[Georgia 01] Genesis (aka Undone)

by Karin Slaughter

  She had never thought of herself as a loft person, but when Sara had moved to Atlanta, she had wanted her new life to be as different from her old as was humanly possible. Instead of choosing a cute bungalow on one of the city's old, tree-lined streets, she had opted for a space that was little more than an empty box. Atlanta's real estate market was just hitting rock bottom, and Sara had a ridiculous amount of money to spend. Everything was new when she'd moved in, but she had renovated the entire place from top to bottom anyway. The price of the kitchen alone would have fed a family of three for a year. Add in the palatial bathrooms and it was downright embarrassing that Sara had been so free with her checkbook.

  In her previous life, she had always been careful with her money, never splurging on anything except a new BMW every four years. After Jeffrey's death, there had been his life insurance policy, his pension, his own savings and the proceeds from the sale of his house. Sara had left all of it in the bank, feeling like spending his money would be admitting he was gone. She had even considered refusing the tax exemption she got from the state for being a widow of a slain police officer, but her accountant had balked and it wasn't worth the fight.

  Subsequently, the money she sent to Sylacauga, Alabama, every month to help Jeffrey's mother came out of her own pocket while Jeffrey's money compounded meager interest at the local bank. Sara often thought about giving it to his son, but that would have been too complicated. Jeffrey's son had never been told that Jeffrey was his real father. She couldn't ruin the boy's life and then hand over a sum that amounted to a small fortune to a kid who was still in college.

  So, Jeffrey's money sat there in the bank, just like the letter sat on Sara's mantel. She stood by the fireplace, fingering the edge of the envelope, wondering why she hadn't put it back into her purse or jammed it into her pocket again. Instead, during her rabid fit of cleaning, she had only picked it up to dust under the envelope as she made her way down the mantel.

  Sara saw Jeffrey's wedding ring on the opposite end. She still wore her wedding ring—a matching, white-gold band—but his college ring, a hunk of gold with the Auburn University insignia carved into the top, was more important to her. The blue stone was scratched and it was too big for her finger, so she wore it on a long chain around her neck the way a soldier wears his dog tags. She didn't wear it for anyone to see. It was always tucked into her shirt, close to her heart, so she could feel it at all times.

  Still, she took Jeffrey's wedding band and kissed it before putting it back on the mantel. Over the last few days, her mind had somehow put Jeffrey in a different place. It was as if she was going through mourning again, but this time, at a remove. Instead of waking up feeling devastated, as she had for the last three and a half years, she felt enormously sad. Sad to turn over in bed and not have him there. Sad that she would never see him smile again. Sad that she would never hold him or feel him inside of her again. But not utterly devastated. Not like every move or thought was an effort. Not like she wanted to die. Not like there was no light at the end of all of this.

  There was something else, too. Faith Mitchell had been so horrible today, and Sara had survived. She hadn't broken down or fallen to pieces. She had not come undone. She had kept herself together. The funny thing was, in some ways Sara felt closer to Jeffrey because of it. She felt stronger, more like the woman he had fallen in love with than the woman who had fallen apart without him. She closed her eyes, and she could almost feel his breath on the back of her neck, his lips brushing so softly that a tingle went down her spine. She imagined his hand wrapping around her waist, and was surprised when she put her hand there to feel nothing but her own hot skin.

  The buzzer rang and the dogs stirred along with Sara. She shushed them as she walked to the intercom and buzzed in the pizza delivery guy. Betty, Will Trent's dog, had been adopted quickly by Billy and Bob, her two greyhounds. When she was cleaning earlier, all three dogs had settled onto the couch in a pile, glancing up occasionally when Sara walked into the room, sometimes giving her a sharp look if she made too much noise. Even the vacuum cleaner had not dislodged them.

  Sara opened the door to wait for Armando, who delivered pizza to her apartment at least twice a week. The fact that they were on a first name basis was something she pretended was normal, and she routinely overtipped the deliveryman so that he wouldn't make a big deal about seeing her more than he saw his own children.

  "Doin' all right?" he asked as pizza and money changed hands.

  "Doing great," she told him, but her mind was back in the apartment, to what she was doing before the buzzer had sounded. It had been so long since she'd been able to remember what it felt like to be with Jeffrey. She wanted to dwell on it, to crawl into bed and let her mind wander back to that sweet place.

  "Have a good one, Sara." Armando turned to leave, then stopped. "Hey, there's some strange guy hanging around downstairs."

  She lived in the middle of a large city, so this was hardly unusual. "Regular strange or call-the-cops strange?"

  "I think he is a cop. Doesn't look it, but I saw his badge."

  "Thanks," she said. He gave her a nod as he headed toward the elevator. Sara put the pizza box on the kitchen counter and walked to the far side of the living room. She pushed open the window and leaned out. Sure enough, six stories down, she spotted a speck looking suspiciously like Will Trent.

  "Hey!" she called. He didn't respond, and she watched him for a moment as he paced back and forth, wondering if he'd heard her. She tried again, raising her voice like a soccer mom at a NASCAR race. "Hey!"

  Will finally looked up, and she told him, "Sixth floor."

  She watched him go into the building, passing Armando on the way out, who tossed Sara a wave and said something about seeing her soon. Sara shut the window, praying Will had not heard the exchange, or at least had the decency to pretend. She checked the apartment, making sure nothing was too horrendously out of place. There were two couches in the middle of the living room, one packed with dogs, the other with pillows. Sara fluffed these up, tossing them back onto the couch in what she hoped was an artful arrangement.

  Thanks to two hours of elbow grease, the kitchen was sparkling clean, even the copper backsplash behind the stove, which was gorgeous until you realized it took two different kinds of cleaners. She passed the flat screen television on the wall and stopped cold. She'd forgotten to dust the screen. Sara tugged down the sleeve of her shirt over her hand and did the best she could.

  By the time she opened her door, Will was getting off the elevator. Sara had only met the man a few times, but he looked awful, like he hadn't slept in weeks. She saw his left hand, noticed the skin on the back of his knuckles was split apart in a way that might suggest his fist had smashed repeatedly into someone's mouth.

  Occasionally, Jeffrey had come home with the same kinds of cuts. Sara always asked about them, and he always lied. For her part, she made herself believe the lies because she wasn't comfortable with the idea of his walking outside the law. She wanted to believe that her husband was a good man in every way. Part of her wanted to think that Will Trent was a good man, too, so she was prepared to believe whatever story he came up with when she asked, "Is your hand all right?"

  "I hit someone. The doorman at Anna's building."

  Sara was caught off-guard by his honesty. She took a second to form a response. "Why?"

  Again, he seemed to give her the truth. "I just snapped."

  "Are you in trouble with your boss?"

  "Not really."

  She realized she was keeping him in the hall and stepped aside so he could come in. "That baby is lucky you found him. I don't know that he could've gone another day."

  "That's a convenient excuse." He looked around the room, absently scratching his arm. "I've never hit a suspect before. I've scared them into thinking I might, but I've never actually done it."

  "My mother always told me there's a fine line between never and always." He looked confused, and Sara explained, "Once you do
something bad, it's easier to do it again the next time, then the next time, and before you know it, you're doing it all the time and it doesn't bother your conscience."

  He stared at her for what felt like a full minute.

  She shrugged. "It's up to you. If you don't like crossing that line, then don't do it again. Don't ever make it easy."

  There was a mixture of surprise in his face, then something like relief. Instead of acknowledging what had just happened, he told her, "I hope Betty wasn't too much trouble."

  "She was fine. She's not yippy at all."

  "Yeah," he agreed. "I didn't intend to dump her on you like that."

  "It was no problem," Sara assured him, though she had to admit that Faith Mitchell was right about Sara's motivations this morning. Sara had offered to watch the dog because she wanted details about the case. She wanted to contribute something to the investigation. She wanted to be useful again.

  Will was just standing there in the middle of the room, his three-piece suit wrinkled, the vest loose around his stomach as if he'd lost weight recently. She had never seen anyone look so lost in her life.

  She told him, "Have a seat."

  He seemed undecided, but finally took the couch across from the dogs. He didn't sit the way men usually sit—legs apart, arms spread along the back of the couch. He was a big guy, but he appeared to work very hard not to take up a lot of space.

  Sara asked, "Have you had supper?"

  He shook his head and she put the pizza box on the coffee table. The dogs were very interested in this development, so Sara sat on the couch with them in order to keep them in line. She waited for Will to take a slice, but he just sat there opposite, hands resting on his knees.

  He asked, "Is that your husband's ring?"

  Startled, she turned to the ring, which was flat on the polished mahogany. The letter was on the other end of the mantel, and Sara had a flash of concern that Will would figure out what was inside.

  "Sorry," he apologized. "I shouldn't pry."

  "It's his," she told him, realizing that she'd been pressing her thumb into the matching ring on her finger, spinning it around in a nervous habit.

  "What about . . ." He touched his hand to his chest.

  Sara mimicked the movement, feeling exposed as she found Jeffrey's college ring beneath her thin shirt. "Something else," she answered, not going into detail.

  He nodded, still looking around the room. "I was found in a kitchen trash can." His words were abrupt, surprising. He explained, "At least that's what my file says."

  Sara didn't know how to respond, especially when he laughed, as if he'd made an off-color joke at a church social.

  "Sorry. I don't know why I said that." He pulled a piece of pizza out of the box, catching the dripping cheese in his hand.

  "It's all right," she told him, putting her hand on Bob's head as the greyhound's snout slid toward the coffee table. She couldn't even comprehend what Will was saying. He might as well have told her he had been born on the moon.

  She asked, "How old were you?"

  He waited until he'd swallowed, then told her, "Five months." He took another bite of pizza and she watched his jaw work as he chewed. Sara's mind conjured up an image of Will Trent at five months old. He would've just started trying to sit up on his own and recognizing sounds.

  He took another bite and chewed thoughtfully. "My mother put me there."

  "In the trashcan?"

  He nodded. "Someone broke into the house—a man. She knew he was going to kill her, and probably me, too. She hid me in the trashcan under the sink, and he didn't find me. I guess I must've known to be quiet." He gave a crooked half-grin. "I was in Anna's apartment today, and I looked in every trash can. All the time, I was thinking about what you said this morning, about how the killer put the trash bags inside of the women to send a message, because he wanted to tell the world that they were trash, meaningless."

  "Obviously, your mother was trying to protect you. She wasn't sending a message."

  "Yeah," he said. "I know."

  "Did they . . ." Her mind wasn't working well enough to ask questions.

  "Did they catch the guy who killed her?" Will asked, finishing her sentence. He glanced around the room again. "Did they catch the person who killed your husband?"

  He had asked a question, but he wasn't looking for an answer. He was making the point that it didn't matter, something Sara had felt from the moment she'd been told the man who'd orchestrated Jeffrey's death was dead. She said, "Every cop who knows, that's all they care about. Did they catch the guy."

  "Eye for an eye." He pointed to the pizza. "Mind if I—"

  He had finished half the pie. "Go ahead."

  "It's been a long day."

  Sara laughed at the understatement. He laughed, too.

  She pointed to his hand. "Do you want me to take care of that?"

  He glanced at the wounds as if he'd just realized something was wrong. "What can you do?"

  "You've waited too long for stitches." She stood up to get her first aid kit from the kitchen. "I can clean it. You need to start some antibiotics so it doesn't get infected."

  "What about rabies?"

  "Rabies?" She tied up her hair with a band she found in the kitchen drawer, then hooked her reading glasses on her shirt collar. "The human mouth is pretty dirty, but it's very rare—"

  "I mean from rats," Will said. "There were some rats in the cave where Anna and Jackie were kept." He scratched his right arm again, and she realized now why he had been doing it. "You can get rabies from rats, right?"

  Sara froze, her hand reaching up to take a stainless steel bowl from the cabinet. "Did they bite you?"

  "No, they ran up my arms."

  "Rats ran up your arms?"

  "Just two. Maybe three."

  "Two or three rats ran up your arms?"

  "It's really calming the way you keep repeating everything I say, but in a louder voice."

  She laughed at the comment, but still asked, "Were they acting erratic? Did they try to attack you?"

  "Not really. They just wanted to get out. I think they were as scared of me as I was of them." He shrugged. "Well, one of them stayed down. He was eyeballing me, you know, kind of watching what I was doing. He never came near me, though."

  She put on her reading glasses and sat beside him. "Roll up your sleeves."

  He took off his jacket and rolled up the shirtsleeve on his left arm, though he had been scratching his right. Sara didn't argue. She looked at the scratches on his forearm. They weren't even deep enough to bleed. He was probably remembering it a lot worse than it actually was. "I think you'll be fine."

  "You're sure? Maybe that's why I went a little crazy today."

  She could tell he was only half kidding. "Tell Faith to call me if you start foaming at the mouth."

  "Don't be surprised if you hear from her tomorrow."

  She rested the stainless steel bowl in her lap, then put his left hand in the bowl. "This might sting," she warned, pouring peroxide over the open wounds. Will didn't flinch, and she took his lack of reaction as an opportunity to do a more thorough job.

  She tried to take his mind off what she was doing, and, frankly, her own curiosity was raised. "What about your father?"

  "There were extenuating circumstances," was all he offered. "Don't worry. Orphanages aren't as bad as Dickens would lead you to believe." He changed the subject, asking, "Do you come from a big family?"

  "Just me and my younger sister."

  "Pete said your dad's a plumber."

  "He is. My sister worked in the business with him for a while, but now she's a missionary."

  "That's nice. You both take care of people."

  Sara tried to think of another question, something to say that would make him open up, but nothing would come to mind. She had no idea how to talk to someone who didn't have a family. What stories of sibling tyranny or parental angst could you share?

  Will seemed equally at a loss for wo
rds, or maybe he was just choosing to be silent. Either way, he didn't speak until she was doing her best to cover the broken skin by crisscrossing several Band-Aids over his knuckles.

  He said, "You're a good doctor."

  "You should see me with splinters."

  He looked at his hand. Flexed his fingers.

  She said, "You're left-handed."

  He asked, "Is that a bad thing?"

  "I hope not." She held up her left hand, which she'd been using to clean his wounds. "My mother says it means you're smarter than everybody else." She started cleaning up the mess. "Speaking of my mother, I called her about the question you had—the apostle who replaced Judas? His name was Matthias." She laughed, joking, "I'm pretty sure if you meet anyone by that name, you've probably found your killer."

  He laughed, too. "I'll put out an APB."

  "Last seen wearing a robe and sandals."

  He shook his head, still smiling. "Don't make light of it. That's the best lead I've heard all day."

  "Anna's not talking?"

  "I haven't talked to Faith since . . ." He waved his injured hand. "She would've called if anything came up."

  "She's not what I thought," Sara told him. "Anna. I know this is odd to say, but she's very dispassionate. Unemotional."

  "She's been through a lot."

  "I know what you mean, but it's beyond that." Sara shook her head. "Or maybe it's my ego. Doctors aren't used to being talked to as if they're servants."