Karin Slaughter - Fractured

"Fuck you, with what you know!" Paul pushed himself away from Will. "Has anybody ever told you that your daughter is dead?" He kept shaking his head, staring at the girl. "That's not her."

Will tried to reason with him. "Her navel is pierced like you said."

He shook his head, his words choking in his throat. "It's not-"

"Come on," Will coaxed, pushing him back a few steps, trying to keep him from contaminating the scene any more than he already had.

Paul's words came out in an almost giddy rush. "Her hair, Trash. Emma's got longer hair than that. It goes down to her back almost. And she's got a birthmark on her right arm-Emma does. Look, there's nothing there. There's no birthmark."

Will checked the arm. Except for the blood, the skin was a perfect white.

"Right arm," Paul insisted, annoyed. He pointed to the other arm "She's got a birthmark." When Will did not respond, he took out his wallet. Receipts and papers fell onto the floor as he dug around inside. "It's weird, shaped like a handprint. The skin's darker there." He found what he was looking for and handed Will a photograph. Emma was much younger in the picture. She was wearing a cheerleading outfit. One arm was cocked to her hip, holding a pom-pom. Paul was right; the birthmark looked as if someone had wrapped his hand around her arm and left a print.

Still, Will said, "Paul, let's not-"

"Abby! It's not her. It's not Emma!" Paul was laughing, elated. "Look at her arm, Trash. There's nothing there. This isn't Emma. It's gotta be Kayla. They look alike. They trade clothes all the time. It's got to be her!"

Abigail ran upstairs, Faith fast behind her.

"Stay back." Will blocked their way, holding out his arms like a crossing guard, physically pushing Paul back. The man was still smiling a fool's grin. All he was thinking was that his daughter wasn't dead. His mind hadn't made the next leap.

"Keep them here," Will told Faith. She nodded, stepping in front of the parents. Carefully, Will walked back toward the dead girl. He crouched down again, studying the shoe prints, the spray on the wall. Crossing the dead girl's body was a fine arc of blood that caught his attention. It went just under her breasts like a finely drawn line. Will hadn't noticed it the first time, but right now, he would have bet his pension that the blood had come from the kid downstairs.

"It's not her," Paul insisted. "It's not Emma."

Faith began, "It's hard sometimes when you lose someone you love. Denial is understandable."

Paul exploded. "Would you listen to me, you stupid bitch? I'm not going through the twelve steps of grief. I know what my fucking daughter looks like!"

Leo called, "Everything okay up there?"

"It's under control," Faith said, sounding like the exact opposite was true.

Will looked at the dead girl's bare feet. The soles were clean, seemingly the only part of her body that didn't have some pattern of blood on it.

He stood up, asking Abigail, "Tell me what happened."

She was shaking her head, unable to let herself hope. "Is it Emma? Is that her?"

Will took in the faint streaks of dark red on the skirt of Abigail's white tennis dress, the transfer patterns across her chest. He kept his voice firm, even though his heart was thumping hard enough to press against his ribs. "Tell me exactly what happened from the moment you got here."

"I was in my car-"

"From the stairs," Will interrupted. "You came up the stairs. Did you go to the body? Did you come into this area?"

"I stood here," she said, indicating the floor in front of her.

"What did you see?"

Tears streamed down her cheeks. Her mouth moved, trying to get out words as her eyes scanned the dead body. Finally, she said, "I saw him standing over her. He had a knife in his hand. I felt threatened."

"I know you felt like your life was in danger," Will assured her. "Just tell me what happened next."

Her throat worked. "I panicked. I stepped back and fell down the stairs."

"What did he do?"

"He came after me-came down the stairs."

"Did he have the knife in his hand?" She nodded.

"Was it raised?"

She nodded again, then shook her head. "I don't know. No. It was at his side." She tightened her hand to her side to show him. "He was running down the stairs. It was at his side."

"Did he raise the knife when he got to the bottom of the stairs?"

"I kicked him before he got to the bottom. To throw him off balance."

"What happened to the knife?"

"He dropped it when he fell. I- He hit me in the head. I thought he was going to kill me."

Will turned around, looked at the shoe prints again. They were scattered, chaotic. Two people had stepped in the blood, walked back and forth, struggled. "Are you sure you didn't come into the hallway up here at all?"

She nodded her head.

"Listen to me very carefully. You didn't walk around up here? You didn't go to your daughter? You didn't step in any blood?"

"No. I was here. Right here. I stopped at the top of the stairs and he came toward me. I thought he was going to kill me. I thought…" She put her hand to her mouth, unable to continue. Her voice cracked as she asked her husband, "It's not Em?"

Will told Faith, "Keep them both right here," as he headed down the stairs.

Leo was standing in the front doorway, talking to one of the uniformed patrolmen. He asked Will, "What's going on?"

"Don't wait for Pete," he ordered, stepping over the body. "I need an ID on this guy right now." He found Abigail Campano's shoes in the parlor under the coffee table. The tread was a court zigzag, not a waffle pattern. Except for a couple of scuff marks on the toes, there wasn't a trace of blood on them.

In the foyer, Leo was taking a pair of latex gloves from his pocket. "The nosey neighbor across the street says she saw a car parked in the driveway a couple of hours ago. Could be yellow, could be white. Could be four doors, could be two."

Will checked the dead man's sneakers. Waffle pattern, dried blood caked in the tread. He said, "Give me those." Leo handed him the gloves and Will put them on. "You got your pictures, right?"

"Yeah. What's going on?"

Carefully, Will peeled up the dead man's T-shirt. The material was still soaking wet where it had bunched up at the waist, and it left an odd, pinkish hue on the exposed skin.

Leo asked, "You wanna tell me what you're doing?"

There was so much blood that it was hard to see anything. Will gently pressed the abdomen, and a narrow slit opened up in the flesh, black liquid oozing out.

"Shit," Leo hissed. "Did the mother stab him?"

"No." Will saw how it must have happened. The young man kneeling beside the body upstairs, a knife plunged into his chest. He would have pulled out the knife, arterial blood spraying over the dead girl's body. The man would've tried to stand, staggering to get help even as his lung collapsed. That's when Abigail Campano had appeared at the top of the stairs. She saw the man who had killed her daughter. He saw the woman who could possibly save them all.

Leo looked up the stairs, then back at the dead kid, finally understanding. "Shit."

Will snapped off the gloves, trying not to think about all the lost time. He went to the bloody bare footprint, saw that the weight had been on the ball of the foot when it was made. There was a small cluster of blood droplets on the bottom stair-six of them.

Will talked it out for Leo's benefit as much as his own. "Emma was unconscious. The killer carried her over his shoulder." Will narrowed his eyes, putting the pieces together. "He stopped here at the bottom of the stairs to catch his breath. Her head and arms were hanging down his back. The blood drops on the bottom tread are almost perfectly round, which means they fell straight down." Will pointed to the footprint. "He shifted her weight forward. Her foot touched the floor-that's why it's facing up the stairs instead of toward the door. After carrying her down the stairs, he had to readjust the body so that he could carry her out the front door."