Genesis (32 page)

Michael Tanner was on her other side. "Just breathe very slowly
until you catch your breath." His hands went down her spine, and
she was about to slap him away before she remembered he was a doctor.
"Slow breaths. In and out."

Faith tried to do as he said. She had been panting for no apparent
reason.

Will asked, "Are you okay?"

She nodded, thinking maybe she was. "Just knocked the breath
out of me," she managed. "Help me up."

Will's hand went under her arms, and she realized how strong he
was as he easily lifted her to standing. "You've got to stop falling
down like this."

"I'm such an idiot." She still had her hand on her stomach. Faith
made herself move it away. She stood there, silent, listening for
something inside her body, trying to feel a twinge or a spasm that
might indicate something was wrong. She felt nothing, heard nothing.
But was she okay?

"What's this?" Will asked, pulling something out of her hair. He
held up a piece of confetti between his thumb and forefinger.

Faith ran her fingers through her hair, looked behind her. She saw
tiny pieces of confetti in the grass.

"Dammit," Will cursed. "I saw one of these on Felix's book bag.
It's not confetti. These are from a Taser."

S
ARA HAD NO IDEA WHY SHE WAS AT GRADY ON HER DAY OFF
.
She'd only gotten through half her laundry, the kitchen was barely
functional, and the bathroom was in such a sorry state that she felt a
rush of shame every time she thought about it.

Yet, here she was, back at the hospital, climbing the stairs up to
the sixteenth floor so that no one would see her as she made her way
to ICU.

She felt responsible for not doing a more thorough examination
on Anna when the woman was first brought into the emergency
room. X-rays, MRIs, ultrasounds, body scans. Almost every surgeon
in the hospital had laid hands on the woman and they had all missed
the eleven trash bags. The CDC had even been called in to culture the
infection and had come up empty-handed. Anna had been tortured,
cut, torn—damaged in countless ways that would not heal because
the plastic was inside of her. When Sara removed the bags, the stench
had filled the room. The woman was starting to rot from the inside.
It was a wonder she hadn't gone into toxic shock.

Logically, Sara knew this was not her fault, but in her gut, she felt
that she had done something wrong. All morning as she folded
clothes and scrubbed dishes, her mind wandered back to two nights
ago when Anna was brought in. Sara saw herself fashioning an alternate
reality where she was able to do more than hand the woman off
to the next doctor. She had to remind herself that even unbending
the woman to do X-rays had caused her excruciating pain. Sara's job
had been to stabilize the woman for surgery, not do a full gynecological
exam.

And yet, she still felt guilty.

Sara stopped at the sixth-floor landing, slightly winded. She was
probably the most fit she had ever been in her life, but the treadmill
and elliptical machine at her gym were hardly good preparation for
real life. Back in January, she had vowed that she would run outside
at least once a week. The gym near her building, with its televisions
and treadmills and temperature-controlled atmosphere, negated one
of the key benefits of running: time alone with yourself. Of course,
it was easy to say you wanted time alone with yourself and quite another
thing to actually do it. January had passed into February, and
now they were already in April, yet this morning was the first time
Sara had taken an outside run since she'd made the promise.

She grabbed the railing and heaved herself up the next flight. By
the tenth floor, her thighs were burning. By the sixteenth, she had to
stop and bend over to catch her breath so the ICU nurses didn't think
a madwoman was in their midst.

She tucked her hand in her pocket for some Chapstick, then
stopped herself. A flash of panic filled her chest as she checked her
other pockets. The letter was not there. She had been carrying it forever,
a talisman that she touched every time she thought about
Jeffrey. It always brought a reminder of the hateful woman who had
written it, the person who had been responsible for his murder, and
now it was gone.

Sara's mind raced as she tried to remember where she left it. Had
she washed it with the rest of the laundry? Her heart leapt into her
throat at the thought. She scanned her memory, finally recalling that
she'd put the letter down on the kitchen counter yesterday when
she'd gotten home from Jacquelyn Zabel's autopsy.

Her mouth opened, a sharp huff of air coming out. The letter was
at home. She'd moved it this morning to the mantel, which seemed
an odd place to put it. Jeffrey's wedding ring was there, the urn with
some of his ashes beside it. The two things should not be together.
What had she been thinking?

The door opened, and a nurse came out with a pack of cigarettes
in her hand. Sara recognized Jill Marino, the ICU nurse who had
been taking care of Anna the morning before.

Jill asked, "Isn't today your day off ?"

Sara shrugged. "Can't get enough of this place. How is she?"

"Infection's responding to antibiotics. Good catch on that. If you
hadn't taken out those bags, she'd be dead by now."

Sara nodded off the compliment, thinking if she'd seen them in
the first place, Anna would have had much more of a fighting chance.

"They took out the breathing tube around five." Jill held open the
door for Sara to pass through. "Brain scan results came back.
Everything looked good except for the damage to the optic nerve.
That's permanent. Ears are fine, so at least she can still hear.
Everything else is fine. No reason she's not waking up." She seemed
to realize the woman had plenty of reasons not to wake up, and
added, "Well, you know what I mean."

"Are you off ?"

Jill guiltily indicated the cigarettes. "Up to the roof to ruin the
fresh air."

"Should I waste my breath and tell you those things will kill
you?"

"Working here will kill me first," the nurse countered, and with
that, she began a slow trudge up the stairs.

Two cops still guarded Anna's room. Not the same as the day before,
but they still both tipped their hats to Sara. One even pulled
back the curtain for her. She smiled her thanks as she went into the
room. There was a beautiful arrangement of flowers on the table by
the wall. Sara checked them and found no card.

She sat in the chair and wondered about the flowers. Probably
someone had checked out of the hospital and given the flowers to the
nurses to distribute as they saw fit. They looked fresh, though, as if
they'd just been plucked this morning from someone's backyard garden.
Maybe Faith had sent them. Sara quickly dismissed the thought.
Faith Mitchell didn't strike her as particularly sentimental. Nor was
she very smart—at least not about her health. Sara had called Delia
Wallace's office that morning. Faith had yet to make an appointment.
She would be running out of insulin soon. She'd either have to risk
another fainting spell or come back to Sara.

She leaned her arms on Anna's bed, staring at the woman's face.
Without the tube down her throat, it was easier to see what she had
looked like before all of this had happened. The bruises on her face
were starting to heal, which meant they looked worse than the day
before. Her skin was a healthier shade now, but it was swollen from
all the fluids they were giving her. The malnourishment was so pronounced
that it would take several weeks before her bones receded
under a healthy layer of flesh.

Sara took the woman's hand, feeling her skin. It was still dry. She
found a bottle of lotion in a zippered bag by the flowers. It was the
usual kit they gave out at the hospital, filled with the things some administrative
committee thought patients might need—slip-proof
socks, lip balm, and lotion that smelled faintly of antiseptic.

Sara squirted some into her palm and rubbed her hands together
to warm the lotion before taking Anna's frail hand in her own. She
could feel each bone of the finger, the knuckles like marbles. Anna's
skin was so dry that the lotion disappeared almost as soon as Sara put
it on, and she was squirting more into her palms when Anna stirred.

"Anna?" Sara touched the side of the woman's face with a firm,
reassuring pressure.

Her head moved just slightly. People in comas did not just magically
wake up. It was a process, usually a drawn-out one. One day,
they might open their eyes. They might speak without making sense,
picking up on some conversation started long ago.

"Anna?" Sara repeated, trying to keep her voice calm. "I need you
to wake up now."

Her head moved again, a distinct tilt toward Sara.

Sara made her voice firm. "I know it's hard, sweetie, but I need
you to wake up." Anna's eyes slit open, and Sara stood, putting herself
directly in her line of vision even though she knew that the
woman could not see her. "Wake up, Anna. You're safe now. No one
is going to hurt you."

Her mouth moved, the lips so dry and chapped that the skin
broke.

"I'm here," Sara said. "I can hear you, sweetie. Try to wake up for
me."

Anna's breath quickened in fear. What had happened was starting
to dawn on the woman—the agony she had endured, the fact that she
could not see.

"You're in the hospital. I know you can't see, but you can hear
me. You're safe. Two police officers are right outside your door. No
one is going to hurt you."

Anna's hand trembled as it reached up, fingers brushing against
Sara's arm. Sara grabbed her hand, held on to it as firmly as she could
without causing more pain. "You're safe now," Sara promised her.
"No one else is going to hurt you."

Suddenly, Anna's grip tightened, squeezing Sara's hand so tightly
that it brought a sharp, shooting pain as the bones crunched together.

The woman was fully alert, wide awake. "Where is my son?"

W
HEN YOU PULLED THE TRIGGER ON A TASER, TWO HOOKED
probes were propelled by an inert nitrogen gas, shooting them out at
about 160 per second. In civilian units, fifteen feet of insulated, conductive
wire facilitated fifty thousand volts being delivered to
whomever the probes latched onto. The electrical pulses interrupted
sensory and motor function as well as the central nervous system.
Will had been shot with a Taser during a training session. He still
could not remember the time frame immediately before or after the
charge hit him, only that Amanda had been the one to pull the trigger
and she had been sporting an incredibly pleased grin when he had
finally been able to stand up.

Like bullets in a gun, the Taser devices required cartridges that
were preloaded with the wires and probes. Because the Constitutional
Framers were unable to predict the existence of such a device,
there was no inalienable right attached to owning a Taser. Some
bright thinker had managed to insert one codicil into their manufacture:
All Taser cartridges had to be loaded with AFIDS, or Anti-Felon
Identification Dots, that scattered out by the hundreds each
time a cartridge was fired. At first glance, these small dots looked like
confetti. The design was on purpose; the tiny pieces were so vast in
number that it was impossible for a perpetrator to pick them all up to
cover his trail. The beauty was that, under magnification, the confetti
revealed a serial number that identified which cartridge they came
from. Because Taser International wanted to keep the legal community
on their side, they had enacted their own tracing program. All
you had to do was call them up with the serial number from one of
the dots and they would give you the name and address of the person
who had purchased the cartridge.

Faith was on hold for less than three minutes when the company
came back with a name.

"Shit," she whispered, then, realizing she was still on the phone,
she added, "No. Thank you. That's all I need." She closed her cell
phone as she reached down to crank the key in the Mini's ignition.
"The Taser cartridge was purchased by Pauline Seward. The address
listed is the vacant house behind Olivia Tanner's place."

"How were the cartridges paid for?"

"With an American Express gift card. No name on the card. It's
untraceable." She gave him a meaningful glance. "The cartridges
were purchased two months ago, which means he's been watching
Olivia Tanner for at least that long. And, since he used Pauline's
name, we have to assume that he was planning on taking her, too."

"The vacant house is owned by the bank—not the one where
Olivia works." Will had called the number on the realtor's sign in the
front yard while Faith was dealing with Taser. "It's been empty almost
a year. No one's looked at it in six months."

Faith turned, backing out of the driveway. Will raised his hand at
Michael Tanner, who was sitting in his Ford Escape, hands gripping
the wheel.

Will said, "I didn't recognize the Taser dots in Felix's bookbag."

"Why would you? It was confetti on a kid's satchel. You need a
magnifying glass to read the serial numbers." She added, "If you
want to blame someone, blame the Atlanta Police for not picking up
on it at the scene. Their forensic guys were there. They must have
vacuumed the carpets in the car. They just haven't processed it yet
because a missing woman isn't a priority."

"The address for the cartridge would have led us to the house behind
Olivia Tanner's."

"Olivia Tanner was already missing when you saw Felix's bookbag."
She repeated, "The Atlanta Police processed the scene. They're
the ones who screwed up." Faith's phone rang. She checked the caller
ID and decided not to answer it. She laid it out for him. "Besides,
knowing the Taser dots in Felix's bag are from the same lot as the
dots we found in Olivia Tanner's backyard hasn't exactly given us a
huge break. All it tells us is that our bag guy has been planning this
for a while and that he's good at covering his tracks. We knew that
when we got up this morning."

Will thought they knew a lot more than that. They had a link
now that tied the women together. "We've got Pauline connected to
the other victims—'I will not deny myself ' ties her to Anna and
Jackie, and the Taser dots tie her to Olivia." He thought about it for
a few seconds, wondering what else he was missing.

Faith was on the same page. "Let's go through this from the beginning.
What do we have?"

"Pauline and Olivia were both taken yesterday. Both women
were shot with the same Taser cartridge."

"Pauline, Jackie and Olivia all had eating disorders. We're assuming
Anna does, too, right?"

Will shrugged. It wasn't a big leap, but it was an unknown. "Yeah,
let's assume."

"None of the women had friends who would miss them. Jackie
had the neighbor, Candy, but Candy wasn't exactly a confidant. All
three are attractive, thin, with dark hair, dark eyes. All three worked
in well-paid jobs."

"All of them lived in Atlanta except for Jackie," Will said, throwing
out a flag. "So, how did Jackie get targeted? She'd only been in
Atlanta a week, tops, just to clean out her mother's house."

"She must have come up before then to help move her mother to
the nursing home in Florida," Faith guessed. "And we're forgetting
the chat room. They could've all met there."

"Olivia didn't have a computer at home."

"She could've had a laptop that was stolen."

Will scratched his arm, thinking about that first night in the cave,
all the maddening non-clues they had followed up on since, all the
brick walls they kept hitting. "This feels like it all starts with
Pauline."

"She was the fourth victim." Faith considered the situation. "He
could've been saving the best for last."

"Pauline wasn't taken from her home like we assume the other
women were. She was taken in broad daylight. Her kid was in the car.
She was missed at work because she had an important meeting. The
other women weren't missed by anyone except for Olivia, and there
was no way to know that Olivia made that phone call every day to
her brother unless our bad guy tapped her phone, which he obviously
didn't."

"What about Pauline's brother?" Faith asked. "I keep coming
back to the fact that she was scared enough about him to mention
him to her son. We can't find a record of him anywhere. He could
have changed his name like Pauline did when she was seventeen."

Will listed all the men who had come up during the investigation.
"Henry Coldfield is too old and has a heart problem. Rick Sigler has
lived in Georgia all his life. Jake Berman—who knows?"

Faith tapped her fingers on the steering wheel, deep in thought.
Finally, she came up with, "Tom Coldfield."

"He's around your age. He would've been barely pubescent when
Pauline ran away."

"You're right," she conceded. "Besides, the Air Force psych evaluation
would have flagged him up big-time."

"Michael Tanner," Will suggested. "He's the right age."

"I've got a background check running on him. They would've
called if something hit."

"Morgan Hollister."

"They're running him, too," Faith said. "He didn't seem really
cut up about Pauline being gone."

"Felix said that the man who took his mother was dressed in a suit
like Morgan from work."

"Surely, Felix would've recognized Morgan?"

"In a fake mustache?" Will shook his head. "I don't know. Let's
keep Morgan on the list. We can talk to him at the end of the day if
nothing else has come up."

"He's old enough to be her brother, but why would she work
with him if he was?"

"People do stupid things when they're being abused," Will reminded
her. "We need to check with Leo and see what he's come up
with. He was working the Michigan police, trying to track down
Pauline's parents. She ran away from home. Who did she run away
from?"

"The brother." Faith said, bringing them back full circle. Her
phone rang again. She let it go into voicemail before opening it and
dialing in a number. "I'll see where Leo is. He's probably out in the
field."

Will offered, "I'll call Amanda and tell her we need to formally
take over the Pauline McGhee case." He opened his phone just as the
stutter of a ring came out. Since the phone had been broken, it had
been doing unusual things. Will pressed his ear to the device, saying,
"Hello?"

"Hey." Her voice was cool, casual, like warm honey in his ear. His
mind flashed on the image of the mole on her calf, the way he could
feel it under his palm when he ran his hand up her leg. "You there?"

Will glanced at Faith, feeling a cold sweat break out over his body.
"Yeah."

"Long time."

He glanced at Faith again. "Yeah," he repeated. About eight
months had passed since he had come home from work to find
Angie's toothbrush missing from the cup in the bathroom.

She asked, "What're you up to?"

Will swallowed, trying to generate some spit. "Working a case."

"That's good. I figured you were busy."

Faith had finished her call. She was looking at the road ahead, but
if she had been a cat, her ear would've been cocked in his direction.

He told Angie, "I guess this is about your friend?"

"Lola's got some good intel."

"That's not really my side of the job," he told her. The GBI didn't
start cases. They finished them.

"Some pimp's turned a penthouse into a drug pad. They've got all
kinds of shit lying around like candy. Talk to Amanda about it. She'll
look good on the six o'clock news standing in front of all that dope."

Will tried to concentrate on what she was saying. There was just
the whir of the Mini's engine and Faith's ever-listening ear.

"You there, baby?"

He said, "Not interested."

"Just pass it on forme. It's the penthouse in an apartment building
called Twenty-one Beeston Place. The name is the same as the address.
Twenty-one Beeston."

"I can't help you with that."

"Repeat it back to me so I know you'll remember it."

Will's hands were sweating so much that he worried the phone
might slip from his grasp. "Twenty-one Beeston Place."

"I'll owe you one."

He couldn't resist. "You owe me a million." But it was too late.
She had already hung up the phone. Will kept it to his ear, then said,
"All right. Bye," like he was having a normal conversation with a
normal person. To make matters worse, the phone slipped as he tried
to close it, the string finally ripping out from under the duct tape.
Wires he had never seen before jutted out of the back of the phone.

He heard Faith's mouth open, the smacking of her lips. He told
her, "Leave it be."

She closed her mouth, kept her hands tight on the wheel as she
made a turn against the light. "I called central dispatch. Leo's on
North Avenue. Double homicide."

The car sped up as Faith blew through a light. Will loosened his
tie, thinking it was warm in the car. His arms were starting to itch
again. He felt light-headed.

"I'll try to get Amanda to—"

"Angie was calling in a tip." The words flooded out before he
could stop them. His mind raced to think of a way to get out of saying
more, but his mouth hadn't gotten the memo to shut up. "Some
Buckhead penthouse has been turned into a drug den."

"Oh" was all Faith offered.

"She's got this girl she used to know back when she worked vice.
A prostitute. Lola. She wants out of jail. She's willing to flip on the
dealers."

"Is it a good tip?"

Will could only shrug. "Probably."

"Are you going to help her?"

He shrugged again.

"Angie's an ex-cop. Doesn't she know somebody in narcotics?"

Will let her figure it out. Angie wasn't exactly good at leaving
bridges unburned. She tended to light them with glee, then throw
gasoline on the flames.

Faith obviously reached the same conclusion. She offered, "I can
make some calls for you. No one will know you're involved."

He tried to swallow, but his mouth was still too dry. He hated
that Angie had this effect on him. He hated it even more that Faith
was getting a front-row seat to his misery. He asked, "What did Leo
say?"

"He's not answering his phone, probably because he knows it's me
calling." As if on cue, her phone rang again. Faith checked the ID
and again didn't answer it. Will figured he didn't have a right to ask
her what that was about, considering he'd put a moratorium on discussions
of his own phone calls.

He cleared his throat a few times so he could speak without
sounding like a pubescent boy. "A Taser gun means distance. He
would've used a stun gun on them if he was able to get close
enough."

Faith returned to their original conversation. "What else have we
got?" she asked. "We're waiting for DNA results from Jacquelyn
Zabel. We're waiting to hear back from the tech department on
Zabel's laptop and the computer from Pauline's office. We're waiting
to hear back on any forensic evidence from the vacant house behind
Olivia's."

Will heard a distinct buzzing, and Faith pulled out her
BlackBerry. She drove with one hand as she read the screen. "Phone
dump on Olivia Tanner's line." She scrolled through. "One number
every morning around seven o'clock to Houston, Texas."

"Seven our time is six Houston time," Will said. "That's the only
number she called?"

Faith nodded. "Going back for months. She probably used her
cell for most of her calls." She tucked the BlackBerry back in her
pocket. "Amanda's working on a warrant for the bank. They were
nice enough to cross-reference their accounts for our missing
women's names—no matches—but they're not going to give us access
to Olivia's computer, phone or email without a fight. Something
about federal banking law. We have to get into that chat room."