Genesis (19 page)

"Ha-ha," Faith allowed. "Wouldn't Felix recognize Morgan if he
was the abductor?"

Will shrugged. Kids could block out anything. Adults weren't bad
at it, either.

Faith pointed out, "Neither of our two known victims has children.
Neither of them has been reported missing, as far as we know.
Jacquelyn Zabel's car is gone. We have no idea if Anna has a car, since
we don't even know her last name." Her tone was getting sharper as
she ticked off each dead end. "Or her first name. It could be something
other than Anna. Who knows what Sara heard?"

"I heard it," Will defended. "I heard her say "Anna."

Faith skipped over his response. "Do you still think there might
be two abductors?"

"I'm not sure about anything right now, except that whoever is
doing this is no amateur. His DNA is everywhere, which means he
probably doesn't have a criminal record he's worried about. We don't
have any clues because he didn't leave any. He's good at this. He
knows how to cover his tracks."

"A cop?"

Will let the question go unanswered.

Faith reasoned it out. "There's something he's doing that makes
women trust him—lets him get close enough to snatch them without
anyone seeing."

"The suit," Will said. "Women—men, too—are more likely to
trust a well-dressed stranger. It's a class judgement, but it's true."

"Great. We just need to round up all the men in Atlanta who were
wearing suits this morning." She held up her fingers, ticking off a
list. "No fingerprints on the trash bags found in either woman.
Nothing to trace on any of the items found in the cave. The bloody
print on Jacquelyn Zabel's driver's license belongs to Anna. We don't
know her last name. We don't know where she lived or worked or if
she has family." Faith had run out of fingers.

"The abductor obviously has a method. He's patient. He excavates
the cave, gets it ready for his captives. Like you said, he probably
watches the women before he abducts them. He's done this
before. Who knows how many times."

"Yeah, but his victims haven't lived to talk about it, or we'd have
something come up in the FBI database."

Will's desk phone rang, and Faith picked it up. "Mitchell." She
listened for a few beats, then took her notepad out of her purse.
She wrote in neat block letters, but Will was incapable of deciphering
the words. "Can you follow up on that?" She waited. "Great.
Call me on my cell."

She hung up the phone. "That was Leo. The prints came back
from Pauline McGhee's SUV. Her real name is Pauline Agnes
Seward. She had a missing persons report filed in Ann Arbor,
Michigan, back in '89. She was seventeen. According to the report,
her parents said there was some kind of argument that set things
off. She was off the straight and narrow—doing drugs, sleeping
around. Her prints were on file because of a shoplifting rap she
pleaded
nolo
on. The locals made a cursory search, put her in the database,
but this is the first hit they've had in twenty years."

"That jibes with what Morgan said. Pauline told him she ran away
from home when she was seventeen. What about the brother?"

"Nothing came up. Leo's going to do a deeper background
search." Faith put the pad back in her pocketbook. "He's trying to
track down the parents. Hopefully, they're still in Michigan."

"Seward doesn't sound like a common name."

"It's not," she agreed. "Something would've come up in the computer
if the brother was involved in a serious crime."

"Do we have an age range? A name?"

"Leo said he'd get back to us as soon as he found something."

Will sat back in his chair, leaned his head against the wall.
"Pauline still isn't part of our case. We don't have a pattern to match
her with."

"She looks like our other victims. No one likes her. She's not close
to anyone."

"She might be close to her brother," Will said. "Leo says Pauline
had Felix through a sperm donor, right? Maybe the brother is the
donor?"

Faith made a noise of disgust. "God, Will."

Her tone made him feel guilty for suggesting such a thing, but the
fact was their job was all about thinking of the worst things that
could happen. "Why else would Pauline warn her son that his uncle
is a bad man she needed to protect him from?"

Faith was reluctant to answer. Finally, she said, "Sexual abuse."

"I could be way off," he admitted. "Her brother could be a thief
or an embezzler or a drug addict. He could be a con."

"If a Seward had a record in Michigan, Leo would have already
pulled him up on the computer search."

"Maybe the brother's been lucky."

Faith shook her head. "Pauline was scared of him, didn't want her
son around him. That points to violence, or fear of violence."

"Like you said, if the brother was threatening or stalking her,
there'd be a report somewhere."

"Not necessarily. He's still her brother. People don't run to the
police when it's a family matter. You know that."

Will wasn't so sure, but she had a point about Leo's computer
search. "What would make you warn Jeremy away from your
brother?"

She gave it some thought. "I can't think of anything Zeke could
do that would make me tell Jeremy not to talk to him."

"What if he hit you?"

She opened her mouth to answer, then seemed to change her
mind. "It's not about whether I would put up with it—it's about
what Pauline would do." Faith was quiet, thinking. "Families are
complicated. People put up with a lot of shit because of blood."

"Blackmail?" Will knew he was grasping at straws, but he continued,
"Maybe the brother knew something bad about Pauline's past?
There has to be a reason she changed her name at seventeen. Fast forward
to now. Pauline has a lucrative job. She's good on her mortgage.
She drives a nice car. She'd probably be willing to pay a lot of money
to keep it that way."

Will shot down his own idea. "On the other hand, if the brother
is blackmailing her, he needs her to keep working. There's no reason
to take her."

"It's not like she's being held for ransom. Nobody cares that she's
gone."

Will shook his head. Another dead end.

Faith said, "Okay, maybe Pauline's not involved in our case.
Maybe she's got some kind of weird
Flowers in the Attic
thing going on
with her brother. What do we do now? Just sit around and wait for a
third—or fourth—woman to be taken?"

Will didn't know how to answer that. Fortunately, he didn't
have to.

Faith looked at her watch. "Let's go talk to the Coldfields."

* * *

THERE WERE CHILDREN
at the Fred Street Women's Shelter—
something Will hadn't anticipated, though of course it made sense
that homeless women would also have homeless children. A small
area at the front of the shelter was cordoned off for their play. Their
ages were varied, but he assumed they were all under the age of six,
because the older kids would be in school this time of day. All the
children were dressed in mismatched, faded clothes and playing with
toys that had seen better days: Barbie dolls with short haircuts,
Tonka toys with missing wheels. Will supposed he should have felt
sad for them, because watching them play was much like a scene from
his own childhood, but the exception here was that these kids had at
least one parent who was looking out for them, one connection to
the normal world.

"Good Lord," Faith mumbled, digging into her purse. There was
a jar for donations on the counter by the front entrance, and she
shoved in a couple of tens. "Who's watching these kids?"

Will looked down the hall. The walls were decorated with paper
Easter cut-outs and some of the childrens' drawings. He saw a closed
door with the symbol for a woman's restroom. "She's probably in the
toilet."

"Anyone could snatch them."

Will didn't think many people wanted these children. That was
part of the problem.

"Ring bell for service," Faith said, he supposed reading from the
sign below the bell, which even a monkey could have figured out.

Will reached over and rang the bell.

She said, "They do computer training here."

"What?"

Faith picked up one of the brochures on the counter. Will saw
pictures of smiling women and children on the front, a couple of
corporate logos that named the big-money sponsors along the bottom.
"Computer training, counseling, meals." Her eyes went back
and forth as she skimmed the text. "Medical counseling with a
Christian focus." She dropped the pamphlet back in with the others.
"I guess that means they tell you you're going to hell if you have an
abortion. Good advice for women who've already got one mouth
they can't afford to feed." She tapped the bell again, this time hard
enough to make it spin off the counter.

Will picked up the bell from the floor. When he stood, he found a
large Hispanic woman behind the counter, an infant in her arms. She
spoke in a distinctive Texas drawl, her words directed toward Faith.
"If you're here to arrest someone, we ask that you don't do it in front
of the children."

"We're here to talk to Judith Coldfield," Faith replied, keeping
her voice low, mindful that the kids were not only watching but had
guessed her occupation just like the woman.

"Walk around the side of the building to the store front. Judith's
working retail today." She didn't wait for a thank you. Instead, she
turned back around with the child and went back down the hallway.

Faith pushed open the door, heading out into the street again.
"These places annoy the hell out of me."

Will thought a homeless shelter was a strange thing to hate, even
for Faith. "Why is that?"

"Just help them. Don't make them pray about it."

"Some people find solace in prayer."

"What if they don't? Then they're not worthy of being helped?
You may be homeless and starving to death, but you can't have a free
meal or a safe place to sleep unless you agree that abortion is an
abomination and that other people have the right to tell you what to
do with your body?"

Will wasn't sure how to answer her, so he just followed her
around the side of the brick building, watching her angrily hitch her
purse up on her shoulder. She was still mumbling when they
rounded the corner to the storefront. There was a large sign out front
that probably had the name of the shelter on it. The economy was
bad for everybody these days, but especially for charities who depended
on people feeling flush enough to help their fellow man.
Many of the local shelters took in donations that they sold in order to
help pay for basic operations. Window lettering advertised various
items inside the store. Faith read them off as they walked to the entrance.

"'House wares, linens, clothes, donations welcome, free pickup
for larger items.'"

Will opened the door, willing her to shut up.

"'Open every day but Sunday.' 'No dogs allowed.'"

"I got it," he told her, glancing around the store. Blenders were
lined up on a shelf, toasters and small microwaves underneath. There
were some clothes on racks, mostly the kind of styles that were very
popular during the eighties. Canned soups and various pantry staples
were stored away from the sun streaming in through the windows.
Will's stomach grumbled, and he remembered sorting cans of food
that came into the orphanage over the holidays. Nobody ever gave
the good stuff. It was usually Spam and pickled beets, just the sort of
thing every kid wanted for Christmas dinner.

Faith had found another sign. "'All donations are tax deductible.
Proceeds go directly to help homeless women and children. God
blesses those who bless others.'"

He realized that his jaw was aching from clenching his teeth so
hard. Luckily, he didn't have to dwell on the pain for long. A man
popped up from behind the counter like Mr. Drucker from
Green
Acres
. "How y'all doin'?"

Faith's hand flew to her chest. "Who the hell are you?"

The man blushed so hard that Will could almost feel the heat
coming off his face. "Sorry, ma'am." He wiped his hand on the front
of his T-shirt. Black finger marks showed where he had done this
many times before. "Tom Coldfield. I'm helping my mom with . . ."
He indicated the floor behind the counter. Will saw he was working
on a push-style lawnmower. The engine was partially disassembled.
It looked like he was trying to put on a new fan belt, which hardly
explained why the carburetor was on the floor.

Will told him, "There's a nut on the—"

Faith interrupted. "I'm Special Agent Faith Mitchell. This is my
partner Will Trent. We're here to meet with Judith and Henry
Coldfield. I assume you're related?"

"My folks," the man explained, a prominent pair of buckteeth
sticking out as he smiled at Faith. "They're in the back. Dad's kind of
unhappy about missing his golf game." He seemed to realize how inconsequential
this seemed to them. "Sorry, I know what happened to
that woman was awful. It's just that—well—they told that other detective
everything that happened."

Faith kept up her sweet side. "I'm sure they won't mind telling us
again."

Tom Coldfield seemed to disagree, but he motioned for them to
follow him to the back room anyway. Will let Faith go ahead of him,
and they all had to pick their way around boxes and various piles of
items that had been donated to the shelter. Will guessed Tom
Coldfield had been athletic at one point in his life, but his early thirties
had beaten that out of him, giving a round spread to his waist and
a stoop to his shoulders. There was a bald spot on the crown of his
head, almost like a tonsure that a Franciscan monk would sport.
Without even asking, Will guessed that Tom Coldfield had a couple
of kids. He looked like a textbook soccer dad. He probably drove a
minivan and played online fantasy football.