“Yeah.”
She could almost see his mind working, the questions he wanted to ask her but didn’t know how to frame.
Faith said, “If you want another partner—”
“Why would I want another partner?”
“Because it’s a problem, Will. I don’t know how much of a problem, but my blood sugar drops or goes up, and I get emotional, and I either bite your head off or feel like I’m going to burst into tears, and I don’t know how I’m going to do my job with this thing.”
“You’ll work it out,” he said, always reasonable. “I worked it out. My problem, I mean.”
He was so adaptive. Anything bad that happened, no matter how horrible, he just nodded and moved on. She supposed that was something he’d learned at the orphanage. Or maybe Angie Polaski had drilled it into him. As a survival skill, it was commendable. As the basis of a relationship, it was irritating as hell.
And there was absolutely nothing Faith could do about it.
Will sat up in his chair. He did his usual trick, making a joke to ease the tension. “If I get a vote, I would rather you bite my head off than start crying.”
“Back at you.”
“I need to apologize.” Suddenly, he was serious again. “For what I did to Simkov. I’ve never laid hands on anyone like that before. Not ever.” He looked her directly in the eye. “I promise it won’t happen again.”
All Faith could say was, “Thank you.” Of course she didn’t agree with what Will had done, but it was hard to shout out recriminations when he was so obviously already doing a good job of hating himself.
It was Faith’s turn to lighten things up. “Let’s stay away from good cop/bad cop for a while.”
“Yeah, stupid cop/bitchy cop works a lot better for us.” He reached into his vest pocket and handed her back Jake Berman’s details. “We should call Coweta and have them put eyes on Berman to make sure he’s the right guy.”
The wheels in Faith’s brain took their time moving in a new direction. She looked at Sam’s block handwriting, the stupid heart around the address. “I don’t know why Sam thinks he can track down the guy in five minutes when our entire data processing division can’t find him in two days.”
Faith took out her cell phone. She didn’t want to bother with the proper channels, so she called Caroline, Amanda’s assistant. The woman practically lived in the building, and she picked up the phone on the first ring. Faith relayed Berman’s address and asked her to have the Coweta County field agent verify that this was the Jake Berman they had been looking for.
“Do you want him to bring the guy in?” Caroline asked.
Faith thought about it, then decided she didn’t want to make the decision on her own. She asked Will, “Do you want them to bring in Berman?”
He shrugged, but answered, “Do we want to tip him off?”
“A cop knocking on his door is a tip-off no matter what.”
Will shrugged again. “Tell him to try to verify Berman’s identity from a distance. If it’s the right guy, then we’ll go down there and snatch him up. Give the agent my cell number. We’ll go after you finish talking to Simkov.”
Faith passed this on to Caroline. She ended the call, and Will turned his computer monitor toward her, saying, “I got this email from Amanda.”
Faith slid over the mouse and keyboard. She changed the color settings so her retinas didn’t spontaneously combust, then double-clicked on the file. She summarized for Will as she read. “Tech hasn’t been able to break into any of the computers. They say the anorexia chat room is impossible to open without a password—it’s got some kind of fancy encryption. The warrants for Olivia Tanner’s bank should be in this afternoon so we can get into her phone and files.” She scrolled down. “Hmm.” She read silently, then told Will, “Okay, well, this might be something to take to the doorman. The fire exit door on the penthouse floor had a partial on the handle—right thumb.”
Will knew Faith had spent most of yesterday afternoon combing through Anna Lindsey’s building. “How are the stairs accessed?”
“Either the lobby or the roof,” she said, reading the next passage. “The fire escape ladder that runs down the back of the building had another print that matched the one from the door. They’re sending it to the Michigan State Police to run comparables. If Pauline’s brother has a record, it should come up. If we can get a name, then we’re halfway there.”
“We should check for parking tickets in the area. You can’t just park anywhere in Buckhead. They’re pretty good about catching you.”
“Good idea,” Faith said, opening up her email account to send out the request. “I’ll open it up to parking tickets in or around the area of all the last known locations of our victims.”
“Son of Sam was caught by a parking ticket.”
Faith tapped the keys. “You’ve got to stop watching so much television.”
“Not much else to do at night.”
She glanced at his hands, the new scratches.
He asked, “How did he get Anna Lindsey out of the building? He couldn’t have thrown her over his shoulder and taken her down the fire escape ladder.”
Faith sent off the email before answering. “The exit door for the stairs was wired. An alarm would have gone off if anyone had opened the door.” She asked, “Did he take her down the elevator and into the lobby?”
“That’s something to ask Simkov.”
“The doorman isn’t there twenty-four hours,” Faith reminded him. “The killer could’ve waited for Simkov to clock out, then used the elevator to bring her body down. Simkov was supposed to keep an eye on things after hours, but he was hardly dedicated to his job.”
“There wasn’t another doorman to relieve him?”
“They’ve been trying to find someone to fill the position for six months,” she told him. “Apparently, it’s hard to find someone who wants to sit on their ass behind a desk for eight hours a day—which is why they put up with so much bullshit from Simkov. He was willing to double up his shifts, such as they were.”
“What about security tapes?”
“They tape over them every forty-eight hours.” She had to add, “Except for the ones from yesterday, which seem to be missing.” Amanda had made sure the tape of Will slamming Simkov’s face into the counter had been destroyed.
Will’s face flooded with guilt, but still he asked, “Anything in Simkov’s apartment?”
“We tossed it upside down. He drives an old Monte Carlo that leaks like a sieve and there aren’t any receipts for storage units.”
“There’s no way he could be Pauline’s brother.”
“We’ve been so focused on that that we haven’t seen anything else.”
“All right, so let’s take the brother out of the equation. What about Simkov?”
“He’s not smart. I mean, he’s not stupid, but our killer is choosing women he wants to conquer. I’m not saying our bad guy is a genius, but he’s a hunter. Simkov is a pathetic schmuck who keeps porn under his mattress and takes blowjobs to let whores into empty apartments.”
“You’ve never believed in profiles before.”
“You’re right, but we’re spinning our wheels everywhere else. Let’s talk about our guy,” Faith said, something Will usually suggested. “Who’s our killer?”
“Smart,” Will admitted. “He probably works for an overbearing woman, or has overbearing women in his life.”
“That’s pretty much every man on the planet these days.”
“Tell me about it.”
Faith smiled, taking his words as a joke. “What kind of job does he have?”
“Something that lets him exist under the radar. He has flexible hours. Watching these women, learning about their habits, takes a lot of time. He’s got to have a job that lets him come and go as he pleases.”
“Let’s ask the same boring, stupid question one more time: What about the women? What do they have in common?”
“The anorexia/bulimi
a thing.”
“The chat room.” She shot that one down on her own: “Of course, even the FBI can’t find out who the site is registered to. No one has been able to break Pauline’s password. How could our guy find it?”
“Maybe he started the site himself in order to troll for victims?”
“How would he find out their true identities? Everyone’s tall, thin and blonde on the Internet. And usually twelve and horny.”
He was twisting his wedding ring again, staring out the window. Faith couldn’t stop looking at the scratches on the back of his hand. In forensic parlance, they would have called the marks defensive wounds. Will had been behind someone who had gouged her fingernails deep into his skin.
She asked, “How did it go with Sara last night?”
Will shrugged. “I just picked up Betty. I think she likes Sara’s dogs. She’s got two greyhounds.”
“I saw them yesterday morning.”
“Oh, that’s right.”
“Sara’s nice,” Faith told him. “I really like her.”
Will nodded.
“You should ask her out.”
He laughed, shaking his head at the same time. “I don’t think so.”
“Because of Angie?”
He stopped twisting the ring. “Women like Sara Linton …” She saw a flash of something in his eyes that she couldn’t quite read. Faith expected him to shrug it off, but he kept talking. “Faith, there’s no part of me that’s not damaged.” His voice sounded thick in his throat. “I don’t mean just the things you can see. There’s other stuff. Bad stuff.” He shook his head again, a tight gesture, more for his own benefit than Faith’s. He finally told her, “Angie knows who I am. Somebody like Sara …” Again his voice trailed off. “If you really like Sara Linton, then you don’t want her to know me.”
All Faith could think to say was his name. “Will.”
He gave a forced laugh. “We gotta stop talking about this stuff before one of us starts lactating.” He took out his cell phone. “It’s almost eight. Amanda will be waiting for you in the interrogation room.”
“Are you going to watch?”
“I’m going to make some calls up to Michigan and annoy the crap out of them until they run those fingerprints we found on Anna’s fire escape. Why don’t you call me when you’re out of your doctor’s appointment? If Sam found the right Jake Berman, we can go talk to him together.”
Faith had forgotten about her doctor’s appointment. “If he’s the right Jake Berman, then we should scoop him up immediately.”
“I’ll call you if that’s the case. Otherwise, go to your doctor’s appointment, then we’ll start from scratch like we’d planned.”
She listed it off. “The Coldfields, Rick Sigler, Olivia Tanner’s brother.”
“That should keep us busy.”
“You know what’s bugging me?” Will shook his head, and she told him, “We haven’t gotten the reports from Rockdale County yet.” She held up her hands, knowing Rockdale was a sore point. “If we’re going to start from the beginning, we need to do just that—get the initial crime-scene report from the first responding cop and go over every detail point by point. I know Galloway said the guy’s fishing in Montana, but if his notes are good, then we don’t need to talk to him.”
“What are you looking for?”
“I don’t know. But it bothers me that Galloway hasn’t faxed it over.”
“He’s not exactly on top of things.”
“No, but everything he’s held back until now has been for a reason. You said it yourself. People don’t do stupid things without a logical explanation.”
“I’ll put a call in to his office and see if the secretary can handle it without getting Galloway involved.”
“You should get those scratches on the back of your hand looked at, too.”
He glanced down at his hand. “I think you’ve looked at them plenty.”
Except for talking to Anna Lindsey in the hospital the day before, Faith had never worked directly with Amanda on a case. The extent of their interaction tended to be with a desk between them, Amanda on one side with her hands steepled in front of her like a disapproving schoolmarm and Faith fidgeting in her chair as she gave her report. Because of this, Faith tended to forget that Amanda had clawed her way up the ranks back during a time when women in uniform were relegated to fetching coffee and typing reports. They weren’t even allowed to carry guns, because the brass thought that, given the choice between shooting a bad guy and breaking a nail, the latter would win out.
Amanda had been the first female officer to disabuse them of this theory. She had been at the bank cashing her paycheck when a robber decided to take an early withdrawal. One of the tellers had panicked, and the robber had started to pistol-whip her. Amanda shot him once in the heart, what was called a K-5 for the circle it corresponded to on the shooting range target. She’d told Faith once that she had gotten her nails done afterward.
Otik Simkov, the doorman from Anna Lindsey’s building, would have benefited from knowing this story. Or maybe not. The little troll had an air of arrogance about him, despite being stuffed into a too-small Day-Glo orange prison uniform and open-toed sandals that had been worn by a thousand prisoners before him. His face was bruised and battered, but he still held himself upright, shoulders squared. As Faith entered the interrogation room, he gave her the same look of appraisal a farmer might give a cow.
Cal Finney, Simkov’s lawyer, made a show of looking at his watch. Faith had seen him on television many times; Finney’s commercials had their own annoying jingle. He was as handsome in person as he was on the set. The watch on his arm could’ve put Jeremy through college.
“Sorry I’m late.” Faith directed the apology toward Amanda, knowing she was the only one who mattered. She sat in the chair opposite Finney, catching the look of distaste on Simkov’s face as he openly stared at her. This was not a man who had learned to respect women. Maybe Amanda would change that.
“Thank you for speaking with us, Mr. Simkov,” Amanda began. She was still using her pleasant voice, but Faith had been in enough meetings with her boss to know that Simkov was in trouble. She had her hands resting lightly on a file folder. If experience was anything to go by, she would open the folder at some point, unleashing the gates of hell.
She said, “We just have a few questions to ask you regarding—”
“Screw you, lady,” Simkov barked. “Talk to my lawyer.”
“Dr. Wagner,” Finney said. “I’m sure you’re aware that we filed a lawsuit against the city this morning for police brutality.” He snapped open his briefcase and pulled out a stack of papers, which he dropped with a thunk on the table.
Faith felt her face flush, but Amanda didn’t seem fazed. “I understand that, Mr. Finney, but your client is looking at a charge of obstructing justice in a particularly heinous case. Under his watch, one of the tenants in his building was abducted. She was raped and tortured. She barely managed to escape with her life. I’m sure you saw it on the news. Her child was left to die, again under Mr. Simkov’s watch. The victim will never regain her vision. You can see why we are somewhat frustrated that your client has been less than forthcoming about what, exactly, was going on in his building.”
“I know nothing,” Simkov insisted, his accent so thick Faith expected him at any moment to start talking about capturing Moose and Squirrel. He told the lawyer, “Get me out of here. Why am I a prisoner? I am soon a wealthy man.”
Finney ignored his client, asking Amanda, “How long will this take?”
“Not long.” Her smile indicated otherwise.
Finney wasn’t fooled. “You’ve got ten minutes. Keep all your questions to the Anna Lindsey case.” He advised Simkov, “Your cooperation now will reflect well during your civil suit.”
Unsurprisingly, he was swayed by the prospect of money. “Yeah. Okay. What are your questions?”
“Tell me, Mr. Simkov,” Amanda continued. “How long have you been in
our country?”
Simkov glanced at his lawyer, who nodded that he should answer.
“Twenty-seven years.”
“You speak English very well. Would you describe yourself as fluent, or should I get a translator here to make you more comfortable?”
“I am perfect with my English.” His chest puffed out. “I read American books and newspapers all the time.”
“You are from Czechoslovakia,” Amanda said. “Is that correct?”
“I am Czech,” he told her, probably because his country no longer existed. “Why do you ask me questions? I am suing you. You should be answering my questions.”
“You have to be a United States citizen in order to sue the government.”
Finney piped up, “Mr. Simkov is a legal resident.”
“You took my green card,” Simkov added. “It was in my wallet. I saw you see it.”
“You certainly did.” Amanda opened the folder, and Faith felt her heart leap. “Thank you for that. It saved me some time.” She slipped on her glasses and read from a page in the folder. “ ‘Green Cards issued between 1979 and 1989, containing no expiration date, must be replaced within 120 days of this notice. Affected lawful permanent residents must file an Application to Replace Lawful Permanent Residence Card, form I-90, in order to replace their current green card or their permanent lawful resident status will be terminated.’ ” She put the page down. “Does that sound familiar to you, Mr. Simkov?”
Finney held out his hand. “Let me see that.”
Amanda passed him the notice. “Mr. Simkov, I’m afraid Immigration and Naturalization Services has no record of you filing form I-90 to renew your legal status as a resident in this country.”
“Bullshit,” Simkov countered, but his eyes went nervously to his lawyer.
Amanda passed Finney another sheet of paper. “This is a photocopy of Mr. Simkov’s green card. You’ll note there’s no expiration date. He’s in violation of his terms of status. I’m afraid we’ll have to turn him over to the INS.” She smiled sweetly. “I also got a call from Homeland Security this morning. I had no idea Czech-made weapons were falling into the hands of terrorists. Mr. Simkov, I believe you were a metalworker before you came to America?”
The Will Trent Series 5-Book Bundle Page 118