He was also glad he wouldn't have to explain why the single bloody footprint on the foyer was heading up the stairs instead of running out the front doorway.
Leo came back into the house, obviously annoyed by the phone call. 'Like I don't got enough people sticking their heads up my ass with this prostate thing.' He indicated the scene. 'You solve this one for me yet?'
Will asked, 'Who does the green BMW on the street belong to?'
'The mother.'
'What about the girl-does she have a car?'
'A black Beemer, if you can believe it, 325 convertible. Parents took it away when her grades started to slide.' He pointed to the house across the street. 'Nosey neighbor turned her in when she saw the car in the driveway during school hours.'
'Did the neighbor see anything today?'
'She's even older than the dog, so don't get your hopes up.' He gave a half shrug of his shoulder, allowing, 'We've got somebody over there talking to her right now.'
'The mother's sure she doesn't recognize the killer?'
'Positive. I had her look at him again when she was more calmed down. Never seen him before in her life.'
Will looked back at the dead man. Everything was adding up but nothing made sense. 'How'd he get here?'
'No idea. Could've taken the bus and walked from Peachtree Street.'
Peachtree, one of the busiest streets in Atlanta, was less than ten minutes away. Buses and trains went back and forth over- and underground bringing thousands of people to the office buildings and shops along the strip. Will had heard of criminals doing more stupid things than timing a brutal murder around a bus schedule, but the explanation didn't feel right. This was Atlanta. Only the desperately poor or ecologically eccentric took public transportation. The man on the floor was a clean-cut white kid wearing what looked like a three-hundred-dollar pair of jeans and a two-hundred-dollar pair of Nikes. Either he had a car or he lived in the neighborhood.
Leo offered, 'We've got patrol out looking for a car that don't belong.'
'You were the first detective on the scene?'
Leo took his time answering, making sure Will knew that he was doing so as a courtesy. 'I was the first cop, period,' he finally said. 'Nine-one-one came in around twelve-thirty. I was finishing lunch at that sandwich place on Fourteenth. I got here maybe two seconds before the cruiser pulled up. We checked the house, made sure no one else was here, then I told everybody to get the hell out.'
Fourteenth Street was less than a five-minute drive from where they stood. It was luck that the first responding officer had been a detective who could secure the scene. 'You were the first one to talk to the mother?'
'She was freaked the fuck out, let me tell you. Hands were shaking, couldn't get her words out. Took about ten minutes for her to calm down enough to get the story out.'
'So, this looks clean to you? Some kind of domestic violence scene between two teenagers, then the mom comes in and puts a kink in it?'
'Is that what Hoyt Bentley sent you to check out?'
Will skirted the question. 'This is a sensitive case, Leo. Bentley plays golf with the governor. He sits on the board of half the charities in town. Wouldn't you be more surprised if we
Leo half shrugged, half nodded. Maybe there was something bothering him about the scene, too, because he kept talking. 'There's defensive wounds on the mother. You can see signs of the struggle what with all the broken shit and the walls being bashed in. Dead kid's got more of the same, including some bite marks on his fingers where the mother tried to get his hands off her. The girl upstairs-he had some time with her. Panties down, bra pushed up. Blood everywhere.'
'Was there a struggle upstairs?'
'Some, but not like down here.' He paused before offering, 'You wanna see her?'
Will appreciated the gesture, but Amanda had made it more than clear that she didn't want him to get involved in this unless it had the markings of a professional hit. If Will saw something upstairs, no matter how innocuous, he might end up having to testify about it later in court.
Still she couldn't fault him for being curious. 'How was the girl killed?'
'Hard to tell.'
Will glanced behind him at the open front door. The air-conditioning in the house was on full blast, trying to keep up with the heat coming in. 'Did you already get pictures of everything in here?'
'Upstairs and down,' Leo told him. 'We'll dust for prints and the usual shit once the bodies are taken away. By the way, that's when I'll shut the door, since you seem to have a stick up your ass about it. I'm trying to keep the tourists down to a minimum here.' He added, 'Case like this, there are gonna be some heavy guns on it.'
Will thought that was an understatement. No one had reported a strange car in the neighborhood. Unless Leo's public transportation theory held up, the kid was most likely a resident of Ansley Park. Knowing how these things worked, he probably came from a family of lawyers. Leo would need to do everything exactly by the book or he'd end up dangling by his short hairs the minute he took the stand.
Will rephrased his earlier question. 'How did she die?'
'She's a fucking mess-face like raw hamburger, blood everywhere. I'm surprised the mother even recognized her.' Leo paused, obviously seeing Will wanted a more concrete answer. 'My guess? He beat her, then stabbed her to death.'
Again, Will looked at the dead man on the floor. His palms were covered with dried blood, not what you would expect from a closed fist beating someone repeatedly, or, for that matter, a hand holding a knife. The knees of his black jeans looked dark, too, as if he had knelt in something wet. His T-shirt was bunched up just below his ribs. A fresh bruise spread down into the waist of his pants.
Will asked, 'Was the mother injured?'
'Scratches on the back of her arms and hands, like I said before. There's a pretty deep cut on the palm from the glass on the floor.' Leo catalogued, 'Lots of bruises, busted lip, some blood in her ear. Maybe a sprained ankle. I thought it was broke, but she moved it.' He rubbed his mouth, probably wishing there was a cigarette in it. 'I called an ambulance, but she said she wasn't leaving until her daughter's removed.'
'She say it like that, ‘removed'?'
Leo mumbled a curse under his breath as he pulled a spiral-bound notebook out of his pocket. He flipped to the right page and showed it to Will.
Will frowned at the indecipherable scrawl. 'Did you fingerprint a chicken?'
Leo turned the notebook back around and read aloud, ' ‘I will not leave my daughter here. I am not leaving this house until Emma leaves.' '
Will rolled the name around in his head, and the girl started to become a person to him rather than just another anonymous victim. She had been a baby once. Her parents had held her, protected her, given her a name. And now they had lost her.
He asked, 'What's the mother saying?'
Leo flipped the notebook closed. 'Just the bare facts. I'd bet my left one she was a lawyer before she got knocked up and gave it all up for the good life.'
'Why is that?'
'She's being real careful about what she says, how she says it. Lots of ‘I felt this' and ‘I feared that.' '
Will nodded. A plea of self-defense relied solely on a person's perception that he or she was in imminent danger of death at the time of the attack. Campano was obviously laying the groundwork, but Will didn't know if that was because she was smart or because she was telling the truth. He looked down at the dead man again, the blood-caked palms, the soaked shirt. There was more here than met the eye.
Leo put his hand on Will's shoulder. 'Listen, I gotta warn you-'
He stopped as the pocket doors slid open. Amanda stood beside a young woman. Behind them, Will could see another woman sitting on a deep couch. She was wearing a white tennis outfit. What must have been her injured foot was propped up on the coffee table. Her tennis shoes were on the floor underneath.
'Special Agent Trent,' Amanda said, sliding the doors closed behind her. 'This is Detective Faith Mitchell.'
