Genesis (31 page)

What had Olivia Tanner's life been like? Faith had worked
missing persons cases before. The key to finding out what happened
to the women—they were all usually women—was to try to put
yourself in their shoes. What were their likes and dislikes? Who were
their friends? What was so awful about their boyfriend/husband/
lover that made them want to pick up and leave?

With Olivia, there were no clues, no emotional anchors to
pounce on. The woman lived in a lifeless house without a comfortable
chair to sink into at the end of the day. All her plates and bowls
were unscratched, unchipped and looked unused. Even the coffee
cups were sparkling at the bottom. How could Faith relate to a
woman who lived in a perfectly kept white box?

Faith returned to the kitchen cabinets, again finding nothing out
of place. Even what she would've considered the junk drawer was
neat—screwdrivers in a plastic case, hammer resting on a ball of
twine. Faith ran her finger along the inside seam of the cabinet, finding
no grit or dirt. There was something to be said for a woman who
dusted her kitchen cabinets inside and out.

Faith opened the bottom drawer and found an oversized envelope
like the kind used for mailing photographs. She opened the top and
found a stack of glossy pages that had been neatly cut from magazines.
All of them showed models in various stages of undress, no
matter whether they were selling perfume or gold watches. These
weren't the usual women you found in sweater sets and pearls as they
cheerily dusted their houses and cleaned up after adorable children.
These models were meant to convey sex, wantonness, and, above all,
thinness.

Faith had seen some of these bone-thin models before. She
skimmed the pages of
Cosmo
and
Vogue
and
Elle
just like every other
person who ever waited in line at the grocery store, but seeing these
anorexic women now, knowing that Olivia Tanner had chosen
these pictures not because she wanted to remember to buy a new eye
shadow or lip gloss, but because she considered the airbrushed skeletons
an attainable goal, made Faith feel sick to her stomach.

She thought again about Michael Tanner's words, the torture his
sister had put herself through in order to be thin. She couldn't figure
out why Will was so certain the woman had been trying to protect
her brother. It seemed unlikely that a man who raped his daughter
would go after his son, but Faith had been a cop too long to believe
criminals followed a logical pattern. Despite her own teenage pregnancy,
the Mitchell family was fairly normal. There were no abusive
alcoholics or sex-crazed uncles. In matters of severe childhood dysfunction,
she always deferred to Will.

He had never outright confirmed anything, but she guessed that
he had suffered a great deal of abuse as a child. His upper lip had obviously
been busted open and not allowed to heal properly. The faint
scar running down the side of his jaw and going into his collar looked
old, the type of thing you got as a kid and lived with for the rest of
your life. She had worked with Will during the hottest months of the
summer and never seen him roll up his shirtsleeves or even loosen his
tie. His question about how Olivia Tanner punished herself was especially
revealing. Faith often thought that Angie Polaski was a punishment
that Will continually brought down on himself.

She heard footsteps on the stairs. Will entered the kitchen, shaking
his head. "I hit the redial on the upstairs phone. I got the
brother's answering machine in Houston."

There was a book in his hand. "What's that?"

He handed her the slim novel, which had a library band on the
spine. The jacket showed a naked woman sitting on her haunches.
She was wearing high heels, but the pose was more artistic than
kinky, sending the distinct message that this was literature, not trash.
So, not the type of book Faith would ever read. She skimmed the
back copy and told Will, "It's about a woman who's a diabetic meth
addict and her abusive father."

"A love story." He guessed the title. "Expose?"

He was close enough. Faith had figured out that he generally read
the first three letters of a word and guessed the rest. More often than
not, he was right, but odd words threw him off.

She put the book face-down on the counter. "Did you find a computer?"

"No computer. No diary. No calendar." He opened drawers,
finding the television remote. He turned on the set, tilting the screen
toward him. "This is the only TV in the house."

"There isn't one in the bedroom?"

"No." Will flipped through the channels, finding the usual digital
offerings. "She doesn't have cable. There's not a DSL modem on the
junction box in the basement."

"So, she doesn't have high-speed internet," Faith surmised.
"Maybe she uses dial-up. She could have a laptop at work."

"Or someone could've taken it."

"Or she just keeps her work at the office. Her brother says she's on
the job from sunup till sundown."

He turned off the television. "Did you find anything down
here?"

"Aspirin," Faith said, indicating the bottles in the pantry. "What
did you mean about Olivia protecting Michael?"

"It's what we were talking about at Pauline's. Did your parents
have much time for your brother when you got into trouble?"

Faith shook her head, realizing what he said made perfect sense.
Olivia had drawn all the negative attention away from her brother so
that he could have some semblance of a life. No wonder the man was
racked with guilt. He was a survivor.

Will was looking out the back window, up at the seemingly
vacant house behind Olivia's. "Those curtains on the door are bothering
me."

Faith joined him by the window. He was right. All the blinds
were closed on the back windows except for the curtains that hung
open on the basement doors.

Faith raised her voice. "Dr. Tanner, we're going to step outside a
minute. We'll be right back."

"All right," the man returned.

His voice still sounded shaky, so Faith added, "We haven't found
anything yet. We're still just looking."

She waited. There was no response.

Will held open the back door and they both walked onto the
deck.

He said, "Her clothes are all size two. Is that normal?"

"I wish," Faith mumbled, then realized what she had said. "It's
thin, but it's not horrible."

She scanned Olivia Tanner's backyard again. Like most in-town
lots, it was barely more than a quarter of an acre, fences delineating
the property lines and telephone poles springing up every two hundred
feet. Faith followed Will down the deck stairs. Olivia's yard was
cordoned off by an expensive-looking cedar fence. The boards were
flat, the supports on the outside. She asked, "Does this look new to
you?"

He shook his head. "It's been pressure-washed. Fresh cedar is
more red than that."

They reached the back of the property and stopped. There were
marks on the cedar planks. Deep scratches running up the center.
Will leaned down, saying, "It looks like someone did this with their
feet, probably trying to get over."

Faith glanced up at Olivia Tanner's backyard neighbor again. "It
looks vacant to me. You think it's a foreclosure?"

"Only one way to find out." Will went to a different section of
the fence and started to lift himself up and over before realizing that
Faith was with him. "Do you want to wait for me here? Or we could
walk around."

"Do I look that pathetic to you?" She grabbed the top of the
fence. They had done this sort of thing at the police academy, but
that was several years ago, and hadn't been in a skirt. Faith pretended
not to notice when Will gave her an assist from behind, just as she
hoped he would pretend not to notice that she was wearing her powder
blue granny underwear.

Somehow, she managed to scramble to the other side. Will made
sure she was clear, then bolted the fence like a ten-year-old Chinese
gymnast.

"Show-off," she mumbled, making her way up the steep hill
toward the empty house. The basement was a wall of windows onto
the backyard with French doors at either end. As she got closer, she
could see that one of the doors was open. The wind picked up, and a
piece of white curtain flapped outside in the breeze.

"This can't be this easy," Will said, obviously thinking what Faith
was thinking:
Was their suspect hiding inside? Was this where he was keeping
his victims?

Will walked toward the house with a determined gait.

She asked, "Should I call for backup?"

Will didn't seem concerned. He pushed open the door with his elbow
and poked his head inside.

"Ever hear of probable cause?"

"Do you hear that noise?" he asked, even though they both knew
that he hadn't heard a thing. Legally, they couldn't go into a private
home without a search warrant or threat of imminent danger.

Faith turned around, looking back at Olivia Tanner's house. The
woman obviously did not believe in window coverings. From Faith's
vantage point, she could see clear through to the kitchen and what
must have been Olivia's bedroom. "We should call for a warrant."

Will was already inside. Faith cursed him under her breath as she
took her gun out of her purse. She went into the basement, stepping
carefully onto the white Berber carpet. The basement was finished,
probably a media room at one time. There was a pool table and a wet
bar. Wires stuck out of the wall where a home theater system had
been. Will was nowhere to be seen. "Idiot," she mumbled, taking another
step inside, pressing back the door until it was flat against the
wall. She listened, her ears straining so hard that she felt a phantom
pain from the effort.

"Will?" she whispered. There was no answer, and Faith ventured
farther, her heart pounding in her chest. She leaned over the wet bar,
looking behind the counter and seeing an empty box and a soda can
on its side. There was a closet behind her, the door partially open.
Faith used the muzzle of her gun to open it wide.

"It's empty," Will said, rounding a corner and scaring the shit out
of her.

"What the hell are you doing?" Faith snapped. "He could've been
in here."

Will didn't seem fazed. "We need to find out who has access to
this house. Realtors. Contractors. Anyone interested in buying the
house." He took a pair of latex gloves out of his pocket and checked
the lock on the French door. "There's tooling marks here. Someone
picked the lock." He walked over to the windows, which were covered
in cheap plastic blinds. One of the blades was bent back. Will
twisted open the plastic wand, letting natural light flood in. He
squatted down and studied the floor.

Faith put her gun back into her purse. Her heart was still beating
like a snare drum. "Will, you scared the crap out of me. Don't walk
into a house like that without me with you."

"You can't have it both ways."

"What does that mean?" she demanded, though she figured it out
before the question left her mouth. He was trying to be more aggressive
to please her.

"Look." He motioned her over. "Footprints."

Faith could see a reddish outline of a pair of shoes on the flat surface
of the carpet. One of the great things about living in Georgia
was the red clay that stuck to every surface, whether it was wet or
dry. She glanced out the window, past the broken blade on the
blinds. Olivia's house was on full display.

Will said, "You were right. He's been watching them. He follows
them, learns their routines, knows who they are." He walked behind
the wet bar, opening and closing cabinet doors. "Someone used this
Coke can as an ashtray."

"Movers, probably."

He opened the refrigerator. She heard glass rattling. "Doc
Peterson's Root Beer." He had probably recognized the logo.

"We should get out of here before we contaminate the scene any
more than we already have."

Thankfully, Will seemed to agree. He followed Faith outside,
pulling the door back to where they'd found it.

She said, "This feels different."

"How so?"

"I don't know," she admitted. "We didn't find anything at Jackie's
mother's house or Pauline's work. Leo searched her house. There was
nothing there. Our guy doesn't leave clues, so why do we have a pair
of shoe prints? Why was the door left open?"

"He lost his first two victims. Anna and Jackie escaped. Maybe
Olivia Tanner was in the pipeline. Maybe he had to move her ahead
to replace them."

"Who would know this house was vacant?"

"Anybody who was paying attention."

Faith looked back at Olivia's house and saw Michael Tanner
standing on the back porch. The thought of wrangling her ass over
that fence again was not a welcome one.

Will said, "I'll go. You walk around."

She shook her head, walking back down the yard with a determined
gait. The fence would be easier from this side, since the supports
were facing out. There was a long two-by-four down the
middle that acted as a step, and Faith was able to lift herself over with
less assistance than before. Will did another swoop, vaulting over
with one hand.

Michael Tanner stood at the back door of his sister's house, hands
clasped together as he watched them approach. "Is something
wrong?"

"Nothing we can share with you right now," Faith told him. "I'm
going to need you to—"

Her foot slipped out from under her as she stepped on the bottom
stair. A comical noise close to a
woof
came out of her mouth, but
there was nothing funny about the way Faith felt. Her vision went
crazy for a few seconds, her head spinning. Without thinking, her
hand went to her stomach and all she could think about was what
was growing inside.

"You okay?" Will asked. He was kneeling beside her, his hand
cupping the back of her head.