The Kept Woman (Will Trent 8) (6 page)

‘His bad choices happened. He’s morbidly obese. He’s unusually bloated. His eyes show signs of conjunctival erythema. I’m guessing he has an enlarged heart, hypertension. There are needle marks on his abdomen and thighs that indicate he’s an insulin-dependent diabetic. His diet was fast food and Skittles. He wasn’t managing his condition.’

Collier looked skeptical. ‘So Harding conveniently slipped into a diabetic coma during the middle of a death match?’

‘It’s more complicated than that.’ Sara indicated the area around her own mouth. ‘Harding’s face. You thought it was mold, but mold usually grows in a colony or clump. Think about bread when it goes bad. My first guess was seborrheic dermatitis, but now I’m fairly certain it’s uremic frost.’

Will said, ‘I thought I smelled urine.’

‘Good catch.’ Sara handed Collier a bag for his gloves and shoe protectors. ‘Urea is one of the toxins that’s supposed to be filtered out through the kidneys. If the kidneys don’t work for some reason—diabetes and hypertension are good reasons—then the body tries to excrete the urea through sweat. The sweat evaporates, the urea crystalizes, and that leads to uremic frost.’

Collier nodded like he understood. ‘How long does that take?’

‘Not long. He’s been living with chronic end-stage renal disease. He was getting treatment at some point. He has a graft for vascular access in his arm. Uremic frost is very rare, but it tells us that for whatever reason, he stopped getting dialysis, probably within the last week to ten days.’

‘Jesus,’ Faith said. ‘So is this a murder or not?’

Amanda said, ‘It seems they both tried to kill each other and both likely succeeded.’ She told Sara, ‘Let’s focus on the missing woman. You said there was a violent struggle in this room that Harding obviously lost, but not before he managed to do quite a bit of damage to his opponent, as evidenced by the blood. Given her wounds, could the woman walk out of here and drive herself away?’ She amended, ‘No maybes or possiblies. You’re not speaking to the court, Dr Linton.’

Sara still hedged. ‘Let’s start with the impact on the stairs. If it’s from the missing woman’s head, then she took a pretty hard blow. Her skull was probably fractured. At the very least, she’s concussed.’ Sara looked back over the kill room. ‘The volume of blood loss is the real danger. I’d estimate this is just over two liters, maybe a thirty to thirty-five percent loss. That’s a borderline Class III hemorrhage. In addition to stopping the bleed, she’d need fluids, probably a transfusion.’

‘She could use the tarp,’ Will said. ‘To stop the bleeding. The tarp is missing. There was a roll of duct tape found in the parking lot.’

‘Possible,’ Sara agreed. ‘But let’s talk about the nature of the injury. If the blood came from the chest or neck, she would be dead. It can’t be from the belly because the blood would stay in the belly. So that leaves the limbs. A good gash in the groin could do this. She would likely be able to walk, but not without
difficulty. Same with the medial malleolus, the inside of the ankle. She could still drag or crawl her way out. There’s also this—’ Sara held up her arms as if to protect her face, palms out. ‘A horizontal cut to the radial or ulnar arteries, then the arms flail and blood sprays around the room like a garden hose, which is basically what the artery would be at that point.’ She looked back at Harding. ‘I’d expect him to have more blood on him if that was the case.’

Amanda said, ‘Thank you, Doctor, for that litany of multiple choices. How much time do we have to find this woman?’

Sara took the dig in stride. ‘None of those injuries are the type that can go untreated, even if she manages to stop the bleeding. Given the four-to-five-hour window on time of death and the volume of blood loss, I’d say that without medical intervention she might have two to three more hours before her organs start shutting down.’

‘You work the dead, we’ll find the living.’ Amanda turned to Will and Faith. ‘We’ve got a clock ticking. Our number one goal is to locate this woman, get her medical help, then find out what the hell she was doing here in the first place.’

Collier asked, ‘What about BackDoorMan.com? Does that bring in Rippy?’

‘That’ll be Harding’s kink,’ Will said. ‘Rippy has a definite type.’

Faith supplied, ‘Dark hair, smart mouth, killer body.’

Collier said, ‘His wife is a blonde.’

Faith rolled her eyes. ‘I’m a blonde. She’s a bottle.’

‘You can discuss hair color after we find the woman.’ Amanda told Collier, ‘Get that partner of yours to run missing persons
reports submitted within the last forty-eight hours. Women, young, Rippy’s type.’ Collier nodded, but she wasn’t finished. ‘I need at least ten uniforms to check both warehouses and the office building. Call in a structural engineer on the building; it looks iffy. I want feet, not just eyeballs, on every single floor, every nook and cranny, no stone unturned. Our victim-slash-murderer could be bleeding out or hiding right under our noses. None of us wants to read that headline in the paper tomorrow morning.’

She turned to Faith. ‘Go to Harding’s place of residence. I’ll have the warrant signed by the time you get there. Harding called himself a private investigator. It makes sense that he was investigating a woman, possibly for Rippy. She could be another victim or she could’ve been blackmailing him for money, or both. Harding will have a file, photographs, notes, hopefully a home address for the girl.’

She pointed to Will. ‘Go with her. Harding can’t be living in luxury. There will be liquor stores, check-cashers, strip joints in his neighborhood. They’ll probably sell burner phones. Cross the IMEIs with any security footage to see if we can pin a phone number to Harding, then cross-reference the numbers against any that are linked to Kip Kilpatrick or Marcus Rippy.’

There was a chorus of ‘Yes, ma’am’s,’ all around.

Will heard metal scraping concrete. The scissor lift had brought Charlie Reed to the second floor. He had a grim look on his face as he approached them.

Amanda said, ‘Spit it out, Charlie. We’re already against the clock.’

Charlie fidgeted with his cell phone. ‘I got back the info on the Glock 43.’

‘And?’

Charlie kept his gaze glued to Amanda. ‘Maybe we should—’

‘I said spit it out.’

He took a deep breath. ‘It’s registered to Angie Polaski.’

Will felt a sudden tightness in his chest. He tasted acid on his tongue.

Dark hair. Smart mouth. Killer body.

There was a burning sensation on the side of his face. People staring at him. Waiting for his reaction. A bead of sweat rolled into his eye. He looked up at the ceiling because he didn’t trust himself to look at anything else.

It was Collier who finally broke the silence with a question. ‘What am I missing here?’ No one answered, so he asked, ‘Who’s Angie Polaski?’

Sara had to clear her throat before she could speak. ‘Angie Polaski is Will’s wife.’

Sara watched Will brace his hand against the wall to steady himself. She should do something—comfort him, tell him it was going to be all right—but she just stood there struggling against the usual spark of rage that accompanied any mention of his erratic, hateful wife.

Angie Polaski had been flitting in and out of Will’s life like a mosquito since he was eleven years old. They had grown up together at the Atlanta Children’s Home, both surviving abuse, neglect, abandonment, torture. Not all of this had come at the hands of the system. Of all the pains visited down upon Will during his adolescence, nothing compared to the torments Angie had put him through. Still kept putting him through, because it made a cruel kind of sense that they were all assembled here in this building with a pool of blood congealing around her latest victim.

Dale Harding was collateral damage. Will was always Angie’s primary target, the one she kept hitting again and again.

Was this finally the end of her?

‘It can’t—’ Will stopped. His eyes scanned the murder room. ‘She can’t be—’

Sara tried to push down her anger. This wasn’t just another one of Angie’s peevish grabs for attention. She could see Will making the same connections: the violent struggle, the life-threatening injury, the veritable lake of blood.

Wounded. Dangerous. Desperate.

Angie.

‘She—’ Will stopped again. ‘Maybe she’s—’ He slumped against the wall. His breathing was erratic. ‘Oh God. Oh Jesus.’ He put his hand to his mouth. ‘She can’t be—’ His voice cracked. ‘It’s her.’

‘We don’t know that.’ Sara tried to make her voice reassuring. She reminded herself that this wasn’t about Angie. This was about Will. Seeing him in so much pain was like a knife twisting in her chest. ‘Her gun could’ve been stolen, or—’

‘It’s her.’ He turned his back to them and walked a few feet away, but not before Sara saw the anguished expression on his face. She felt overwhelmed by her own uselessness. Angie was someone they both desperately wanted to be rid of, but not like this. At least not that Sara would ever say aloud. She had to admit that she had always known that Angie would never gracefully bow out. Even in death—or near-death—she had found a way to drag Will down with her.

Amanda asked, ‘Charlie, what’s the address on the registration?’

‘The same as on her driver’s license.’ Charlie looked at the screen on his phone. ‘Ninety-eight—’

‘Baker,’ Will interrupted, still not turning around. ‘That’s her old address. What about the phone number?’

Charlie read off a number, and Will shook his head. ‘Disconnected.’

Amanda asked Will, ‘Do you know where she is?’

He shook his head again.

‘When did you last see her?’

Will paused a moment before answering, ‘Saturday.’

Sara felt the knife in her chest make a final, violent twist. ‘Saturday?’

They had slept over at his house. They had made love. Twice. Then Will had told Sara he was going for a run and secretly met with his wife.

Sara’s mouth could barely form words. ‘You saw her two days ago?’

Will said nothing.

Amanda gave a quick, agitated sigh. ‘Do you have a phone number? A place of employment? Any means to get in touch with her?’

He shook his head to every question.

Sara stared at his back, his broad shoulders that she had wrapped her arms around. His neck that she had kissed. His thick dirty-blond hair that she’d run her fingers through. Tears welled into her eyes. Had he been seeing Angie all this time? All of those late nights at work. All of those early meetings. All of those two-hour runs and pick-up games of basketball.

‘All right.’ Amanda clapped her hands for attention. Her voice was raised to fill the building. ‘Crime scene people, take a fifteen-minute break. Get hydrated. Sit in the air conditioning.’

There was a groan of appreciation as the white-suited techs made their way toward the exits. They would probably start gossiping as soon as they were outside.

Sara wiped her eyes before her tears could fall. She was at work. She had to focus on what was in front of her, what she could control. She told Amanda, ‘We can do blood typing in the mobile lab. Results are almost instantaneous.’ She tried in vain to swallow the lump in her throat. ‘It’s not DNA, but we can use ABO typing as a rule-out against Angie. Or as a rule-in, depending what her blood type is.’ She had to stop to swallow again. She couldn’t tell if she was making any sense. ‘We can establish a loose narrative. Does the blood type from the spatter on the stairs match the type of the bloody footprints that go toward the room? Do those samples match the blood type inside the room? Is it the same type as the arterial spray? The hand swipe?’ Sara pressed together her lips. How many times was she going to say the word
type
? Someone could turn it into a drinking game. ‘I’ll need Angie’s blood type. And we’ll need to backstop all of this with DNA. But the blood typing could at least tell us something.’

Amanda gave a curt nod. ‘Do it. Angie was a cop for ten years. I’ll pull the blood info from her file.’ She sounded uncharacteristically flustered. ‘Faith, hit the phones. We need a current address, phone, employer, anything you can find. Collier, yours and Ng’s orders haven’t changed. I want you to get teams to search the ware—’

‘I’ll do it.’ Will started toward the lift, but Amanda clamped her hand down on his arm, stopping him cold.

‘Stay here.’ He tried to pull away, but her fingernails dug into his shirtsleeve. ‘That’s an order.’

‘She could be—’

‘I know what she could be, but you’re going to stay here and answer my questions. Is that understood?’

Collier coughed into his hand, like the teacher was scolding a student. Faith slapped his arm to shut him up.

Amanda said, ‘Charlie, take Collier and Faith downstairs, then come back up for me.’

Faith squeezed Sara’s hand as she walked by. They had a rule that they never discussed Will except in general terms. Sara had never wanted to break that rule more badly than she did right now.

‘Amanda.’ Will didn’t wait for the audience to leave. ‘I can’t just—’

Amanda held up a finger to silence him. At least someone was worried about Sara being humiliated. Again.

Saturday.

Two days ago.

She’d had no idea Will was keeping something from her. What else had she missed? Sara tried to scan back over the last few weeks. Will hadn’t been acting strange. If anything, he had been more attentive, even romantic, which could’ve been the biggest sign of all.

‘Amanda,’ Will tried again, his voice lowered as he struggled to sound reasonable. ‘You heard what Sara said. Angie could be bleeding to death. She might have a few hours before . . .’ His words trailed off. They all knew what would happen if Angie
didn’t get help. ‘I have to look for her. I’m the only one who knows the kinds of places she’d hide.’

Amanda gave Will one of her steely glares. ‘I swear on my life, Wilbur, if you take one step off this balcony, I’ll have you in handcuffs before you see sunshine.’

His eyes burned with hatred. ‘I’ll never forgive you for this.’

Amanda made a show of pulling out her phone. ‘Add it to the list.’

Will turned his back to her. His gaze skipped over Sara. Instead of speaking to her, or even acknowledging what was happening, he walked back toward the stairs. Sara expected him to go down anyway, but he turned back around, pacing the length of the balcony like a caged leopard. His teeth were so tightly gritted that Sara could see his jawbone working. His fists were clenched. He stopped again at the top of the stairs, shook his head, mumbled something under his breath.