being followed up on, cops sifting through the pranksters and nutjobs, trying to find a viable lead.
Will had paperwork to do on all of this, but instead of turning to his computer, he sat back in his chair and stared at his blurred reflection in the dark window. They were coming up on thirty-six hours since Abigail Campano had come home to find her life turned upside down. Two people were still dead. One girl was still missing. And, still, not a single suspect was in sight.
He didn't understand the ransom demand. Will was no rookie. He had worked kidnapping cases before. He had worked abduction cases. There were basic tenets to both. Kidnappers wanted money. Abductors wanted sex. He could not reconcile the brutal way in which Kayla Alexander had been killed with the phone call this morning demanding one million dollars. It just did not add up.
Then there was the fight between Abigail and Paul Campano. Angie had been right: Paul was cheating on his wife. Apparently, he liked young blondes, but did that include his own daughter, and possibly Kayla Alexander? Amanda had told Will to get the man's DNA. Maybe she was right, too. Add in Faith, who had managed to get Gabriel Cohen to talk, and that just left Will as the odd man out-literally-because he was the only one who brought absolutely nothing to this case.
Will turned back to his desk, knowing that overthinking the problem would not bring him any closer to a solution. His cell phone was laid out on his desk in two pieces. During his fight with Paul, the clamshell had snapped off and the screen had cracked. Will held the lid in place and taped it back onto the phone with several pieces of Scotch tape. The phone still worked. When he'd left the Campano house, he had been able to hold it together in order to check his voice mail. Faith Mitchell's messages had gotten progressively more important, her voice going up in excitement as she told him about the threatening notes Gabe Cohen had kept from them.
Will still wasn't sure she had made the right decision about keeping the kid out of the system, but he had to trust her instincts.
At least they had more information on the car now. A computer search of graduate students working at the Georgia Tech Research Institute in Ireland had revealed the name Farokh Pansing. After a few phone calls, they had located a cell phone number and woken the man up from what sounded like a very deep sleep. The physics major had given Will a loving description of the blue 1981 Chevy Impala he had left behind. No air-conditioning. No seat belts. The driver's door stuck when it rained. The engine leaked like a sieve. The undercarriage was so rusted out that, from the backseat, you could watch the road pass under your shoes. Because of its age, the state of Georgia considered the car a classic and it was therefore exempt from any emissions requirements. Farokh had sold the ancient car to Adam Humphrey for four hundred dollars. The state had no record of Adam ever applying for insurance or a tag.
They had issued a new alert on the Impala, but the warning only pertained to the state of Georgia. Emma Campano could easily be in Alabama or Tennessee or the Carolinas. Given the almost two days that had passed since her abduction, she could well be in Mexico or Canada.
Will's computer gave a chug like a train, indicating that the system was running. Will had been out of the office for two days. He needed to check his e-mail and file his daily reports. He put on the headphones and adjusted the microphone, preparing to dictate the report. After opening up a blank Word document, he pressed the start key, but found himself at a loss for words. He stopped the recorder and sat back in his chair. When he reached up to rub his eyes, he gasped from the pain.
Paul hadn't broken his nose, but he'd managed to whack it hard enough to move the cartilage. With the ransom recording to analyze and the threatening notes to rush to the lab, Will hadn't had time to look at himself in the mirror until about ten minutes before the Humphreys had shown up to identify their son. Will's nose had been broken several times in the past. It was already crooked enough. With the bruises, he looked like a bar brawler, which did not exactly engender trust in the Humphreys. The father had accepted his mumbled excuse about a rough football game the weekend before, but the mother had looked at him as if he had a giant 'liar' sticker pinned to his head.
Will tapped the space bar on his computer and used the mouse to click on the e-mail icon. He slipped the headphones on and listened to his e-mails. The first three were spam, the second was from Pete Hanson, telling him the basic information Faith had already relayed about the autopsies of Adam Humphrey and Kayla Alexander.
The third e-mail was from Amanda Wagner. She had called apress conference for six-thirty the next morning. Will guessed she had been following the news as closely as he had. Absent anything else to cover, the reporters had started targeting the parents, picking apart their lives, slowly pointing the finger back at the victims. The press would be in for a disappointment if they thought they'd be able to talk to the Campanos tomorrow. Amanda was a master at controlling the press. She would parade out Paul and Abigail for the cameras, but she would do all the talking. Will couldn't think how she would manage to put a muzzle on Paul, but he'd seen her pull too many rabbits out of her hat in the past to worry about logistics.
Amanda's e-mail ended curtly. 'You are to be in my office directly after the press conference,' the computer read. Will gathered she had heard about Paul Campano bashing his face in.
Will pressed play again, listening to Amanda's terse message as if he could divine some nuance. The program allowed you to assign different voices to people. Pete sounded like Mickey Mouse. Amanda was Darth Vader. Sitting alone in his dark office, the sound gave Will an involuntary shudder.
Then it gave him an idea.
He opened up Pete's e-mail again and selected a different voice to read the text. He went through each option, listening to the nuances. Will realized he was doing this the wrong way. He opened a new e-mail and clicked in the text area, then took out his digital recorder and selected the file that had the kidnapper's voice on it.
He held the player up to the microphone and let it dictate the text:
Then Abigail, stuttering,
Will cut off the recording, excitement taking hold. Playing back each line, he isolated the kidnapper's sentences and deleted Abigail's. Next, he went through each voice option, searching for one that sounded similar to the kidnapper's.
The last one in line was the one he used for Amanda Wagner. His finger hovered over the mouse. He clicked the button. The headphones sent out a foreboding, deep voice.
Will looked up, sensing he was not alone. Faith Mitchell stood in the doorway.
He jumped up, yanking off the headphones as if he had something to be guilty about. 'I thought you were going home.'
She walked into his office and sat down. The desk lamp cast her in a harsh light. She looked older than her thirty-three years. 'What are you doing?'
'The audiotape of the ransom demand,' he began, then figured he could just as easily show her. He picked up his digital recorder and pressed play. 'This is the audio.' Will kept his thumb on the button, listening along with Faith to the kidnapper's phone call this morning, Abigail Campano's terrified responses. He stopped it at the same place as before. 'Now this is something I just did in my computer. It's got one of those speaking options for lazy people where it reads stuff to you.' He moved the mouse over to the start button, saying, 'I didn't even remember I had it on here. I guess it's some ADA thing.' He pulled out the headphone jack so the speakers would play. 'Ready?'
She nodded.
He pressed play, and the kidnapper's words came out of the computer speakers in the Darth Vader voice.
'Jesus Christ,' she murmured. 'It's almost exactly the same.'
'I think he must have written the sentences and prerecorded them coming out of the computer speakers.'
