“I’m sorry.” Sam shook his head, slightly out of breath. “I didn’t mean to—I just—”
Faith didn’t care. Even if her mind had blocked out Sam from her conscious thoughts over the years, her body seemed to remember every part of him. It felt so damn good to have his arms around her again, to feel the closeness of somebody who knew about her family and her job and her past—even if that particular body wasn’t of much use to her at the moment. She kissed his mouth very gently and with no other meaning than to feel connected again. “It’s okay.”
Sam pulled back. He was too embarrassed to see that it didn’t matter.
“Sammy—”
“I haven’t gotten the hang of things being sober.”
“It’s okay,” she repeated, trying to kiss him again.
He stepped back even farther, looking somewhere over her shoulder instead of in her eyes. “You want me to …” He made a halfhearted gesture toward her lap.
Faith let out a heavy sigh. Why were the men in her life such a constant disappointment? God knew she didn’t have high standards.
He looked at his watch. “Gretchen’s probably waiting up for me. Been working late a lot.”
Faith gave up, leaning her head against the cabinet behind her. She might as well try to salvage something out of this. “Do you mind taking out the trash on your way out?”
CHAPTER TWELVE
—
“Goddamn it,” Pauline whispered, then wondered why she wasn’t screaming it at the top of her lungs. “Goddamn it!” she yelled, her voice catching in her throat. She rattled the handcuffs around her wrists, jerking at them even though she knew the gesture was useless. She was like a goddamn prisoner at a jail, her hands cuffed, strapped tight to a leather belt so that, even if she contorted herself into a ball, her fingertips barely grazed her chin. Her feet were chained, the thick links clanking against each other with every step she took. She had done enough damn yoga to be able to bend her feet up to her head, but what good was that? What the hell kind of help was the inversion plow pose when your fucking life was at stake?
The blindfold made it worse, though she had managed to move it up a little by rubbing her face against the rough concrete blocks lining one of the walls. The scarf was tight. Millimeter by millimeter, the blindfold was forced up, shaving away some of the skin on her cheek in the process. There was no difference above or below the strip of material, but Pauline felt like she had accomplished something, might be prepared when that door opened and she saw a sliver of light under the blindfold.
For now, it was darkness. That was all she saw. No windows, no lights, no way of judging the movement of time. If she thought about it, thought that she could not see, did not know if she was being watched or videotaped or worse, she would lose her mind. Hell, she was half losing her mind already. She was soaking wet, sweat pouring from her skin. Rivulets tickled her nose as they slid down her scalp. It was maddening, made all the more worse by the fucking darkness.
Felix liked the dark. He liked it when she got in bed with him and held him and told him stories. He liked being under the covers, blankets over his head. Maybe she had coddled him too much when he was a baby. She’d never let him out of her sight. She was scared that someone would take him away from her, someone would realize that she really shouldn’t be a mother, that she didn’t have it in her to love a child like a child should be loved. But she did. She loved her boy. She loved him so much that the thought of him was the only thing that was keeping her from twisting herself into a ball, wrapping the chains around her neck and killing herself.
“Help!” she screamed, knowing it was useless. If they were afraid of Pauline being heard, they would have gagged her.
She had paced out the room hours ago, approximating the size at twenty feet by sixteen. Cinderblock walls on one side, sheetrock on the others, with a metal door that was bolted from the outside. Vinyl mattress pad in the corner. A slop bucket with a lid. The concrete was cold against her bare feet. There was a hum in the next room, a hot-water heater, something mechanical. She was in a basement. She was underground, which made her feel as if her skin would crawl right off her body. She hated being underground. She didn’t even park in the damn garage at work, she hated it so much.
She stopped pacing, closed her eyes.
No one parked in her space. It was right by the door. Sometimes she’d go out for some air, stand at the entrance to the garage to make sure the space was empty. She could read the sign from the street: pauline mcghee. Christ, the battle with the sign company to get that “c” in lowercase. It had cost someone their job, which was just as well, since apparently they couldn’t do it right.
If someone was parked in her space, she would call the attendant and have the asshole towed. Porsche, Bentley, Mercedes—Pauline didn’t care. She had earned that fucking space. Even if she wasn’t going to use it, she would be damned if someone else would.
“Let me out of here!” she screamed, jerking the chains, trying to wrench off the belt. It was thick, the sort of thing her brother wore back in the seventies. Two rows of riveted holes going the circumference, two prongs in the buckle. The metal felt like a wad of wax, and she knew the prongs had been soldered down. She couldn’t remember when it had happened, but she knew what a fucking soldered belt felt like.
“Help me!” she screamed. “Help me!”
Nothing. No help. No response. The belt was biting into her skin, raking across her hip bones. If she wasn’t so fucking fat, she could just slide out of the thing.
Water, she thought. When had she last had water? You could live without food for weeks, sometimes months, but water was different. You could go three, maybe four days before it hit you—the cramps, the cravings. The awful headaches. Were they going to give her water? Or were they going to let her waste away, then do whatever they wanted to her while she lay there, helpless as a child?
Child.
No. She would not think about Felix. Morgan would take him. He would never let anything bad happen to her baby. Morgan was a bastard and a liar, but he would take care of Felix, because underneath it all, he was not a bad person. Pauline knew what a bad person looked like, and it was not Morgan Hollister.
She heard footsteps behind her, outside the door. Pauline stopped, holding her breath so she could hear. Stairs—someone was coming down the stairs. Even in the dark, she could see the walls closing in around her. Which was worse: being alone down here, or being trapped with someone else?
Because she knew what was coming. Knew it just as certain as she knew the details of her own life. There was never just one. He always wanted two: dark hair, dark eyes, dark hearts that he could shatter. He had kept them apart for as long as he could stand it, but now he’d want them together. Caged, like two animals. Fighting it out. Like animals.
The first domino would soon fall, then the rest would follow one after the other. A woman alone, two women alone, and then …
She heard a chattering, “No-no-no-no,” and realized the words were coming from her own mouth. She backed up, pressing herself into the wall, her knees shaking so hard that she would’ve fallen to the floor but for the rough cinderblock bracing her. The handcuffs rattled as her hands trembled.
“No,” she whispered, just one word, shaking herself out of it. She was a survivor. She had not lived the last twenty years of her life so that she would die in some fucking underground hole.
The door opened. She saw a flash of light under the blindfold.
He said, “Here’s your friend.”
She heard something drop to the floor—a dank exhalation of air, the rattling of chains, then stillness. Then there was a second, quieter sound; a solid thud that echoed in the large room.
The door closed. The light was gone. There was a whistling sound, labored breathing. Groping, Pauline found the body. Long hair, blindfold, thin face, small breasts, hands cuffed in front of her. The whistling was coming from the woman’s broken nose.
No time to worry a
bout that. Pauline checked the woman’s pockets, tried to find something that could get her out of here. Nothing. Nothing except another person who was going to want food and water.
“Fuck.” Pauline sat back on her heels, fighting the urge to scream. Her foot struck something hard, and she reached around, remembering the second thud.
She traced her hands along the thin cardboard box, guessing it was about six inches square. It had some heft—maybe a couple of pounds. There was a perforation line along one side, and she pressed her fingers against it, breaking open the seal. Her fingers found something slick inside.
“No …” she breathed.
Not again.
She closed her eyes, felt tears weep from under the blindfold. Felix, her job, her Lexus, her life—all of it slipped away as she felt the slick plastic trash bags between her fingers.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
—
Will had forced himself to get up at his usual time of five o’clock. His run had been sluggish, his shower far from bracing. He was standing over the kitchen sink, his breakfast cereal soggy in the bowl, when Betty nudged his ankle to stir him from his stupor.
He found Betty’s leash by the door and stooped down to clip it onto her collar. She licked his hand, and despite himself, he petted her little head. Everything about the Chihuahua was an embarrassment. She was the kind of dog a young starlet would carry in a leather satchel, hardly Will’s speed. Making it worse, she was roughly six inches off the ground, and the only leash at the pet store that was long enough for him to comfortably hold came in hot pink. The fact that it matched her rhinestone collar was something many attractive women had pointed out to him in the park—right before they’d tried to set up Will with their brothers.
Betty had been an inheritance of sorts, abandoned by Will’s next-door neighbor a couple of years ago. Angie had hated the dog on sight, and chastised Will for what they both knew was the truth: A man who was raised in an orphanage was not going to drop off a dog at the pound, no matter how ridiculous he felt when they were out in public.
There were more shameful aspects about his life with the dog that even Angie did not know about. Will worked odd hours, and sometimes when a case was breaking, he barely had time to go home and change his shirt. He had dug the pond in the backyard for Betty, thinking that watching the fish swim would be a nice way for her to pass the time. She had barked at the fish for a couple of days, but then she’d gone back to sitting on the couch, whiling away the hours until Will came home.
He half suspected the animal was playing him, that she jumped on the couch when she heard his key in the lock, pretending that she’d been waiting there all day when in fact she had been running in and out of the dog door, romping it up with the koi in the backyard, listening to his music.
Will patted his pockets, making sure he had his phone and wallet, then clipped his paddle holster onto his belt. He left the house, locking the door behind him. Betty’s tail was pointed in the air, swishing back and forth like crazy, as he walked her toward the park. He checked the time on his cell phone. He was supposed to meet Faith at the coffee shop across from the park in half an hour. When cases were in full swing, he usually had her pick him up there instead of home. If Faith ever noticed that the coffee shop was right beside a dog day care center called Sir Barks-A-Lot, she’d been kind enough not to mention it.
They crossed the street against the light, Will slowing his pace so he didn’t run over the dog, much as he had done with Amanda the day before. He did not know which was worrying him more—the case, in which they had very little to go on, or the fact that Faith was obviously mad at him. God knew Faith had been mad before, but this particular anger had a tinge of disappointment to it.
He felt her pushing him, even though she wouldn’t say the words. The problem was that she was a different cop than Will was. He had long known that his less aggressive way of approaching the Job was at odds with her own, but rather than being a point of contention, it was a contrast that had worked for them both. Now he wasn’t so sure. Faith wanted him to be one of those kinds of cops that Will despised—someone who goes in with his fists swinging and worries about the consequences later. Will hated those cops, had worked more than a few cases where he’d gotten them kicked off the force. You couldn’t say you were one of the good guys if you did the same thing the bad guys did. Faith had to know this. She’d grown up in a cop’s family. Then again, her mother had been forced out of the job for improper conduct, so maybe Faith did know it and just didn’t care.
Will couldn’t accept that reasoning. Faith was not just a solid cop; she was a good person. She still insisted her mother was innocent. She still believed that there was a distinct line between good and bad, right and wrong. Will couldn’t just tell her that his way was best—she would have to see it for herself.
He had never walked a beat like Faith, but he had walked into plenty of small communities and learned the hard way that you don’t piss off the locals. By law, the GBI was called in by the bosses, not the detectives and patrolmen on the street. They were invariably still working their cases, still thinking they could crack them on their own and highly resentful of any outside interference. Chances were, you would need something from them later on, and if you left them in the gutter, took away all chances of them saving face, they would actively work to sabotage you, damn the consequences.
Case in point was Rockdale County. Amanda had made an enemy of Lyle Peterson, the chief of police, while she was working another case with him. Now that they needed cooperation from the local force, Rockdale was balking in the form of Max Galloway, who was straddling the line between being a jerk and being grossly negligent.
What Faith needed to realize was that the cops weren’t always selfless in their actions. They had egos. They had territories. They were like animals marking their spots: If you encroached on their space, they didn’t care about the bodies stacking up. It was just a game to some of them, one they had to win no matter who was hurt in the process.
As if she could read his mind, Betty stopped near the entrance of Piedmont Park to do her business. Will waited, then took care of the mess, dropping the bag into one of the trashcans as they cut through the park. Joggers were out in force, some with dogs, some alone. They were all bundled up to fight the cold in the air, though Will could tell from the way the sun was burning off the fog that it would be warm enough by noon so that his collar would start to rub against his neck.
The case was twenty-four hours old and he and Faith had a full day—talk to Rick Sigler, the paramedic who had been on the scene when Anna was hit by the car; track down Jake Berman, Sigler’s hookup; then interview Joelyn Zabel, Jacquelyn Zabel’s awful sister. Will knew he shouldn’t make snap judgments, but he’d seen the woman all over the television news last night, both local and national. Apparently, Joelyn liked to talk. Even more apparently, she liked to blame. Will was grateful he had been at the autopsy yesterday, had had the burden of Jacquelyn Zabel’s death removed from his long list of burdens, or the sister’s words would have cut into him like a thousand knives.
He wanted to search Pauline McGhee’s house, but Leo Donnelly would probably protest. There had to be a way around that, and if there was any one thing Will wanted to do today, it was find a way to bring Leo on board. Rather than sleep, Will had thought about Pauline McGhee most of last night. Every time he closed his eyes, he mixed up the cave and McGhee, so that she was on that wooden bed, tied down like an animal, while Will stood helplessly by. His gut was telling him that something was going on with McGhee. She had run away once before, twenty years ago, but she had roots now. Felix was a good kid. His mother would not leave him.
Will chuckled to himself. He of all people should know that mothers left their sons all the time.
“Come on,” he said, tugging Betty’s leash, pulling her away from a pigeon that was almost as big as she was.
He tucked his hand into his pocket to warm it, his mind staying focused on the case.
Will wasn’t stupid enough to take full credit for the majority of the arrests he made. The fact was that people who committed crimes tended to be stupid. Most killers made mistakes, because they usually were acting on the spur of the moment. A fight broke out, a gun was handy, tempers flared and the only thing to figure out when it was all over was whether or not the prosecution was going to go for second-or first-degree murder.
Stranger abductions were different, though. They were harder to solve, especially when there was more than one victim. Serial killers, by definition, were good at their jobs. They knew they were going to murder. They knew who they were going to kill and exactly how they were going to do it. They had practiced their trade over and over again, perfecting their skills. They knew how to evade detection, to hide evidence or simply leave nothing at all. Finding them tended to be a matter of dumb luck on the part of law enforcement or complacency in the killer.
Ted Bundy had been captured during a routine traffic stop. Twice. BTK—who signed his letters taunting the cops with those initials, indicating he liked to bind, torture and kill his victims—was tripped up by a computer disc he accidentally gave his pastor. Richard Ramirez was beaten by a vigilante whose car he tried to steal. All captured by happenstance, all with several murders under their belts before they were stopped. In most serial cases, years passed, and the only thing the police could do was wait for more bodies to show up and pray that happenstance brought the killers to justice.
Will thought about what they had on their guy: a white sedan speeding down the road, a torture chamber in the middle of nowhere, elderly witnesses who could offer nothing usable. Jake Berman could be a lead, but they might never find him. Rick Sigler was squeaky clean except for being a couple of months behind on his mortgage, hardly shocking considering how bad the economy was. The Coldfields were, on paper, exemplars of an average retired couple. Pauline McGhee had a brother she was worried about, but then she might be worried about him for reasons that had nothing to do with their case. She might not have anything to do with their case at all.
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