Genesis (7 page)

Sara asked, "Have you had anything to eat since we talked?"

Faith shook her head, looking down at the doctor's food selection:
a scrawny piece of baked chicken on a leaf of wilted lettuce and
something that may or may not have been a vegetable. Sara used her
plastic fork and knife to cut into the piece of chicken. At least she
tried to cut into it. In the end, it was more like a tearing. She moved
the roll off her bread plate and passed Faith the chicken.

"Thanks," Faith managed, thinking that the fudge brownies she
had spotted when she walked in were much more appetizing.

Sara asked, "Are you officially on the case?"

Faith was surprised by the question, but then again, Sara had
worked on the victim; she was bound to be curious. "Will managed
to snag it for us." She checked the signal on her cell phone, wondering
why he hadn't called yet.

"I'm sure the locals were very happy to step aside."

Faith laughed, thinking Sara's husband had probably been a good
cop. Faith was a good cop, too, and she knew that it was one in the
morning and Sara had said six hours ago that she was at the end of her
shift. Faith studied the doctor. Sara had the unmistakable glow of an
adrenaline junkie. The woman was here for information.

Sara offered, "I checked on Henry Coldfield, the driver." She
hadn't eaten anything yet, but then she had come into the cafeteria to
find Faith, not choke down a piece of chicken that had hatched just as
Nixon was resigning. "The air bag bruised his chest, and the wife
took a couple of stitches in her head, but they're both fine."

"That's actually what I'm waiting on." Faith checked the clock
again. "They were supposed to meet me down here."

Sara looked confused. "They left at least half an hour ago with
their son."

"What?"

"I saw them all talking to that detective with the greasy hair."

"Motherfucker." No wonder Max Galloway had looked so smug
when he left the cafeteria. "Sorry," she told Sara. "One of the locals
is smarter than I thought. He played me like a violin."

"Coldfield is an unusual name," Sara said. "I'm sure they're in the
phone book."

Faith hoped so, because she didn't want to have to go crawling
back to Max Galloway and give him the satisfaction of relaying the
information.

Sara offered, "I could pull the address and phone number off the
hospital intake form for you."

Faith was surprised by the offer, which usually required a subpoena.
"That'd be great."

"It's not a problem."

"It's, uh—" Faith stopped, biting her tongue to keep from telling
the other woman that she would be breaking the law. She changed
the subject. "Will told me you worked on the victim when she came
in."

"Anna," Sara supplied. "At least that's what I think she said."

Faith tested the waters. Will hadn't given her the gritty details.
"What were your impressions?"

Sara sat back in her chair, arms folded. "She showed signs of severe
malnutrition and dehydration. Her gums were white, her veins
collapsed. Because of the nature of the healing and the way the blood
was clotting, I would assume that the wounds were inflicted over a
period of time. Her wrists and ankles showed signs of being bound.
She was penetrated vaginally and anally; there were indications that a
blunt object was used. I couldn't really do a rape kit before surgery,
but I managed to examine her as best I could. I removed some splinters
of wood from under her fingernails for your lab to look at—not
pressure-treated from the look of it, but that will have to be confirmed
by your guys."

She sounded like she was giving testimony in court. Every observation
had supporting evidence, every educated guess was framed as
an estimation. Faith asked, "How long do you think she was kept?"

"At least four days. Though gauging by how malnourished she
was, it might be as much as a week to ten days."

Faith didn't want to think about the woman being tortured for
ten days. "How are you so sure about the four days?"

"The cut on the breast here," Sara replied, indicating the side of
her own breast. "It was deep, already septic, with signs of insect
activity. You'd have to talk to an entomologist to pin down the
pupation—the developmental stage of the insect—but considering
she was still alive, that her body was relatively warm and there was a
fresh blood supply to feed on, four days is a solid guess." She added,
"I don't imagine they'll be able to save the tissue."

Faith kept her lips pressed tightly together, resisting the urge to
put her hand over her own breast. How many pieces of yourself
could you lose and still go on?

Sara kept talking, though Faith had not prompted her. "The
eleventh rib, here," she touched her abdomen. "That was recent,
probably earlier today or late yesterday, and done with precision."

"Surgical precision?"

"No." She shook her head. "Confidence. There were no hesitation
marks, no test cuts. The person was confident in what they were
doing."

Faith thought the doctor seemed pretty confident herself. "How
do you think it was done?"

Sara took out her prescription pad and started drawing a bunch of
curved lines that only made sense when she explained, "The ribs are
numbered in pairs starting at the top and going down, twelve each
side, left and right." She tapped the lines with her pen. "Number one
is just under the clavicle and twelve is the last one here." She looked
up to make sure Faith was following. "Now, eleven and twelve at the
bottom are considered to be 'floating,' because they don't have an anterior
connection. They only connect at the back, not the front." She
drew a straight line to indicate the spine. "The top seven ribs connect
at the back and then attach to the sternum—like a big crescent. The
next three rows connect roughly to the ribs above. They're called
false ribs. All of this is very elastic so that you can breathe, and it's also
why it's hard to break a rib with a direct blow—they bend quite a
bit."

Faith was leaning forward, hanging on her every word. "So, this
was done by someone with medical knowledge?"

"Not necessarily. You can feel your own ribs with your fingers.
You know where they are in your body."

"But, still—"

"Look." She sat up straight, raising her right arm and pressing the
fingers of her left hand into her side. "You run your hand down the
posterior axillary line until you feel the tip of the rib—eleven, with
twelve a little farther back." She picked up the plastic knife. "You
slice the knife into the skin and cut along the rib—the tip of the
blade could even scrape along the bone as a guide. Push back the fat
and muscle, disarticulate the rib from the vertebra, snap it off, whatever,
then grab hold and yank it out."

Faith felt queasy at the thought.

Sara put down the knife. "A hunter could do it in under a minute,
but anyone could figure it out. It's not precision surgery. I'm sure you
could Google up a better drawing than the one I've made."

"Is it possible that the rib was never there? That she was born
without it?"

"A small portion of the population is born with one pair fewer,
but the majority of us have twenty-four."

"I thought men were missing a rib?"

"You mean like Adam and Eve?" A smile curved Sara's lips, and
Faith got the distinct impression the woman was trying not to laugh
at her. "I wouldn't believe everything they told you in Sunday
School, Faith. We all have the same number of ribs."

"Well, don't I feel stupid." It wasn't a question. "But, you're sure
about this, that the rib was taken out?"

"Ripped out. The cartilage and muscle were torn. This was a violent
wrenching."

"You seem to have given this a lot of thought."

Sara shrugged, as if this was just the product of natural curiosity.
She picked up the knife and fork again, cutting into the chicken.
Faith watched her struggle with the desiccated meat for a few seconds
before she put back down the utensils. She gave a strange smile,
almost embarrassed. "I was a coroner in my previous life."

Faith felt her mouth open in surprise. The doctor had said it the
same way you might confide a hidden acrobatic talent or youthful indiscretion.
"Where?"

"Grant County. It's about four hours from here."

"Never heard of it."

"It's well below the gnat line," Sara admitted. She leaned her arms
on the table, a wistful tone to her voice when she revealed, "I took
the job so that I could buy out my partner in our pediatric practice.
At least I thought I did. The truth was that I was bored. You can only
give so many vaccinations and stick so many Band-Aids on skinned
knees before your mind starts to go."

"I can imagine," Faith mumbled, though, she was wondering
which was more alarming: that the doctor who had just diagnosed
her with diabetes was a pediatrician or that she was a coroner.

"I'm glad you're on this case," Sara said. "Your partner is . . ."

"Strange?"

Sara gave her an odd look. "I was going to say 'intense.' "

"He's pretty driven," Faith agreed, thinking this was the first time
since she'd met Will Trent that anyone's first impression of him had
been so complimentary. He usually took awhile to grow on you, like
cataracts or shingles.

"He seemed very compassionate." Sara held up her hand to stop
any protest. "Not that cops aren't compassionate, but they usually
don't show it."

Faith could only nod. Will seldom showed any emotions, but she
knew that torture victims cut him close to the bone. "He's a good
cop."

Sara looked down at her tray. "You can have this if you want. I'm
not really hungry."

"I didn't think you came in here to eat."

She blushed, caught.

"It's all right," Faith assured her. "But, if you're still offering the
Coldfields' information . . ."

"Of course."

Faith dug out one of her business cards. "My cell number is on the
back."

"Right." She read the number, a determined set to her mouth,
and Faith saw that not only did Sara know she was breaking the law,
she obviously didn't care. "Another thing—" Sara seemed to be debating
whether or not to speak. "Her eyes. The whites showed petechia,
but there weren't any visible signs of strangulation. Her
pupils wouldn't focus. It could be from the trauma or something
neurological, but I'm not sure she could see anything."

"That might explain why she walked out in the middle of the
road."

"Considering what she's been through . . ." Sara didn't finish the
sentence, but Faith knew exactly what she meant. You didn't have to
be a doctor to understand that a woman who'd been through that
kind of hell might deliberately walk into the path of a speeding car.

Sara tucked Faith's business card into her coat pocket. "I'll call you
in a few minutes."

Faith watched her leave, wondering how in the hell Sara Linton
had ended up working at Grady Hospital. Sara couldn't be more than
forty, but the emergency room was a young person's game, the sort
of place you ran screaming from before you hit your thirties.

She checked her phone again. All six bars were lit, meaning the
signal was bright and clear. She tried to give Will the benefit of the
doubt. Maybe his phone had fallen apart again. Then again, every
cop on the scene would have a cell phone, so maybe he really was an
asshole.

It did occur to Faith as she got up from the table and made her
way to the parking lot that she could call Will herself, but there was a
reason Faith was pregnant and unmarried for the second time in less
than twenty years, and it wasn't because she was good at communicating
with the men in her life.

W
ILL STOOD AT THE MOUTH OF THE CAVE, LOWERING DOWN
a set of lights on a rope so that Charlie Reed would have something
better than a flashlight to help him collect evidence. Will was soaked
to the bone, even though the rain had stopped half an hour ago. As
dawn approached, the air had turned chillier, but he would rather
stand on the deck of the
Titanic
than go down into that hole again.

The lights hit the bottom and he saw a pair of hands pull them into
the cavern. Will scratched his arms. His white shirt showed pindrops
of blood where the rats had clawed their way over him, and he was
wondering if itching was a sign of rabies. It was the kind of question
he would normally ask Faith, but he didn't want to bother her. She
had looked awful when he'd left the hospital, and there was nothing
she could do here but stand in the rain alongside him. He would catch
her up on the case in the morning, after she'd had a good night's sleep.
This case wasn't going to be solved in an hour. At least one of them
should be well rested as they headed into the investigation.

A helicopter whirred overhead, the chopping sound vibrating in
his ears. They were doing infrared sweeps, looking for the second
victim. The search teams had been out for hours, carefully combing
the area within a two-mile radius. Barry Fielding had shown up with
his search dogs, and the animals had gone crazy for the first half hour,
then lost the scent. Uniformed patrolmen from Rockdale County
were doing grid searches, looking for more underground caves, more
clues that might indicate the other woman had escaped.

Maybe she hadn't managed to escape. Maybe her attacker had
found her before she could reach help. Maybe she had died days or
even weeks ago. Or maybe she had never existed in the first place. As
the search wore on, Will was getting the impression that the cops
were turning against him. Some of them didn't think there was a second
victim at all. Some of them thought Will was keeping them out
in the freezing cold rain for no reason other than he was too stupid to
see that he was wrong.

There was one person who could clarify this, but she was still in
surgery back at Grady Hospital, fighting for her life. The first thing
you normally did in an abduction or murder case was put the victim's
life under a microscope. Other than assuming her name was Anna,
they knew nothing about the woman. In the morning, Will would
pull all the missing persons reports in the area, but those were bound
to be in the hundreds, and that was excluding the city of Atlanta,
where on average, two people a day went missing. If the woman
came from a different state, the paperwork would increase exponentially.
Over a quarter of a million missing persons cases were reported
to the FBI every year. Compounding the problem, the cases
were seldom updated if the missing were found.

If Anna wasn't awake by morning, Will would send over a fingerprint
technician to card her. It was a scattershot way of trying to find
her identity. Unless she had committed an arrestable crime, her fingerprints
would not be on file. Still, more than one case cracked open
based on following procedure. Will had learned a long time ago that
a slim chance was still a chance.

The ladder at the mouth of the cavern shook and Will steadied it
as Charlie Reed made his way up. The clouds had passed with the
rain, letting through some of the moonlight. Though the deluge had
passed, there was the occasional drop, sounding like a cat smacking
its lips. Everything in the forest had a strange, bluish hue to it, and
there was enough light now that Will didn't need his flashlight to see
Charlie. The crime-scene tech's hand reached out, slapping a large
evidence bag on the ground at Will's feet as he climbed to the surface.

"Shit," Charlie cursed. His white clean suit was caked in mud. He
unzipped it as soon as he was topside, and Will could see that he was
sweating so badly his t-shirt was stuck to his chest.

Will asked, "You okay?"

"Shit," Charlie repeated, wiping his forehead with the back of his
arm. "I can't believe . . . .Jesus, Will." He leaned over, bracing his
hands on his knees. He was breathing hard, though he was a fit man
and the climb was not a difficult one. "I don't know where to start."

Will understood the feeling.

"There were torture devices . . ." Charlie wiped his mouth with
the back of his hand. "I've only seen that kind of thing on television."

"There was a second victim," Will said, raising up his voice at the
end so that Charlie would take his words as an observation that
needed confirming.

"I can't make sense of anything down there." Charlie squatted
down, resting his head in his hands. "I've never seen anything like it."

Will knelt down alongside him. He picked up the evidence bag.
"What's this?"

He shook his head. "I found them rolled up in a tin can by the
chair."

Will spread the bag flat on his leg and used the penlight from
Charlie's kit to study the contents. There were at least fifty sheets of
notebook paper inside. Each page was covered front to back in cursive
pencil. Will squinted at the words, trying to make sense out of
them. He had never been able to read well. The letters always tended
to mix up and turn around. Sometimes, they blurred so much that he
felt motion sickness just trying to decipher their meaning.

Charlie didn't know about Will's problem. Will tried to draw out
some information from him, asking, "What do you make of these
notes?"

"It's crazy, right?" Charlie was rubbing his thumb and forefinger
along his mustache, a nervous habit that only came out during dire
circumstances. "I don't think I can go back down there." He paused,
swallowing hard. "It just feels . . . evil, you know? Just plain damn
evil
."

Will heard leaves rustling, branches snapping. He turned to find
Amanda Wagner making her way through the woods. She was an
older woman, probably in her sixties. She favored monochromatic
power suits with skirts that hit below her knee and stockings that
showed off the definition of what Will had to admit were remarkably
good calves for a woman he often thought of as the AntiChrist.
Her high heels should have made it difficult for her to find her footing,
but, as with most obstacles, Amanda conquered the terrain with
steely determination.

Both men stood as she approached.

As usual, she didn't bother with pleasantries. "What's this?" She
held out her hand for the evidence bag. Other than Faith, Amanda
was the only person in the bureau who knew about Will's reading
issues, something she both accepted and criticized at the same time.
Will trained the penlight on the pages and she read aloud,
" 'I will not
deny myself. I will not deny myself.' "
She shook the bag, checking the
rest of the pages. "Front and back, all the same sentence. Cursive,
probably a woman's handwriting." She handed the notes back to
Will, giving him a pointed look of disapproval. "So, our bad guy's
either an angry schoolteacher or a self-help guru."

She addressed Charlie. "What else have you found?"

"Pornography. Chains. Handcuffs. Sexual devices."

"That's evidence. I need clues."

Will took over for him. "I think the second victim was bolted underneath
the bed. I found this in the rope." He took a small evidence
bag from his jacket pocket. It contained part of a front tooth, some of
the root still attached. He told Amanda, "That's an incisor. The victim
at the hospital had all of her teeth intact."

She scrutinized Will more than the tooth. "You're sure about this?"

"I was right in her face trying to get information," he answered.
"Her teeth were chattering together. They were making a clicking
sound."

She seemed to accept this. "What makes you think the tooth was
recently lost? And don't tell me gut instinct, Will, because I've got
the entire Rockdale County police force out here in the wet and
cold, ready to lynch you for sending them on a wild-goose chase in
the middle of the night."

"The rope was cut from underneath the bed," he told her. "The
first victim, Anna, was tied down to the top of the bed. The second
victim was underneath. Anna couldn't have cut the rope herself."

Amanda asked Charlie, "Do you agree with this?"

Still shaken up, he took his time answering. "Half of the cut ends
of the rope were still under the bed. It would make sense that they
would fall that way if they were cut from underneath. Cut from the
top, the ends would be on the floor or still on top of the bed, not underneath
it."

Amanda was still dubious. She told Will, "Go on."

"There were more pieces of rope tied to the eyebolts under the
bed. Someone cut themselves away. They would still have the rope
around their ankles and at least one wrist. Anna didn't have any rope
on her."

"The paramedics could've cut it off," Amanda pointed out. She
asked Charlie, "DNA? Fluids?"

"All over the place. We should get them back in forty-eight hours.
Unless this guy's on the database . . ." He glanced at Will. They all
knew that DNA was a shot in the dark. Unless their abductor had
committed a crime in the past that caused his DNA to be taken, then
logged into the computer, there was no way he would come up as a
match.

Amanda asked, "What about the waste situation?"

Initially, Charlie didn't seem to understand the question, but then
he answered, "There aren't any empty jars or cans. I guess they were
taken away. There's a covered bucket in the corner that was used as a
toilet, but from what I can tell, the victim—or victims—were tied
up most of the time and didn't have a choice but to go where they
were. I couldn't tell you if any of this points to one or two captives.
It depends on when they were taken, how dehydrated they were, that
kind of thing."

She asked, "Was there anything fresh underneath the bed?"

"Yes," Charlie answered, as if surprised by the revelation.
"Actually, there was an area that tested positive for urine. It would be
in the right place for someone lying down on their back."

Amanda pressed, "Wouldn't it take longer for liquid to evaporate
underground?"

"Not necessarily. The high acidity would have a chemical reaction
with the pH in the soil. Depending on the mineral content and the—"

Amanda cut him off. "Don't educate me, Charlie, just give me
facts that I can use."

He looked at Will apologetically. "I don't know if there were two
hostages at the same time. Someone was definitely kept under the
bed, but it could have been that the abductor moved the same victim
from place to place. The body fluids could've also drained off from
above." He told Will, "You were down there. You saw what this guy
is capable of." The color had drained from his face again. "It's awful,"
he mumbled. "It's just awful."

Amanda was her usual sympathetic self. "Man up, Charlie. Get
back down there and find me some evidence I can use to catch this
bastard." She patted him on the back, more of a shove to get him
moving, then told Will, "Walk with me. We've got to find that
pygmy detective you pissed off and make nice with him so he doesn't
go crying to Lyle Peterson." Peterson was Rockdale County's chief
of police and no friend of Amanda's. By law, only a police chief, a
mayor or a district attorney could ask the GBI to take over a case.
Will wondered what strings Amanda had managed to pull and how
furious Peterson was about it.

"Well." She held out her hands for balance as she stepped over a
fallen limb. "You bought some good grace volunteering yourself to
go down into that hole, but if you ever do anything that stupid again,
I'll have you running stings in the men's bathroom at the airport for
the rest of your natural born life. Do you hear me?"

Will nodded. "Yes, ma'am."

"Your victim doesn't look good," she told him, walking past a
group of cops who had stopped for a cigarette break. They glared at
Will. "There were some complications. I talked to the surgeon.
Sanderson. He doesn't sound hopeful." She added, "He confirmed
your observation about the teeth, by the way. They were fully intact."

This was typical Amanda, making him work for everything. Will
didn't take it as an insult but as a sign that she might be on his side.
"The soles of her feet were freshly cut," he said. "She didn't bleed
from her feet when she was in the cave."

"Take me through your process."

Will had already relayed the highlights to her over the telephone,
but he told her again about finding the sheet of plywood, going
down into the hole. He went into more details this time around as he
described the cavern, carefully giving her a sense of the atmosphere
while trying not to reveal that he had been even more petrified than
Charlie Reed. "The slats of the bed were clawed underneath," he
said. "The second victim—her hands had to be unbound to make
those marks. He wouldn't have left her hands free while she was
alone because she could free herself and leave."

"You really think he kept one on top and one on bottom?"

"I think that's exactly what he did."

"If they were both tied up and one of them managed to get a
knife, it would make sense that the woman on bottom would keep it
hidden while they waited for the abductor to leave."

Will didn't respond. Amanda could be sarcastic and petty and
downright mean, but she was also fair in her own way, and he knew
that as much as she derided his gut instincts, she had learned over the
years to trust him. He also knew better than to expect anything remotely
resembling praise.

They had reached the road where Will had parked the Mini all
those hours ago. Dawn was coming fast, and the blue cast of light had
turned to sepia tones. Dozens of Rockdale County cruisers were
blocking off the area. More men milled around, but the sense of urgency
had been lost. The press was out there somewhere, too, and
Will saw a couple of news helicopters hovering overhead. It was too
dark to get a shot, but that probably was not stopping them from reporting
every movement they saw on the ground—or at least what
they thought they saw. Accuracy wasn't exactly part of the equation
when you had to provide news twenty-four hours a day.