Will realized that he had been using “she,” when the victim had a name. Anna, close to Angie, the name of Will’s wife. Like Angie, the woman had dark hair, dark eyes. Her skin tone was olive and she had a mole on the back of her calf just down from her knee, the same as Angie. Will wondered if this was something olive-skinned women tended to have, a mole on the back of their leg. Maybe this was some kind of marker that came in the genetic kit along with dark hair and eyes. He bet that doctor would know.
He remembered Sara Linton’s words as she examined the torn skin, the fingernail scratches around the gaping hole in the victim’s side. “She must have been awake when the rib was removed.”
Will shuddered at the thought. He had seen the work of many sadists over his law enforcement career, but nothing as sick as this.
His cell phone rang, and Will struggled to get his hand into his pocket without knocking the steering wheel and sending the Mini into the ditch by the road. Carefully, he opened the phone. The plastic clamshell had been cracked apart months ago, but he’d managed to put the pieces back together with superglue, duct tape and five strips of twine that acted as a hinge. Still, he had to be careful or the whole thing would fall apart in his hand.
“Will Trent.”
“It’s Lola, baby.”
He felt his brow furrow. Her voice had the phlegmy rasp of a two-pack-a-day smoker. “Who?”
“You’re Angie’s brother, right?”
“Husband,” he corrected. “Who is this?”
“This is Lola. I’m one’a her girls.”
Angie was freelancing for several private detective firms now, but she had been a vice cop for over a decade. Will occasionally got calls from some of the women she had walked the streets with. They all wanted help, and they all ended up right back in jail, where they used the pay phone to call him. “What do you want?”
“You don’t gotta be all abrupt on me, baby.”
“Listen, I haven’t talked to Angie in eight months.” Coincidentally, their relationship had become unhinged around the same time as the phone. “I can’t help you.”
“I’m innocent.” Lola laughed at the joke, then coughed, then coughed some more. “I got picked up with an unknown white substance I was just holding for a friend.”
These girls knew the law better than most cops, and they were especially careful on the pay phone in the jail.
“Get a lawyer,” Will advised, speeding up to pass a car in front of him. Lightning cracked the sky, illuminating the road. “I can’t help you.”
“I got information to exchange.”
“Then tell that to your lawyer.” His phone beeped, and he recognized his boss’s number. “I have to go.” He clicked over before the woman could say anything else. “Will Trent.”
Amanda Wagner inhaled, and Will braced himself for a barrage of words. “What the hell are you doing leaving your partner at the hospital and going on some fool’s errand for a case that we have no jurisdiction over and haven’t been invited to attend—in a county, I might add, where we don’t exactly have a good relationship?”
“We’ll get asked to help,” he assured her.
“Your woman’s intuition is not impressing me tonight, Will.”
“The longer we let the locals play this out, the colder the trail is going to get. This isn’t our abductor’s first time, Amanda. This wasn’t an exhibition game.”
“Rockdale has this covered,” she said, referring to the county that had police jurisdiction over the area where the car accident had occurred. “They know what they’re doing.”
“Are they stopping cars and looking for stolen vehicles?”
“They’re not completely stupid.”
“Yes, they are,” he insisted. “This wasn’t a dump job. She was held in the area and she managed to escape.”
Amanda was silent for a moment, probably clearing the smoke coming out of her ears. Overhead, a flash of lightning slashed the sky, and the ensuing thunder made it hard for Will to hear what Amanda finally said.
“What?” he asked.
She curtly repeated, “What’s the status of the victim?”
Will didn’t think about Anna. Instead, he recalled the look in Sara Linton’s eyes when they rolled the patient up to surgery. “It doesn’t look good for her.”
Amanda gave another, heavier sigh. “Run it down for me.”
Will gave her the highlights, the way the woman had looked, the torture. “She must have walked out of the woods. There’s got to be a house somewhere, a shack or something. She didn’t look like she’d been out in the elements. Somebody kept her for a while, starved her, raped her, abused her.”
“You think some hillbilly snatched her?”
“I think she was kidnapped,” he replied. “She had a good haircut, her teeth were bleached white. No track marks. No signs of neglect. There were two small plastic surgery scars on her back, probably from lipo.”
“So, not a homeless woman and not a prostitute.”
“Her wrists and ankles were bleeding from being bound. Some of the wounds on her body were healing, others were fresh. She was thin—too thin. This took place over more than a few days—maybe a week, two weeks, tops.”
Amanda cursed under her breath. The red tape was getting pretty thick. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation was to the state what the Federal Bureau of Investigation was to the country. The GBI coordinated with local law enforcement when crimes crossed over county lines, keeping the focus on the case rather than territorial disputes. The state had eight crime labs as well as hundreds of crime-scene techs and special agents on duty, all ready to serve whoever asked for help. The catch was that the request for help had to be formally made. There were ways to make sure it came, but favors had to be played, and for reasons not discussed in polite company, Amanda had lost her heat in Rockdale County a few months ago during a case involving an unstable father who had abducted and murdered his own children.
Will tried again. “Amanda—”
“Let me make some calls.”
“Can the first one be to Barry Fielding?” he asked, referring to the canine expert for the GBI. “I’m not even sure the locals know what they’re dealing with. They haven’t seen the victim or talked to the witnesses. Their detective wasn’t even at the hospital when I left.” She didn’t respond, so he prodded some more. “Barry lives in Rockdale County.”
A heavier sigh than the first two came down the line. Finally, she said, “All right. Just try not to piss off anyone more than usual. Report back to me when you’ve got something to move on.” Amanda ended the call.
Will closed the cell phone and tucked it into his jacket pocket just as the rumble of thunder filled the air. Lightning lit up the sky again, and he slowed the Mini, his knees pressing into the plastic dashboard. His plan had been to drive straight up Route 316 until he found the accident site, then beg his way onto the scene. Stupidly, he had not anticipated a roadblock. Two Rockdale County police cruisers were parked nose to nose, closing both lanes, and two beefy uniformed officers stood in front of each. About fifty feet ahead, giant xenon work lights illuminated a Buick with a crumpled front end. Crime-scene techs were all over, doing the painstaking work of collecting every piece of dirt, rock and glass so they could take it back to the lab for analysis.
One of the cops came up to the Mini. Will looked around for the button to roll down the window, forgetting that it was on the center console. By the time he got the window down, the other cop had joined his partner. Both of them were smiling. Will realized he must look comical in the tiny car, but there was nothing to be done about it now. When Faith had passed out in the parking lot of the courthouse, Will’s only thought was that her car was closer than his and it would be faster using the Mini to take her to the hospital.
The second cop said, “Circus is thataway.” He pointed his thumb back toward Atlanta.
Will knew better than to attempt to pull out his wallet from his back pocket while he was still in the car. H
e pushed open the door and clumsily exited the vehicle. They all looked heavenward as a clap of thunder shook the air.
“Special Agent Will Trent,” he told the cops, showing them his identification.
Both men looked wary. One of them walked away, talking into the radio mike on his shoulder, probably checking with his boss. Sometimes local cops were glad to see the GBI on their turf. Sometimes they wanted to shoot them.
The man in front of him asked, “What’s with the monkey suit, city boy? You just come from a funeral?”
Will ignored the jab. “I was at the hospital when the victim was brought in.”
“We’ve got several victims,” he answered, obviously determined to make this hard.
“The woman,” Will clarified. “The one who was walking on the road and was hit by the Buick that was being driven by an elderly couple. We think her name is Anna.”
The second cop was back. “I’m going to have to ask you to get back in your car, sir. According to my boss, you don’t have jurisdiction here.”
“Can I talk to your boss?”
“He figured you’d say that.” The man had a nasty smile on his face. “Said to give him a call in the morning, say around ten, ten-thirty.”
Will looked past their cruisers to the crime scene. “Can I get his name?”
The cop took his time, making a show of taking out his pad, finding his pen, putting pen to paper, printing the letters. With extreme care, he tore off the page and handed it to Will.
Will stared at the scrawl over the numbers. “Is this English?”
“Fierro, numbnuts. It’s Italian.” The man glanced at the paper, offering a defensive “I wrote it clear.”
Will folded the note and put it in his vest pocket. “Thank you.”
He wasn’t stupid enough to think the cops would politely return to their posts while he got back into the Mini. Will was in no hurry now. He leaned down and found the pump handle to lower the driver’s seat, then pushed it back as far as it would go. He angled himself into the car and gave the cops a salute as he did a three-point turn and drove away.
Route 316 hadn’t always been a back road. Before I-20 came along, 316 had been a main artery connecting Rockdale County and Atlanta. Today, most travelers preferred the interstate, but there were still people who used it for shortcuts and other nefarious pursuits. Back in the late nineties, Will had been involved in a sting operation to stop prostitutes from bringing johns out here. Even then, the road was not well traveled. That two cars managed to be here tonight at the same time as the woman was wildly coincidental. That she had at that point managed to walk onto the road into the path of one of them was even more fantastical.
Unless Anna had been waiting for them. Maybe she had stepped out in front of the Buick on purpose. Will had learned a long time ago that escape was sometimes easier than survival.
He kept the Mini at a slow crawl as he looked for a side road to turn down. He had gone about a quarter of a mile before he found it. The pavement was choppy, the low-riding car feeling each and every bump. An occasional streak of lightning lit the woods for him. There were no houses that Will could see from the road, no run-down shacks or old barns. No lean-tos sheltering old stills. He kept going, using the bright lights at the crime scene as his guide so that when he stopped, he found himself parallel to the action. Will pulled up the emergency brake and allowed himself a smile. The accident site was about two hundred yards away, the lights and activity making it look like a football field in the middle of the forest.
Will took the small emergency flashlight out of the glove box and got out of the car. The air was changing fast, the temperature dropping. On the news this morning, the weatherman had predicted partly cloudy, but Will was thinking they were in for a deluge.
He made his way on foot through the thick forest, carefully scanning the ground as he walked, searching for anything that was out of place. Anna could have come through here, or she could have been on the other side of the road. The point was that the crime scene should not just be confined to the street. They should be out in the forest, searching within at least a mile radius. The job would not be easy. The forest was dense, low-lying limbs and bushes blocking forward progress, fallen trees and sinkholes making the nighttime terrain even more dangerous. Will tried to get his bearings, wondering which direction would lead him to I-20, where the more residential areas were, but gave up after the compass in his head started spinning toward nowhere.
The grade shifted, sloping downward, and though it was still far away, Will could hear the usual sounds of a crime scene—the electric hum of the generator, the buzz from the stadium lights, the pop of camera flashes, the grumblings of cops and crime-scene techs occasionally punctuated by surprised laughter.
Overhead, the clouds parted, sending down a sliver of moonlight that cast the ground in shadow. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a patch of leaves that looked disturbed. He crouched down, the weak beam of the light not helping him much. The leaves were darker here, but he couldn’t tell if that was from blood or precipitation. Will could definitely tell that something had lain in the spot. The question was, had that something been an animal or had it been a woman?
He tried to get his bearings again. He was about halfway between Faith’s car and the crumpled Buick on the road. The clouds moved again, and he was back in darkness. The flashlight in his hand chose this moment to give up the ghost, the bulb going yellowish brown, then black. Will slapped the plastic case against his palm, trying to get some more juice out of the batteries.
Suddenly, the bright beam of a Maglite illuminated everything within a five-foot radius.
“You must be Agent Trent,” a man said. Will put up his hand to keep his retinas from burning. The man took his time lowering the flashlight to Will’s chest. In the distant glow of the crime-scene lights, he appeared to be the living embodiment of a Macy’s Day parade balloon—bulbous at the top, tapering to almost a point at the bottom. The man’s tiny little pinhead floated above his shoulders, the flesh of his thick neck spilling up over his shirt collar.
Considering his girth, the man was light on his feet. Will hadn’t heard him making his way through the forest. “Detective Fierro?” Will guessed.
He flashed the light into his own face so Will could see him. “Call me Asshole, because that’s what you’re gonna be thinking about me the whole lonely way back to Atlanta.”
Will was still crouched down. He glanced toward the crime scene. “Why not let me have a peek first?”
The light was back in Will’s eyes. Fierro said, “Persistent little fucker, aren’t you?”
“You think she was dropped here, but she wasn’t.”
“You’re a mind reader?”
“You’ve got an APB for all suspicious cars in the area and you’ve got your crime-scene guys going over that Buick with a sieve.”
“The APB is a code 10-38, which you’d know if you were a real cop, and the closest house to here is an old geezer in a wheelchair about two miles up.” Fierro said this with a disdain that was more than familiar to Will. “I’m not gonna have this conversation with you, pal. Leave my scene.”
“I saw what was done to her,” Will pressed. “She wasn’t put in a car and dropped. She was bleeding from everywhere. Whoever did this is smart. He wouldn’t put her in a car. He wouldn’t risk the trace evidence. He sure as hell wouldn’t leave her alive.”
“Two options.” Fierro held up his pudgy fingers and counted them off for Will. “Leave on your own two feet or leave on your back.”
Will stood up, straightening his shoulders so that he was standing at his full six-three. Pointedly, he looked down at Fierro. “Let’s try to work this out. I’m here to help.”
“I don’t need your help, Gomez. Now I suggest you turn around, get back in your little girl car and go gentle into that good night. You wanna know what happens here? Read a newspaper.”
“I think you mean Lurch,” Will corrected. “Gomez was the father.”<
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Fierro’s brow wrinkled.
“Look, the victim—Anna—probably lay down here.” Will pointed to the depression in the leaves. “She heard the cars coming, and she walked onto the road to get help.” Fierro didn’t stop him, so he continued, “I’ve got a canine unit on the way. The trail is still fresh now, but it’ll be gone with the rain.” As if on cue, lightning flashed, followed closely by a clap of thunder.
Fierro stepped closer. “You’re not hearing me, Gomez.” He thrust the butt of his flashlight into Will’s chest, physically pushing him away from the crime scene. He kept doing this as he spoke, punctuating each word with a sharp jab. “Get your fucking GBI, three-piece fucking undertaker ass back in your little red toy car and get the fuck off my—”
Will’s heel struck something solid. Both men heard it, and both men stopped.
Fierro opened his mouth, but Will indicated he should keep quiet, slowly kneeling down to the ground. Will used his hands to brush away some leaves and found the outline of a large square of plywood. Two big rocks framed the corner, marking the spot.
There was a faint sound in the air, almost a crackling. Will knelt down farther and the noise turned into a few muffled words. Fierro heard it, too. He drew his gun, keeping the flashlight alongside the muzzle so he could see what he was going to shoot. Suddenly, the detective no longer appeared to mind Will’s presence; instead, he seemed to be encouraging Will to be the one pulling back the sheet of plywood and putting his face in the line of fire.
When Will looked up at him, Fierro shrugged, as if to say, “You wanted on the case.”
Will had been in court all day. His gun was at home in the drawer by his bed. Fierro either had a large goiter on his ankle or he was carrying a backup piece. The man didn’t offer the gun and Will didn’t ask for it. He would need both hands if he was going to pull back the plywood and get out of the way in a timely manner. Will sucked in his breath as he moved the rocks, then dug his fingers carefully into the soft ground, getting a good grip on the edge of the board. It was standard size, roughly four-by-eight, and half an inch thick. The wood felt wet under his fingers, which meant that it would be even heavier.
The Will Trent Series 5-Book Bundle Page 84