“She had to feel the scars, Warren. I know you took your clothes off. I know you wanted to feel her skin against yours.”
“No.”
“I don’t know which is worse, the pain or the smell. First, it’s like little needles digging into you—a million at a time just burning and stinging. And then the smell hits you. It’s like barbecue, isn’t it? You smell it in the summer all over the city, that raw flesh burning in the flames.”
“I told you, we love each other.”
Will’s tone was almost playful, as if he was giving the windup for a joke. “You ever feel your skin in the shower sometimes, Warren? You’re soaping up and your hand goes to your ribs and you feel the little holes that were burned into your flesh?”
“That doesn’t happen.”
“They’re like little suction cups when they’re wet, right? You put your finger in them and you feel yourself get trapped all over again.”
He shook his head.
“Did you beg for it to be over, screaming like a pussy because it hurt so bad? You told them you’d do anything, right? Anything to make the pain stop.”
“Nobody hurt me like that.”
Will’s tone got harder, his words came faster. “You feel those scars and it makes you so angry. You want to take it out on someone—maybe Emma with her perfect life and her rich daddy and her beautiful mother who has to have a doctor come knock her out because she can’t bear the thought of being without her precious little girl.”
“Stop it.”
Will slammed his hand against the table. They all jumped. “She doesn’t belong to you, Warren! Tell me where she is!”
Warren’s jaw clenched as he glared at the table in front of him.
Spit flew from Will’s mouth as he moved even closer. “I know you. I know how your mind works. You didn’t take Emma because you love her, you took her because you wanted to make her scream.”
Slowly, Warren looked up, facing Will. His anger was barely controlled, his lips trembling like a rabid dog’s. “Yeah,” he said, his voice a hoarse whisper. “She screamed.” His face was as controlled as his tone. “She screamed until I shut her up.”
Will sat back in his chair. There was a clock on the wall. Faith listened to it slowly ticking away the time. She looked at the cinder-block wall in front of her rather than give Warren the satisfaction of her curiosity or Will the intensity of her concern.
She had worked with cops who could stand in the pouring rain and swear on a stack of Bibles that the sun was shining. Many times, she had sat in this very interrogation room and listened to Leo Donnelly, a man with no children and four divorces, rhapsodize about his love of God and his precious twin baby girls in order to lure a suspect into a confession. Faith herself had at times fabricated an invisible husband, a doting grandmother, an absent father, in order to get suspects to talk. All cops knew how to spin a yarn.
Only, this time, she was certain that Will Trent was not lying.
Will put his hand on the stack of folders. “We found your adoption records.”
Warren shook his head. “Those are sealed.”
“They are unless you commit a felony,” Will said, and Faith studied him, knowing that this was a lie, trying to figure out what cues he gave when he was not telling the truth. His face was just as impassive as before, and she ended up turning her attention back to Warren so that she did not drive herself mad.
Will said, “Your mother is still alive, Warren.”
“You’re lying.”
“She’s been looking for you.”
For the first time since Will had entered the room, Warren glanced at Faith, as if he could engage her maternal instinct. “That’s not fair.”
Will said, “All this time, she’s been looking for you.”
He opened the last folder. There was a sheet of paper inside. He turned the page around and slid it toward Warren. From where Faith sat, she could see that he had copied a memo about appropriate attire for on-duty, undercover officers. The city’s seal at the top had been duplicated so many times that the rising phoenix looked like a blob.
Will asked, “Don’t you want to see your mother, Warren?”
His eyes filled with tears.
“There she is,” Will said, tapping the paper. “She lives less than ten miles from where you work.”
Warren started rocking back and forth, his tears wetting the page.
“What kind of son is she going to find in you?”
“A good one,” the young man insisted.
“You think what you’ve done is good? You think she’s going to want to be around the man who kept a young girl from her family?” Will pressed a little harder. “You’re doing the same thing to Emma’s parents that was done to your mom. You think she’s going to be able to love you after finding out that you knew how to get Emma back to her family, but you wouldn’t do it?”
“She’s safe,” he said. “I just wanted to keep her safe.”
“Tell me where she is. Her mother misses her so much.”
He shook his head. “No,” he answered. “You’re never going to find her. She’s going to be with me forever. There’s nothing that can come between us now.”
“Stop the bullshit, Warren. You didn’t want Emma. You wanted her life.”
Warren looked at the file folders in front of Will as if he expected something even worse to be pulled out, some information even more damaging to be thrown into his face.
Will tried again. “Tell us where she is, and I’ll tell you your mother’s address.”
Warren’s eyes did not stray from the files, but he started whispering something so quietly that Faith could not make out what he was saying.
“I’ll go get her myself. I’ll drive her over to see you.”
Warren kept whispering, his mouth moving in an unintelligible mantra.
Will said, “Speak up, Warren. Just tell us where she is so we can give her back to her parents who love her.”
Faith finally understood his words. “Blue, red, purple, green. Blue, red, purple, green.”
“Warren—”
His voice got louder. “Blue, red, purple, green.” He stood up, screaming, “Blue, red, purple, green!” He started waving his hands, his tone rising to the top of his voice. “Blue! Red! Purple! Green!” He ran toward the door, trying the knob. Faith was closest to him, so she tried to pull him away. Warren’s elbow caught her in the mouth and she fell back against the table.
“Blue! Red! Purple! Green!” he screamed, running full on into the concrete wall. Will went after him, wrapping his arms around the man. Warren kicked, screaming, “No! Let me go! Let me go!”
“Warren!” Will let go of him, keeping his hands out wide in case he needed to grab him again.
Warren stood in the middle of the room. Blood dripped down his face where he had slammed his head into the wall. He lunged toward Will, swinging his fists wildly.
The door flew open and two cops rushed in to help. Warren tried to run out the door, but they wrestled him to the floor, where he wriggled frantically, jerking his hands away from them as they tried to cuff him, screaming all the while. His foot kicked up, catching one of the officers in the face.
The Taser came out. Thirty thousand volts screamed through his body. Almost immediately, Warren went limp on the floor.
Will sat back on his heels, his breath coming in pants. He leaned over Warren, hand on his chest. “Please,” he begged. “Just tell me. Tell me where she is.”
Warren’s lips moved. Will leaned down to listen to him. Something passed between the two men. Will nodded once, very much like the curt affirmations Warren had given them earlier. He sat up slowly, hands in his lap, telling the cops, “Take him away.”
The officers scooped up Warren like a bag of potatoes, dragging him toward the door. They would take him to his cell and let him sleep off the shock.
Faith looked at Will, trying to understand. “What did he say to you?”
He pointed to his f
ile folders on the table, leaning over as if he was still too breathless to speak. Faith looked at the files. They were in the wrong order, but she could see it now: blue, red, purple, green.
Warren had been yelling out the colors of the folders.
The homicide squad room had not improved during Faith’s three-day absence. Robertson’s jockstrap still dangled from the top drawer of his desk. A blow-up doll marked as “evidence” during the last birthday party sat on top of the filing cabinet, her mouth still opened in a suggestive O even as the air slowly drained out of her once curvaceous body. Leo Donnelly’s desk was cleared but for a famous old photograph of Farrah Fawcett that he had obviously cut out of a magazine. Over the years, the margins of the photo had been embellished with graffiti and artwork that was more suitable for a middle school boys’ bathroom.
Adding to the overall masculine effect, the shift was changing, an event Faith always likened to a football locker room during halftime. The noise was deafening, the smells alarming. Someone had turned on the television that hung from the ceiling. Someone else was trying to find a station on the ancient radio. A burrito heated in the microwave, the odor of burned cheese wafting through the air. Baritone bellows filled the room as detectives tromped in and out, turning over cases, giving each other the business about whose dick was bigger, who would solve a case first, who was turning over a dog of an investigation that would never be solved. In short, the whole room was filling with testosterone the way a cloth diaper filled with shit.
Faith glanced at the television set as she recognized Amanda’s voice saying, “… proud to announce that an arrest has been made in the Campano kidnapping.”
Someone yelled, “Thanks to APD, you cunt.”
There were more words tossed Amanda’s way—bitch, snatch, whatever base and degrading terms other cops could conjure to denigrate a woman who would have them all pissing in their pants if she got them alone in a room for more than five minutes.
The handful of detectives closest to Faith’s desk gave her curious glances—not because she was working the case, but because of the language. Faith shrugged, looking back at the television set, watching Amanda expertly handle the reporters. She could still feel their eyes on her, though.
This sort of testing took place almost on a daily basis. If Faith told them to shut up, she was a ballbuster who couldn’t take a joke. If she ignored it, they took her silence for tacit approval. It didn’t stop there. If she spurned their sexual advances, she was a lesbian. If she dated any of them, she would be labeled a whore. Faith couldn’t win either way, and striking back in similar terms took up too much of her time. The pouting, the passive-aggressive whining—Faith had already raised one child, and she wasn’t ready to take on twenty more.
And yet, she had always loved working here, loved feeling like she was part of a brotherhood. This was why Will Trent did not act or talk like a cop. He didn’t sit in a squad room. He didn’t bullshit over beers with Charlie Reed and Hamish Patel. He was certainly part of a team, but working with him was like working in a bubble. There was never the hum of people in the background, the jostling of egos and assignments. His was a more focused way of doing the job, but it was so different from what Faith was used to that, now that she was back among her fellow detectives, she felt like she no longer belonged. She had to admit that for all Will’s faults, at least he listened to what she had to say. It was nice to have a discussion with a colleague who didn’t ask “What’re you, on the rag?” every time she disagreed with him.
Faith looked back at the television. Amanda was nodding as a reporter asked about Westfield Academy, the arrest of Evan Bernard. She looked absolutely radiant, and Faith had to admit she was in her element on camera. The reporters were eating out of the palm of her hand. “Mr. Bernard is certainly a person of interest.”
“You interested in this?” one of the detectives yelled. Faith did not have to glance over to know the man was probably cupping his genitals.
Amanda answered another question. “The suspect is a twenty-eight-year-old man with a storied past.”
Off camera, a reporter asked, “Why aren’t you releasing his name?”
“The arraignment in the morning will make it part of the public record,” she said, sidestepping the obvious, which was that they were keeping Warren’s name out of the press as long as they could in order to keep some helpful do-gooder from offering him legal advice. The fact that Lionel Petty had already submitted an I-Report to CNN.com of him and Warren Grier standing beside one of the copy machines at work would soon work against them.
Another reporter was obviously thinking the same thing as Faith. “What about the missing girl? Any leads on her whereabouts?”
“We believe it’s only a matter of time before Emma Campano is found.”
Faith noted that the woman did not say whether the girl would be found dead or alive. She felt a sudden pang of envy for Amanda and her position. Like Faith’s mother, Amanda had worked her way to the top. If Faith had to put up with a little misogyny now and then, she could not imagine what it was like for her mother’s generation.
Amanda had started in the secretarial pool, just like Evelyn Mitchell, back when the women officers had to wear below-the-knee wool skirts as they fetched coffee and typed up requisitions. Amanda had clawed her way to the top, only to have a bunch of idiots with primordial ooze dripping out of their noses heckle her as she broke one of the biggest cases the city had seen since Wayne Williams was spotted tossing a body into the Chattahoochee.
And where was Faith after all those years of progress and women’s lib? She was still in the equivalent of the secretarial pool, she supposed. To be fair, she had volunteered for the task of cataloguing all the evidence Will had taken from Warren Grier’s tiny abode. That was before she’d seen the piles of boxes they had taken from the boardinghouse and stacked around her desk. There were at least six of them, all filled to the top with papers. Warren was a pack rat, the kind of man who couldn’t throw out a receipt or a movie ticket. He still had pay stubs from the copy center that went back almost ten years.
Faith touched her jaw, bruised and tender from where Warren’s elbow had caught her. She had found an ancient Lean Cuisine in the back of the freezer in the break room. The bag was hard as a rock, but it felt good on her mouth. She hated getting hit. Not that anyone particularly enjoyed it, but Faith had learned a long time ago that puking was her natural response to pain. Holding a bag of frozen spaghetti and meatballs was not helping matters. A small price to pay considering what Emma Campano had probably gone through.
Will was escorting Warren Grier to the holding cells. There was only one question he had yet to get answered: Where was Emma? Even if the girl was still alive, time was running out. Faith thought about the conditions in which she might be kept: locked up in a room somewhere or, worse, shoved in the trunk of a car. Today, the temperature had hit one hundred before noon. The heat was unrelenting, even at night. Did Emma have water? Did she have food? How long before her supplies ran out? Death by dehydration took a week to ten days, but that was without a head wound and the broiling heat. Were they going to spend the next two weeks counting off the hours until Emma Campano could no longer draw breath?
“Hey, Mitchell. How’s it working with that rat?” Robertson asked. He was sitting at his desk, leaning so far back in his chair that it looked like it might break.
“Fine,” she told him, wondering why no one was giving Will credit for letting the Atlanta police duckwalk Evan Bernard out of Westfield Academy in front of the rolling cameras.
Robertson wagged his finger at her. “Be careful around that fucker. Never trust a Statey.”
“Gotcha. Thanks.”
“Fucking GBI. Taking our case, making it look like they did all the heavy lifting.” There were noises of agreement from around the room.
What selective memory they all seemed to have. Faith would’ve probably been joining in if she hadn’t been there that first day, watching Will co
nnect the dots that had been in front of them all along.
Robertson seemed to be waiting for her to say something else, maybe take a jibe at Will or make a nasty comment about the GBI, but Faith was at a loss. A week ago, the words would have rushed out like beer from a tap. Now, the well had run dry.
Faith turned back to the work in front of her, trying to block out the noises of the squad room. She didn’t have the strength at the moment to start going through the boxes from Warren’s apartment, so she concentrated on her computer screen. Will had used a digital camera to take pictures of Warren Grier’s living quarters, and she scrolled through the series of shots, which showed basically the same small room from six different angles.
Every mundane detail of Warren’s existence had been captured, from his toiletries to his sock drawer. There were boxes and boxes of papers under his bed, overflowing with school report cards and official-looking forms from his time in the foster care system. There was a close-up of a manual for a Mac laptop computer, a phone number scribbled on the front. Faith tilted her head, wondering why Will had turned the camera upside down.
She picked up her cell phone and dialed the number, sticking her finger in her other ear to block out the noise. The phone rang once, twice, then a local theater picked up and started giving movie times for the next shows. No news flash there. The six billion ticket stubs sitting in a box at Faith’s feet revealed his passion for the silver screen.
Faith went back to the pictures, trying to divine a clue that might lead to the missing girl. All she saw was the sad one-room apartment where Warren had lived all of his adult life. There were no photographs of family, no calendars with dates marked for dinners with friends. From all appearances, he had no friends, no one he could turn to.
That was no kind of excuse, though. By his own admission, Will had grown up under similar circumstances. He had lived in state care until he was eighteen. He’d become a cop—and a damn good one. His social skills left something to be desired, but there was something underneath all his awkwardness that was oddly endearing.
Or maybe it was something her mother had told her ages ago: the easiest way for a man to get into your heart was if you imagined what he was like as a child.
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