Faith could not imagine what sitting in a car, waiting around at all those airports would feel like. Maddening, she guessed; the most painful day of any parent's life. She chanced a look at Will. His usual passive expression had returned. "Did they have anything?"
He shook his head. "Adam doesn't have a car here. He's been to Atlanta twice. The first time, he flew down with his father for orientation, stayed three days, then flew back. Both parents drove him down two weeks ago to help him settle into the dorm."
"From Oregon?" she asked, surprised. "How many days did that take?"
"The mom said they took a week, but they stopped to see things along the way. Apparently, they're into camping."
"That jibes with the outdoor magazines I found in his room," Faith said, thinking she would just as soon slit her wrists as drive across America. Add Jeremy into the road trip, and they would be looking at a murder/suicide. "So, he's been in Atlanta for fourteen days."
"Right," Will said. "They've never heard of either Kayla Alexander or Emma Campano. As far as they know, Adam wasn't seeing anyone. He had a girlfriend back home but she moved to New York last year-she's some kind of dancer. It was a mutual split and he's dated off and on since then, but nothing serious. They have no idea why Emma's picture was in his wallet." He rubbed his jaw, his fingers finding the line of the scar. "The mother said that his laptop was stolen last week. They reported it to campus security, but she didn't think it was taken seriously."
Faith figured that was her cue. She told him about Gabe and Tommy, the girlfriend who might have gone to Westfield. As she spoke, she figured she should come clean and told him about shouldering Tommy into the hallway. She also told him about Victor Martinez's comments, though she held back the embarrassing parts for the sake of her own dignity.
Instead of railing her for assault and battery against Albertson, Will asked, "What are there, around fifty bars in Buckhead?"
"At least."
"I guess it's worth a try calling around to see if we can find her," he said. "I hate to say it, but at this point, a girlfriend who might have gone to the same school as Emma and Kayla and who's dating a friend of Adam's is the only lead we've got to follow."
Neither one of them had to vocalize the obvious: every hour that ticked by made it harder to find the killer, and less likely that they would find Emma alive.
He started pressing numbers on his phone. "Someone called while I was talking to the parents," he explained. "Put the incident with Albertson in your report, then put it out of your mind. We've got much bigger problems to deal with right now."
A cream-colored Lexus sedan pulled up while he was listening to his messages. Faith saw Amanda Wagner behind the wheel. She must have been the one who left the message, because Will told Faith, "They found Kayla Alexander's Prius at a copy center on Peachtree. There's blood in the trunk, but no sign of Emma. Security camera's fuzzy, but at least it was working."
He pocketed the phone as he walked toward Amanda's car, rattling off orders for Faith. "Call in a couple of units to help you canvass the dorms. Maybe somebody else knows more about Adam. Search his things, see if there are any more pictures of Emma. Take out anything his parents don't need to see. Go back at that Gabe kid if you think it'll work. If not, give him the night to stew. We can both hit him tomorrow."
She tried to process all of this. "What time do we start?"
"Is seven too early?"
"No."
"Meet me at Westfield Academy. I want to screen the staff."
"Wasn't Leo-"
"He's not on this anymore." Will opened the car door. "I'll see you in the morning."
Faith opened her mouth to ask him what the hell happened to Leo, but Amanda started to pull away before his butt hit the seat. Faith saw that Will's jacket was still on the Mini's hood and waved for them to stop, but Amanda either didn't see her or didn't care. Faith supposed the good news was that she was still on the case. The bad news was that she was definitely still at the scut-work level. She was probably going to be here until three in the morning.
Leo was the first casualty. Faith would be damned if she'd be the second.
She checked Will's jacket and found a handful of latex gloves. She also found something far more curious: a digital voice recorder. Faith turned over the small device in her hand. All the letters had been rubbed off from use. The screen said there were sixteen messages. She guessed the red button was record, so the one beside it would have to be play.
Her cell phone rang and Faith almost dropped the recorder. She recognized Jeremy's number and looked up at the second floor of Glenn Hall. She counted five spaces over and found him standing at his window, watching her.
He said, "Isn't it illegal to go through somebody's pockets like that?"
She put the recorder back in the jacket. "I'm getting really tired of dealing with smart-aleck kids who know their legal rights."
He snorted.
"Answer a question for me: if you didn't have your key card, how would you get into the building?"
"Press the handicap button."
Faith shook her head at the situation. So much for tracking people who'd been in and out of the dorm. "So, do you need pizza money or your laundry done or are you just making sure I don't come up there and embarrass you in front of your friends?"
"I heard about that kid," he said. "It's all over the dorm."
"What are they saying?"
"Not a lot," Jeremy admitted. "Nobody really knew him, you know? He was just some guy you passed in the hall on the way to the toilet."
She heard the sympathy in his voice, and Faith felt a tinge of pride that her son showed such humanity. She had met the alternative and it wasn't pretty.
He asked, "Do you think you'll find that girl?"
"I hope so."
"I can keep my ear to the ground."
"No, you will not," she countered. "You're going to school to learn how to be an engineer, not a cop."
"There's nothing wrong with being a cop."
Faith could think of several things, but she didn't want him to know. "I should go, honey. I'm going to be here late."
He didn't hang up. "If you wanted to do some laundry…"
She smiled. "I'll call you before I leave."
"Hey, Mom?"
"Yeah?"
He was silent, and she wondered if he was going to tell her that he loved her. That was how they trapped you, after all. You walked the floor with them and cleaned up after them and took all the grief and the noise and the swarthy Latin men who looked at you as if you had horns, and then they hooked you back in with those three simple words.
Not this time, though. Jeremy asked, "Who was that guy you were with? He didn't look like a cop."
Her son was right about that. She picked up Will Trent's jacket to lock it back in the car. "Nobody. Just a guy who works for your aunt Amanda."
CHAPTER FOUR
THE COPY RIGHT COPY CENTER was on the street-level floor of an ancient three-story building. It was one of the few structures on Peachtree Street yet to be torn down and replaced by a skyscraper, and the entire building had an air of resignation, as if at any moment it expected to be razed. The high-volume copy machines, made visible through the plate-glass windows by harsh, fluorescent lights, gave the place a dystopic, science fiction feel. Blade Runner meets Kinko's.
"Shit," Amanda hissed as the uneven road scraped against the bottom of her car. The asphalt was patched with heavy metal plates that overlapped like thick Band-Aids. Pylons and signs blocked off an entire lane on Peachtree, but the construction workers were long gone.