The Will Trent Series 7-Book Bundle

by Karin Slaughter

  “That might explain why she walked out in the middle of the road.”

  “Considering what she’s been through …” Sara didn’t finish the sentence, but Faith knew exactly what she meant. You didn’t have to be a doctor to understand that a woman who’d been through that kind of hell might deliberately walk into the path of a speeding car.

  Sara tucked Faith’s business card into her coat pocket. “I’ll call you in a few minutes.”

  Faith watched her leave, wondering how in the hell Sara Linton had ended up working at Grady Hospital. Sara couldn’t be more than forty, but the emergency room was a young person’s game, the sort of place you ran screaming from before you hit your thirties.

  She checked her phone again. All six bars were lit, meaning the signal was bright and clear. She tried to give Will the benefit of the doubt. Maybe his phone had fallen apart again. Then again, every cop on the scene would have a cell phone, so maybe he really was an asshole.

  It did occur to Faith as she got up from the table and made her way to the parking lot that she could call Will herself, but there was a reason Faith was pregnant and unmarried for the second time in less than twenty years, and it wasn’t because she was good at communicating with the men in her life.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  —

  Will stood at the mouth of the cave, lowering down a set of lights on a rope so that Charlie Reed would have something better than a flashlight to help him collect evidence. Will was soaked to the bone, even though the rain had stopped half an hour ago. As dawn approached, the air had turned chillier, but he would rather stand on the deck of the Titanic than go down into that hole again.

  The lights hit the bottom and he saw a pair of hands pull them into the cavern. Will scratched his arms. His white shirt showed pinpoints of blood where the rats had clawed their way over him, and he was wondering if itching was a sign of rabies. It was the kind of question he would normally ask Faith, but he didn’t want to bother her. She had looked awful when he’d left the hospital, and there was nothing she could do here but stand in the rain alongside him. He would catch her up on the case in the morning, after she’d had a good night’s sleep. This case wasn’t going to be solved in an hour. At least one of them should be well rested as they headed into the investigation.

  A helicopter whirred overhead, the chopping sound vibrating in his ears. They were doing infrared sweeps, looking for the second victim. The search teams had been out for hours, carefully combing the area within a two-mile radius. Barry Fielding had shown up with his search dogs, and the animals had gone crazy for the first half hour, then lost the scent. Uniformed patrolmen from Rockdale County were doing grid searches, looking for more underground caves, more clues that might indicate the other woman had escaped.

  Maybe she hadn’t managed to escape. Maybe her attacker had found her before she could reach help. Maybe she had died days or even weeks ago. Or maybe she had never existed in the first place. As the search wore on, Will was getting the impression that the cops were turning against him. Some of them didn’t think there was a second victim at all. Some of them thought Will was keeping them out in the freezing cold rain for no reason other than he was too stupid to see that he was wrong.

  There was one person who could clarify this, but she was still in surgery back at Grady Hospital, fighting for her life. The first thing you normally did in an abduction or murder case was put the victim’s life under a microscope. Other than assuming her name was Anna, they knew nothing about the woman. In the morning, Will would pull all the missing persons reports in the area, but those were bound to be in the hundreds, and that was excluding the city of Atlanta, where on average, two people a day went missing. If the woman came from a different state, the paperwork would increase exponentially. Over a quarter of a million missing persons cases were reported to the FBI every year. Compounding the problem, the cases were seldom updated if the missing were found.

  If Anna wasn’t awake by morning, Will would send over a fingerprint technician to card her. It was a scattershot way of trying to find her identity. Unless she had committed an arrestable crime, her fingerprints would not be on file. Still, more than one case cracked open based on following procedure. Will had learned a long time ago that a slim chance was still a chance.

  The ladder at the mouth of the cavern shook and Will steadied it as Charlie Reed made his way up. The clouds had passed with the rain, letting through some of the moonlight. Though the deluge had passed, there was the occasional drop, sounding like a cat smacking its lips. Everything in the forest had a strange, bluish hue to it, and there was enough light now that Will didn’t need his flashlight to see Charlie. The crime-scene tech’s hand reached out, slapping a large evidence bag on the ground at Will’s feet as he climbed to the surface.

  “Shit,” Charlie cursed. His white clean suit was caked in mud. He unzipped it as soon as he was topside, and Will could see that he was sweating so badly his T-shirt was stuck to his chest.

  Will asked, “You okay?”

  “Shit,” Charlie repeated, wiping his forehead with the back of his arm. “I can’t believe … Jesus, Will.” He leaned over, bracing his hands on his knees. He was breathing hard, though he was a fit man and the climb was not a difficult one. “I don’t know where to start.”

  Will understood the feeling.

  “There were torture devices …” Charlie wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “I’ve only seen that kind of thing on television.”

  “There was a second victim,” Will said, raising up his voice at the end so that Charlie would take his words as an observation that needed confirming.

  “I can’t make sense of anything down there.” Charlie squatted, resting his head in his hands. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  Will knelt down alongside him. He picked up the evidence bag. “What’s this?”

  He shook his head. “I found them rolled up in a tin can by the chair.”

  Will spread the bag flat on his leg and used the penlight from Charlie’s kit to study the contents. There were at least fifty sheets of notebook paper inside. Each page was covered front to back in cursive pencil. Will squinted at the words, trying to make sense out of them. He had never been able to read well. The letters always tended to mix up and turn around. Sometimes, they blurred so much that he felt motion sickness just trying to decipher their meaning.

  Charlie didn’t know about Will’s problem. Will tried to draw out some information from him, asking, “What do you make of these notes?”

  “It’s crazy, right?” Charlie was rubbing his thumb and forefinger along his mustache, a nervous habit that only came out during dire circumstances. “I don’t think I can go back down there.” He paused, swallowing hard. “It just feels … evil, you know? Just plain damn evil.”

  Will heard leaves rustling, branches snapping. He turned to find Amanda Wagner making her way through the woods. She was an older woman, probably in her sixties. She favored monochromatic power suits with skirts that hit below her knee and stockings that showed off the definition of what Will had to admit were remarkably good calves for a woman he often thought of as the Antichrist. Her high heels should have made it difficult for her to find her footing, but, as with most obstacles, Amanda conquered the terrain with steely determination.

  Both men stood as she approached.

  As usual, she didn’t bother with pleasantries. “What’s this?” She held out her hand for the evidence bag. Other than Faith, Amanda was the only person in the bureau who knew about Will’s reading issues, something she both accepted and criticized at the same time. Will trained the penlight on the pages and she read aloud, “ ‘I will not deny myself. I will not deny myself.’ ” She shook the bag, checking the rest of the pages. “Front and back, all the same sentence. Cursive, probably a woman’s handwriting.” She handed the notes back to Will, giving him a pointed look of disapproval. “So, our bad guy’s either an angry schoolteacher or a self-help guru.”

>   She addressed Charlie. “What else have you found?”

  “Pornography. Chains. Handcuffs. Sexual devices.”

  “That’s evidence. I need clues.”

  Will took over for him. “I think the second victim was bolted underneath the bed. I found this in the rope.” He took a small evidence bag from his jacket pocket. It contained part of a front tooth, some of the root still attached. He told Amanda, “That’s an incisor. The victim at the hospital had all of her teeth intact.”

  She scrutinized Will more than the tooth. “You’re sure about this?”

  “I was right in her face trying to get information,” he answered. “Her teeth were chattering together. They were making a clicking sound.”

  She seemed to accept this. “What makes you think the tooth was recently lost? And don’t tell me gut instinct, Will, because I’ve got the entire Rockdale County police force out here in the wet and cold, ready to lynch you for sending them on a wild-goose chase in the middle of the night.”

  “The rope was cut from underneath the bed,” he told her. “The first victim, Anna, was tied down to the top of the bed. The second victim was underneath. Anna couldn’t have cut the rope herself.” Amanda asked Charlie, “Do you agree with this?” Still shaken up, he took his time answering. “Half of the cut ends of the rope were still under the bed. It would make sense that they would fall that way if they were cut from underneath. Cut from the top, the ends would be on the floor or still on top of the bed, not underneath it.”

  Amanda was still dubious. She told Will, “Go on.” “There were more pieces of rope tied to the eyebolts under the bed. Someone cut themselves away. They would still have the rope around their ankles and at least one wrist. Anna didn’t have any rope on her.”

  “The paramedics could’ve cut it off,” Amanda pointed out. She asked Charlie, “DNA? Fluids?”

  “All over the place. We should get them back in forty-eight hours. Unless this guy’s on the database …” He glanced at Will. They all knew that DNA was a shot in the dark. Unless their abductor had committed a crime in the past that caused his DNA to be taken, then logged into the computer, there was no way he would come up as a match.

  Amanda asked, “What about the waste situation?” Initially, Charlie didn’t seem to understand the question, but then he answered, “There aren’t any empty jars or cans. I guess they were taken away. There’s a covered bucket in the corner that was used as a toilet, but from what I can tell, the victim—or victims—were tied up most of the time and didn’t have a choice but to go where they were. I couldn’t tell you if any of this points to one or two captives. It depends on when they were taken, how dehydrated they were, that kind of thing.”

  She asked, “Was there anything fresh underneath the bed?” “Yes,” Charlie answered, as if surprised by the revelation. “Actually, there was an area that tested positive for urine. It would be in the right place for someone lying down on their back.”

  Amanda pressed, “Wouldn’t it take longer for liquid to evaporate underground?”

  “Not necessarily. The high acidity would have a chemical reaction with the pH in the soil. Depending on the mineral content and the—”

  Amanda cut him off. “Don’t educate me, Charlie, just give me facts that I can use.”

  He looked at Will apologetically. “I don’t know if there were two hostages at the same time. Someone was definitely kept under the bed, but it could have been that the abductor moved the same victim from place to place. The body fluids could’ve also drained off from above.” He told Will, “You were down there. You saw what this guy is capable of.” The color had drained from his face again. “It’s awful,” he mumbled. “It’s just awful.”

  Amanda was her usual sympathetic self. “Man up, Charlie. Get back down there and find me some evidence I can use to catch this bastard.” She patted him on the back, more of a shove to get him moving, then told Will, “Walk with me. We’ve got to find that pygmy detective you pissed off and make nice with him so he doesn’t go crying to Lyle Peterson.” Peterson was Rockdale County’s chief of police and no friend of Amanda’s. By law, only a police chief, a mayor or a district attorney could ask the GBI to take over a case. Will wondered what strings Amanda had managed to pull and how furious Peterson was about it.

  “Well.” She held out her hands for balance as she stepped over a fallen limb. “You bought some good grace volunteering yourself to go down into that hole, but if you ever do anything that stupid again, I’ll have you running stings in the men’s bathroom at the airport for the rest of your natural born life. Do you hear me?”

  Will nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Your victim doesn’t look good,” she told him, walking past a group of cops who had stopped for a cigarette break. They glared at Will. “There were some complications. I talked to the surgeon. Sanderson. He doesn’t sound hopeful.” She added, “He confirmed your observation about the teeth, by the way. They were fully intact.”

  This was typical Amanda, making him work for everything. Will didn’t take it as an insult but as a sign that she might be on his side. “The soles of her feet were freshly cut,” he said. “She didn’t bleed from her feet when she was in the cave.”

  “Take me through your process.”

  Will had already relayed the highlights to her over the telephone, but he told her again about finding the sheet of plywood, going down into the hole. He went into more details this time around as he described the cavern, carefully giving her a sense of the atmosphere while trying not to reveal that he had been even more petrified than Charlie Reed. “The slats of the bed were clawed underneath,” he said. “The second victim—her hands had to be unbound to make those marks. He wouldn’t have left her hands free while she was alone because she could free herself and leave.”

  “You really think he kept one on top and one on bottom?”

  “I think that’s exactly what he did.”

  “If they were both tied up and one of them managed to get a knife, it would make sense that the woman on bottom would keep it hidden while they waited for the abductor to leave.”

  Will didn’t respond. Amanda could be sarcastic and petty and downright mean, but she was also fair in her own way, and he knew that as much as she derided his gut instincts, she had learned over the years to trust him. He also knew better than to expect anything remotely resembling praise.

  They had reached the road where Will had parked the Mini all those hours ago. Dawn was coming fast, and the blue cast of light had turned to sepia tones. Dozens of Rockdale County cruisers were blocking off the area. More men milled around, but the sense of urgency had been lost. The press was out there somewhere, too, and Will saw a couple of news helicopters hovering overhead. It was too dark to get a shot, but that probably was not stopping them from reporting every movement they saw on the ground—or at least what they thought they saw. Accuracy wasn’t exactly part of the equation when you had to provide news twenty-four hours a day.

  Will held out his hand to Amanda, helping her down the shoulder as they went into the opposite side of the forest. There were hundreds of searchers in the area, some from other counties, all spread out into groups. The Georgia Emergency Management Agency, or GEMA, had called in the civilian canine corps, the people who had trained their dogs to scent corpses. The dogs had stopped barking hours ago. Most of the volunteers had gone home. It was mostly cops now, people who didn’t have a choice. Detective Fierro was out there somewhere, probably cursing Will’s name.

  Amanda asked, “How’s Faith?”

  He was surprised by the question, but then, Amanda had a connection with Faith that went back several years. “She’s fine,” he said, automatically covering for his partner.

  “I heard she passed out.”

  He feigned surprise. “Did you?”

  Amanda raised her eyebrows at him. “She hasn’t been looking good lately.”

  Will assumed she meant the weight gain, which was a little much for Faith�
��s small frame, but he had figured out today that you did not discuss a woman’s weight, especially with another woman. “She seems fine to me.”

  “She seems irritable and distracted.”

  Will kept his mouth shut, unsure whether Amanda was truly concerned or asking him to tattle. The truth was that Faith had been irritable and distracted lately. He had worked with her long enough to know her moods. For the most part, she was pretty even-keeled. Once every month, always around the same time, she carried her purse with her for a few days. Her tone would get snippy and she’d tend to favor radio stations that played women singing along to acoustic guitars. Will knew to just apologize a lot for everything he said until she stopped carrying her bag. Not that he would share this with Amanda, but he had to admit that lately, every day with Faith seemed like a purse day.

  Amanda reached out her hand and he helped her step over a fallen log. “You know I hate working cases we can’t clear,” she said.

  “I know you like solving cases no one else can.”

  She chuckled ruefully. “When are you going to get tired of me stealing all your thunder, Will?”

  “I’m indefatigable.”

  “Putting that calendar to use, I see.”

  “It’s the most thoughtful gift you’ve ever given me.” Leave it to Amanda to give a functional illiterate a word-a-day calendar for Christmas.

  Up ahead, Will saw Fierro making his way toward them. This side of the road was more densely forested, and there were limbs and vines everywhere. Will could hear Fierro cursing as his pant leg got caught in a prickly bush. He slapped his neck, probably killing an insect. “Nice of you to join this fucking waste of time, Gomez.”