“I’m sorry,” Will answered, knowing that wasn’t much of a consolation. “You’re right. I should have told you. I’m not used to—”
“Working with a partner,” she finished, her tone telling him that the excuse was getting old.
He could not blame her for being annoyed. She was working just as hard on this case as he was, and leaving her out was unfair. In as much detail as he could muster, Will told her about the Copy Right’s security camera footage, the rope and duct tape Charlie had found. “According to the video, the dark car showed up at the parking garage at exactly eleven-fifteen yesterday morning. Two passengers got out—Adam and a stranger. Kayla Alexander’s Prius drove up at twelve twenty-one. We can assume Emma was taken out of the trunk and transferred to the dark car. He was gone a little over a minute later.” He summed up, “So, the last time we know Adam’s whereabouts is eleven-fifteen a.m. in the parking deck of the Copy Right building.”
Faith had been writing the times down in her notebook, but she stopped on this last point, looking up at Will. “Why there?”
“It’s cheap, it’s convenient to the house. There’s no full-time attendant.”
Faith provided, “The nosey neighbor told on them last year when they parked in the driveway. Using the garage was a good way to get around her.”
“That was my guess,” Will agreed. “We’re doing background checks on all the Copy Right employees. The two girls came in for the evening shift while we were there—Frieda and Sandy. They really don’t go into the garage. It’s dark and they don’t think it’s particularly safe, which is probably true, especially considering the lack of any real security.”
“What about the construction workers?”
“Amanda is going to spend today tracking them down. It’s not just a matter of calling up the city and asking them for a list. Apparently, the workers just show up in the morning and they’re told which fire to put out first. There are all kinds of subcontractors who use subcontractors, and before you know it, you’ve got day laborers and undocumented workers … it’s a mess.”
“Has anyone seen the car there before?”
“The parking deck is in the back of the building. Unless the Copy Right people happen to be looking at the security camera, they have no idea who’s coming and going, and of course the tape is reused, so we don’t have old footage to compare.” He turned to face her. “I want to talk about our suspect. I think we need to get a clearer picture in our heads about who he is.”
“You mean like a profile? A loner between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-five who lives with his mother?”
Will allowed a smile. “This was well coordinated. He brought the knife, the rope, the duct tape to the house. Someone let him in.”
“So, you think this was really a kidnapping and Kayla and Adam got in the way?”
“It feels more personal than that,” Will said. “I know I’m contradicting myself, but the scene was sloppy. Whoever killed Kayla wasn’t in control. He felt real fury toward her.”
“Maybe she said the wrong thing and it got out of hand.”
“You have to have a conversation with someone to say the wrong thing.”
“What about the second person on the Copy Right tape? Do you think that’s the killer? It would make more sense if one of our victims knew him.”
“Maybe,” Will allowed, but that didn’t feel quite right. “Adam left the dorm at ten thirty-two a.m. Somewhere between ten thirty-two and eleven-fifteen, he picked up both a car and a passenger. We’ve got a gap in the timeline where he’s unaccounted for. That’s …” Will tried to wrap his brain around the math, but he was too tired and his head was hurting so badly that his stomach ached. “I need more coffee. How many minutes is that?”
“Forty-five,” Faith supplied. “We need to know where and how he got the car. No one we spoke with in the dorms last night either let Adam borrow a car or knows where he got access to one. I guess we could look at the security card reader again, cross-reference it with the times Adam was in the dorm?”
“It’s something to consider.” He nodded at her notebook. “Let’s come up with some questions. Number one, where is Adam’s student ID?”
She started writing. “He might’ve left it in the car.”
“What if the killer took it as a souvenir?”
“Or to use it to get into the dorm,” she countered. “We need to alert campus security to cancel his card.”
“See if there’s a way they can leave it active but flag it somehow so we know if someone tries to use it.”
“Good point.” She kept writing. “Question number two, where did he get the car?”
“Campus is the obvious answer. Check to see if there were any stolen cars. Does Gabe Cohen or Tommy Albertson have a car?”
“Freshmen can’t really park on campus, and it’s impossible to find a safe place in the city to park, so if they have a vehicle, they tend to leave it at home. That being said, Gabe has a black VW with yellow stripes that his father drives. Albertson has a green Mazda Miata that he left back in Connecticut.”
“Neither one of those fits the car on the video.”
She stopped writing. “Adam could have a car we don’t know about.”
“He’d be keeping it from his parents, too. They said he didn’t have one.” Will thought about something Leo Donnelly had said yesterday. “Maybe he went off campus to get a car. Public transportation is in and out of there all day. Let’s put a team on tracking down security cameras from buses. What’s the nearest MARTA station?” he asked, referring to the city’s bus and train system.
Faith closed her eyes, obviously thinking. “Midtown Station,” she finally remembered.
Will stared out the window at the school parking lot. More faculty had shown up, and a few students were straggling in. “It’d take about twenty minutes to drive here, though. Then another twenty, twenty-five minutes to the parking garage.”
“There’s our forty-five minutes. Adam drove here to pick up Emma, then took her to the parking garage.”
“The arm in the videotape,” he said. “It was pretty small. I suppose it could have been a girl’s hand that reached out and caught the keys.”
“I’ve been assuming that Kayla drove Emma from school to the house in her Prius, and that Adam somehow met them there.”
“Me, too,” Will admitted. “Do you think it’s possible Adam drove Emma to the garage, and then they both walked to the house?”
“The killer could’ve walked from Tech.”
“He knew Adam’s car was in the garage.” Will turned to Faith.
“If he knew he was going to take Emma Campano from the scene, he would have to have a place to keep her. Somewhere quiet and isolated—not in the city because the neighbors would hear. Not a dorm room.”
“If he didn’t dump the body.”
“Why take her just to dump her?” Will asked, and the question was one that gave him pause. This was why he had wanted to talk through a profile of the suspect. “The killer came to the house with gloves, rope, tape and a knife. He had a plan. He went there to subdue someone. He left Adam’s and Kayla’s bodies at the house. If the goal was to kill Emma, he would have killed her there. If the goal was to abduct her, to take her away so that he could spend more time with her, then he accomplished his goal.”
“And APD gave him plenty of time to do it,” Faith added ruefully.
Will felt a sense of urgency building up at the thought. Less than twenty-four hours had passed since the girl had been taken. If her abductor had removed her from the scene so that he could take his time with her, then maybe Emma Campano was still alive. The question was, how much longer did she have?
He checked his cell phone, noting the time. “I’ve got to be at the Campanos at nine.”
“Do you think they know something?”
“No,” he admitted. “But I’m going to have to ask Paul for a DNA sample.”
Faith’s uneasy expression probably mimicked
his own, but Amanda had told him to do it and Will really didn’t have a choice.
He said, “Let’s talk to the teachers, get a general sense of the girls. If they think there’s anyone else in particular we need to talk to—a student or janitor—I’ll leave you to do that. If nothing turns up, then I want you to go sit in on the autopsies. Adam Humphrey’s parents will be in later this evening. We need to have some answers for them.”
Her expression changed, and Will thought he was getting to know her well enough to see when Faith Mitchell was upset about something. He knew that her son was the same age as Adam Humphrey. Watching the eighteen-year-old being dissected would be horrible for anyone, but a parent would bring a special kind of pain to the experience.
He tried to be gentle, asking, “Do you think you can handle it?”
She riled, taking his question the wrong way. “You know, I got up this morning and I told myself that I was going to work with you and keep up a good attitude, and then you have the nerve to question me—a detective on the God damn homicide squad who steps over dead bodies almost every day of her life—about whether or not I can handle one of the basic requirements of my job.” She put her hand on the door latch. “And while we’re at it, asshole, where the hell do you get off driving a Porsche and investigating my mother for stealing?”
“I just—”
“Let’s just do our jobs, okay?” She threw open the door. “You think you can do me that professional courtesy?”
“Yes, of course, but—” She turned to face him, and Will felt his mouth moving but there were no words coming out. “I apologize,” he finally said, not knowing exactly what he was apologizing for, but knowing it couldn’t possibly make things worse.
She exhaled slowly, staring at the coffee cup in her hand, obviously trying to decide how to respond.
Will said, “Please don’t throw hot coffee at me.”
She looked up at him, incredulous, but his request had worked to break the tension. Will took the time to give himself some credit. This wasn’t the first time he’d had to extricate himself from a tenuous situation with an angry woman.
Faith shook her head. “You are the strangest man I have ever met in my life.”
She got out before he could respond. Will took it as a positive sign that she didn’t slam the door.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The heat outside was so intense that Faith couldn’t finish her coffee. She dropped the cup in the waste can before heading toward the administration building. She had spent more time in schools over the past two days than she had her entire junior year.
“Ma’am,” one of the hired security men said, tipping his hat to her.
Faith nodded, feeling sorry for the man. She could still remember what it felt like to wear her full uniform in the Atlanta heat. It was like rolling yourself in honey and then walking into a kiln. Because this was a school zone, no weapons were allowed on campus unless they had a police badge accompanying them. Despite the baton on one side of the man’s belt and a can of Mace on the other, he looked about as harmless as a flea. Fortunately, only a cop would notice these things. The rentals were here to give the parents and kids a feeling of safety. In a crazy, mixed-up world where rich white girls could be killed or kidnapped, the show of force was pretty much expected.
At the very least, they were giving something for the press to focus on. Across the street, Faith spotted three photographers adjusting their lenses, going in for the kill. The news had gotten hold of the name of the school sometime last night. Faith hoped the rental cops were capable of forcefully reminding the reporters that the school was on private property.
Faith pressed the buzzer beside the door, looking up at the camera mounted on the wall. The speaker sputtered to life, and an irritated woman’s voice said, “Yes?”
“I’m Faith Mitchell with the—”
“First left, down the hallway.”
The door buzzed and Faith opened it. There was an awkward shuffling where Will made it clear he wasn’t going to let her hold the door for him. Faith finally went in. They stood at the top of a long hallway with branches off to the left and right. Closed doors were probably schoolrooms. She looked up, counting six more security cameras. The place certainly had its bases covered, but the principal had told Leo yesterday there was a gap in coverage behind one of the main classroom buildings. Yesterday morning, Kayla and Emma had apparently taken advantage of it to their own cost.
Will cleared his throat, looking around nervously. Except for the fact that he was wearing yet another three-piece suit in the middle of summer, he had the worried look of an errant student hoping to avoid a trip to the principal’s office.
He asked, “Which way did she say?” Even without the woman telling them where to go two seconds ago, he was standing beside a large sign that directed visitors to go to the front office down the hallway.
Faith crossed her arms, recognizing this as a very lame attempt to make her feel useful. “It’s all right,” she said. “You’re a good cop, Will, but you have the social skills of a feral monkey.”
He frowned over the description. “Well, I suppose that’s fair.”
Faith really wasn’t the type of person who rolled her eyes, but she felt a pulling at her optic nerve that she hadn’t experienced since puberty. “This way,” she said, heading down a side hallway. She found the front office behind several stacked cardboard boxes. As a parent, Faith instantly recognized the chocolate bars that schools pawned off onto helpless children and their parents every year. Taking advantage of forced child labor, the administration would send out the kids to sell candy in hopes of raising money for various school improvements. Faith had eaten so many of the bars when Jeremy was growing up that her stomach trembled at the sight of them.
A bank of video monitors showing various scenes around the school was behind the woman at the front desk, but her attention was on the phone system, which was ringing off the hook. She took in Faith and Will with a practiced glance, asking three different callers to please hold before finally directing her words toward Faith. “Mr. Bernard is running late, but everyone else is in the conference room. Back out the door to your left.”
Will opened the door and Faith led him down the hallway to the appropriately marked door. She knocked twice, and someone called, “Enter.”
Faith had been to her share of parent-teacher conferences, so she shouldn’t have been surprised to find all ten of them seated in a half-circle with two empty chairs at the center waiting to be filled. As was befitting a progressive school specializing in the communicative arts, the teachers were a multicultural bunch representing just about every part of the rainbow: Chinese-American, African-American, Muslim-American, and—just to mix things up—Native American. There was one lone Caucasian in the bunch. With her hemp sandals, batik dress and the long, gray ponytail hanging down her back, she radiated white guilt like a cheap space heater.
She held out her hand, offering, “I’m Dr. Olivia McFaden, principal of Westfield.”
“Detective Faith Mitchell, Special Agent Will Trent,” Faith provided, taking a seat. Will hesitated, and for a moment she thought he looked nervous. Maybe he was having a bad student flashback, or perhaps the tension in the room was getting to him. The security guards outside were meant to make people feel safe, but Faith got the distinct impression that they were doing the exact opposite. Everyone seemed to be on edge, especially the principal.
Still, McFaden went around the room, introducing the teachers, the subjects they taught and which girl was in their classes. As Westfield was a small school, there was a considerable overlap; most teachers were familiar with both girls. Faith carefully recorded their names in her notebook, easily recognizing the cast of characters: the hip one, the nerdy one, the gay one, the one hanging on by her fingernails as she prayed for retirement.
“Understandably, we’re all extremely upset about this tragedy,” McFaden said. Faith didn’t know why she took such an instant dislike to the w
oman. Maybe she was having some bad school flashbacks herself. Or maybe it was because of all the faculty in the room, McFaden was the only one who hadn’t obviously been crying. Some of the women and one of the men actually had tissues in their hands.
Faith told the teachers, “I’ll convey your sympathies to the parents.”
Will answered the obvious question. “We can’t entirely rule out a connection between what happened yesterday and the school. There’s no need to be overly alarmed, but it’s a good idea for you all to take precautions. Be alert to your surroundings, make sure you know where students are at all times, report any unexplained absences.”
Faith wondered if he could have phrased that any differently to freak them out even more. Glancing around the room, she thought not. Faith stopped, going through the teachers’ faces again. She remembered what the front-office secretary had said. “Is someone missing?”
McFaden supplied, “That would be Mr. Bernard. He had a previously scheduled meeting with a parent that couldn’t be moved on such short notice. He’ll be here shortly.” She glanced at her watch. “I’m afraid we’re a bit tight for time before the assembly starts.”
“Assembly?” Faith gave Will a sharp glance.
He had the sense to look ashamed. “Amanda wants one of us to attend the assembly.”
Faith guessed she knew which one was going to draw that short straw. She shot him a look of utter hatred.
McFaden seemed oblivious. “We thought it would be best to call all of the students together and assure them that their safety is our number one priority.” Her smile was of the megawatt variety, the kind meant to encourage a reluctant student to accept a foregone conclusion. “We really appreciate your help in this matter.”
“I’m happy to help out,” Faith told the woman, forcing her own smile. She didn’t think an assembly was a bad idea, but she was furious that the task fell to her, not least of all because Faith was terrified of public speaking. She could very well imagine what the assembly would be like: myriad teenage girls in various stages of hysteria demanding that their hands be held, their fears be assuaged, and all the while Faith would be trying to keep the tremble out of her voice. This was something more suited to a school counselor than a homicide detective who had thrown up before her oral comps on her detective’s exam.
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