“Then tell me another connection.”
Judith’s eyes scanned his back and forth, and he could read the desperation in her face. “Pauline,” she suggested. “She might be—”
“Pauline is missing, Mrs. Coldfield. She was abducted from a parking lot two days ago. Her six-year-old son was left in the car.”
“She has a child?” Judith’s mouth opened in shock. “Pauline has a baby?”
“Felix. Your grandson.”
She put her hand to her chest. “The doctors said she wouldn’t—I don’t understand. How could she have a baby? They said she’d never be able to carry—” She kept shaking her head in disbelief.
“Did your daughter have an eating disorder?”
“We tried to get help for her, but in the end …” Judith shook her head, as if it was all useless. “Tom teased her about her weight, but all little brothers tease their older sisters. He never meant her any harm. He never meant …” She stopped, holding back a strangled sob. There was a crack in her façade as she let herself consider the possibility that her son might be the monster Will had described. Just as quickly, she recovered, shaking her head. “No. I don’t believe you. Tom would never hurt anyone.”
Will’s body started to shiver. He still wasn’t losing much blood, but his mind wasn’t capable of ignoring the pain for longer than a minute at a time. His head would drop, or he would flick sweat out of his eye, and it would flare up like hellfire. The darkness kept calling to him, the sweet relief of letting go. He let his eyes close for a few seconds, then a few more. Will jerked himself awake, groaning at the searing pain.
Judith said, “You need help. I should get you help.” She made no move to do this. The phone started to ring again, and she simply stared at the receiver on the wall.
“Tell me about the cave.”
“I don’t know anything about that.”
“Did your son like to dig holes?”
“My son likes to go to church. He loves his family. He loves helping people.”
“Tell me about the number eleven.”
“What about it?”
“Tom seems drawn to it. Is it because of his name?”
“He just likes it.”
“Judas betrayed Jesus. There were eleven apostles until Matthias came along.”
“I know my Bible stories.”
“Did Pauline betray you? Were you incomplete until your son came along?”
“This means nothing to me.”
“Tom’s obsessed with the number eleven,” Will told her. “He took Anna Lindsey’s eleventh rib. He shoved eleven trash bags up inside her womb.”
“Stop!” she shouted. “I don’t want to hear any more.”
“He electrocuted them. He tortured and raped them.”
She screeched, “He was trying to save them!”
The words echoed around the tiny room like a pinball striking metal.
Judith covered her mouth with her hand, horrified.
Will said, “You knew.”
“I didn’t know anything.”
“You must have seen it on the news. Some of the women’s names were released. You had to recognize them from your work at the shelter. You saw Anna Lindsey in the road after Henry hit her with the car. You called Tom to take care of her, but there were too many people around.”
“No.”
“Judith, you know—”
“I know my son,” she insisted. “If he was with those women, it was only because he was trying to help them.”
“Judith—”
She stood up, and Will could tell she was angry. “I’m not going to listen to you lie about him. I nursed him when he was a baby. I held him—” She cradled her arms. “I held him to my chest and promised him that I would protect him.”
“You didn’t do that with Pauline, too?”
Her face became emotionless. “If Tom doesn’t come, I’m going to have to take care of you myself.” She took a knife out of the butcher block. “I don’t care if I go to prison for the rest of my life. I will not let you destroy my son.”
“You sure you can do that? Stabbing someone in the back isn’t the same as stabbing them to their face.”
“I’m not going to let you hurt him.” She held the knife awkwardly, gripped in both hands. “I won’t let you.”
“Put the knife down.”
“What makes you think you can tell me what to do?”
“My boss is behind you with a gun pointed at your head.”
She gasped, the sound catching in her throat when she whirled around and saw Amanda standing on the other side of the window. Without warning, Judith raised the knife and lunged toward Will. The window exploded. Judith fell to the floor in front of him, the knife still gripped in her hand. A perfect circle of blood seeped into the back of her shirt.
He heard a door break open. People ran in, heavy shoes on the floor, orders being barked. Will couldn’t take it anymore. He dropped his head and the pain shot through to his core. Amanda’s high heels swam into his vision. She knelt down in front of him. Her mouth was moving, but Will couldn’t hear what she was saying. He wanted to ask about Faith, about her baby, but it was too easy to surrender to the darkness.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
—
Pauline McGhee was hard to look at, even as she held her child in her lap. Her mouth had been ripped to shreds by the metal wire she’d chewed through, so she mumbled as she tried to speak, her lips tightly held together. Tiny sutures held the skin in place like something out of Frankenstein. And yet, she was hard to feel any sympathy for, perhaps because she kept referring to Faith as “bitch” more than any man ever had.
“Bitch,” she said now, “I don’t know what I can tell you. I haven’t seen my family in twenty years.”
Will shifted in his chair beside Faith. His arm was in a sling tight to his chest and he was in visible pain, but he had insisted on coming in for the interview. Faith couldn’t blame him for wanting answers. Unfortunately, it was fast becoming obvious that they weren’t going to get them from Pauline.
“Tom has lived in sixteen different cities over the last thirty years,” Will told her. “We’ve found cases in twelve of them—women who were abducted and never returned. They were always in pairs. Two women at a time.”
“I know what a fucking pair is.”
Will opened his mouth to speak, but Faith reached under the table, pressing his knee. Their usual tactics weren’t working. Pauline McGhee was a survivor, willing to step over anything or anyone to save her own skin. She had kicked Olivia Tanner into unconsciousness in order to make sure she was the first one to escape the basement. She would have strangled her own brother to death if Faith hadn’t stopped her. She wasn’t someone who could be reached through empathy.
Faith took a gamble. “Pauline, stop the bullshit. You know you can leave this room at any time. You’re staying for a reason.”
The injured woman looked down at Felix, stroking his hair. For just an instant, Pauline McGhee seemed almost human. Something about the child transformed her so that Faith suddenly understood the hard outer shell was a defense against the world that only Felix could penetrate. The boy had fallen asleep in her arms as soon as his mother sat down at the conference table. His thumb kept going to his mouth, and Pauline moved it away a few times before giving in. Faith could understand why she wouldn’t want to let her son out of sight, but this was hardly the kind of thing you’d want to bring a kid to.
Pauline asked, “Were you really going to shoot me?”
“What?” Faith asked, even though she knew exactly what the woman meant.
“In the hall,” she said. “I would’ve killed him. I wanted to kill him.”
“I’m a police officer,” Faith answered. “It’s my job to protect life.”
“That life?” Pauline asked, incredulous. “You know what that bastard did.” She lifted her chin toward Will. “Listen to your partner. My brother killed at least two dozen women. Do you real
ly think he deserves a trial?” She pressed her lips to the top of Felix’s head. “You should’ve let me kill him. Put him down like a fucking dog.”
Faith didn’t answer, mostly because there was nothing to say. Tom Coldfield was not talking. He wasn’t bragging about his crimes or offering to tell where the bodies were buried in exchange for his life. He was resolved to go to prison, probably death row. All he had asked for was bread and water and his Bible, a book that had so many scribbled notations in the margins that the words were barely legible.
Still, Faith had tossed and turned in bed over the last few nights, reliving those few seconds in the hallway. Sometimes she let Pauline kill her brother. Sometimes she ended up having to shoot the woman. None of the scenarios sat well with her, and she had resigned herself to knowing that these emotions were the type that only time could heal. The process of moving on was helped by the fact that the case was no longer Faith and Will’s responsibility. Because Matthias Thomas Coldfield’s crimes had crossed state lines, he was the FBI’s problem now. Faith was only allowed to interview Pauline because they thought the women shared a bond. They were dead wrong.
Or maybe not.
Pauline asked, “How far along are you?”
“Ten weeks,” Faith answered. She had been at the edge of insanity when the paramedics arrived at Tom Coldfield’s house. All she could think about was her baby, whether or not it was still safe. Even when the heartbeat had bleated through the fetal monitor, Faith had kept sobbing, begging the EMTs to take her to the hospital. She’d been sure they were all wrong, that something horrible had happened. Oddly, the only person who could convince her otherwise had been Sara Linton.
On the plus side, her whole family knew she was pregnant now, thanks to the Grady nurses referring to Faith as “that hysterical pregnant cop” her entire stay in the ER.
Pauline stroked back Felix’s hair. “I got so fat with him. It was disgusting.”
“It’s hard,” Faith admitted. “It’s worth it, though.”
“I guess.” She brushed her torn lips across her son’s head. “He’s the only thing good about me.”
Faith had often said the same thing about Jeremy, but now, facing Pauline McGhee, she saw how lucky she was. Faith had her mother, who loved her despite all Faith’s faults. She had Zeke, even though he had moved to Germany to get away from her. She had Will, and for better or worse, she had Amanda. Pauline had no one—just a small boy who desperately needed her.
Pauline said, “When I had Felix, it just made me think about her. Judith. How could she hate me so much?” She looked up at Faith, expecting an answer.
Faith said, “I don’t know. I can’t imagine how anyone could hate their own child. Any child, for that matter.”
“Well, some kids just suck, but your own kid …”
Pauline went quiet again for such a long time that Faith wondered if they were back to square one again.
Will spoke. “We need to know why all of this happened, Pauline. I need to know.”
She was staring back out the window, her son held close to her heart. She spoke so quietly that Faith had to strain to hear her. “My uncle raped me.”
Faith and Will were both silent, giving the woman space.
Pauline confided, “I was three years old, then four, then coming up on five. I finally told my grandmother what was happening. I thought the bitch would save me, but she turned it around like I was some devil child.” Her lips twisted into a bitter sneer. “My mother believed them, not me. She chose their side. Like always.”
“What happened?”
“We moved away. We always moved when things got bad. Dad put in for a transfer at work, we sold the house and then we started all over again. Different town, different school, same fucking situation.”
Will asked, “When did it get bad with Tom?”
“I was fifteen.” Pauline shrugged again. “I had this friend, Alexandra McGhee—that’s where I got my name when I changed it. We lived in Oregon a couple of years before we moved to Ann Arbor. That’s when it really started with Tom—when everything got bad.” Her tone had turned to a dull narrative, as if she was giving a secondhand account of something mundane instead of revealing the most horrible moments of her life. “He was obsessed with me. Like, in love with me. He followed me around, and he would smell my clothes and try to touch my hair and …”
Faith tried to hide her revulsion, but her stomach clenched at the image the other woman’s words conjured.
Pauline said, “Suddenly, Alex stopped coming over. We were best friends. I wanted to know if I’d said something, or done something …” Her voice trailed off. “Tom was hurting her. I don’t know how. At least, I didn’t know how in the beginning. I found out soon enough.”
“What happened?”
“She was writing this sentence everywhere, over and over again. On her books, on the soles of her shoes, the back of her hand.”
“I will not deny myself,” Will guessed.
Pauline nodded. “It was this exercise one of the doctors at the hospital gave me. I was supposed to write the sentence, convince myself not to binge and purge, like writing a fucking sentence a zillion times would make it all go away.”
“Did you know Tom was making Alex write the sentence?”
“She looked like me,” Pauline admitted. “That’s why he liked her so much. She was like a substitution for me—same color hair, same height, about the same weight but she looked fatter than me.”
The same qualities that had drawn Tom to all the recent victims: Each woman resembled his sister.
Pauline told them, “I asked him about it—why he was making her write the sentence. I mean, I was pissed, right? And I yelled at him, and he just hit me. Not like a slap, but with his fist. And when I fell down, he started beating me.”
Faith asked, “What happened next?”
Pauline stared blankly out the window, as if she was alone in the room. “Alex and I were in the woods. We’d go out there to smoke after school. The day that Tom beat me, I met her out there. At first, she wouldn’t say anything, but then she just broke down. She finally told me that Tom had been taking her into the basement of our house and doing things to her. Bad things.” She closed her eyes. “Alex took it because Tom said if she didn’t, then he would start doing it to me. She was protecting me.”
She opened her eyes, staring at Faith with startling intensity. “Alex and I were talking about what to do. I told her it was useless telling my parents, that nothing would happen. So we decided to go to the police. There was this cop I knew. Only, I guess Tom followed us out to the woods. He was always watching us. He had this baby monitor he hid in my room. He’d listen to us and …” She shrugged, and Faith could very easily guess what Tom had been doing while he listened to his sister and her friend.
Pauline continued, “Anyway, Tom found us in the woods. He hit me in the back of the head with a rock. I don’t know what he did to Alex. I didn’t see her for a while. I think he was working on her, trying to break her. That was the hardest part. Was she dead? Was he beating her? Torturing her? Or maybe he’d let her go and she was keeping quiet because she was scared of him.” She swallowed. “But it wasn’t that.”
“What was it?”
“He was keeping her in the basement again. Priming her for the really bad stuff.”
“No one heard her down there?”
Pauline shook her head. “Dad was gone, and Mom …” She shook her head again. Faith was convinced they would never really know what Judith Coldfield knew about her son’s sadistic ways.
Pauline said, “I don’t know how long it lasted, but eventually, Alex ended up in the same place as me.”
“Where was that?”
“In the ground,” she said. “It was dark. We were blindfolded. He put cotton in our ears, but we could still hear each other. We were tied up. Still … we knew we were underground. There’s a taste, right? Kind of like a wet, dirty taste you get in your mouth. He had dug a cave.
It must’ve taken him weeks. He always liked to plan everything, to control every last detail.”
“Was Tom with you all the time after that?”
“Not at first. I guess he was still working on his alibi. He just left us there for a few days—tied up so we couldn’t move, couldn’t see, could barely hear anything. We screamed at first, but …” She shook her head as if she could shake away the memory. “He brought us water, but not food. I guess a week went by. I was okay—I’d gone longer than that without eating. But Alex … She broke. She kept crying all the time, begging me to do something to help her. Then Tom would come, and I’d beg him to shut her up, to make it so I didn’t have to hear it.” She went silent again, lost in her memories. “And then one day, something changed. He started in on us.”
“What did he do?”
“At first, he just talked. He was all into biblical stuff—stuff my mom put into his head about him being a replacement for Judas, who betrayed Jesus. She was always saying how I had betrayed her, how she had carried me to be a good kid, but I had turned out rotten, made her family hate her with my lies.”
Faith quoted the last sentence she had heard Tom Coldfield utter. “ ‘O Absalom, I am risen.’ ”
Pauline shivered, as if the words cut through her. “It’s from the Bible. Ammon raped his own sister, and once he was finished with her, he cast her out for being a whore.” Her torn lips twisted into an approximation of a smile. “Absalom was Ammon’s brother. He killed him for raping their sister.” She gave a harsh laugh. “Too bad I didn’t have another brother.”
“Was Tom always obsessed with religion?”
“Not a regular religion. Not normal. He twisted the Bible to suit whatever he wanted to do. That’s why he was keeping me and Alex underground—so that we would have a chance to be reborn like Jesus.” She looked up at Faith. “Crazy shit, right? He’d go on and on for hours, telling us how bad we were, talking about how he was going to redeem us. He’d touch me sometimes, but I couldn’t see …” She shuddered again, her whole body shaking from the movement. Felix stirred, and she soothed him back to sleep.
Faith felt her heart thumping in her chest. She could remember her own struggle with Tom, the feel of his hot breath in her ear when he told her, “Fight.”
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