“Drug dealer. Heroin overdose.”
“Anna’s employer didn’t miss her?”
Faith told her what little she’d managed to find out. “She works for a law firm—Bandle and Brinks.”
“Good Christ, this just keeps getting worse. Do you know about the firm?” Amanda didn’t give Faith time to answer. “They specialize in bringing lawsuits against municipalities—bad policing, bad social services, anything they can catch you on, they pounce and sue your budget to hell and back. They’ve sued the state and won more times than I can count.”
“They weren’t open to questioning. They won’t turn over any of her files without a warrant.”
“In other words, they’re being lawyers.” Amanda paced the room. “You and I will talk with Anna now, then we’ll go back over to her building and turn it upside down before that law firm of hers realizes what we’re doing.”
“When’s the interview with the doorman?”
“Eight sharp tomorrow morning. You think you can fit that into your busy schedule?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Amanda looked like a parent as she shook her head at Faith again; frustrated, mildly disgusted. “I don’t suppose the father’s in the picture this time, either.”
“I’m a little too old to be trying something new.”
“Congratulations,” she said, opening the door. It would’ve been nice except for the “idiot” she muttered as she walked into the hall.
Faith hadn’t realized she had been holding her breath until Amanda left the room. Her lips parted in a heavy sigh, and for the first time since this whole diabetes thing started, she jabbed the needle into her skin on the first try. It didn’t hurt as much, or maybe she was in such shock that she couldn’t feel anything.
She stared at the wall in front of her, trying to get her head back into the investigation. Faith closed her eyes, visualizing the autopsy photos of Jacquelyn Zabel, the cave where Jacquelyn and Anna Lindsey had been kept. Faith catalogued the horrible things that must have happened to the women—the torture, the pain. She put her hand to her stomach again. Was the child that was growing inside of her a girl? What sort of world was Faith bringing her into—a place where young girls were molested by their fathers, where magazines told them they would never be perfect enough, where sadists could take you away from your life, your own child, in the blink of an eye and thrust you into a living hell for the rest of your life?
A shudder racked her body. She stood and left the room.
The cops in front of Anna’s door stepped aside. Faith crossed her arms over her chest, feeling a sudden coldness as she entered. Anna was lying in bed, Balthazar in the crook of her bony arm. Her shoulder was pronounced, the bone hard against the skin, the same as the girls Faith had seen in the videos on Pauline McGhee’s computer.
“Agent Mitchell has just entered the room,” Amanda told the woman. “She’s been trying to find out who did this to you.”
The whites of Anna’s eyes were clouded, as if she had cataracts. She stared unseeingly toward the door. Faith knew there was no etiquette for this kind of situation. She had handled rape and abuse cases before, but nothing like this. She had to think the skills translated. You didn’t make small talk. You didn’t ask them how they were doing, because the answer was obvious.
Faith said, “I know this is a difficult time. We just have a few questions for you.”
Amanda told Faith, “Ms. Lindsey was just telling me she finished a big case and took off work for a few weeks to spend time with her child.”
Faith asked, “Did anyone else know you were taking time off?”
“I left a note with the doorman. People at work knew—my secretary, my partners. I don’t talk to the people in my building.”
Faith felt like a large wall had been erected around Anna Lindsey. There was something so cold about the woman that establishing a connection seemed impossible. She stuck to the questions they needed answered. “Can you tell us what happened when you were taken?”
Anna licked her dry lips, closed her eyes. When she spoke, her voice was little more than a whisper. “I was in my apartment getting Balthazar ready for a walk in the park. That’s the last thing I remember.”
Faith knew there could be some memory loss with Taser attacks. “What did you see when you woke up?”
“Nothing. I never saw anything again after that.”
“Any sounds or sensations you can recall?”
“No.”
“Did you recognize your attacker?”
Anna shook her head. “No. I can’t remember anything.”
Faith let a few seconds pass, trying to get hold of her frustration. “I’m going to give you a list of names. I need you to tell me if any of them sound familiar.”
Anna nodded, her hand sliding across the sheets to find her son’s mouth. He suckled her finger, tiny gulping noises coming from his throat.
“Pauline McGhee.”
Anna shook her head.
“Olivia Tanner.”
Again she shook her head.
“Jacquelyn, or Jackie, Zabel.”
She shook her head.
Faith had saved Jackie for last. The two women had been in the cave together. This was the only thing they knew for certain. “We found your fingerprint on Jackie Zabel’s driver’s license.”
Anna’s dry lips parted again. “No,” she said firmly. “I don’t know her.”
Amanda glanced Faith’s way, eyebrows raised. Was this traumatic amnesia? Or something else?
Faith asked, “What about something called thinspo?”
Anna stiffened. “No,” she said, more quickly this time, her voice louder.
Faith gave it another few seconds, letting the woman think. “We found some notebooks where you were kept. They had the same words over and over again—‘I will not deny myself.’ Does that mean anything to you?”
She shook her head again.
Faith worked to keep the pleading out of her voice. “Can you tell us anything about your attacker? Did you smell something, like oil or gas on him? Cologne? Did you feel any facial hair or any physical—”
“No,” Anna whispered, pressing her fingers along her child’s body, finding his hand and taking it in hers. “I can’t tell you anything. I don’t remember any details. Nothing.”
Faith opened her mouth to speak, but Amanda beat her to the punch, saying, “You’re safe here, Ms. Lindsey. We’ve had two armed guards outside your door since you were brought in. No one can hurt you anymore.”
Anna turned her head toward her baby, making shushing sounds to soothe him. “I am not afraid of anything.”
Faith was taken aback at how certain the woman sounded. Maybe if you survived what Anna had been through, you believed you could endure anything.
Amanda said, “We think he has two more women right now. That he’s doing the same thing to them that he’s done to you.” She tried again, “One of the women has a child, Ms. Lindsey. His name is Felix. He’s six years old and he wants to be with his mother. I’m sure wherever she is, she’s thinking of him right now, wanting to hold him again.”
“I hope she’s strong,” Anna mumbled. Then, louder, she told them, “As I have said many times now, I don’t remember anything. I don’t know who did it, or where they took me or why they did it. I just know that it’s over now, and I’m putting it behind me.”
Faith could feel Amanda’s frustration matching her own.
Anna said, “I need to rest now.”
“We can wait,” Faith told her. “Maybe come back in a few hours.”
“No.” The woman’s expression turned hard. “I know my legal obligations. I’ll sign a statement, or make my mark, or whatever it is blind people do, but if you want to talk to me again, you can make an appointment with my secretary when I’m back at work.”
Faith tried, “But, Anna—”
She turned her head toward the baby. Anna’s blindness had blocked them from her vision, but her actions
seemed to block them from her mind.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
—
Sara had finally managed to clean her apartment. She could not think of the last time it had looked this good—maybe when she had first seen it with her real estate agent before she had even moved in. The Milk Lofts had once been a dairy, serviced by the vast farmland that used to cover the eastern part of the city. There were six floors in the building, two apartments on each floor separated by a long hallway with large windows at either end. The main living area of Sara’s place was what was called an open plan, the kitchen looking onto the enormous living room. Floor-to-ceiling windows that were a bitch to keep clean lined an entire wall, giving her a nice view of downtown when the shades were open. There were three bedrooms in the back, each with its own bathroom. Sara, of course, slept in the master, but no one had ever slept in the guest room. The third room she used as an office and for storage.
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, on 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 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 wa
nted 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.
The Will Trent Series 7-Book Bundle Page 113
