He took her hand in his. She stood dumbstruck as he brought his lips to the back of her hand and gently kissed it. "Think about a movie you want to see," he told her. "Something really scary."
Then he was gone.
Angie leaned against the wall. She let out a stream of breath. Here was another perfectly sweet man she was ruining. Okay, he was a perfectly sweet pedophile and murderer, but glass houses and all that.
Gina Ormewood passed through the sliding doors. She did a double take when she saw Angie, but kept walking toward the ER.
"Hey," Angie said. "Wait up."
Gina stopped but didn't turn around. She said, "I just want to be left alone."
Angie walked around the woman to get a good look at her. Gina's lip was split. Her left eye had a bruise that was painful to look at. No wonder the guy at the desk hated Michael.
Angie asked, "What the hell happened to you?"
"I fell down," Gina told her. She tried to walk away, but Angie blocked her path.
"Did he hit you?"
"What do you think?"
"Christ."
Gina narrowed her eyes, finally recognizing Angie. "You fucked my husband."
"Yeah, well." Angie knew better than to lie. "If it's any consolation, I've had much better."
Gina laughed, then winced as her lip split open again. She put her hand to her mouth and looked at the blood on her fingers. "God," she groaned. "Let's go in here."
She pushed open the door to the women's restroom and Angie followed. Gina was petite, maybe five-three in her sneakers and around a hundred pounds. Michael had at least eighty pounds on her. This was like kicking a puppy.
"I met him when I was fifteen," Gina said. She was leaning over the sink basin, looking at her split lip in the mirror. "He was interested in my cousin. She was a year younger than me. I thought I was protecting her."
Angie knew to let her talk.
"He was so sweet," Gina said. "I'd get these letters from him when he was in the Gulf, talking about how much he loved me, that he wanted to take care of me." Her eyes met Angie's in the mirror. "This is how he takes care of me now."
Angie rummaged in her purse. "They're all sweet at first."
"You know that for a fact?"
"Even got the blood-stained T-shirt."
Gina took a tissue from the dispenser and wet it under the faucet. "After Tim was born," she began, "things changed. He started getting angry about everything. He didn't want to touch me anymore. He'd leave the house at night, stay out for hours at a time." She dabbed the tissue at her bloody lip. "Sometimes, he'd go away for the whole weekend. I'd check the odometer and he'd put five, sometimes six hundred miles on the car."
Angie found what she was looking for in her purse. "Where was he going?"
"You get punched in the face enough times, you stop asking questions."
Angie told her, "Turn around." She dabbed some foundation onto the sponge and patted it around Gina's black eye. "This is Clinique," she said. "If you go a little lighter than your usual shade, do a little blending with your finger, it helps soften the bruise."
"Did he hit you, too?"
"No," Angie answered, concentrating on hiding the bruise. The truth was, Angie had been too drunk to remember exactly what Michael had done. All she knew was that she had woken up the next morning in the backseat of her car with a deep bite mark on her breast and a pain between her legs that took a couple of weeks to go away.
It wasn't like this was the first time something bad like that had happened, but it was the first time it had happened with a guy from work.
Gina said, "He told me he was with Ken."
"Wozniak?" Angie asked. Michael's partner in Homicide. "What was he doing with Ken?"
"He said they went fishing up in the mountains together."
Angie pressed her lips together, holding back comment. She couldn't picture Ken with a fishing pole, and even if she could, Ken wasn't exactly Michael's kind of guy.
Gina's voice dropped to almost a whisper. "Was he rough with you?"
Angie nodded. She used her fingers to tilt up Gina's chin so she could check her handiwork in the light.
"He's a bastard," Gina said, still whispering. "I just want to get away."
Angie added some more foundation. "You left him?"
"Two days ago."
"Where are you staying now?"
"With my mother," she answered. "He told me he'd come get me."
Angie checked her again. Perfect. "Did you file a report?"
She laughed. "You're a cop. You know how useless that would be."
"That's bullshit," Angie told her. "You go to DeKalb County and file a report. They don't give a shit if he's a cop. They'll take one look at you and run him in."
"And then what?" Gina asked. "What happens when he gets out?"
"File a restraining order."
"Look at my face," the woman said. "Do you think a restraining order is going to stop him?"
She had a point. Angie remembered her days in uniform, recalled vividly how she had once peeled a bloody restraining order from the hand of a woman who had been beaten to death by her husband. He had used a hammer. Their kids were watching.
Gina washed her hands at the sink. "Why are you here?"
"I wanted you to send Michael a message."
She turned off the faucet and grabbed a towel to wipe her hands. "You think he'll listen to me?"
"No," Angie admitted. She took one of her cards out of her purse. "I want to give you my phone number. Call me if he does anything to you."
Gina didn't take the card. "He's going to do whatever he wants. A phone call isn't going to save me." She checked herself in the mirror, smoothed her hair. "Thanks for the makeup. Clinique?" Angie nodded. "I'll get some at lunch today. If Michael finds out I talked to you, I'm probably going to need it."
"I won't tell him."
Gina leaned against the door, propping it open. "He'll find out," she said. "He always finds out about everything."
Angie stayed in the bathroom a few minutes, trying to regain her composure. She wanted to talk to Will, but what could she say? I went to the hospital to threaten Michael's wife? He beats the crap out of her and, oh, by the way, he was so rough with me that one night we spent together that I couldn't pee straight for a month? Like every other emotion in his life, Will had learned to control his sharp temper. Angie knew it was still there, though, right at the surface waiting for something to set it off. If Angie ever told him what had really happened with Michael Ormewood, Will would kill him.
A young girl came into the bathroom, saw Angie and quickly left. Well, that was a real spirit booster. Angie looked at her reflection, the heavy makeup, the white vinyl crotch-dusting skirt and the hot pink haltertop that barely hid her breasts. No wonder people were scared of her.
She went into the hallway, glancing back toward the doors of the emergency room. Tank held both Gina's hands in his as he talked to her. Angie couldn't hear what he was saying, but she could guess. Suddenly, Gina started crying, and the man wrapped his arms around her. Angie watched them for a moment, feeling like an intruder but unable to look away.
A therapist had once told Angie that she looked for men who would abuse her because that was all she had ever known. This same therapist had also suggested that the reason Angie kept hurting Will was because she wanted to make him angry, to bring him to the point where he finally hauled off and hit her; then, Angie could finally open herself up to him. Then, she could really love him.
Of course, Angie had lied to the therapist about her relationships, about Will. She wasn't about to tell a complete stranger the truth. Hell, she had told so many lies by now that she wouldn't know the truth if it bit her on the ass.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
11:31 am
Will sat at his desk, listening to his recording of Angie reading the letter Monroe had written to her mother. He'd heard it enough times by now that he knew it by heart, but he wanted to hear her voice
, catch her inflections. Sometimes, he'd look at the letter while he listened to the words, trying to follow along. Angie hated reading aloud and her tone showed it. Will thought if he could read as well as she could he would read out loud all of the time.
He slipped the headphones out of his ears and went back to the diagram he had been drawing in his mind. Will saw things in images, like a storyboard for a movie. Jasmine Allison's face came to mind. She was still missing. The Atlanta PD was looking, but Will wasn't certain they were taking this as seriously as he needed them to. Even if they did, where would they look? There were a million places you could stash a little girl—a million more if she didn't need to breathe while you were doing it.
Aleesha Monroe's mother wasn't home; he had called several times that morning until the maid had finally picked up and told him Ms. Monroe wasn't expected back until noon. Will had put in a call to DeKalb and found out that there was nothing new on the Cynthia Barrett case. He had even sent a forensic team back to the Homes to go over the pay phone. There were only seven quarters in the coin box, and none of them had usable prints.
No leads, no clues to follow up on. All he had was the letter and the slim hope that Miriam Monroe would know something.
Leo Donnelly knocked on Will's office door as he opened it. "Hey, man."
Will slid the recorder and headphones into his desk drawer. "What's going on?"
"You got a minute?"
“Sure.”
Leo closed the door and sat in the chair beside Will's desk. He looked around the room, obviously nervous. "Nice place you got here."
Will glanced around, wondering if the detective was being sarcastic. The office was so small that Will had pushed one side of the desk up against the wall so that he didn't have to climb over it to get out.
Leo rubbed his palms on his cheap trousers as he stared out the window. The man seemed to be in a state of shock.
Will repeated, "What's going on?"
"I just talked with Greer. He's my lou, right?"
"Yeah." Will had met the lieutenant on Monday when he'd asked to be let in on the Monroe case.
Leo's tone was still incredulous. "He just got a courtesy call from DeKalb PD. Gina filed a restraining order on Mike."
"Gina Ormewood?" Will sat up in his chair. "What did she list as cause?"
"Her broken face." Leo propped his elbow on the desk and leaned his head in his hand. "Greer didn't see the pictures or nothing, but the cop who took the report said she was pretty banged up."
The detective was obviously shaken. Will had guessed that except for Michael, Leo didn't have many friends in the squad. Even if he was close to some of them, you didn't rat out your friends. That still did not explain why he'd come to Will.
Leo rubbed his chin with his thumb. "My old man used to haul off on my ma. Used to watch it when I was a kid."
"I'm sorry to hear that."
"I thought I knew the guy," Leo said, meaning Ormewood. "This is out of left field, you know? At first, I thought maybe the bitch was making it up, but then I called Michael and..." His voice trailed off. "He tried to laugh it off, said it was a big misunderstanding, that she was withdrawing the order, had just made it up to get back at him for working so much." Leo's mouth twisted to the side, like the explanation still didn't sit right with him. The man had been a cop for much longer than Will and he had probably heard that same excuse from many an abusive husband.
Leo continued, "Then I started pushing him about it, asking what was going on. Gina's a good girl, you know? Smart as a whip. I don't see her putting his nuts in a vice just for shits and giggles." Leo glanced at Will, then back out the window. "He told me to mind my own fucking business."
Leo had obviously taken that as an admission of guilt. Will took it as proof that Michael was answering his phone only when the caller ID told him it was somebody he wanted to talk to.
"Anyway," Leo turned back to Will, his knees banging the desk. He cursed a few times before saying, "I thought I'd come in and catch you up on the Monroe case."
"Anything new?"
"Her pimp was shot this morning."
"Baby G?"
"Two in the gut, one in the head. Doctors say it's just a matter of time before he's gone. No brain activity."
"They catch the doer?"
"Two of his cousins, both of them fifteen. G's grandmother saw the whole thing from her front window." Leo gave a half-shrug of his shoulder. "Not that she's saying shit. Both of'em confessed, though, so it's not like we need her. Still, you'd think she'd be a little more upset that her grandson is dead."
Will thought of Cedric. "Did anyone else get hurt?"
"No, this was a gang thing. They said G dissed 'em the other day, didn't give them respect." Leo rubbed his chin again. "Shit, since when did they start handing out respect without you having to do anything to earn it?"
"You're sure this isn't related to Monroe?"
"Doesn't seem to be," Leo said. "They're sharing a lawyer, some pro-bono fucker from Buckhead who gets his jollies helping the poor. Both of'em will be out in ten years, tops."
"Maybe," Will said, thinking Leo was more than likely right. "Did you get that memo I sent around about Jasmine Allison?"
"Missing black girl?" he confirmed. "Stick a blonde wig on her, maybe she'll get in the papers."
Will didn't acknowledge the sarcasm. He had thought of something else. "Can you pull the list of recently released sex offenders for me?"
"How recent?"
Four months ago, fifteen-year-old Julie Cooper had been brutally raped, her tongue bitten in two. There was no telling how long her attacker had been operating under the radar. He told Leo, "Let's go back at least eight months."
"Just Atlanta or metro area, too?"
"Metro," Will said, knowing that he'd just tripled the work.
"They don't exactly keep that list up-to-date," Leo pointed out. "I'll have to do some cross-checking, mark off the ones that went back in, moved away, whatever."
"I appreciate it." Will felt the need to add, "I know this is a needle in a haystack, but we don't have much more to go on."
"I'm with you, man." Leo stood up. "Shouldn't take more than a day or so to get them together. You want me to leave them on your desk?"
"That'd be great."
"I'll take the first half," Leo offered. "We're working this together, right?"
"Right," Will echoed, though he didn't exactly count Donnelly as an ally.
Will took out his cell phone as Leo shut the door. He dialed Angie's number, listened to the rings as he waited for her to answer.
She must have recognized his number on the caller ID. "What's up?"
"Why would Michael's wife file a restraining order against him?"
She exhaled slowly, taking her time with the answer. "Because he beats her."
Will felt as if he had been beaten himself.
She asked, "You there?"
He didn't think he could form the words. "Did he hit you, Angie?"
"What you should be asking is how long they've been married."
"Did he ever hit you?"
"No, Will. He never hit me."
"Are you lying to me?"
Her laugh was that strange, disaffected laugh she gave when she needed to distance herself from something. "Why would I lie to you, baby?"
"Aleesha's pimp got shot this morning."
"It wasn't me."
"Can you be serious for just one minute?"
"What do you want me to say, Will?"
"There's a missing girl," he told her. "Her name is Jasmine Allison. She lives three floors down from Aleesha's place. Sunday night, somebody paid her twenty bucks to make a phone call to the police to report that Aleesha was being attacked. Now, she's missing."
Angie's tone changed. "When was she last seen?"
"Yesterday afternoon."
"Do you have any leads?"
"None."
"How old is she?"
“Fourteen.”
Angie let out a soft breath. "Is anyone downtown taking this seriously?"
"Yeah, they're bending over backward to help the GBI."
She tried to take up for them. "They've got a lot of work to do down there."
"I'm not saying they don't."
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