“Thank you for coming in,” Faith said, shaking the woman’s hand, then taking a seat.
Joelyn Zabel looked like a chubbier version of her sister. Not that she was fat, but she had a healthy curve to her hips whereas Jacquelyn had been boyishly thin. Will caught the scent of cigarette smoke as he shook her hand.
He said, “I’m so sorry about your loss.”
“Trent,” she noted. “You’re the one who found her.”
Will tried to keep eye contact, to not convey the gut-level guilt he still felt for not reaching the woman’s sister in time. All he could think to do was repeat himself. “I’m so sorry about your loss.”
“Yeah,” she snapped. “I got that.”
Will sat down beside Faith, and Amanda clapped her hands together like a kindergarten teacher getting the class’s attention. She rested her hand on top of a manila folder, which Will guessed contained the abridged autopsy summary. Pete had been instructed to leave off the information about the trash bags. Considering the Rockdale County force’s cozy relationship with the press, they were running thin on guilty knowledge to pin down any future suspect.
Amanda began, “Ms. Zabel, I take it you’ve had time to go over the report?”
The lawyer spoke. “I’ll need a copy of that for my files, Mandy.”
Amanda smiled an even sharkier smile than the lawyer had. “Of course, Chuck.”
“Great, so y’all know each other.” Joelyn crossed her arms, her shoulders bunching around her neck. “You want to explain to me what the hell you’re doing to find my sister’s killer?”
Amanda’s smile did not falter. “We’re doing everything we can to—”
“You find a suspect yet? I mean, shit, this guy’s a fucking animal.”
Amanda didn’t answer, which Faith took as her cue to begin. “We agree with you. Whoever did this is an animal. That’s why we need to talk to you about your sister. We need to know about her life. Who her friends were. What her habits were.”
Joelyn’s eyes flashed down a minute, guilty. “I didn’t have much contact with her. We were both pretty busy. She lived in Florida.”
Faith tried to soften things up. “She lived on the Bay, right? Must’ve been nice down there. Good reason to sneak in a vacation with a family visit.”
“Well, yeah, it would’ve been, but the bitch never invited me.”
Her lawyer reached out, touching her arm as a gentle reminder. Will had watched Joelyn Zabel on every major channel, sobbing anew over the tragic death of her sister for each new reporter. He’d not seen one tear drop from her eyes, though she made all the motions of someone who was crying—sniffling, wiping her eyes, rocking back and forth. She wasn’t even doing that now. Apparently, she needed a camera rolling to feel her pain. Even more apparent, the lawyer wasn’t going to let her play anything other than the grieving family member.
Joelyn sniffed, still with no tears. “I loved my sister very much. My mother just moved into a nursing home. She’s got maybe six months left, and this happens to her daughter. The loss of a child is devastating.”
Faith tried to ease into more questions. “Do you have children?”
“Four.” She seemed proud.
“Jacquelyn didn’t have—”
“Fuck no. Three abortions before she was thirty. She was terrified of getting fat. Can you believe that? Her sole reason for flushing them down the toilet is her fucking weight. And then she gets in the shadow of forty, and suddenly she wants to be a mother.”
Faith hid her surprise well. “Was she trying to conceive?”
“Did you not hear me about the abortions? You can look that up. I’m not lying about that.”
Will always assumed that when people insisted they weren’t lying about a particular thing, that meant they were lying about something else. Finding out the what else would be the key to Joelyn Zabel. She didn’t strike him as a particularly caring person, and she would want to make sure her ten minutes of fame stretched out as long as possible.
Faith asked, “Was Jackie looking for a surrogate?”
Joelyn seemed to realize how important her words were. She suddenly had everyone’s rapt attention. She took her time answering. “Adoption.”
“Private? Public?”
“Who the fuck knows? She had a lot of money. She was used to buying what she wanted.” She was gripping the arms of her chair, and Will could see this was a subject she liked talking about. “That’s the real tragedy here—not being able to see her adopt some reject retard who ends up stealing from her or going schizophrenic on her ass.”
Will could feel Faith stiffen beside him. He took over the questioning. “When was the last time you talked to your sister?”
“About a month ago. She was waxing on about motherhood, like she understands the first thing about it. Talking about adopting some kid from China or Russia or something. You know, some of those kids turn out to be killers. They’re abused, just sick in the head. They’re never right.”
“We see that a lot.” Will shook his head sadly, like this was a common tragedy. “Was she making any progress? Do you know what agency she was working with?”
She turned reticent when pressed for details. “Jackie wasn’t into sharing. She was always phobic about her privacy.” She jerked her head toward the state lawyers, who were doing their best to blend in with the upholstery. “I know those tools sitting on the couch aren’t going to let you apologize, but you could at least acknowledge that you fucked up.”
Amanda jumped back in. “Ms. Zabel, the autopsy shows—”
Joelyn gave a belligerent half-shrug. “All it shows is what I already know: You dumbasses were standing around doing nothing while my sister died.”
“Perhaps you didn’t read the report carefully enough, Ms. Zabel.” Amanda’s voice was gentle sounding, the soothing sort of tone she’d used earlier in the hall before humiliating Will. “Your sister took her own life.”
“Only because y’all weren’t doing a damn thing to help her.”
“You realize that she was blind and deaf?” Amanda asked.
Will could tell from the way that Zabel’s eyes shifted to the lawyer that she had not, in fact, realized this.
Amanda removed another folder from the top drawer of her desk. She thumbed through it, and he could see color photos of Jacquelyn Zabel in the tree, in the morgue. Will found this particularly cruel, even for Amanda. No matter how horrible Joelyn Zabel was, she had still lost her sister in the worst way. He saw Faith shift in her seat and knew she was thinking the same thing.
Amanda took her time searching for the right page, which seemed to be buried among the worst of the photographs. Finally, she found the passage relating to the external examination of the body. “Second paragraph,” she said.
Joelyn hesitated before sitting on the edge of her seat. She was trying to get a better look at the photos the way some people slow down to look at a particularly terrible car accident. Finally, she sat back with the report. Will watched her eyes move back and forth as she read, but then they suddenly stopped tracking, and he knew that she wasn’t seeing anything at all.
Her throat worked as she swallowed. She stood up, mumbling “Excuse me” as she bolted from the room.
The air seemed to leave with her. Faith stared straight ahead. Amanda took her time stacking the photos into a neat pile.
The lawyer said, “Not nice, Mandy.”
“Them’s the breaks, Chuck.”
Will stood. “I’m going to stretch my legs.”
He left the room before anyone could respond. Caroline, Amanda’s secretary, was at her desk. Will lifted his chin, and she whispered, “In the bathroom.”
Will walked down the hall, hands in his pockets. He stopped in front of the women’s-room door, pressing it open with his foot. He leaned in. Joelyn Zabel stood in front of the mirror. She had a lighted cigarette in her hand, and she startled when she saw Will.
“You can’t be in here,” she snapped, holding up
her fist like she expected some kind of fight.
“No smoking is allowed in the building.” Will walked into the room and put his back against the closed door, keeping his hands in his pockets.
“What are you doing in here?”
“I wanted to make sure you were okay.”
She took a hard hit off the cigarette. “By barging into the ladies’ room? This is off-limits, okay? It’s not allowed.”
Will glanced around. He had never been in a women’s restroom before. There was a comfortable-looking couch with flowers in a vase on the table beside it. The air had the scent of perfume, the paper dispensers were stocked and there was no water splashed around the basin so that you got the front of your pants wet when you washed your hands. It was no wonder women spent so much time in this place.
“Hello?” Joelyn asked. “Crazy man? Get out of the ladies’ room.”
“What aren’t you telling me?”
“I told you everything I know.”
He shook his head. “Cameras aren’t rolling in here. No lawyers, no audience. Tell me what you’re not telling me.”
“Fuck off.”
He felt the door being gently pressed against his back, then close just as quickly. He said, “You didn’t like your sister.”
“No shit, Sherlock.” Her hand shook as she took another hit of smoke into her lungs.
“What did she do to you?”
“She was a bitch.”
The same could be said for Joelyn, but Will kept that to himself. “Was there any specific way this manifested itself toward you, or is that just a general statement?”
She stared at him. “What the hell does that mean?”
“It means that I don’t care what you’re going to do after you leave here. Sue the state. Don’t sue the state. Sue me personally. I don’t care. Whoever killed your sister probably has someone else—some woman who’s being tortured and raped right now as we speak—and your keeping something from me is just as good as saying that what’s happening to this other woman is okay.”
“Don’t put that on me.”
“Then tell me what you’re hiding.”
“I’m not hiding anything.” She turned from the mirror, wiping under her eyes with her fingers so she wouldn’t smudge her makeup. “It’s Jackie who was hiding things.”
Will kept silent.
“She was always secretive, always acting like she was better than me.”
He nodded, like he got it.
“She got all the attention, all the boyfriends.” She shook her head, turning to face Will. She leaned against the counter, hand beside the sink. “My weight went up and down when I was a kid. Jackie used to tease me about being beached whenever we’d go to lay out.”
“You’ve obviously outgrown that problem.”
She shook off the compliment, disbelieving. “Everything always came so easy to her. Money, men, success. People liked her.”
“Not really,” Will disagreed. “None of her neighbors seem too shaken up that she’s missing. They didn’t even notice until the cops knocked on their doors. I got the feeling they were relieved she’s gone.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Your mother’s neighbor, Candy, doesn’t seem too broken up about it, either.”
She was obviously unconvinced. “No, Jackie said Candy was like a toy poodle nipping at her heels, always wanting to hang out with her.”
“That’s not true,” Will said. “Candy wasn’t very fond of her. I’d even say she was less fond of your sister than you are.”
She finished the cigarette, then went into one of the stalls to flush it down the toilet. Will could see her processing this new information about her sister, liking it. Joelyn went back to the sink, leaned against the counter again. “She was always a liar. Lied about little things, things that didn’t even matter.”
“Like what?”
“Like, that she was going to the store when she was going to the library. Like that she was dating one guy when she was really dating another one.”
“Seems kind of devious.”
“She was. That’s a perfect word for her—‘devious.’ She drove our mother nuts.”
“Did she get into much trouble?”
Joelyn snorted a laugh. “Jackie was always the teacher’s pet, always sucking up to the right people. She had them all fooled.”
“Not all of them,” Will pointed out. “You said she drove your mother nuts. Your mom must’ve known what was going on.”
“She did. Spent all kinds of money trying to get Jackie help. It ruined my fucking childhood. Everything was always about Jackie—how she was feeling, what she was out doing, whether she was happy. Nobody worried whether or not I was happy.”
“Tell me about this adoption thing. What agency was she talking to?”
Joelyn looked down, guilt flashing in her eyes.
Will kept his tone neutral. “This is why I’m asking: If Jackie was trying to adopt a child, we’re going to have to go to Florida and find the agency. If there’s an overseas connection, we might have to go to Russia or China to see if their operations are legitimate. If Jackie was trying to contract with a surrogate at home, we’ll have to talk to every woman who might have spoken to her. We’ll have to dig into every agency down there until we find something, anything, that connects to your sister, because she met a very bad person who tortured and raped her for at least a week, and if we can find out how your sister met her abductor, then maybe we can find out who that man is.” He let her consider his words for a few seconds. “Will we find a connection through an adoption agency, Joelyn?”
She looked down at her hands, not answering. Will counted the tiles on the wall behind her head. He was at thirty-six when she finally spoke. “I just said that—the stuff about getting a kid. Jackie was talking about it, but she wasn’t going to do it. She liked the idea of being a mother, but she knew she would never be able to pull it off.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“It’s like when people are around well trained dogs, you know? They want a dog, but they want that dog, not a new one they’d have to work with and train on their own.”
“Did she like your kids?”
Joelyn cleared her throat. “She never met them.”
Will gave the woman some time. “She was picked up on a DUI before she died.”
Joelyn was surprised. “Really?”
“Was she much of a drinker?”
She shook her head vehemently. “Jackie didn’t like being out of control.”
“The neighbor, Candy, says they smoked some grass together.”
Her lips parted in surprise. She shook her head again. “I don’t buy it. Jackie never did shit like that. She liked it when other people drank too much, got out of hand, but she never did it herself. You’re talking about a woman who’s weighed the same weight since she was sixteen years old. Her ass was so tight it squeaked when she walked.” She thought about it some more, shook her head again. “No, not Jackie.”
“Why was she cleaning out your mother’s house? Why not pay someone else to do the dirty work?”
“She didn’t trust anybody else. She always had the right way to do things, and whoever you were, you were always doing it wrong.”
That, at least, jibed with what Candy said. Everything else was a completely different picture, which made sense considering that Joelyn was not particularly close to her sister. He asked, “Does the number eleven mean anything to you?”
She furrowed her brow. “Not a damn thing.”
“What about the words ‘I will not deny myself’?”
She shook her head again. “But it’s funny … As rich as she was, Jackie denied herself all the time.”
“Denied herself what?”
“Food. Alcohol. Fun.” She gave a rueful laugh. “Friends. Family. Love.” Her eyes filled with tears—the first real tears Will had seen her cry. He pushed away from the door and left, finding Faith waiting in the hallway for him.
“Anything?” she asked.
“She lied about the adoption thing. At least she said she did.”
“We can check it out with Candy.” Faith took out her phone and flipped it open. She talked to Will as she dialed. “We were supposed to meet Rick Sigler at the hospital ten minutes ago. I called him to postpone, but he didn’t pick up.”
“What about his friend, Jake Berman?”
“I put some uniforms on it first thing. They’re supposed to call if they find him.”
“You think it’s odd that we can’t track him down?”
“Not yet, but talk to me at the end of the day if we still can’t find him.” She put the phone to her ear, and Will listened as she left a message for Candy Smith to return her call. Faith closed the phone and gripped it in her hand. Will felt dread well up inside him, wondering what she was going to say next—something about Amanda, a diatribe against Sara Linton, or Will himself. Thankfully, it was about the case.
She said, “I think Pauline McGhee is part of this.”
“Why?”
“It’s just gut. I can’t explain it, but it’s too coincidental.”
“McGhee is still Leo’s case. We’ve got no jurisdiction over it, no reason to ask him for a piece of it.” Still, Will had to ask, “You think you can nuance him?”
She shook her head. “I don’t want to make trouble for Leo.”
“He’s supposed to call you, right? When he tracks down Pauline’s parents in Michigan?”
“That’s what he said he’d do.”
They stood at the elevator, both quiet.
Will said, “I think we need to go to Pauline’s work.”
“I think you’re right.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
—
Faith paced the lobby of Xac Homage, the ridiculously named design firm that employed Pauline McGhee. The offices took up the thirtieth floor of Symphony Tower, an architecturally awkward skyscraper that loomed over the corner of Peachtree and Fourteenth Street like a large speculum. Faith shuddered at the image, thinking about what she had read in Jacquelyn Zabel’s autopsy report.
The Will Trent Series 5-Book Bundle Page 104