Genesis

by Karin Slaughter

  Will gave the doorman another chance, carefully enunciating each word of his question. "Did you know this baby was up here?"

  Simkov shrugged, his shoulders going up high to his ears. "What the fuck do I know what goes on up here with the rich people? I make eight dollars an hour and you want me to keep up with their lives?"

  "There's a baby," Will said, so furious that he could barely speak. "A little baby who was dying."

  "So there's a baby. What the fuck do I care?"

  Rage came in a black, blinding intensity, so that it wasn't until Will was on top of the man, his fist slamming back and forth like a jackhammer, that Will realized what he was doing. And he didn't stop himself. He didn't want to stop. He was thinking about that baby lying in his own shit, the killer shoving him into the trash room so he'd starve to death, the prostitute wanting to trade information about him to get her own ass out of the sling and Angie . . . there was Angie on top of this steaming pile of excrement, pulling Will's strings like she always did, fucking with his head so that he felt like he belonged in the trash heap with all the rest of them.

  "Will!" Faith screamed. She was reaching her hands out in front of her the way you do when you're talking to a crazy person. Will felt a deep pain in his shoulders as both cops pinned his arms behind his back. He was panting like a rabid dog. Sweat dripped down his face.

  "All right," Faith said, her hands still out as she came closer. "Let's calm down. Just calm down." She put her hands on Will, something he realized she had never done before. Her palms were on his face, forcing him to look at her instead of Simkov, who was writhing on the floor. "Look at me," she ordered, her voice low, like her words were something only they could hear. "Will, look at me."

  He forced himself to meet her gaze. Her eyes were intensely blue, wide open in panic. "It's all right," Faith told him. "The baby's gonna be all right. Okay? All right?"

  Will nodded, feeling the cops loosen their grip on his arms. Faith was still standing in front of him, still had her hands on his face.

  "You're all right," she told him, talking to him in the same tone she had used with the baby. "You're going to be fine."

  Will took a step back so that Faith would have to let him go. He could tell she was almost as terrified as the doorman. Will was scared, too—scared that he still wanted to beat the man, that if the cops hadn't been there, if it had just been him and Simkov alone, Will would have beaten him to death with his bare hands.

  Faith kept her gaze locked with Will's just a moment longer. Then, she turned her attention to the bloodied pulp on the floor. "Get up, asshole."

  Simkov groaned, curling into a ball. "I can't move."

  "Shut up." She jerked Simkov's arm.

  "My nose!" he yelled, so dizzy that the only thing that kept him up was his shoulder slamming into the wall. "He broke my nose!"

  "You're fine." Faith glanced up and down the hall. She was looking for security cameras.

  Will did the same, relieved to find none.

  "Police brutality!" the man screamed. "You saw it. You're all my witnesses."

  One of the cops behind Will said, "You fell, buddy. Don't you remember?"

  "I didn't fall," the man insisted. Blood was pooling out of his nose, squeezing through his fingers like water from a sponge.

  The other paramedic was starting an IV on the baby. He didn't look up, but said, "Better be careful where you walk next time."

  And just like that, Will was the kind of cop he had never wanted to be.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  FAITH'S HANDS WERE STILL SHAKING AS SHE STOOD IN FRONT OF Anna Lindsey's ICU room. The two cops who had been on guard outside the woman's door were chatting with the nurses behind the desk, but they kept glancing up, as if they knew what had happened outside Anna Lindsey's penthouse apartment and weren't quite sure what to think about it. For his part, Will stood across from her, hands in his pockets, eyes staring blankly down the hallway. She wondered if he was in shock. Hell, she wondered if she was in shock.

  In both her personal and her private life, Faith had been the focus of a lot of angry men, but she had never witnessed anything like the violence Will had shown. There had been a moment in that hallway outside the Beeston Place penthouse when Faith had been afraid that Will would kill the doorman. It was his face that had shocked her— cold, merciless, driven toward nothing but keeping his fist slamming into the other man's face. Like everyone else's mother in the world, Faith's had always told her to be careful what she wished for. Faith had wished that Will would be a little more aggressive. Now she would give anything to have him back the way he was before.

  "They won't say anything," Faith told him. "The cops, the paramedics."

  "It doesn't matter."

  "You found that baby," she reminded him. "Who knows how long it would've taken before somebody—"

  "Stop."

  There was a loud ding as the elevator doors opened. Amanda hit the ground at a trot. She scanned the hall, taking in who was around, probably trying to neutralize witnesses. Faith braced herself for crushing recriminations, lightning-fast suspensions, maybe the loss of their badges. Instead, Amanda asked them, "Are you both all right?"

  Faith nodded. Will just stared at the floor.

  "Glad to see you finally grow a pair," Amanda told Will. "You're suspended without pay for the rest of the week, but don't think for a goddamn minute that means you're going to stop working your ass off for me."

  Will's voice sounded thick in his throat. "Yes, ma'am."

  Amanda strode toward the stairwell. They followed, and Faith noticed her boss had none of her usual grace, none of her control. She seemed just as shocked as they were.

  "Shut the door."

  Faith saw that her hands were still shaking as she pulled it closed.

  "Charlie's processing Anna Lindsey's apartment," Amanda told them, her voice echoing up the stairs. She adjusted her tone. "He'll call if he finds anything. Obviously, the doorman is off-limits to you." She meant Will. "Forensics should be back tomorrow morning, but don't get your hopes up, considering the state of the apartment. Tech hasn't been able to break into the computers the women were using. They're running all the password programs they have. It could take weeks or months to crack it. The anorexia website is hosted through a shell company in Friesland, wherever the hell that is. It's overseas. They won't give us registration information, but tech was able to pull up the stats for the site on the web. They get around two hundred unique users a month. That's all we know."

  Will didn't speak, so Faith asked, "What about the vacant house behind Olivia Tanner's?"

  "The shoe prints are for a men's size eleven Nike sold in twelve hundred outlets across the country. We found some cigarette butts in the Coke can behind the bar. We'll try to pull DNA, but there's no telling who they belong to."

  Faith asked, "What about Jake Berman?"

  "What the hell do you think?" Amanda took a breath as if to calm herself. "We've released a sketch and his booking photo through the state network. I'm sure the press will pick up on it, but we've asked them to hold off at least twenty-four hours."

  Faith's mind was jumbled with questions, but nothing would come out. She had been standing in Olivia Tanner's kitchen less than an hour ago and she could not for the life of her remember one detail about the house.

  Will finally spoke. His voice sounded as defeated as he looked. "You should fire me."

  "You're not getting off that easy."

  "I'm not kidding, Amanda. You should fire me."

  "I'm not kidding either, you ignorant jackass." Amanda tucked her hands into her hips, looking more like the usual, annoyed Amanda that Faith was familiar with. "Anna Lindsey's baby is safe because of you. I think that's a win for the team."

  He scratched at his arm. Faith could see that the skin on his knuckles was broken and bleeding. She was reminded of that moment in the hallway when she had her hands on his face, the way she had willed him to be okay because Faith didn't know how
she could handle being in the world if Will Trent stopped being the man she had shared her life with almost every day for the past year.

  Amanda caught Faith's eye. "Give us a minute."

  Faith pushed the door open and walked back into the hall. There was a low hum of activity in the ICU, but nothing like downstairs in the emergency room. The cops were back at their station in front of Anna's door, and their eyes followed Faith as she passed.

  One of the nurses told her, "They're in exam three."

  Faith didn't know why she was being given this information, but she went to exam three anyway. She found Sara Linton inside. The doctor was standing by a plastic bassinet. She was holding the baby in her arms—Anna's baby.

  "He's bouncing back," Sara told Faith. "It'll take a couple of days, but he'll be fine. Mostly, I think being back with his mom again will help them both."

  Faith couldn't be a human being right now, so she made herself be a cop. "Did Anna say anything else?"

  "Not much. She's in a lot of pain. They upped the morphine now that she's awake."

  Faith ran her hand down the baby's back, feeling the soft give of his skin, the tiny bones of his spine. "How long do you think he was left alone?"

  "The EMT was right. I'd say two days, tops. Otherwise, we'd be in a very different situation." Sara moved the baby to her other shoulder. "Someone was giving him water. He's dehydrated, but not as bad as some I've seen."

  "What are you doing here?" Faith asked. The question came out without any forethought. She heard it sound in her ears, and thought it was a good one—good enough to repeat. "Why are you here? Why were you with Anna in the first place?"

  Sara gently returned the baby to the bassinet. "She's my patient. I was checking on her." She tucked a blanket around the infant. "Just like I checked on you this morning. Delia Wallace's office said you haven't called."

  "I've been a little busy rescuing babies off of trash piles."

  "Faith, I'm not the enemy here." Sara's tone took on the annoying tenor of someone trying to be reasonable. "This isn't just about you anymore. You have a child inside of you—another life you're responsible for."

  "That's my decision."

  "Your decision clock is running out. Don't let your body make it for you, because if it's between the diabetes and the baby, the diabetes will always win out."

  Faith took a deep breath, but that didn't do anything to help matters. She let loose. "You know, you may be trying to force yourself onto my case, but I'll be damned if I'll let you force yourself into my private life."

  "Excuse me?" Sara had the gall to sound surprised.

  "You're not a coroner anymore, Sara. You're not married to a police chief. He's dead. You saw him blown to pieces with your own two eyes. You're not going to get him back by hanging out at the morgue and shoving your way onto an investigation."

  Sara stood there with her mouth open, seemingly incapable of responding.

  Shockingly, Faith burst into tears. "Oh, my God, I'm so sorry! That was so awful." She put her hand to her mouth. "I can't believe I said—"

  Sara shook her head, looking down at the floor.

  "I'm so sorry. God, I'm sorry. Please forgive me."

  Sara took her time speaking. "I guess Amanda caught you up on the details."

  "I looked it up on the computer. I didn't—"

  "Agent Trent read it, too?"

  "No." Faith made her voice firm. "No. He said it was none of his business, and he's right. It's none of my business, either. I shouldn't have looked. I'm sorry. I am just an awful, awful person, Sara. I can't believe I said that to you."

  Sara bent down to the baby, put her hand to his face. "It's okay."

  Faith floundered for something to say, rattling off all the horrible things she could think about herself. "Look, I lied to you about my weight. I've gained fifteen pounds, not ten. I eat Pop-Tarts for breakfast, sometimes for dinner but usually with a Diet Coke. I never exercise. Ever. The only time I run is when I'm trying to make it to the bathroom before the commercial's over, and honest to God, since I got TiVo, I don't even do that anymore."

  Sara was still silent.

  "I'm so sorry."

  She kept fiddling with the blanket, tucking it in tighter, making sure the baby was in a tight little cocoon.

  "I'm sorry," Faith repeated, feeling so awful she thought she might throw up.

  Sara kept her thoughts to herself. Faith was trying to figure out how to gracefully leave the room when the doctor said, "I knew it was fifteen pounds."

  Faith felt some of the tension start to dissipate. She knew better than to ruin it by opening her mouth.

  Sara said, "No one ever talks to me about him. I mean, in the beginning, of course, but now no one even says his name. It's like they don't want to upset me, like saying his name might send me back to . . ." She shook her head. "Jeffrey. I can't remember the last time I said that out loud. His name is—was—Jeffrey."

  "It's a nice name."

  Sara nodded. Her throat worked as she swallowed.

  "I saw pictures," Faith admitted. "He was good-looking."

  A smile curved Sara's lips. "He was."

  "And a good cop. You could tell by the way they wrote the reports."

  "He was a good man."

  Faith floundered, trying to think of something else to say.

  Sara beat her to it, asking, "What about you?"

  "Me?"

  "The father."

  In her mortification, Faith had forgotten about Victor. She put her hand to her stomach. "You mean my baby's daddy?"

  Sara allowed a smile.

  "He was looking for a mother, not a girlfriend."

  "Well, that was never Jeffrey's problem. He was very good at taking care of himself." Her eyes took on a faraway look. "He was the best thing that ever happened to me."

  "Sara—"

  She went through the desk drawers and found a glucose monitor. "Let's test your blood sugar."

  This time, Faith was too contrite to protest this time. She held out her hand, waited for the lancet to pierce her skin.

  Sara talked as she went through the procedure. "I'm not trying to get back my husband. Believe me, if it was as simple as walking onto a case, I would sign up at the police academy tomorrow."

  Faith winced as the needle pierced her skin.

  "I want to feel useful again," Sara said, her voice taking on a confessional tone. "I want to feel like I'm doing more to help people than prescribing ointments for rashes that would probably go away on their own and patching up thugs so they can go back on the street and shoot each other again."

  Faith hadn't considered that Sara's motivations might be so altruistic. She supposed it reflected badly on herself that she always assumed everyone approached life with selfish intentions. She told Sara, "Your husband sounded . . . perfect."

  Sara laughed as she filled the test strip. "He left his jockstrap hanging on the bathroom doorknob, he slept around the first time we were married—which I found out for myself when I came home from work early one day—and he had an illegitimate son he never knew about until he was forty." She read the machine, then showed it to Faith. "What do you think? Juice or insulin?"

  "Insulin." She confessed, "I ran out at lunch."

  "I gathered." Sara picked up the phone and called one of the nurses. "You need to get this under control."

  "This case is—"

  "This case is ongoing, just like all the other cases you've worked and all the ones you'll work in the future. I'm sure Agent Trent can spare you for a couple of hours while you get this squared away."

  Faith wasn't sure Agent Trent could spare anything at the moment.

  Sara checked on the baby again. "His name is Balthazar," she said.

  "Here I was thinking we had saved him."

  She was kind enough to laugh, but her words were serious. "I'm board certified in pediatric medicine, Faith. I graduated at the top of my class at Emory University and I've devoted nearly two decades of my li
fe to helping people, whether they're living or dead. You can question my personal motivations all you like, but don't question my medical abilities."

  "You're right." Faith felt even more contrite. "I'm sorry. It's been a really hard day."

  "It doesn't help when your blood sugar is out of whack." There was a rap on the door, and Sara walked over, taking a handful of insulin pens from the nurse. She shut the door and told Faith, "You have to take this seriously."

  "I know I do."

  "Postponing dealing with it isn't going to work. Take two hours out of your day to see Delia so that you can get yourself right and focus on your work."

  "I will."

  "Mood swings, sudden tempers—these are all symptoms of your disease."

  Faith felt like her mother had just scolded her, but maybe that's exactly what she needed right now. "Thank you."

  Sara put her hands on the bassinet. "I'll leave you to it."

  "Wait," Faith said. "You deal with young girls, right?"

  Sara shrugged. "I used to a lot more when I had my private practice. Why?"

  "What do you know about thinspo?"

  "Not a lot," the doctor admitted. "I know it's a word for pro-anorexia propaganda, usually on the Internet."

  "Three of our victims have a connection to it."

  "Anna's still very thin," Sara observed. "Her liver and kidney functions are off, but I thought that was because of what she'd been through, not anything she'd done to herself."

  "Could she be anorexic?"

  "It's possible. I really didn't consider the disorder because of her age. Anorexia is generally a teenage issue." Sara recalled, "Pete flagged up something similar during Jacquelyn Zabel's autopsy. She was very thin, but then again, she was starved and denied water for at least two weeks. I just assumed she had started out slightly underweight. Her frame was small." She leaned down to Balthazar and stroked the side of his cheek. "Anna couldn't have had a baby if she was starving herself. Not without serious complications."

  "Maybe she got it under control long enough to have him," Faith guessed. "I'm never quite sure which is which—is anorexia where they throw up?"