"Did you ever see him again? I mean, after he left school, did he try to get in touch with you?"
"Of course not."
Something in her tone made Faith ask, "Did you try to get in touch with him?"
The tears came back, humiliation marring her pretty features. "Of course I did."
"What happened?"
"He had another girl there," she said. "In our room. My room." Tears rolled down her cheeks. "I screamed at them, threatened to call the police, said whatever stupid thing I could think of to get him back." She stared at the markings on the door jamb, the milestones of her children's lives. "I remember it was pouring down raining, and cold—cold like it never gets here. I think it actually snowed that year."
"What did you do?"
"I offered myself to him, whatever he wanted, however he wanted." She nodded her head, as if agreeing with the memory that she had been willing to debase herself in any way for this man. "I told him I would do anything."
"What did he say?"
She looked back at Faith. "He beat me like a dog with his hands and fists. I lay there in the street until the morning."
"Did you go to the hospital?"
"No. I went home."
"Did you ever go back?"
"Once, maybe three or four months later. I was with my new boyfriend. I wanted to park in front of Evan's house. I wanted someone else to fuck me there, like I could pay him back." She chuckled at her naiveté. "Knowing Evan, he would've stood at the window, watching us, jerking himself off."
"He wasn't there?"
"He had moved. I guess he was on to greener pastures, on to our illustrious Westfield Academy."
"And you never spoke to him again—not until you saw him your first day at school?"
"No. I wasn't so stupid that I didn't understand."
"Understand what?"
"Before, he never left bruises where people could see them. That's how I knew it was over. He kicked my face so hard that my cheekbone fractured." She put her hand to her cheek. "You can't tell, can you?"
Faith looked at the woman's pretty face, her perfect skin. "No."
"It's on the inside," she said, stroking her cheek the way she probably soothed her children. "Everything Evan did to me is still on the inside."
*
WILL WALKED THROUGH the parking lot behind the Copy Right, feeling time start to crush in on him. Evan Bernard would be out of jail this time tomorrow. His accomplice was no closer to being identified. There were no clues to follow up on, no breaks on the horizon. The forensic evidence was a wash. The DNA would take days to process. Amanda was ruthless in her focus. She worked cases to win them, cutting her losses when she felt the odds stacking against her. Unless the four o'clock ransom call revealed something earth-shattering, she would soon start pulling resources, assigning priorities to other cases.
They thought Emma was dead. Will could feel it in the way Faith looked at him, the careful words Amanda chose when she talked about the teenage girl. They had all given up on her—everyone but Will. He could not accept that the girl was gone. He would not accept anything less than bringing a living, breathing child back to Abigail Campano.
He pressed the button beside the door and was buzzed in immediately. As Will walked down the hallway to the Copy Right, he could hear the high-pitched whir of the machines working at full speed. The construction crew on the street added to the cacophony, hammer drills and concrete mixers providing a steady beat. Inside the store, the plate-glass windows facing Peachtree Street were vibrating from the activity.
"Hey, man!" Lionel Petty called. He was sitting behind the front counter, his head bent over a paper plate that contained a very large steak and French fries. Will recognized the logo on the paper sack beside him as that of the Steakery, a fast-food place specializing in large portions of dubiously inexpensive meat.
"You got my phone call!" Petty said, obviously excited. "The construction crew came back this morning. I was shocked, man. Somebody must've screwed up their orders." He looked closely at Will. "Damn, man, you got creamed."
"Yeah," Will said, stupidly touching his bruised nose.
The noise level died down a bit and Petty stood up to check the machines.
Will asked, "The contractors—is it the same crew?"
He stopped at one of the copiers and began loading in reams of paper. "Some of them look familiar. The foreman's been coming in and out of the garage with his big-ass truck. Warren's pissed about it, but there's nothing we can do because we don't technically own the lot."
Will thought about what the manager had told him, how most of their customers never came to the building. "Why does he care?"
"The trash, man—all that litter. It's a matter of respect." He closed the machine and pressed a button. The copier whirred back to life, adding a deep hum to the chorus of spinning wheels and shuffling paper. Loud beeping came from outside as a Bobcat front loader backed into position to move the steel plates off the road.
Petty sat down in front of his meal. "The dust gets dragged all over the carpet. It's so fine that we can't vacuum it up."
"What dust?"
Petty cut into the meat, grease and blood squirting onto the paper plate. "The concrete they use underground."
Will thought of the gray powder. He glanced back at the construction workers. The Bobcat rammed its front shovel into the edge of one of the steel plates, revealing a gaping hole in the road. "What does it look like?"
Petty cupped his hand to his ear. "What?"
Will didn't answer. The hand at Petty's ear held a cheap-looking knife. The handle was wood, the grommets holding it together a faded gold. The blade was jagged but sharp.
Will tried to swallow, his mouth suddenly going dry. The last time he had seen a knife like that, it was lying inches from Adam Humphrey's lifeless hand.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
FAITH STOOD OUTSIDE the conference room door in Victor's building. Behind the glass, she could hear the low murmur of male voices. Her mind was elsewhere-back in Evan Bernard's apartment where he kept his pink vibrator and handcuffs in his little-girl bedroom. Were these the same devices he had used on a teenage Mary Clark? What were some of the sadistic things he'd gotten up to with the girl? Mary wasn't telling, but the truth was written all over her face. He had damaged her deeply in ways the other woman could not articulate-would probably never be able to articulate. It made Faith sick just thinking about it, especially when she was certain that Mary was just one of many, many victims the schoolteacher had targeted over the years.
Faith had called the resource officer at Alonzo Crim High School as soon as she'd made her way out of Grant Park. There was no record of the alleged rape that had forced Evan Bernard to leave his position. Mary Clark could not remember the girl's name-or at least she claimed not to. No charges had been filed against Evan Bernard, so the local precinct had no records of an investigation. Of the hundred or so current faculty members, none had been around during the time Mary Clark was being sadistically abused. There were no witnesses, no evidence and no accomplices in sight.
Still, somewhere out there was another person who knew exactly where Emma Campano was. Will seemed to think there was a chance that the girl was still alive, but Faith held no such illusion. If the killer had a living victim, he would have recorded another proof of life for the second call. This was all well planned out. Bernard was the calm one, the one who remained in control. The Campano house told them that the killer, Emma's abductor, was not similarly gifted. Something must have gone horribly wrong.