Karin Slaughter - Fractured

Faith let out a long breath of air. How close had she come as a kid to being just like Mary Clark? It was luck of the draw that the older man in her life had been a teenage boy instead of a sadistic pederast. "Did he handcuff you?"

Mary put her hand over her mouth, only trusting herself to nod.

"Were you ever afraid for your life?"

Mary did not answer, but Faith could see it in the woman's eyes. She had been terrified, trapped. "It was all a game for him," she said. "We would be together one day, and then the next, he would break it off with me. I lived in constant fear that he would finally leave me, and I would be all alone."

"What happened?"

"He quit in the middle of the year," Mary told her. "I didn't see him again until my first day at Westfield. I just stood there like a gawking teenager, like it was thirteen years ago and he was my teacher. I felt all these things for him, things that I shouldn't feel. I know it's sick, but he was the first man I loved." She looked up at Faith, almost begging her to understand. "All the things he did to me, all the humiliation and the pain and the grief…I don't know why I can't break this connection I have with him." She was crying again. "How sick is that, that I still have feelings for the man who raped me?"

Faith looked at her hands, not trusting herself to answer. "Why did Evan leave your school?"

"There was another girl. I don't remember her name. She was hurt really badly-raped, beaten. She said that Evan did it to her."

"He wasn't arrested?"

"She was a troublemaker. Like me. Another kid stood up for him, gave him an alibi. Bernard could always get kids to lie for him, but he still quit anyway. I think he knew they were on to him."

"Did you ever see him again? I mean, after he left school, did he try to get in touch with you?"

"Of course not."

Something in her tone made Faith ask, "Did you try to get in touch with him?"

The tears came back, humiliation marring her pretty features. "Of course I did."

"What happened?"

"He had another girl there," she said. "In our room. My room." Tears rolled down her cheeks. "I screamed at them, threatened to call the police, said whatever stupid thing I could think of to get him back." She stared at the markings on the door jamb, the milestones of her children's lives. "I remember it was pouring down raining, and cold-cold like it never gets here. I think it actually snowed that year."

"What did you do?"

"I offered myself to him, whatever he wanted, however he wanted." She nodded her head, as if agreeing with the memory that she had been willing to debase herself in any way for this man. "I told him I would do anything."

"What did he say?"

She looked back at Faith. "He beat me like a dog with his hands and fists. I lay there in the street until the morning."

"Did you go to the hospital?"

"No. I went home."

"Did you ever go back?"

"Once, maybe three or four months later. I was with my new boyfriend. I wanted to park in front of Evan's house. I wanted someone else to fuck me there, like I could pay him back." She chuckled at her naiveté. "Knowing Evan, he would've stood at the window, watching us, jerking himself off."

"He wasn't there?"

"He had moved. I guess he was on to greener pastures, on to our illustrious Westfield Academy."

"And you never spoke to him again-not until you saw him your first day at school?"

"No. I wasn't so stupid that I didn't understand."

"Understand what?"

"Before, he never left bruises where people could see them. That's how I knew it was over. He kicked my face so hard that my cheekbone fractured." She put her hand to her cheek. "You can't tell, can you?"

Faith looked at the woman's pretty face, her perfect skin. "No."

"It's on the inside," she said, stroking her cheek the way she probably soothed her children. "Everything Evan did to me is still on the inside."

WILL WALKED THROUGH the parking lot behind the Copy Right, feeling time start to crush in on him. Evan Bernard would be out of jail this time tomorrow. His accomplice was no closer to being identified. There were no clues to follow up on, no breaks on the horizon. The forensic evidence was a wash. The DNA would take days to process. Amanda was ruthless in her focus. She worked cases to win them, cutting her losses when she felt the odds stacking against her. Unless the four o'clock ransom call revealed something earth-shattering, she would soon start pulling resources, assigning priorities to other cases.

They thought Emma was dead. Will could feel it in the way Faith looked at him, the careful words Amanda chose when she talked about the teenage girl. They had all given up on her-everyone but Will. He could not accept that the girl was gone. He would not accept anything less than bringing a living, breathing child back to Abigail Campano.

He pressed the button beside the door and was buzzed in immediately. As Will walked down the hallway to the Copy Right, he could hear the high-pitched whir of the machines working at full speed. The construction crew on the street added to the cacophony, hammer drills and concrete mixers providing a steady beat. Inside the store, the plate-glass windows facing Peachtree Street were vibrating from the activity.

"Hey, man!" Lionel Petty called. He was sitting behind the front counter, his head bent over a paper plate that contained a very large steak and French fries. Will recognized the logo on the paper sack beside him as that of the Steakery, a fast-food place specializing in large portions of dubiously inexpensive meat.

"You got my phone call!" Petty said, obviously excited. "The construction crew came back this morning. I was shocked, man. Somebody must've screwed up their orders." He looked closely at Will. "Damn, man, you got creamed."

"Yeah," Will said, stupidly touching his bruised nose.

The noise level died down a bit and Petty stood up to check the machines.

Will asked, "The contractors-is it the same crew?"

He stopped at one of the copiers and began loading in reams of paper. "Some of them look familiar. The foreman's been coming in and out of the garage with his big-ass truck. Warren's pissed about it, but there's nothing we can do because we don't technically own the lot."

Will thought about what the manager had told him, how most of their customers never came to the building. "Why does he care?"

"The trash, man-all that litter. It's a matter of respect." He closed the machine and pressed a button. The copier whirred back to life, adding a deep hum to the chorus of spinning wheels and shuffling paper. Loud beeping came from outside as a Bobcat front loader backed into position to move the steel plates off the road.

Petty sat down in front of his meal. "The dust gets dragged all over the carpet. It's so fine that we can't vacuum it up."

"What dust?"

Petty cut into the meat, grease and blood squirting onto the paper plate. "The concrete they use underground."

Will thought of the gray powder. He glanced back at the construction workers. The Bobcat rammed its front shovel into the edge of one of the steel plates, revealing a gaping hole in the road. "What does it look like?"

Petty cupped his hand to his ear. "What?"

Will didn't answer. The hand at Petty's ear held a cheap-looking knife. The handle was wood, the grommets holding it together a faded gold. The blade was jagged but sharp.

Will tried to swallow, his mouth suddenly going dry. The last time he had seen a knife like that, it was lying inches from Adam Humphrey's lifeless hand.

FAITH STOOD OUTSIDE the conference room door in Victor's building. Behind the glass, she could hear the low murmur of male voices. Her mind was elsewhere-back in Evan Bernard's apartment where he kept his pink vibrator and handcuffs in his little-girl bedroom. Were these the same devices he had used on a teenage Mary Clark? What were some of the sadistic things he'd gotten up to with the girl? Mary wasn't telling, but the truth was written all over her face. He had damaged her deeply in ways the other woman could not articulate-would probably never be able to articulate. It made Faith sick just thinking about it, especially when she was certain that Mary was just one of many, many victims the schoolteacher had targeted over the years.