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 had 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?”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
—
When you pulled the trigger on a taser, two hooked probes were propelled by an inert nitrogen gas, shooting them out at about 160 feet 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, which 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 on Felix’s book bag.”
“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 book bag.” 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 on 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 confidante. 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 voice mail 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 for me. 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 Will Trent Series 7-Book Bundle Page 109