The Silent Wife: From the No. 1 Sunday Times bestselling author comes a gripping new crime thriller (Will Trent Series, Book 10)

by Karin Slaughter

  “Yes, ma’am,” Sara said. “She’ll be brought to this building. I’ll do X-rays to look for broken bones or fractures or any foreign objects that might have been previously missed. I’ll perform an autopsy and examine the organs and tissue. Embalming interferes with toxicology studies, but hair and nails might provide answers.”

  “Is it that obvious?” Aimee asked. “Can you just tell if something is wrong?”

  Again, Sara held back the details. “My goal is to be able to tell you both definitively whether Shay’s death was accidental or by another means.”

  Aimee asked, “You mean murder?”

  “Murder?” Larry struggled with the word. “What do you mean, murder? Who would hurt our—”

  “Larry,” Aimee said, her voice softer. “Either Shay accidentally died alone in the woods, or she took her own life, or someone murdered her. There’s nothing else that could’ve happened.”

  Larry looked to Sara for confirmation.

  Sara nodded.

  “What if—” Larry’s voice caught. “Will you be able to tell other things?”

  Aimee asked, “What other things?”

  Sara knew what he was most afraid of. “Mr. Van Dorne, if your daughter was murdered, it’s possible that she was raped.”

  He would not meet Sara’s gaze. “You’ll be able to tell?”

  “How?” Aimee asked. “From sperm? Could you get his DNA?”

  “No, ma’am. Any genetic material would have been absorbed.” Sara chose her words carefully. “If there was bruising, or internal tearing, the damage would still be apparent.”

  Larry asked, “Tearing?”

  “Yes.”

  He stared at Sara, unspeaking. His eyes were light green, like her own eyes.

  Like her father’s.

  Eddie had never asked and Sara had never shared with him the details of her rape, though the weight of it had shifted their relationship in subtle ways. Cathy likened it to Adam eating from the tree of knowledge. They had both been thrown out of paradise.

  “Larry.” Aimee had her arms crossed again. She was visibly struggling to hold back her emotions. “You know where I stand. But this isn’t my decision alone. Shay is just as much yours as she is mine.”

  Larry looked down at his twisted hands. “Two yesses, one no.”

  Sara recognized the phrase from her work at the children’s clinic. A lot of parents agreed to the dictum that on the important decisions, you had to have two yesses. One vote of no from either parent, for any reason, could shut down the conversation.

  Larry leaned up to find his handkerchief in his back pocket. He blew his nose.

  Sara was about to offer to leave, but the father stopped her.

  “Yes,” he said. “Dig her up. I want to know.”

  Sara spread out Leslie Truong’s paperwork across several desktops, trying to figure out what was bothering her. There was no lightning bolt. Her concentration was shot. Her brain had lost its sense of logic. She was standing in the briefing room, the same room they had all sat in this morning, but with another stressful twelve hours tacked onto her sleepless night.

  The timing. Something was bothering her about the timing.

  A wide yawn broke her train of thought. Neither of the two coffees she’d bolted down was having the desired effect. All Sara wanted in the world was to put her head down on one of the desks and grab five minutes of sleep. She looked at the clock on the wall. 7:02 p.m. The floor-to-ceiling windows showed an ominous black outside. She rubbed her eyes. Stray bits of mascara still clung to her lashes. She had washed off in the shower at the back of the morgue. Her scrubs smelled like the chemicals Gary used to scour the tables, but she’d trade that for the formaldehyde stench and U-Store damp any day.

  She looked at the clock again, because she kept losing track of time. That was what happened when you drove around town all night with a blinding rush of shit in your brain. At least Tessa had gotten a good laugh out of it.

  She had to look at the clock a third time.

  7:03 p.m.

  Sara’s only hope was that she would catch her second wind when the briefing started. Then, she would go home and fall into bed.

  Whether or not Will was beside her was completely out of her hands.

  “Doc.” Nick placed his rhinestone cowboy briefcase in one of the chairs. “Amanda told me you were in Grant County today.”

  “For two seconds. Brock gave me access to his storage facility.”

  “Find any taxidermied corpses dressed like his mother?”

  Sara abhorred that kind of teasing. “I found the files we need to investigate this case, and I’m grateful that Brock was willing to help us.”

  Nick’s eyebrows went up, but he didn’t apologize. He unhooked his reading glasses from his shirt. He looked down at the papers on the desks. “This everything?”

  “Yes.”

  He ran his fingers down a few paragraphs. “It’s hard for me to accept that Jeffrey was wrong on this one.”

  “You mean the Chief?”

  Nick kept his eyes on the page, but she saw the sly grin on his lips. He had never called Jeffrey by that name.

  “Nick, what you’re doing with Will,” Sara said. “I know that Jeffrey would’ve appreciated it, but I don’t.”

  He looked at her over his glasses. He gave a curt nod. “Message received.”

  “Dr. Linton.” The top of Amanda’s head entered the room first. As usual, she was typing on her phone. “I sent the Van Dorne paperwork to Villa Rica. They’ve scheduled the exhumation for five tomorrow morning. The information is on the server.”

  “Great,” Sara said, because standing in a cold, dark cemetery at the crack of dawn was much better than sleeping in her warm bed.

  Nick asked Amanda, “How’d it go with Zanger? Is she a victim or was that Miranda gal just blowing smoke up our asses?”

  “I haven’t been updated.” She asked Sara, “Tommi Humphrey?”

  Sara’s brain took a moment to catch up. It wasn’t like Faith and Will not to report in. “I couldn’t find Tommi online. Not in our database or social media. I asked my mother to do some digging around.”

  “Speaking to Humphrey is a priority.”

  Sara bit her lip so she would not tell Amanda that everything couldn’t be a priority. “I’ll call her again.”

  “Do that.”

  Sara gave into an eye-roll as she stepped out into the hallway. She leaned her back against the wall. She closed her eyes. She was vibrating with exhaustion. She was incapable of summoning her inner medical student, who had thrived on back-to-back shifts.

  Her phone vibrated with a new alert. Sara had to blink her eyes several times to get them to focus. She swiped through her messages. Agents asking for reports. Gary requesting time off to take his cat to the vet. The state’s attorney wanted to schedule prep on a case that was about to go to trial. Brock had texted to make sure Sara had found everything she needed at the U-Store. The thought of responding to any of them felt overwhelming. Only guilt made her reply to Brock—

  Got everything. Really helpful. Will return key soon. Thks.

  Sara figured she might as well get her mother out of the way. A phone call felt like a burden. She texted in the formal style that Cathy demanded—

  Hey, Mama. Did Tessie ask you to find Tommi Humphrey’s phone number or location for me? Her mother’s information would work, too. It’s for a very important case. We really need to speak with her as soon as possible. I love you. S.

  Sara slid her phone into her pocket. She did not expect a quick response from her mother. Cathy’s phone was probably sitting on the kitchen counter, hooked up to the charger, which is where she usually left it when she was inside the house.

  Of its own accord, Sara’s hand reached back into her pocket. The phone came out. Her thumb swiped up. She was like an addict. Hours had passed since her last hit. She could no longer resist the temptation.

  She opened the Find My app.

  Instead o
f Lena’s address, the map showed an actual pin.

  Will had made himself visible to her again. He was inside the building. Sara almost wept with relief. She held the phone to her chest even as she berated herself for being so desperate.

  At that very moment, the stair door banged open. Will stepped aside, letting Faith stomp down the hall ahead of him. Sara’s first thought was that Faith looked worse than Sara felt. Her shoulders were bowed. She was gripping her purse to her chest like a football. Her usual air of cheerful disgruntlement had been replaced by a crushing anguish.

  She took a left into the briefing room, telling Sara, “Fuck my job.”

  Will looked as haunted as Faith. Instead of speaking to Sara, he shook his head.

  She followed him inside.

  Amanda asked, “Well?”

  “Well, this.” Faith hurled her purse at one of the desks. The contents spilled onto the floor. She paced a few steps toward the window. Her hands went into her hair. Everyone but Will was stunned. Faith never acted out. Sara had always thought of her as unflappable.

  She looked to Will, but he had knelt down to gather Faith’s things back into her purse.

  Amanda told him, “Speak.”

  Will set the purse upright on the desk. He said, “We called Callie Zanger from the car outside her office building.”

  He carefully relayed Faith’s phone conversation with the lawyer. Will had always been uncomfortable leading briefings. Now, his voice had turned monotone, almost rote. Sara sat down in the front row. Will was directing his words toward Faith, though she clearly already knew the details. Sara realized that he was watching his partner, ready to step in if she needed him.

  He continued, “Zanger sat at the bar with Faith. I was at a table about ten feet away.”

  Sara heard a roughness enter his tone. He was just as bruised by Callie Zanger’s story. He laid it all out in painful detail. The abduction. The woman’s certainty that her ex-husband was the man who had harmed her, who had raped her, who had left her for dead.

  As Will spoke, he worried his thumb over his wounded knuckle. Fresh blood slid down his fingers. By the time he had finished telling them what Callie Zanger thought was the truth of her abduction, the carpet beneath his hand was stained with dots of blood.

  Will said, “Zanger is sure it was her husband. We didn’t tell her any different.”

  He said we, but Sara knew from the story that Will had never spoken to the woman.

  “The bartender told me he’d make sure she didn’t drive herself home,” Will said. “And then we left. That’s it.”

  “I couldn’t tell her.” Faith had sagged into a chair. She looked haunted by the weight of the day. “Callie thinks she won. That’s what she said. ‘I won.’”

  No one spoke in the immediate.

  Nick pulled at a string on the corner of his briefcase.

  Will leaned his back against the wall.

  Amanda let out a long, slow breath. She was the most hardened officer of them all, but she was also closely tied to the Mitchell family. Early in her career, she had been partnered with Evelyn, Faith’s mother. She had dated Faith’s uncle. Jeremy and Emma called her Aunt Mandy.

  “Nick,” Amanda said. “There’s a bottle of bourbon in the bottom drawer of my desk.”

  Nick left at a sprint.

  Faith said, “I don’t want a drink.”

  “I do.” Amanda was always on her feet, but she sat at the desk beside Faith. She asked Will, “Rod Zanger?”

  Will said, “We located him in Cheyenne. He’s been in the Laramie county lock-up for the last three months. He beats his new wife, too.”

  Faith put her head in her hands. “I couldn’t tell her. She’s barely holding it together. I’m barely holding it together.”

  Amanda asked Will. “The transceiver on her car?”

  He said, “We couldn’t ask for it without telling her why.”

  “I wasn’t going to do that to her,” Faith said. “I couldn’t take that away from her.”

  Amanda nodded for Will to continue.

  He said, “Rod’s got an extensive social media presence going back ten years. During the week of the Grant County attacks, he was in Antwerp with Callie Zanger for some kind of tax conference. There are photographs of them on an orange, wooden escalator that’s well-known in the city.”

  Amanda said, “My recollection is that he had no alibi for his whereabouts when his wife was abducted?”

  “Yes,” Will said. “He always denied it.”

  “He didn’t do it.” Faith turned to Amanda, incredulous. “Jesus Christ, can you stop bullshitting around about this? It all lines up. The hair tie. The hammer. The month and time of day. The woods. The fucking blue Gatorade. Everything Callie said lines up, just like everything else lined up this morning when we were all sitting in this same damn room and you were telling us, berating us, warning us, that we couldn’t call this guy a serial killer when every single fucking clue was pointing to a serial killer.”

  Amanda ignored the accusation, telling Will, “I want to talk to the detective who worked the Zanger disappearance. Call the super in her building. He might have the hard drives from two years ago lying around his office. If we can get—”

  Faith stood up. She was looking at the photos from Leslie Truong’s autopsy. “There are nineteen women, Amanda. Nineteen women who were attacked. Fifteen are dead, and that doesn’t even include Tommi Humphrey. You know what he did to her. You know!”

  Amanda took the abuse head-on. “I do.”

  “So why the fuck are we pretending this isn’t connected when—” She held up one of the photos. Her voice was shaking. “Look at this! This is what he does. This is what would’ve happened to Callie Zanger if she hadn’t somehow been able to think, to act, to walk out of those woods on her own!”

  Amanda let her vent.

  “How many more women are out there? He could be hurting another woman right now, Amanda. Right now, because he is a serial killer of women. That is what he is. A fucking serial killer.”

  Amanda nodded once. “Yes, we are dealing with a serial killer.”

  The admission knocked the wind out of Faith.

  Amanda asked, “Does it make you feel better giving it a name?”

  “No,” Faith said. “Because you wouldn’t listen to me, but you listened to Miranda Newberry’s stupid fucking spreadsheet.”

  “The source of the data is immaterial,” Amanda said. “Chance favors the prepared.”

  “Unbelievable.” Faith slumped back into the desk.

  Amanda directed her attention to Will. “Excluding Grant County and Alexandra McAllister, we have thirteen separate jurisdictions where bodies were found. For now, we’ll leave out the three cases where the women managed to escape. First thing in the morning, I want you and Faith to divvy up the counties with Nick. We need to light up the phones, start setting appointments and interviews. Keep it casual. Don’t give away too much.”

  Will was obviously still concerned about Faith, but he suggested, “We could say we’re doing a state-wide, random check on missing persons cases.”

  “Yes, good.” Amanda said, “Tell them we are studying how to streamline the reporting process. Focus on the names from our list. I need all of the witness statements, coroner reports, any photographs, recordings, forensics, maps, crime scene diagrams, investigator’s logs and the names of anyone who was on scene. And I do mean softly, Wilbur. My phone calls this morning have already caused some ripples. Our killer could go underground if he gets wind of us laying the groundwork for a task force.”

  “You were making phone calls this morning to set up a task force,” Faith said. “So it wasn’t just the spreadsheet? You’ve been building up to this since the briefing, but for some reason, you not only held back that detail, you kept insisting that we ignore the obvious?”

  “I’ve been working quietly since this morning, which is the operative word you seem to be missing.” Amanda put a fine point on it. “The
last thing we need is some half-cocked hillbilly deputy in Butts County mouthing off to the press about how we’ve got the next Jack the Ripper in our backyard. This is how we keep that from happening. Baby steps.”

  Faith blew out an exasperated sigh.

  Amanda seemed ready to move on, but she recalibrated, telling Faith, “Yes, I could’ve told you earlier.”

  “But?” Faith asked.

  “But,” Amanda said. “I could’ve told you earlier.”

  This was the closest Sara had ever heard Amanda come to admitting that she had made a mistake.

  Faith did not seem mollified. There was something else. “I can’t tell her, Mandy. When it’s time, I can’t be the one to tell Callie Zanger that it wasn’t her husband.”

  Amanda rubbed Faith’s back with her hand. “We’ll jump off that cliff when we get to it.”

  Nick returned with the bourbon. He’d brought a ceramic mug from the kitchen. He poured a healthy serving. He offered it to Faith.

  She shook her head. “I’ve got to drive.”

  “I’ll drive you,” Amanda said. “Emma is still with her father. We’ll go to Evelyn’s.”

  Faith took the mug. She pressed it to her mouth. From across the room, Sara could hear her swallow.

  “Dr. Linton,” Amanda said. “Let’s talk about the killer returning to the victims. The Zanger story confirms a pattern.”

  Sara felt caught out. Her brain was too depleted to make such a quick transition.

  Amanda prompted, “Dr. Linton?”

  Sara struggled to generate a working thesis.

  Will saved her. “The pattern is, the killer somehow incapacitates his victims, probably with a hammer. Then he takes them to the woods. He drugs them. When the drug stops working, he punctures their spinal cords. His goal is to paralyze them, to completely control them. He keeps going back to the women until they’re found.”

  Sara said, “The cut nerves in Alexandra McAllister’s brachial plexus show a progression.”

  Amanda verified, “You mean from Tommi Humphrey?”

  “I mean from all three Grant County victims.” Sara finally got her second wind. “I’ve always thought the three victims—Humphrey, Caterino, Truong—were a case study in escalation. The killer was trying to find the right technique, the correct dosage in the Gatorade, the best tool to paralyze them and when.”