Will asked Abigail, "Is there anyone who might have a grudge against you or your husband?"

She kept shaking her head, transfixed by the sight of the dead man lying in her foyer. "It all happened so fast. I keep trying to think what I did...what else I could have..."

"I know you've been asked this before, but are you sure you don't recognize the man?"

Abigail's eyes closed, but he imagined that she could still see her daughter's murderer. "No," she finally answered. "He's a stranger to me."

Suddenly there was a man screaming from the front of the house. "Get the fuck out of my way!"

Will heard scuffling outside, cops yelling for someone to stop, then Paul Campano barreled up the front steps like a man on fire. He rammed Faith Mitchell out of his way as he burst into the house. A uniformed patrolman caught her as she stumbled back, perilously close to the edge of the porch. Neither of them looked happy, but Leo waved his hand, telling them to let it go.

Paul stood in the foyer, fists clenched. Will wondered if this was something genetic—that you were either the type of person who clenched your fists all the time or you weren't.

"Paul ..." Abigail whispered, rushing to him.

Even holding his wife, Paul kept his hands fisted.

Faith was obviously still bristling. Her tone was clipped. "Mr. Campano, I'm Detective Mitchell with the Atlanta Police Department. This is Detective Donnelly."

Paul wasn't interested in introductions. He was staring at the dead man over his wife's shoulder. "Is that the fucker who did this?" His voice turned to a growl. "Who is he? What's he doing in my house?"

Faith and Leo exchanged a look that Will would've missed if he hadn't been watching them for his own cues. They were partners; they obviously had a shorthand, and it looked like this time Faith was taking the short straw.

She suggested, "Mr. Campano, let's go out on the porch and talk about this."

"Who the fuck are you?" Paul glared at Will, his beady eyes almost swallowed by the extra weight on his face.

Will shouldn't have been surprised by the question, or even the way it was phrased. The last time Paul Campano had talked to him this way, Will was ten years old and they were both living in the Atlanta Children's Home. A lot had changed since then. Will had gotten taller and his hair had gotten darker. The only thing that changed about Paul was he seemed to have gotten heavier and meaner.

Leo supplied, "Mr. Campano, this is Agent Trent with the GBI."

Will tried to talk Paul down a little, to make him feel like he could help. "Do you know if your daughter had any enemies, Mr. Campano?"

"Emma?" he asked, glaring at Will. "Of course not. She was only seventeen years old."

"How about you?"

"No," he snapped. "No one who would do..." He shook his head, unable to complete the sentence. He looked back at the dead killer. "Who is this bastard? What did Emma ever do to him?"

"Anything you can give us will help. Maybe you and your wife could—"

"She's up there, isn't she?" Paul interrupted, looking up. "My baby's upstairs."

No one answered him, but Leo took a couple of steps toward the stairs to block the way.

Paul said, "I want to see her."

"No," Abigail warned, her voice shaking. "You don't want to see her like that, Paul. You don't want to know."

"I need to see her."

"Listen to your wife, sir," Faith coaxed. "You'll get to see her soon. You just need to let us take care of her right now."

Paul barked at Leo, "Get the fuck out of my way."

"Sir, I don't think—"

Leo took the brunt of his anger. Paul slammed him into the wall as he bolted up the stairs. Will ran up after the man, almost knocking into him as Paul stopped cold at the top of the landing.

He stood frozen, staring at his daughter's lifeless form at the end of the hallway. The girl was at least fifteen feet away, but her presence filled the space as if she were right there beside them. All the fight seemed to drain out of Paul. Like most bullies, he could never sustain any one emotion.

"Your wife was right," Will told him. "You don't want to see her like this."

Paul went quiet, his labored breathing the only audible noise. His hand was to his chest, palm flat as if he was saying the pledge of allegiance. Tears brimmed in his eyes.

He swallowed hard. "There was this glass bowl on the table." His voice had gone flat, lifeless. "We got it in Paris."

"That's nice," Will said, thinking that never in a million years could he imagine Paul in Paris.

"It's a mess up here."

"There are people who can clean it up for you."

He went silent again, and Will followed his gaze, taking in the scene. Leo was right about downstairs being worse than up, but there was something even more sinister and unsettling in the air up here. The same bloody shoe prints were here, crisscrossing the white carpeting up and down the long hall. Streaks of blood slashed across the white walls where either the knife or a fist had arced over the body, repeatedly punching or plunging into the flesh. For some reason, the most troubling part to Will was the single red handprint on the wall directly over the victim's head where her attacker had obviously rested his weight as he raped her.

"Trashcan, right?"

Paul Campano wasn't looking for the garbage. He had called Will "Trashcan" when they were children. The memory put a lump in Will's throat. He had to swallow before he could answer. "Yeah."

"Tell me what happened to my daughter."

Will debated, but only for a moment. He had to turn sideways to get past Paul and go into the hallway. Careful not to disturb anything, he stepped into the crime scene. Emma's body was parallel to the walls, her head facing away from the stairs. As he walked toward her, Will's eyes kept going back to the handprint, the perfect formation of the palm and fingers. His gut roiled as he thought about what the guy had been doing when he left the impression.

Will stopped a few feet from the girl. "She was probably killed here," he told Paul, knowing from the pool of blood soaking into the carpet that the girl had not been moved. He crouched down by the body, resting his hands on his knees so that he wouldn't accidentally touch anything. Emma's shorts were bunched around one ankle, her feet bare. Her underwear and shirt had been yanked out of the way by her attacker. Teeth marks showed dark red against the white of her breasts. Scrapes and bruises trailed up the insides of her thighs, swollen welts showing the damage that had been done. She was thin, with shoulder-length blond hair like her mother and broad shoulders like her dad. There was no telling what she had looked like in life. Her face was beaten so severely that the skull had collapsed on itself, obscuring the eyes, the nose. The only point of reference was the mouth, which gaped open in a toothless, bloody hole.

Will checked on Paul. The man still stood frozen at the top of the stairs. His big, meaty hands were clasped in front of his chest like a nervous old woman waiting for bad news. Will didn't know what exactly he could see, if the distance softened some of the violence or made it worse.

Will told him, "She was beaten. I can see what looks like two knife wounds. One's just below her breast. The other is above her belly button."