Broken

by Karin Slaughter

  “You’ve got me for three more hours,” Faith said by way of greeting.

  “We’ve got a second victim. They think his name is Jason Howell.”

  “That’s good news.” Faith was hardly the optimistic type, but she was right. A new victim meant a new crime scene, a new set of clues to follow. They had absolutely no useful information on Allison Spooner. The aunt was nowhere to be found. Allison hadn’t made any connections at home or school. The only person who seemed to mourn her loss was Lionel Harris from the diner, and he was hardly a close friend. But Jason Howell’s death would surely open up new leads. A second body meant a second course of investigation. Find one detail, one person or friend or enemy, that tied together both Allison Spooner and Jason Howell, and usually that detail could lead to the murderer. Even the most careful killer made mistakes. Two crime scenes meant twice as many mistakes.

  Faith told him, “You’re going to have a hard time getting a warrant for all the names of the students in that dorm building.”

  “I hope the college will be compliant.”

  “I hope this baby comes out clutching a bag full of gold.”

  She had a point. Colleges were notorious for their desire for privacy. “Where are we on the warrant for Allison’s room?”

  “You mean the real one?” She seemed to be enjoying this. “I faxed it to the station about ten minutes ago. There’s no landline to the Braham house, so that’s a dead end. Did you get anything from the autopsy?”

  He told her about Allison’s injury. “It’s unusual that the killer stabbed her through the back of the neck instead of slicing through the front.”

  “I’ll run it through ViCAP right now.” She meant the FBI’s Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, a database designed to detect similarities in criminal behavior. If Allison’s killer had used this method before, ViCAP would have a record of the case.

  Will asked, “Can you give Nick Shelton a call, too? He’s the local field agent here. Sara knows him. I want him to run some stuff to the Central lab for me. Sara’s going to let him know when she’s got everything ready.”

  “What else?”

  “I still need that audiotape of the 911 call. I want Sara to listen to the voice and see if it belongs to our Julie Smith.”

  “Can you say a sentence that doesn’t have ‘Sara’ in it?”

  Will scratched his jaw, his fingers finding the scar that ran down his face. He felt jittery again, much as he’d felt when he’d been talking to Sara in the basement of the funeral home.

  She said, “You know that Charlie is at Central this week?”

  “No.” Charlie Reed was on Amanda’s team. He was the best forensics guy Will had ever worked with. “Central’s an hour away from here.”

  “You want me to give him a call and see if he can come out?”

  Will thought about the garage, the crime scene in the woods. He was working two cases now—one against Lena Adams and Frank Wallace and another against the man who had killed Allison Spooner and possibly their new victim. “I told the local chief I was bringing out a team. Might as well follow through on it.”

  “I’ll give him a call,” Faith offered. “ViCAP shows no similar hits on a killer using a knife to cut from the rear through the carotid sheath, the carotid, the jugular, or the carotid and jugular. I cross-referenced the twist, too. No MO matches.”

  “I guess that’s good news.”

  “Or really bad news,” she countered. “That’s a clean kill, Will. You don’t do that your first time out. I have to agree with Sara on this one. I don’t see your retarded kid doing this.”

  “Intellectually disabled.” Now that Sara had pointed it out, the word was starting to grate. Will supposed he should feel some solidarity with Tommy Braham since they both had a problem. “Call me when you hear from Charlie.”

  “Will do.”

  Will closed his phone to end the call. Ahead, Sara’s SUV took a turn up a circular drive that led to a three-story brick building. She parked behind a campus patrol car at the front entrance. The rain was still unrelenting. She pulled up the hood of her jacket before running up the steps to the entrance.

  Will got out of his car and ran up after her, his shoes kicking up puddles. His socks hadn’t dried since he’d stepped into the lake this morning. They were in the process of rubbing a large blister on his heel.

  Sara waited for him in a small alcove between two sets of glass doors. The sleeves of her jacket were dripping wet. She knocked on the doors. “No one is in the patrol car out front.” She cupped her hands to the glass. “Is someone supposed to be here?”

  “The security guard was told to remain in the building until we got here.” Will punched a few buttons on the keypad by the door. The LCD screen remained blank. He turned around, trying to find a camera.

  “Back door’s open.”

  Will looked through the glass. The building was wider than it was deep. A set of stairs faced the front door. A long hallway shot off to the side. At the back of the building, an exit sign glowed softly over the open fire door.

  Sara asked, “Where are the police?”

  “I told Lena not to call anyone.”

  Sara turned to look at him.

  “She got the call on her cell phone. Apparently, the campus police have her as an after-hours contact.”

  “She didn’t call Frank?”

  “No. Funny, right?”

  “‘Funny’ isn’t the word I’d use.”

  Will didn’t respond. Sara’s personal ties were clouding her view. She wasn’t looking at this as a criminal investigation. With two suspects, you always worked one against the other to see who would flip first to get the better deal. Self-preservation generally won out over loyalty. The garage where Tommy lived painted a grim story for Frank and Lena. At this point, it was just a matter of who would talk first.

  Sara looked back through the glass door. “Here he is.”

  Will saw a small black man making his way up the hall. He was young and skinny, the shirt of his uniform puffing out like a woman’s blouse. He gripped his cell phone close to his chest as he approached them. With the other hand, he waved his key card over a pad by the door. The lock clicked open.

  Sara rushed in. “Marty, are you all right?”

  Will could see why she was worried. The man’s face was ashen.

  “Dr. Linton,” the man said. “I’m sorry. I was just outside trying to catch my breath.”

  “Let’s sit down.” Sara helped him to a bench by the door. She kept her arm around his shoulders. “Where’s your inhaler?”

  “I just used it.” He reached his hand out to Will. “Sorry for my state. I’m Marty Harris. I think you met my grandfather this morning.”

  “Will Trent.” Will shook his hand. The man’s grip was weak.

  Marty waved his phone in the air. “I was talking to Lena about what happened.” He coughed. The color was slowly returning to his face. “I’m sorry, it just got me worked up again.”

  Will leaned his back against the wall. He tucked his hands into his pockets. He had figured out a long time ago that showing his irritation tended to get the exact opposite result he was looking for. “Can you tell me what you told Detective Adams?”

  He coughed a few more times. Sara rubbed his back. “I’m all right now,” he told her. “It’s just hard to recollect is all. I’ve never seen anything like that in my life.”

  Will fought to keep his patience. He looked up and down the hallway. The lights were still off, but his eyes were adjusting. There wasn’t a camera on the front door. He guessed the entrance keypad was meant to catch students and visitors going into the building. There was a camera over the fire exit in the back, though, and he could see it was tilted up toward the ceiling.

  “It was like that when I got here,” Marty told him. He put his phone in his shirt pocket and pushed his glasses up his nose.

  “When was that?”

  “About thirty minutes ago, I guess.” Marty looked a
t his watch. “It seems like it’s been a lot longer than that.”

  “Can you tell me what happened?”

  He patted his hand to his chest. “I was making my rounds. I do that every three hours. With the students gone for the holiday, I wasn’t checking the dorms. We do drive-bys to make sure the front and back doors are okay, but we don’t go in.” He coughed into his hand before continuing. “I was at the library when I noticed one of the windows on the second floor was open. The second floor to this building.” He paused for breath. “I figured the wind must’ve pulled it open. Those old windows never shut tight. With the rain, there’d be a lot of water damage if I didn’t do something about it.” He paused again. Will could see he was sweating despite the fact that the building was cold. “I went up there and saw him, and …” He shook his head. “I called the emergency number.”

  “Not 911?”

  “We got a direct number we’re supposed to call if something happens on campus.”

  Sara explained, “The dean doesn’t like bad publicity.”

  “Can’t get more bad than this.” Marty gave a harsh laugh. “Lord, what was done to that boy. The smell is the worst part. I don’t think I’ll ever get it out of my breath.”

  Will asked, “Did you come in through the front door or the back door?”

  “Front.” He indicated the fire exit. “I know I shouldn’t’a gone out the back, but I needed air.”

  “Was the back door locked?”

  He shook his head.

  Will saw the red warning signs plastered all around the door. “Does the alarm go off when it’s opened?”

  “Students usually bypass the alarm the first week they’re here. We can’t keep up with them. The minute we hook it up, they disconnect it again. Lots of engineers and computer folks in this place. They look at it as a challenge.”

  “They bypass the alarm for fun?”

  “It’s easier to get to the library that way. The back entrance for the cafeteria is there, too. They’re not supposed to go through the loading docks because of safety concerns, but they sneak back through anyway.”

  Will pointed to the camera mounted over the door. “Is that the only camera in the building?”

  “No, sir, and like I said, it was tilted up like that when I got here. There’s another one on the second floor that’s been tilted up, too.”

  Will saw how easy it would be to get into the building undetected. As long as you knew where the camera was, you could stand underneath it and use a broom handle or something similar to push it up, then go on your merry way. Still, he asked, “Do you have footage from the cameras?”

  “Yes, sir. It’s all sent to a central building on campus. I don’t have the key, but my boss, Demetrius, is on the way. Should be here in an hour or two.” He told Sara, “He’s in Griffin with his daddy’s people.”

  Will asked, “What about exterior cameras?”

  “The cold got to ’em. They’re all out. Half are frozen solid, the rest cracked like walnuts. We had one fall on a student’s car the other day. Broke the back windshield.”

  Will rubbed his jaw. “Does anyone else know the cameras are out?”

  He thought about it. “Demetrius, the dean, maybe some other people if they happened to look up. Some of the damage is pretty obvious even from the ground.”

  “I saw the keypad by the door. Is that the only way to get in through the front?”

  “Yeah, and I already checked the logs. I can run a system diagnostic on the keypad. No one’s been in or out the front door since Saturday afternoon. The only key card not scanned out belongs to Jason Howell. The room he’s in is registered to that name, too.” He told Sara, “I don’t know why he’d stay here. Heat’s off. Campus is shut down. Library closed at noon on Sunday. I thought this place was deserted.”

  “It’s not your fault,” Sara told him, though Will had some issues about the man opening the exit door. She redeemed herself by asking, “Do you think you could get a list of all the students in this dorm? It might be good if Agent Trent had them.”

  “That’s not a problem at all. I can print them up for you right now.”

  Will asked, “Do you remember what you touched upstairs?”

  “Nothing. The door was open a little. I got this feeling, like this really bad feeling. I pushed open the door with my foot and saw him and …” He looked down at the ground. “I wish I could take a pill to forget all this.”

  Will said, “I’m sorry to push you, Mr. Harris, but do you remember if the lights were on or off?”

  “All the switches are downstairs.” He pointed to a set of light switches by the stairs. They were high up, probably to discourage students from flicking them on and off at will. “I turned on the lights before I went up, but then I turned them all back off like I found them.”

  “Thank you for your time, Mr. Harris.” Will nodded toward the stairs, indicating he was ready to go.

  Sara stood up, but she didn’t leave. “Did you know Jason?”

  “No, ma’am. I’d seen that girl at the diner—Allison. You know how Grandaddy is, had her running around every second she was on the clock. I’d smile at her but we never talked. Something like this happens, and you realize you need to be paying more attention to the people around you. I’d hate to think there was something I could’ve done to stop all this.”

  Will could tell the man was genuinely distressed. He put his hand on Marty’s shoulder. “I’m sure you did everything you could do.”

  They walked back to the stairs. Sara reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out two pairs of paper booties to cover their feet. Will slipped them on, watching her do the same. She pulled on a latex glove and reached up, flipping the light switch. Light came down the stairwell.

  Will went first. The right way to do this would be to send in a team to clear the building, but Will knew that the killer was long gone. Bodies didn’t smell when they were fresh.

  The building was old, but solid, with an institutional feel that wasn’t exactly welcoming. The stairs went straight up to the third floor, creating a wind chamber for cold air. Will looked down at the black rubber treads. They would need to be checked for traces of blood. He hoped Faith had managed to get in touch with Charlie Reed. Their killer was smart, and he knew how to cover his tracks. But he didn’t have the benefit of a giant lake to wash away his presence this time. If anyone could find trace evidence, it was Charlie.

  The view at the top of the second-floor landing was familiar: a long hallway lined with closed doors, but for one. At the end of the hall was a cased opening, the inside obscured by shadows.

  “Bathrooms,” Sara guessed.

  Will turned around and found the security camera mounted high in the corner by the stairs. The lens pointed up toward the ceiling. Jason’s killer had probably pressed himself along the stair railing, stood on the bottom step leading to the third floor, and used something to push up the camera.

  “You smell that?”

  Will took a shallow breath. “He’s been here a while.”

  Sara had come prepared. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a paper mask. “This should help.”

  Will was torn between his need to be a gentleman and his need to not throw up. “Do you only have one?”

  “I’ll be okay.”

  She continued down the hall. Will slipped on the mask. The air got marginally more breathable. Jason Howell’s room was closer to the bathroom than the stairs. Their footsteps echoed around them, bouncing off the walls. The closer they got, the stronger the smell became. Will saw that the students all had bulletin boards on their doors. Papers were pinned on top of photographs and messages. The board on Jason’s door was empty.

  Sara put the back of her hand to her nose. “God, that’s bad.”

  She took a breath through her mouth before going into the room. Will stood in the doorway. He held his breath as the smell of death washed over him.

  The kid was lying on his back, bloodshot eyes staring at
the ceiling. His face was swollen, almost crimson. His nose was broken. Dried blood circled his nostrils and mouth. One hand dangled to the floor. The thumb was cut. The tip of the pinky finger hung by a few threads.

  “Looks like a match.” Sara had found Jason’s student ID hanging from the closet door. She showed the picture to Will. Even with all the damage, there was no mistaking the resemblance.

  Oddly, Jason was clothed in layers—a pair of sweatpants over pajama bottoms; several shirts, a terry cloth housecoat, and a zippered jacket. His body was swollen from the early signs of decomposition. Gases filled his stomach. The skin on his hands was turning green. His shoes were loosely tied but his feet were so swollen that the laces cut into his socks.

  Knife wounds punctured his chest. The blood had dried in thick chunks around the material of his jacket. More blood was on the floor, smeared in a streak to the desk opposite the bed. The computer, the notebooks and papers scattered around, were all covered in blood and pieces of brain matter.

  Sara put her hand to the boy’s wrist. The check for a pulse was routine, though hardly necessary. “I count eight stab wounds to the chest, three more to the neck. The bacteria from the gut is what’s causing the smell. His bowel was pierced. He’s filled with toxins.”

  Will asked, “How long do you think he’s been dead?”

  “Judging by the rigor mortis, at least twelve hours.”

  “You think we’re looking at the same killer?”

  “I think whoever killed Jason knew him. This is hatred.” She pressed her fingers to one of the wounds in Jason’s neck, stretching the skin back into place. “Look at this. There’s the same twist at the bottom that I saw on Allison.” She checked the other wounds on the neck. “All of them are the same. The killer plunged in the blade, then twisted it to make sure he hit the mark. You can see bruising from the hilt. I’d guess the same type of knife was used. I’ll have to get them both on the table, but it’s an educated guess that this is the work of the same killer.”

  “Jason was a lot bigger than Allison. He wouldn’t be as easy to overpower.”