Karin Slaughter - Fractured

Will dropped to the floor, starting CPR. Billy got on his radio, calling out codes, ordering an ambulance. By the time more help arrived, Will was sweating, his hands cramping from pressing into Warren's chest. "Don't do this," he begged. "Come on, Warren. Don't do this."

"Will," Billy said, his hand resting on Will's shoulder. "Come on. It's over."

Will wanted to pull away, to keep going, but his body would not respond. For the second time that evening, he sat back on his knees and looked down at Warren Grier. The younger man's last words still echoed in his ears. "Colors," Warren had said. He had figured out Will's filing system, the way he used the colors to indicate what was inside the folders. "You use colors just like me." Warren Grier had finally found a kindred spirit. Ten minutes later, he had killed himself.

Another hand went around Will's arm. Faith helped him stand. He hadn't realized she was there, hadn't seen the circle of cops that had formed around him.

"Come on," she said, keeping her hand on his arm as she walked with him up the hallway. There were catcalls, the kind of remarks you expected men behind bars to make when a pretty woman walked by. Will ignored them, fighting the urge to slump against Faith, to do something foolish like reach out to her.

Faith sat him down at Billy's desk. She knelt in front of him, raised her hand to his cheek. "You had no way of knowing he'd do that."

Will felt the coolness of her palm against his face. He put his hand over hers, then gently pulled it away. "I'm not much good at taking comfort, Faith."

She nodded her understanding, but he could read the pity in her eyes.

"I shouldn't have lied to him," Will said. "The stuff about the cigarette burns."

Faith sat back, looking up at him. He could not tell whether she believed him or was simply humoring him. "You did what you had to do."

"I pushed him too hard."

"He put that sheet around his own neck." She reminded him, "He also pulled the trigger, Will. You would be dead now if those chambers had been full. He may have been more pathetic than Evan Bernard, but he was just as cold and calculating."

"Warren was doing what he was programmed to do. Everything he had in his life-everything-was a struggle. No one gave him anything." Will felt his jaw clench. "Bernard's educated, well liked, he has a good job, friends, family. He had a choice."

"Everyone has a choice. Even Warren."

She would never understand because she had never been completely alone in the world. He told her, "I know Emma's alive somewhere, Faith."

"It's been a long time, Will. Too long."

"I don't care what you say," he told her. "She's alive. Warren wouldn't have killed her. He wanted things from her, things he was in the process of taking. You heard how he talked in the interview. You know he was keeping her alive."

Faith did not respond, though he could see the answer in her eyes: she was just as certain Emma Campano was dead as Will was that the girl was alive.

Instead of arguing with him, she changed the subject. "I just talked to Mary Clark." She walked him through the discovery of the yearbooks in the photographs Will had taken of Warren's apartment, the phone call to the teacher wherein Mary Clark confirmed that Warren had given Bernard an alibi all those years ago. As Faith spoke, Will could finally see everything coming into focus. Bernard would have been the only anchor in Warren's life. There was nothing the young man would not have done for his mentor.

Faith told him the other things the teacher had said. "Bernard let them come to his house and drink, smoke, do whatever they wanted. Then when he was finished using them, he tossed them away."

"He probably tutored Warren," Will guessed. "He would've been the only adult in his life who tried to help him instead of treating him like there was something wrong with him." Warren would have lain in front of an oncoming train if Bernard told him to. The young man's refusal to implicate the teacher suddenly made sense.

"This shows a pattern with the girls," Faith told him. "Bernard will get more time in prison if Mary tells a jury what happened to her."

Will did not believe for a second that Mary Clark finally had the strength to confront her abuser. "I want him to die," he mumbled. "All those girls he raped-he might as well have killed them. Who was Mary Clark going to be before Evan Bernard got hold of her? What kind of life was she going to have? All that went out the door the minute he set his sights on her. That girl Mary was going to be is dead, Faith. How many other girls did he kill like that? And now Kayla and Adam and God knows what Emma's going through." He stopped, swallowing back his emotions. "I want to be there when they put the needle in his arm. I want to jam it in myself."

Faith was so taken aback by his vehemence that, for a few seconds, she could not trust herself to speak. "We can look for other witnesses," she finally told him. "There have to be other girls. Tie it in with the allegations at Georgia Tech and he could get thirty, forty years."

Will shook his head. "Bernard killed Adam and Kayla, Faith. I know he didn't do it with his own hands, but he knew what Warren was capable of. He knew that he had complete and total control over him, that he could pull the trigger and Warren would shoot." Will thought about Warren, how desperately he must have wanted to fit in. Sitting around Bernard's house with the other kids, drinking beer and talking about all the losers who were still at school, must have been the closest he ever came to being part of a family.

Faith said, "The room in his house thirteen years ago was just like the one we found in Bernard's apartment. He's been doing this for years, Will. As soon as his picture goes out on the news, we're going to have-"

"Where?" Will interrupted. "Did Mary say where the house was?"

"I thought you checked his last residence?"

"I did." Will felt the final piece click into place. "Bernard's background check showed another house. He bought it fifteen years ago and sold it three years later. I didn't think anything about it, but-"

Faith took out her cell phone, dialed in a number. "Mary knows where the house is."

FAITH DROVE, FOLLOWING the Atlanta police cruiser down North Avenue. The lights were on, but the siren was silent. Will was silent, too. He kept thinking about Warren Grier, the soft give to his chest as Will tried to press the life back into his heart. What had compelled the man to wrap the sheet around his neck, to take his own life? Was he afraid that he would not be able to hold out much longer, that Will would push him so hard that he would end up betraying Evan Bernard? Or was it just a means to an end, Warren's desperate, grand plan to make sure that he spent the rest of his life with Emma Campano?

The cruiser bumped along construction sites in front of the Coca-Cola building, streetlights illuminating the road. Faith slowed so that the bottom of her car would not be ripped apart.

She said, "I don't want to find the body."

Will looked at her profile, the way the blue lights flashed against her pale skin. He understood what she meant: she wanted Emma Campano to be found, she just didn't want to be the one who discovered her. "She's going to be alive," Will insisted. He could not think otherwise-especially after Warren. "Emma is going to be alive, and she's going to tell us that Evan Bernard did this, that he put Warren up to everything."

Faith kept her own counsel, staring at the road ahead, probably thinking that Will was a fool.

Houses started to appear on the side of the road, dilapidated Victorians and cottages that had been boarded up long ago. Ahead, the cruisers' lights cut off as they approached Evan Bernard's old address. There were no streetlights here. The moon was covered in clouds. At almost midnight, the only source of light came from the automobile headlights.