The Will Trent Series 5-Book Bundle

by Karin Slaughter

  She tried not to shudder. “The bite marks, too?”

  There was a loud snap as Pete clamped his dentures together, and Faith wrote nonsense words in her notebook, praying he would stop. “So, you’re saying that the girl wasn’t raped.”

  “And as I told Agent Trent at the crime scene, there was semen in the crotch of the panties, indicating that after having sex, she put on her underwear and stood up. Now, unless the perpetrator raped her, made her dress and stand up, then chased her down the hall and killed her, then pulled down her panties again, then I would say that she was not raped. At least not during the attack.”

  Faith noted this word for word in her notebook.

  Pete took another bite of his sandwich. “Now, as for cause of death, I would say there are three likely candidates: blunt-force trauma, the pierced jugular and just plain old shock. The nature of the attack was intense. There would have been a cascade effect with the body. There comes a time when the brain and the heart and the organs just throw up their hands and say, ‘You know what? We can’t take this anymore.’ ”

  Faith dutifully recorded his words. “Which one is your money on?”

  He chewed thoughtfully, then laughed. “Well, an armchair coroner might go for the jugular!”

  Faith managed a chuckle, though she had no idea why she was encouraging him.

  “The jugular was sliced. I would say that, in and of itself, the cut was fatal, but it would’ve taken time—say, three to four minutes. My official report will reflect the more likely culprit: massive shock.”

  “Do you think she was conscious during the attack?”

  “If the parents ask you that question, I would tell them unequivocally that she was instantly rendered unconscious and felt absolutely no pain.” He took a bag of potato chips out of the paper sack, leaning back in his chair as he opened them. “Now, the boy, not so much.”

  “What’s your best guess?”

  “It jibes with Will’s theory. I can’t believe how well he reads a crime scene.” Pete popped a potato chip into his mouth, seemingly lost in thoughts of Will Trent’s expertise.

  “Pete?”

  “Sorry,” he said, offering her a potato chip. Faith shook her head, and he went on. “I haven’t culled all my notes, but I think I have a clear picture.” He sat up in the chair and drank from the Dunkin’ Donuts cup on his desk. “Physically, he presents pretty straightforward. I already told you about the head wound. The stab to the chest alone was enough to kill him. I would imagine it was through pure adrenaline that he managed to put up the struggle he did. The knife punctured his right lung—easy math, we’re looking for a left-handed killer—bypassing the bronchial trunk. We can assume the victim removed the knife, which exacerbated the negative airflow. The lung is vacuum sealed, you see, and a puncture deflates it much as a balloon being pierced by a pin.”

  Faith had dealt with a victim who’d died of a collapsed lung before. “So, unless he managed to get help, he only had a few minutes.”

  “Well, here’s the funny thing: he would’ve been panicked, his breathing would have been shallow. When a lung collapses, it’s like a self-fulfilling prophecy. You gulp for air, and the more you breathe, the worse it gets. I’d say that the panic bought him some extra time.”

  “What’s the cause of death?”

  “Manual strangulation.”

  Faith wrote down the words, underlining them. “So, Abigail Campano actually did kill him.”

  “Exactly.” Pete picked up his sandwich again. “She killed him right before he died.”

  The interior of the morgue had spotty cell reception at best. Faith used this as an excuse to leave Pete to finish his lunch by himself. She dialed Will Trent’s number as she walked toward the parking garage for some air. Faith needed to tell him about Mary Clark and Ruth Donner. She also wanted to talk about Kayla Alexander some more. The picture she was getting of the girl was not a pretty one.

  Will’s phone rang several times before she was sent to voice mail.

  “Hi, Will—” Call-waiting beeped and she checked the screen, reading the words “Cohen, G.” Faith put the phone back to her ear, not recognizing the name. “I’m just leaving the morgue and—” Her phone beeped again and Faith finally realized who was calling. “Call me,” she said, then switched the line over. “Hello?”

  “It’s Gabe.” His voice sounded far away, though she guessed he was still at Tech.

  “What can I do for you?”

  He was silent, and she waited him out. Finally, he told her, “I lied to you.”

  Faith stopped walking. “About what?”

  His voice was so low she had to strain to hear him. “I thought she was younger.”

  “Who?”

  “I’ve got …” His words trailed off. “I need to show you something Adam had. I should’ve shown you before, but I …”

  She started to jog, heading toward the Mini. “What do you have of Adam’s?”

  “I have to show you. I can’t tell you on the phone.”

  Faith knew that was bullshit, but she also knew that Gabe Cohen was ready to talk. She would dance like a monkey if it got the truth out of him. “Where are you?”

  “The dorm.”

  “I can be there in fifteen minutes,” she said, unlocking the door.

  “You’re coming?” He sounded surprised.

  “Yes,” she said, switching the phone to her other ear as she put the key in the ignition. “Do you want me to stay on the phone with you while I drive over?”

  “I’m okay,” he said. “I just … I’ve got to show you this.”

  She glanced over her shoulder and swerved the Mini out of the space so sharply that it squealed up on two wheels. “I’ll be right there, okay? Just stay right where you are.”

  “Okay.”

  Faith had never driven so fast in her life. Part of her wondered if Gabe was just stringing her along, but there was always the slim chance that he had something important to tell her. She called Will Trent’s cell phone again, leaving another message, telling him to meet her at the dorm. Her heart raced as she blew through red lights, nearly causing a bus to slam into another car, heading into oncoming traffic to whip around construction crews. On campus, she didn’t bother to look for legal spaces, again parking the Mini in the handicapped section. She flipped down the visor and jumped out of the car. By the time she reached Towers Hall, she was panting from exertion.

  Faith bent over at the waist, trying to catch her breath. She opened her mouth, taking in big gulps of air, cursing herself for not being in better shape. She let a minute pass, then hit the handicapped plate and headed up the stairs, taking them two at a time. There was the distant thump of music, but the building felt empty. It was the middle of the day; most kids were in class. She trotted past Adam’s room, expecting Gabe to be in his own dorm, but the door to 310 was cracked open.

  Faith pushed the door the rest of the way open, noting that the police tape sealing off the room had been cut. Adam’s things had been boxed up. The mattress was bare, the television and game set gone. Black fingerprint powder was smeared all around the room where they had dusted for prints.

  Gabe sat on the bare floor, his back to one of the beds, his book bag beside him. His elbows were on his knees, his head pressed against the cast on his arm. His shoulders shook. Still, Faith could not forget the angry man who had threatened to call security on her yesterday. Was that the real Gabriel Cohen, or was this crying child closer to his real self? Either way, he had something to tell her. If Faith had to play along with his game to get the information, then that was how it was going to be.

  She rapped her knuckles lightly on the open door. “Gabe?”

  He looked up at her with swollen, red eyes. Fresh tears rolled down his cheeks. “Adam told me she was young,” he sobbed. “I thought, like, fourteen or something. Not seventeen. The news said that she was seventeen.”

  Faith used his book bag to prop open the door before sitting beside him on the f
loor. “Tell me from the beginning,” she said, trying to keep her voice calm. Here was proof that Adam had talked to Gabe about Emma.

  “I’m sorry,” he cried. His lip trembled, and he put his head down, hiding his face from her. “I should have told you.”

  She should have felt sorry for the kid, but all Faith could think was that Emma Campano was somewhere crying, too—but there was no one there to comfort her.

  “I’m sorry,” he repeated. “I’m so sorry.”

  Faith asked him, “What did you want to tell me?”

  His body shook as he struggled with his emotions. “He met her online. He was on this video Web site.”

  Faith felt her heart stop mid-beat. “What sort of Web site?”

  “LD.” Faith had known the answer before he opened his mouth. Learning disabilities. Will Trent’s instincts had been right yet again.

  Gabe told her, “Adam went online with her all the time, like, for a year.”

  “You said it was a video site?” she asked, wondering what else the kid had been hiding.

  “Yeah,” Gabe answered. “A lot of them weren’t really good at writing.”

  “What learning disorder did Adam have?”

  “Behavioral stuff. He was homeschooled. He didn’t fit in.” Gabe glanced up at her. “You don’t think that’s why he was killed, do you?”

  Faith wasn’t sure about anything at this point, but she assured him, “No. Of course not.”

  “She seemed younger than she was, you know?”

  Faith made sure she understood. “That’s why you didn’t tell me that you knew Adam was seeing Emma? You thought she was underage and you didn’t want to get him into trouble?”

  He nodded. “I think he had a car, too.”

  Faith felt her jaw clench. “What kind? What model?”

  He took his time answering—for effect or from genuine emotion, she could not tell. “It was an old beater. Some graduate student was transferring to Ireland and he posted it on the board.”

  “Do you remember the student’s name?”

  “Farokh? Something like that.”

  “Do you know what the car looked like?”

  “I only saw it once. It was this shitty color blue. It didn’t even have air-conditioning.”

  Adam would have had thirty days to register the car with the state, which might explain why they hadn’t pulled up anything on the state’s system. If they could get a description, then they could put it on the wire and have every cop in the city looking for it. “Can you remember anything else about it? Did it have a bumper sticker or a cracked windshield or—”

  He turned petulant. “I told you I only saw it once.”

  Faith could practically feel the irritation in her voice, like an itch at the back of her throat. She took a deep breath before asking, “Why didn’t you tell me about the car before?”

  He shrugged again. “I told my girlfriend, Julie, and she said … she said that if Emma’s dead, it’s my fault for not telling you. She said she never wants to see me again.”

  Faith guessed that that was what was really bothering him. There was nothing more self-involved than a teenager. She asked, “Did you ever meet Emma in person?”

  He shook his head.

  “How about her friend Kayla Alexander—blond girl, very pretty?”

  “I’d never even heard of her until I turned on the news.” Gabe asked, “Do you think I did a bad thing?”

  “Of course not,” Faith assured him, hoping she managed to keep the sarcasm out of her voice. “Do you know the Web site Adam and Emma used?”

  He shook his head. “He had it on his laptop, but then his laptop got stolen.”

  “How did it get stolen?”

  Gabe sat up, wiping his eyes with his fist. “He left it out at the library when he went to pee, and when he came back, it was gone.”

  Faith was hardly surprised. Adam might as well have put a “take me” sign on it. “Did you ever see what name he used on the site? Did he use his e-mail address?”

  “I don’t think so.” He used the bottom of his shirt to wipe his nose. “If you put in your e-mail address, then you get all kinds of trolls for spam and shit.”

  She had assumed as much. Compounding the problem, there were probably nine billion Web sites for people with learning disabilities, and those were just the American ones. She reminded him, “When you called me, you said you had something to show me. Something that belonged to Adam.”

  Guilt flashed in his eyes, and she realized that the other stuff—the Web site, the car, the fear about Emma’s age—was just preamble to the information that had really compelled him to call her.

  Faith struggled to keep the urgency out of her tone. “Whatever it is that you have, I need to see it.”

  He took his sweet time relenting, making a show of leaning up on his heels so he could dig his hand into the front pocket of his jeans. Slowly, he pulled out several pieces of folded white paper. He explained, “These were slipped under Adam’s door last week.”

  As he unfolded the three pages, all she could think was that between the creases, smudges and dog-eared corners, the paper had been handled many, many times.

  “Here,” Gabe said. “That’s all of them.”

  Faith stared in shock at the three notes he’d spread out on the floor between them. Each page had a single line of bold, block text running horizontally across it. Each line heightened her sense of foreboding.

  SHE BE LONGS TOME!!!

  RAPIST!!!

  LEV HER ALONG!!!

  At first, Faith didn’t trust herself to speak. Someone had tried to warn Adam Humphrey away from Emma Campano. Someone had been watching them together, knew their habits. The notes were more proof that this was not a spur-of-the-moment abduction. The killer had known some if not all of the participants.

  Gabe had his own concerns. “Are you mad at me?”

  Faith could not answer him. Instead, she gave him back her own question. “Did anyone else touch these besides you and Adam?”

  He shook his head.

  “What order did they come in—do you remember?”

  He switched around the last two sheets before she could stop him. “Like that.”

  “Don’t touch them again, okay?” He nodded. “When did the first one come?”

  “Monday last week.”

  “What did Adam say when he got it?”

  Gabe was no longer being emotional about his answers. He seemed almost relieved to be telling her. “First, we were like, you know, it was funny, because everything is spelled wrong.”

  “And when the second one came?”

  “It came the next day. We were kind of freaked out. I thought Tommy was doing it.”

  The asshole dormmate. “Was he?”

  “No. Because I was with Tommy the day Adam got the third note. That was when his computer was stolen, and I was like, ‘What the fuck? Is somebody stalking you or what?’ ” Gabe glanced at her, probably looking for confirmation on his theory. Faith gave him none, and he continued, “Adam was pretty freaked out. He said he was going to get a gun.”

  Faith’s instincts told her that Gabe was not blowing smoke. She made her tone deadly serious. “Did he?”

  Gabe looked back at the notes.

  “Gabe?”

  “He was thinking about it.”

  “Where would he get a gun?” she asked, though the answer was obvious. Tech was an urban campus. You could walk ten blocks in any direction and find meth, coke, prostitutes and firearms in any combination on any street corner.

  “Gabe?” she prompted. “Where would Adam get a gun?”

  Again, he remained silent.

  “Stop screwing around,” she warned him. “This is not a game.”

  “It was just talk,” he insisted, but he still wouldn’t look her in the eye.

  Faith no longer tried to hide her impatience. She indicated the notes. “Did you report these to campus security?”

  His chin started to quive
r. Tears brimmed in his eyes. “We should’ve, right? That’s what you’re saying. It’s my fault, because Adam wanted to, and I told him not to, that he’d get in trouble because of Emma.” He put his head in his hands, shoulders shaking again. She saw how thin he was, how his ribs pressed into the thin T-shirt he wore. Watching him, listening to him cry, Faith realized that she had read Gabe Cohen completely wrong. This was no act on his part. He was genuinely upset, and she had been too focused on the case to notice.

  His voice cracked. “It’s all my fault. That’s what Julie said. It’s all my fault, and I know you think that, too.”

  Faith sat there, not knowing what to do. The truth was, she was mad at him, but also at herself. If Faith had been better at her job, she would have spotted this yesterday. The time lost was down to her. Gabe had probably had these notes in his pocket when he challenged her less than twenty-four hours ago. Blaming him for her own failure would not get them any closer to finding Emma Campano, and right now, that was all that mattered.

  She sat back on her heels, trying to figure out what to do. Faith could not tell how fragile the young man was right now. Was he just another teenager caught up in his emotions or was he playing up the situation for her attention?

  “Gabe,” she began, “I need you to be honest with me.”

  “I am being honest.”

  Faith took a moment, trying to find the best way to phrase her next question. “Is there something else you’re not telling me?”

  He looked up at her. There was suddenly such sadness in his eyes that she had to force herself not to look away. “I can’t do anything right.”

  His life had been turned upside down over the last couple of days, but she knew he was talking about more than that. She told him, “I’m sure that’s not true.”