murder around a bus schedule, but the explanation didn't feel right. This was Atlanta. Only the desperately poor or ecologically eccentric took public transportation. The man on the floor was a clean-cut white kid wearing what looked like a three-hundred-dollar pair of jeans and a two-hundred-dollar pair of Nikes. Either he had a car or he lived in the neighborhood.

Leo offered, "We've got patrol out looking for a car that don't belong."

"You were the first detective on the scene?"

Leo took his time answering, making sure Will knew that he was doing so as a courtesy. "I was the first cop, period," he finally said. "Nine-one-one came in around twelve-thirty. I was finishing lunch at that sandwich place on Fourteenth. I got here maybe two seconds before the cruiser pulled up. We checked the house, made sure no one else was here, then I told everybody to get the hell out."

Fourteenth Street was less than a five-minute drive from where they stood. It was luck that the first responding officer had been a detective who could secure the scene. "You were the first one to talk to the mother?"

"She was freaked the fuck out, let me tell you. Hands were shaking, couldn't get her words out. Took about ten minutes for her to calm down enough to get the story out."

"So, this looks clean to you? Some kind of domestic violence scene between two teenagers, then the mom comes in and puts a kink in it?"

"Is that what Hoyt Bentley sent you to check out?"

Will skirted the question. "This is a sensitive case, Leo. Bentley plays golf with the governor. He sits on the board of half the charities in town. Wouldn't you be more surprised if we weren't here?"

Leo half shrugged, half nodded. Maybe there was something bothering him about the scene, too, because he kept talking. "There's defensive wounds on the mother. You can see signs of the struggle what with all the broken shit and the walls being bashed in. Dead kid's got more of the same, including some bite marks on his fingers where the mother tried to get his hands off her. The girl upstairs-he had some time with her. Panties down, bra pushed up. Blood everywhere."

"Was there a struggle upstairs?"

"Some, but not like down here." He paused before offering, "You wanna see her?"

Will appreciated the gesture, but Amanda had made it more than clear that she didn't want him to get involved in this unless it had the markings of a professional hit. If Will saw something upstairs, no matter how innocuous, he might end up having to testify about it later in court.

Still she couldn't fault him for being curious. "How was the girl killed?"

"Hard to tell."

Will glanced behind him at the open front door. The air-conditioning in the house was on full blast, trying to keep up with the heat coming in. "Did you already get pictures of everything in here?"

"Upstairs and down," Leo told him. "We'll dust for prints and the usual shit once the bodies are taken away. By the way, that's when I'll shut the door, since you seem to have a stick up your ass about it. I'm trying to keep the tourists down to a minimum here." He added, "Case like this, there are gonna be some heavy guns on it."

Will thought that was an understatement. No one had reported a strange car in the neighborhood. Unless Leo's public transportation theory held up, the kid was most likely a resident of Ansley Park. Knowing how these things worked, he probably came from a family of lawyers. Leo would need to do everything exactly by the book or he'd end up dangling by his short hairs the minute he took the stand.

Will rephrased his earlier question. "How did she die?"

"She's a fucking mess-face like raw hamburger, blood everywhere. I'm surprised the mother even recognized her." Leo paused, obviously seeing Will wanted a more concrete answer. "My guess? He beat her, then stabbed her to death."

Again, Will looked at the dead man on the floor. His palms were covered with dried blood, not what you would expect from a closed fist beating someone repeatedly, or, for that matter, a hand holding a knife. The knees of his black jeans looked dark, too, as if he had knelt in something wet. His T-shirt was bunched up just below his ribs. A fresh bruise spread down into the waist of his pants.

Will asked, "Was the mother injured?"

"Scratches on the back of her arms and hands, like I said before. There's a pretty deep cut on the palm from the glass on the floor." Leo catalogued, "Lots of bruises, busted lip, some blood in her ear. Maybe a sprained ankle. I thought it was broke, but she moved it." He rubbed his mouth, probably wishing there was a cigarette in it. "I called an ambulance, but she said she wasn't leaving until her daughter's removed."