The Kept Woman (Will Trent 8) (16 page)

Faith put the photos side by side with the mugshots from Delilah’s various arrests. Collier’s estimate was off by a few years. Faith could pin down the age back to the girl’s first arrest at ten years old. The illicit image was heartbreaking. Delilah was dressed in lace panties and a bra that must have been clipped in the back so it wouldn’t slide down to her feet. She didn’t have a waist yet, or curves, or anything but baby fat that the heroin would eventually wear away. Faith looked at her dull, lifeless eyes. Everything about the girl reeked of abandon.

Why was Harding, who by all accounts didn’t give a shit about anyone or anything, so interested in this abandoned girl? What did she mean to him?

Collier asked, ‘What’s next, Kemosabe?’

‘I’ll be right back.’ Faith stood up. She went back into the kitchen. Again Collier followed her. He was like a kid, always underfoot. She longed for Will’s quiet self-containment. ‘We can be apart for longer than two seconds.’

‘Then how will I know what you’re up to?’

She opened the freezer door. Ice cream and alcohol filled the shelves, but there was also a quart-sized Ziploc bag with a stack of papers shoved into the back. Freezer burn had melded it to a box of fish fingers. Faith had to hit the box on the side of the fridge to break away the bag.

People with chronic or end-stage diseases were told to leave valuable documents like medical directives in their freezer so that paramedics could easily find them. As horrible a man as Harding was, he had managed to follow the guideline. Except his directive explicitly stated that all possible measures should be taken to preserve his life.

‘Je-sus,’ Collier said, because of course he was reading over Faith’s shoulder. ‘The guy’s got a death warrant, but he wants the paramedics to keep him alive for as long as possible?’

‘This was filled out two years ago. Maybe he forgot about it.’ Faith found the contact information on the second page.

Next of kin: Delilah Jean Palmer.

Relationship: daughter.

‘She was his kid,’ Collier said, because he had forgotten that Faith had eyes in her head. ‘Her juvie rap sheet listed her as an orphan.’

There were three phone numbers beside Delilah’s name, two of which had lines drawn through them. All of them were in different shades of ink. Faith used Harding’s landline and dialed the most recent number. It went straight into a pre-recorded message from the phone company informing Faith that the number had been disconnected.

She tried the other two numbers just to be sure.

Disconnected.

Collier took out his cell phone. ‘My turn to work some magic?’

‘Help yourself.’

Collier started to follow her back to the bedroom, but she put her hand out to stop him. ‘We don’t have to do everything together.’

‘What if the rat comes back? With its babies?’

‘Scream really loud.’

She headed down the hallway again, glancing up the attic stairs because the rat was still up there, possibly giving birth to triplets, because that was the kind of day she was having. Thank God Faith had made more holes in the ceiling in case the thing decided it wanted to expand its territory.

She sat down in the chair and made herself look at the photos of Delilah again.

Putting aside how disgusting it was that a father kept pictures of his naked daughter, age twelve, bending over a stick riding horse, there was something off about the girl. Faith couldn’t articulate what made the photos different from the hundreds of similar photos she had seen throughout her law enforcement career, but it was there.

Exploitation had a common theme: misery. Delilah’s eyes were glassy, likely from the heroin that had either been given or withheld so that she would pose for the camera. Her thighs were red where someone had been rough with her. A thin powdering of make-up barely concealed the bruising around her neck. There was lipstick on her teeth. None of this was new or particularly surprising.

It was that same feeling Faith had been having all day: something wasn’t adding up.

Faith hated when things didn’t add up.

‘It’s weird that they’re pictures, right?’ Collier was hovering in the doorway again.

Faith said, ‘You mean like some fathers keep school pictures of their kids, only Harding kept naked photos?’

‘No, I mean why doesn’t he have videos? Porn is the sole reason for the internet. It ruined the nudie pic industry. Even
Playboy
gave up the ghost.’

‘You’re asking why Harding was looking at naked pictures of his daughter instead of naked videos?’

‘Basically. Shit.’ He clapped his hand to his throat. He coughed. ‘I think I swallowed a fly.’

‘Try keeping your mouth shut.’

‘Ha-ha.’ He sat down on the mattress again. It made the sound again. He gave her the look. Again. ‘I asked my girl in records to run a priority background on little Delilah. We’ll see what she’s been up to lately. With Harding dead, she’ll wind up in jail soon, and there won’t be anybody to get her out.’

‘She could know something,’ Faith said. ‘We have to figure out what Harding was up to over the last week or so of his life. That’s going to tell us why he ended up in Rippy’s nightclub.’ She tried to talk through what was bothering her. ‘Was he a pedophile or a bad father?’

‘My vote goes for both.’

‘He must’a broken his piggy bank over this chick.’ A cop’s currency was knowing who to call, and also knowing that when that person called you back, you did what they wanted, no questions asked. ‘This isn’t asking a uni to lose a speeding ticket. These are high-level favors, lieutenants and parole officers and judges, even. No way he could pay all of that back. He worked white collar. He didn’t have the juice. There was probably nobody left on the force who would answer his calls.’

‘You know the story about the dad who stopped going to work. He couldn’t leave his little girl’s behind.’

Faith shook her head, wishing Collier would shut the hell up. Will’s sense of humor could be irreverent, but he would never, ever joke about a man molesting his own child.

Miraculously, Collier finally picked up on her mood. ‘Harding doesn’t have a computer or a printer.’

Faith checked the paper stock on the photos. ‘These weren’t printed at a lab. Somebody did them privately.’

‘You think someone printed them out for him?’

‘For what? Blackmail?’ She thought about Harding’s windfall six months ago. He moved into the Mesa Arms. He bought a new car. ‘It would be the other way around. Harding’s the one who came into some scratch. I have a good mind to call the lottery board and run his name.’

Collier’s phone buzzed. His finger slid across the screen. ‘Attachment.’ He waited for the download. ‘Oh man. This keeps getting better and better.’ He held up the phone. The screen showed a scan of an official marriage license.

Faith squinted at the words. She had to read them twice before their meaning came through.

Five and a half months ago, Vernon Dale Harding had married Delilah Jean Palmer. It was his fifth marriage and her first.

Faith put her hand to her mouth, then thought better of it.

‘Damn,’ Collier said. ‘Dude married his own daughter.’

‘That can’t be right.’

‘You can see it right here. Processed and everything.’

‘He listed her as his daughter two years ago. You saw it on the forms.’

Collier didn’t seem as confused as she felt. ‘The DNR forms aren’t official, at least not unless somebody finds them and takes them to the hospital.’

Faith felt her head shaking in confusion. She wanted to go back and look at the papers again, but she knew she hadn’t read them wrong. ‘How did that even happen? You can’t marry somebody you’re related to. You have to fill out a license. They run the—’

‘She was always an orphan in the system. Harding probably never had parental rights. They could do all the background checks they wanted and the relationship wouldn’t show up.’

Faith had let the pornographic photos fall out of her hands. She looked down at the scattered images and tried not to think about why Dale Harding had kept them over the years. ‘Good God, this poor girl never had a chance.’

‘He wasn’t sleeping with her.’ Collier stopped Faith’s protest. ‘Not recently, at least. There’s no Viagra in the bathroom, and considering what that guy had going on, there was no farmer left in the dale.’ He laughed. ‘Like, the tractor wasn’t up to plowing the fields.’

‘We need to find this girl.’ Faith started typing a text to Amanda to put out an APB. ‘She’s Harding’s legal wife. Harding was found dead or murdered in a room full of blood. If I’m his killer, then I’m looking for anyone Harding might have confided in. Whether she’s his wife or daughter, she has to know something. Just by virtue of the fact that she was living with him.’

‘Did you notice she’s not here?’ Collier’s mood had shifted. He was getting it now. ‘The TV’s gone. There’s no computer. Maybe she heard that he was dead, knew that there was a target on her back, so she sold his shit and got out of Dodge.’

‘Violet, the property manager, never met Delilah. There’s the weird closet thing. Why would you keep a girl hidden away from everybody in the neighborhood unless there was a reason to keep her hidden?’

Collier said, ‘She’s a whore, so she knows the streets. She was probably working Harding the same as he was working her. Maybe she’s the one who got him killed. I can see that happening—girl crosses the wrong guy, Harding swoops in to protect her and gets a doorknob for his troubles.’

‘Either way, she’s in danger.’ Faith asked, ‘Did records give you her last known address?’

Collier went back to his phone. ‘Renaissance Suites off I-20. My girl already called the manager, texted him a photo from Delilah’s last booking. He says he don’t know nothin’ about nothin’.’

Faith heard her phone chirp. She read the text. ‘Amanda’s put out the APB on Delilah. You need to work your back channels in the APD for information on the girl. Knock on every door to every building or house she’s ever lived in. Check into her juvie record, go by her school, whatever it takes to find out who her friends were.’

Collier had a weird look on his face. ‘Anything else, boss lady?’

‘Yeah, she was busted for soliciting, so she’ll have a pimp. Find him. Talk to him. Run him in if you have to.’ The alarm went off on Faith’s phone. She started shoving the files and photographs back into the boxes. ‘We need to find Delilah before someone else does.’

Collier asked, ‘What are you going to be doing while I pound out this awesome amount of shoe leather?’

‘I’ve got to go to the hospital and talk to the Jane Doe that Will found. She might have seen something last night.’

‘Uh, technically we found her, as in Will and me.’

‘Will and I.’ She muscled up the boxes. They were heavier than she’d anticipated. ‘I should have Harding’s banking and phone information by the time I get to Grady. I’ll go through these files and cross-check them against—’

‘Wait.’ Collier was trailing her down the hall. Again. ‘Your Jane Doe—she knows me. She’d be more likely to talk to a friendly face.’

Faith stopped. Collier bumped into her from behind. She told him, ‘Charlie Reed, our crime scene guy, will be here any minute. Wait for him, then go look for Delilah. If she’s out there, we need to talk to her. If Angie and Harding were killed for a reason, she might know the reason, and that reason could get her killed too.’

‘You really think she’s in danger?’

‘Don’t you?’

‘You’re not much of a feminist, are you?’ Collier grinned at what must have been the shocked look on her face. ‘Could be Delilah’s the one that went after both of them. Angie and Harding. Ever think of that? Women are capable of murder too, partner.’

‘If you call me partner again, you’ll find out exactly what women are capable of.’

For once, Collier took her seriously. ‘I’ll get Ng started, join him as soon as your guy gets here. Should I call you later?’

‘If you find Delilah or have valuable information, yes.’

‘What if I want to look at some more porn with you?’

Faith shouldered open the front door. She kept her head down so her retinas wouldn’t ignite. At her car, she balanced the boxes
on one knee and fumbled with the door handle until she nearly dropped everything. She finally managed to yank back the handle with the tip of her pinky finger. She used the toe of her shoe to pry open the door. She threw the boxes into the passenger seat. She got behind the wheel. All the while, Collier stood in the open front doorway, not bothering to offer any help whatsoever. He was up her ass when she didn’t need him and she couldn’t get him to move a muscle when she did.

‘God dammit,’ Faith muttered.

Amanda was right.

He was exactly her type.

Will stood in the lobby of the gleaming Tower Place 100 office building. The twenty-nine-story skyscraper was part of the Tower Place complex, which anchored the corner of Piedmont and Peachtree Road and was only partially responsible for the dense line of Jaguars and Maseratis that clogged Buckhead morning, noon and night.

He hadn’t planned on being here so much as followed the breadcrumbs Angie had left. First he’d gone home to change and get some documents from his safe, then he’d gone to Angie’s bank, which led to the store where she kept her post office box, which led him to this office building, where he stuck out like a country rube because he’d forgone his usual suit and tie for something more comfortable. He couldn’t even pass for a tech billionaire. His jeans were Lucky, not Armani. Sara had bought his long-sleeved polo from a store he had never heard of. His old
running sneakers were splotched with the French-blue paint from his bathroom.

He had painted the walls a lighter color because he had realized one morning that the chocolates and dark browns he had chosen for his house were too masculine for Sara.

Sara.

Will felt his chest rise and fall with a deep, calming breath. Just the thought of her name had drained away some of his anxiety. He allowed himself a moment to remember how good it felt to wake up in the middle of the night and find Sara’s body draped across his. She fit him like the last piece of a complicated puzzle. He had never met anyone like her before. She woke him up sometimes just to be with him. Her hands on him. Wanting him. Angie had never wanted him like that.