The Will Trent Series 5-Book Bundle Read online

  As he turned from the closet, he was struck by the faint smell of ammonia. There was a dog bed beside him, probably meant to serve the ancient Labrador that Leo had mentioned. There were no obvious stains on the yellow bed. Will unzipped the liner, pressing his gloved fingers into the stuffing. This yielded nothing, except for making his gloved hands smell faintly of dog and urine.

  Will heard Amanda’s voice downstairs as he was zipping up the bed. She was coming up the back stairs and, from the sound of it, she was talking on her cell phone.

  He took off the dog-smelling gloves and changed into a fresh pair, then returned to the girls’ purses, dumping them out on the floor, searching them again. Emma’s cell phone had been located on a charger in the kitchen downstairs. Kayla had her own designer bag and Visa card. She certainly had a cell phone somewhere.

  He sat back on his heels, feeling like he was missing something. Will had searched the room in a grid pattern, sectioning each piece, even digging his gloved fingers into the shag carpet under the bed and finding nothing more startling than a piece of Jolly Rancher watermelon candy that crinkled under his touch. He had checked under furniture and felt along the bottom of drawers. He’d flipped all the rugs over.

  Nothing.

  Where had Emma been while Kayla was being attacked? What had the girl been doing while her best friend was possibly being raped, certainly being beaten and murdered? Was Will looking at this the wrong way? Having often been on the receiving end of Paul’s anger at the children’s home, Will knew firsthand that the Campano blood ran pretty hot. Did that sort of thing skip a generation, or was it passed down directly? The mother had said that her daughter changed lately, that she had been acting out. Could she have been involved in Kayla’s murder? Was Emma not a victim but a participant?

  He looked around the room again—the stuffed teddy bears, the stars on the ceiling. Will would certainly not be the first man who had been fooled by the stereotype of an angelic young woman, but the scenario that called for Emma being one of the bad guys didn’t feel right.

  Suddenly, he realized what was missing. The walls were bare. Emma’s room had obviously been professionally decorated, so where was the art, the photographs? He stood up and checked for nail holes where pictures had hung. He found five, as well as scratches where frames had scraped the paint. He also found several pieces of tape that on close inspection revealed torn pieces of the posters from the closet. He could easily imagine Abigail Campano being outraged to find a picture of a breast-augmented, genitalia-neutral Marilyn Manson marring this otherwise perfect girl’s room. He could also see a teenage girl taking down all the framed art the decorator had chosen in retaliation.

  “Trent? When you have a minute?”

  Will stood, following the sound out into the hall.

  Charlie Reed, a crime-scene tech who had worked for Amanda almost as long as Will, was at the end of the hallway. Now that the body had been removed, the man was cleared to go about the careful cataloguing of blood and evidence. Dressed in the special white body suit to prevent cross-contamination of the scene, Charlie would spend the next several hours on his hands and knees going over every square inch of the scene. He was a good investigator, but his resemblance to the cop in the Village People tended to put people off. Will made a point of specifically requesting Charlie on all his cases. He understood what it meant to be an outsider, and how sometimes it made you work even harder to prove people wrong.

  Charlie pulled down his mask, revealing a finely sculpted handlebar mustache. “This was under the body.” He handed Will an evidence bag containing the broken, bloody guts of a cell phone. “There’s a shoe print on the plastic that’s similar to the print we found downstairs, but not the shoe we found on the second victim. I’d guess our abductor nailed it with his foot, then the girl fell on it.”

  “Was there a transfer pattern on the body?”

  “The plastic cut open the skin on her back. Pete had to peel it off for me.”

  Through the bag, Will made out the shattered phone. Still, he pressed his thumb on the green button and waited. There was no power to the device.

  “Switch out the SIM card in your phone,” Charlie suggested.

  “Sprint,” Will told him, recognizing the silk-screened logo on the back of the silver phone. The phone didn’t use a SIM card. The only way to access any information stored on the device would be to have a technician hook it up to a computer and pray. Will said, “It must belong to either the kid downstairs, Kayla or somebody else.”

  “I’ll rush it through the lab once we get prints,” Charlie offered, holding out his hand for the phone. “The IMEI has been scratched off.”

  The IMEI was the serial number that cell phone networks used to identify a particular phone on the grid. “Scratched off on purpose?”

  Charlie studied the white sticker near the battery casing. “Looks rubbed off from use to me. It’s an older model. There’s duct tape residue on the sides. I’d guess it was falling apart long before it was crushed. Not what I’d expect a teenage girl to carry.”

  “Why is that?”

  “It’s not pink and it doesn’t have Hello Kitty stickers all over it.”

  He had a point. Emma Campano’s phone had a bunch of pink, plastic charms dangling from the case.

  Will said, “Tell the lab this has priority over the computer.” They had found a MacBook Pro downstairs that belonged to Emma Campano. The girl had enabled FileVault, encryption software so secure that not even Apple could unlock it without the password. Unless Emma had used something simple like the name of the family dog, nothing short of the NSA could break it open.

  Charlie said, “I found this over by the table.” He held up another plastic bag that contained a brass key. “Yale lock, pretty standard. No usable fingerprints on it.”

  “Was it wiped down?”

  “Just used a lot. There aren’t any prints to lift.”

  “No keychain?”

  Charlie shook his head. “If you had it in your pocket and you were wearing baggy pants, it could easily come out during a struggle.”

  Will looked at the key, thinking that if it had a number or address on it, his job would be so much easier. “Mind if I hold on to this?”

  “I’ve already catalogued it. Just make sure it gets back to evidence.”

  “Will?” Amanda had been hovering behind him. “I talked to Campano.”

  He pocketed the key Charlie had found, trying to hide his sense of dread along with it. “And?”

  “He wants you off the case,” she said, but didn’t seem to think that was worth discussing. “He says that they’ve had some problems with Emma lately. She was a good girl, the perfect child, then she got mixed up with this Kayla Alexander sometime last year and everything went to hell.”

  “In what way?”

  “She started skipping school, her grades started to fall, she started listening to the wrong music and dressing the wrong way.”

  He told her about what he’d found in Emma’s room. “I’m guessing they made her take down the posters.”

  “Typical teenager stuff,” Amanda said. “I wouldn’t trust the father so much on where the blame lies. I have yet to meet a parent who admits that his own child is the bad apple.” She tapped her watch, her signal that they were wasting time. “Tell me what progress we’ve made.”

  Will told her, “The deceased male is Adam Humphrey. He’s got an Oregon driver’s license.”

  “He’s a student?”

  “Detective Mitchell is calling local colleges to see if he’s registered. We’re still trying to track down Alexander’s parents.”

  “You know the key to breaking this is going to be finding a second person who knows at least one of our victims.”

  “Yes, ma’am. We’re running dumps on all the telephones. We just need a lead to follow.”

  “GHP is pulling a negative,” she said, meaning the Georgia Highway Patrol. “White is a popular color for the Prius, but there aren’t
that many on the road. Unfortunately, we’re heading into rush hour, so it’s not going to get easier.”

  “I’ve got uniforms pulling video from every ATM and store-front on Peachtree as well as anything in the Ansley Mall area. If the Prius left either way, we might get an image we can work with.”

  “Let me know if you need more feet on the ground.” She rolled her hand, meaning for him to continue.

  “The knife doesn’t match anything in the kitchen or the carriage house, which points to the killer bringing it with him. It’s pretty cheap—wooden handle, fake gold grommets—but it’s obviously sharp enough to do some damage. The brand is for commercial use only. It’s the kind of thing you’d find at Waffle House or Morrison’s. The local supplier says he sells millions of them a year just in the metro area.”

  Amanda always thought in terms of how she could frame a case for the prosecutor. “Bringing the knife to the crime scene shows intent. Go on.”

  “There’s dried blood on the glass outside the front door. Whoever broke it already had blood on his or her hand—it’s on the outside of the pane. I’d guess it would take someone with an arm that was around three feet long to reach in through that window and unlock the front door.”

  “So, no forced entry—the girls let their attacker into the house. Whoever busted the glass obviously wanted to make it look as if he broke in.” Amanda mumbled, “I suppose we have CSI to thank for his stupidity.”

  “Or someone smart enough to make it look stupid.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Possibly. Do you think we should be looking at the father more closely?”

  “He sells cars and he’s a jerk. I’m sure there’s a long list of enemies, but this feels deeply personal. Look at Kayla Alexander. Whoever killed her was furious. If you’re a hired gun, you go in, take out the target and leave. You don’t spend time beating her and you don’t use a knife.”

  “What was your conversation like with Paul Campano?”

  “He doesn’t seem to know a lot about her life,” Will said. Thinking back on the interview, he realized that this fact seemed to be the genesis of Paul’s anger. It was as if he had never met his own daughter. “The mother had to be sedated. I’ll go back at her first thing tomorrow.”

  “Do we know if Alexander was raped?”

  “Pete isn’t sure yet. Bruising would indicate yes, and there’s sperm in her vagina, but it’s also on the crotch of her panties.”

  “So, she stood up and put on her underwear at some point after intercourse. Let’s see if the sperm comes back to our other victim, if that’s what we’re calling corpse number two for the moment.” Amanda pressed her finger to her lip as she thought this through. “What about the mother? Hysterics, sedation. Pretty dramatic stuff and it conveniently takes her out of the spotlight.”

  “I think she’s genuinely horrified about what’s happened and she’s scared she’s going to be arrested for killing someone in cold blood.”

  Amanda looked at the dark, congealed pool where the body had lain. “Good defense if you ask me. Let’s go back to the father. Maybe he was molesting the daughter.”

  Will felt his body break out in a sudden cold sweat. “He wouldn’t do that.”

  Amanda studied him. “Do you have a previous relationship with this person that I should know about?”

  “What did he say?”

  She gave him a sharp smile. “You don’t have the luxury of not answering my question.”

  Will felt his jaw working and made himself stop. “It was a long time ago.”

  Amanda seemed to realize Charlie was at her feet, picking through carpet fibers with a pair of tweezers. She murmured to Will, “A discussion for another time.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Amanda’s tone went back to normal. “Charlie, can you walk me through this?”

  Charlie finished what he was doing and stood up with a groan, rubbing one of his knees as if he needed to work some life back into it. He pulled down his mask again. “We lucked out with the blood. The female decedent is B-negative, the male decedent is O-negative. The carpet here”—he indicated the shoe prints—“shows almost exclusively B, indicating the female decedent.”

  “Charlie.” Amanda stopped him. “Just paint me a story. Adam and Kayla. Go.”

  He allowed a smile at the situation. “This is all supposition, of course, but we might assume Kayla was chased down this hallway, toward the back staircase. The killer caught up with her about here.” He indicated a distance of about three feet behind them. “We found a significant patch of hair, part of the scalp still attached, here.” He pointed to another spot on the carpet. “From this we might conclude that she was jerked back by her hair and fell onto the floor. Possibly, this is the point at which she was raped—or not. The probability that she died here is very high.”

  Amanda looked at her watch again. Like Will, she hated the fact that forensics worked in the couched language of “possibly” and “most likely” instead of dead certainty. She asked, “Is this the part where we get past assumptions and down to hard science?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Charlie answered. “As I said before, the blood types make it easier. Kayla was beaten and stabbed here. You can see the cast-off pattern on the wall.” He indicated slashes of dark blood. “The killer was in a frenzy, probably furious from chasing her or maybe from seeing her with another man—Adam, you could suppose.”

  Will asked, “How long would the attack have taken?”

  Charlie looked at the walls, the stained floor. “Forty to fifty seconds. Maybe a full minute or two if rape occurred.”

  “Does anything in the pattern suggest that someone tried to stop him?”

  Charlie put his hand to his chin, studying the blood. “No, actually. These arcs are fairly perfect. If he’d been interrupted or someone tried to stop his arm from swinging, we would see more variation. This is extremely uniform, almost like a machine going up and down.”

  Will supplied, “The coroner says Kayla was stabbed at least twenty times, maybe more.”

  Charlie moved on to the footprints. “There was definitely a lot of activity after she was dead. You can see from the two sets of footprints that two people—one of them with shoes matching Adam’s—walked back and forth here.”

  “Do you see signs that they struggled?”

  Charlie shrugged. “It’s hard to say because of the carpet. On a smoother surface, I could tell you where the weight of the foot was, if someone was caught off balance or pressing forward to fight with someone else.”

  Amanda said, “Best guess.”

  “Well …” Charlie shrugged again. “It seems probable in the greater context of the scene that there was a struggle. What I can definitely tell you is that at some point, Adam was on his knees beside the body. We’ve got the blood pattern on his jeans as well as the tops of his shoes. I have a theory that he reached out”—Charlie stretched his arm out near the bloody handprint—“and leaned his hand against the wall as he put his ear to Kayla’s mouth.”

  Will stopped him. “Why do you say that?”

  “He’s got a light spray of B-negative just around here.” He indicated his own ear. “There’s also that spray of O-negative on Kayla’s abdomen, which you pointed out to me earlier. I’d draw the same conclusion as you—he removed the knife from his own chest while he was bending over her. In fact, we found a mixture of both blood types on the weapon.”

  “Any fingerprints?”

  “Just one set. Preliminarily, we’ll say they’re Adam’s, but they’ll have to confirm that at the lab. There were also markings on the knife handle that look consistent with someone wearing latex gloves.”

  Amanda told Will, “Throw wearing surgical gloves in with him bringing the knife to the scene and we’ve got premeditated murder.”

  Will didn’t point out that they would have to find the killer before they could charge him. “What about the footprint downstairs?”

  “That’s where it gets interesting,” Ch
arlie began. “Type O-positive.”

  Amanda said, “Different from the two victims.”

  “Exactly,” Charlie confirmed. “We found several spots on the stairs, a couple more up here. My guess is that whoever the blood belongs to was unconscious. As Will and I suggested, she was carried down the stairs. Either the abductor had to stop at the bottom to reposition her or she came to and started to struggle. Somehow, her foot touched the ground at that one spot.”

  Will told Amanda, “I’ve asked Charlie to Lumenol the house top to bottom. I’m curious about where Emma Campano was while her friend was being attacked.”

  “It follows that she was unconscious somewhere.”

  “Not here,” Charlie supplied. “At least, not by what the blood tells us.”

  Will said, “We’ve had a lot of mistakes made today. I want to make sure that footprint downstairs belongs to Emma Campano. She’s got a ton of shoes in her closet. Maybe you can get a latent?”

  “It’s a long shot, but I can certainly try.”

  Amanda asked, “Did you find any sperm in this area?”

  “Nothing.”

  “But Kayla Alexander had sperm on and in her person.”

  “Yes.”

  She told him, “I want a rush DNA comparison against both Adam Humphrey and Paul Campano. Check the master bathroom for hair or any tissue you can find that might belong to the father.” She looked at Will, as if waiting for him to object. “I want to know who this girl has been having sex with, consensual or otherwise.” She didn’t wait for a response, turning on her heel after tossing a “Will?” over her shoulder.

  He followed her down the back stairs and into the kitchen. Will tried to get ahead of her on the blame game. “Why didn’t you tell me Faith Mitchell’s mother was part of my investigation?”

  She started opening and closing drawers. “I assumed you would use your brilliant detective skills to make a connection between the two last names.”

  She was right, but Evelyn Mitchell hadn’t been a priority for him for a long time. “Mitchell is a common name.”

  “I’m glad we have that settled.” Amanda found what she was looking for. She held up a kitchen knife, looked at the silver bee on the handle. “Laguiole. Nice.”