Criminal

by Karin Slaughter

  He said what they always said. “Do I look like a cop?” But he unzipped his pants without prompting. It was the last vestige of democracy. Even undercover, a cop wasn’t allowed to show you his junk. “All right?”

  Zanna nodded, suppressing a shudder. He was huge. “Damn,” she managed. “That looks fun.”

  The man zipped back up. “Have a seat.” He indicated the chair. Zanna sat, legs apart, so he’d have a good view from the bed. Only, he kept standing. His shadow stretched across the room, nearly reaching the edge of the door.

  “How do you like it?” she asked, though Zanna had a sneaking suspicion he liked it rough. She pulled in her shoulders, tried to look smaller than she already was. “You wanna be gentle with me. I’m just a girl.”

  His lip quivered, but that was the only reaction she got. He asked, “How did you get here?”

  She thought he meant the literal path she’d taken—up Peachtree, left on Edgewood. Then she realized he meant her current state of employment.

  Zanna shrugged. “What can I say? I love sex.” That’s what they wanted to hear. That’s what they tried to tell themselves when they ripped you apart and threw money in your face—that you loved it, couldn’t live without it.

  “No,” he said. “I want the real story.”

  “Oh, you know.” She blew out a puff of air. Her story was so boring. You couldn’t turn on the television without seeing some iteration of the same. Zanna hadn’t been tossed out on the streets. She hadn’t been abused. Her parents were divorced, but they were good people. The problem was Zanna. She’d started smoking weed so a boy would think she was cool. She’d started taking pills because she was bored. She’d started smoking meth to lose weight. And then it was too late to do anything else but hang on by her fingernails until the next hit.

  Her mom let her live at home until she figured out Zanna was smoking more than Marlboros. Her dad let her live in his basement until his new wife found the blackened pieces of tinfoil that smelled like marshmallows. Then, they put her up in an apartment. Then they got all tough love, and two failed stints in rehab later, Zanna was out on the street, earning her fix between her legs.

  “Tell me the truth,” the man said. “How did you get here?”

  Zanna tried to swallow. Her mouth was dry. She couldn’t tell if it was from withdrawal or from the scary feeling she was getting off this guy. She told him what she knew he wanted to hear. “My daddy hurt me.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “I didn’t have a choice.” She sniffed and looked down at the floor. She used the back of her hand to wipe away fake tears. Her jaw could’ve come unhinged like a boa constrictor’s, so bored was Zanna with spinning this story. “I didn’t have anywhere to go. I was sleeping on the streets. Sex is something I like. And I’m good at it, so …”

  He kneeled down to look at her. Even on his knees, he was taller than her. Zanna glanced at him, then quickly looked away. It was shame this guy was looking for. Older generation. They lapped it up. Zanna could give him plenty of shame. Valerie Bertinelli. Meredith Baxter. Tori Spelling. Zanna had seen the look in every single Lifetime movie she’d ever watched.

  She said, “I miss him. That’s the sad part.” She looked back up at the man, blinked her eyes a few times. “I miss my daddy.”

  He took her hand, gently sandwiching it between both of his. Zanna couldn’t see anything but her wrist. His touch was light on her skin, but she felt like he’d trapped her. Her breath stuttered in her chest. Panic was a natural instinct she thought she’d learned to control. There was something about this man that set off what little warning system she had left.

  He said, “Suzanna, don’t lie to me.”

  Bile boiled up into her mouth. “That’s not my name.” She tried to pull away. His fingers clamped around her wrist. “I didn’t tell you my name.”

  “Didn’t you?”

  She was going to kill that fucking pimp. He’d sell his mother for an extra twenty. “What did Terry tell you? My name is Trixie.”

  “No,” the man insisted. “You told me your name is Suzanna.”

  She felt pain rush up her arm. She looked down. He held both her wrists in one hand. He leaned into her legs, trapping her against the chair. “Don’t fight,” he said, his free hand wrapping around her neck. The tips of his fingers touched in the back. “I want to help you, Suzanna. To save you.”

  “I-I-I’m not—” She couldn’t speak. She was choking. She couldn’t breathe. Panic jerked through her body like a live wire. Her eyes rolled upward. She felt a stream of urine dribble down her leg.

  “Just relax, sister.” He hovered above her. His eyes going back and forth as if he did not want to miss a second of her fear. A smile creased his lips. “The Lord will guide my hand.”

  six

  Present Day

  MONDAY

  Sara walked through the Grady Hospital emergency room, trying not to get pulled away on cases. Even if she tattooed “off duty” on her forehead, the nurses wouldn’t leave her alone. She shouldn’t blame them. The hospital was notoriously understaffed and overburdened. There had not been a time in Grady’s 120-year history when supply was able to keep up with demand. Working here was tantamount to signing away your life, which had been just what Sara needed when she’d taken the job. She hadn’t really had a life back then. She was newly widowed, living in a different city, starting over from scratch. Throwing herself into a demanding job was the only way she’d been able to cope.

  It was amazing how quickly her needs had changed in the last two weeks.

  Or the last hour, for that matter. Sara had no idea what was going on between Will and Amanda. Their relationship had always puzzled her, but the exchange in the hallway before the stairs collapsed had been downright bizarre. Even after the fall, when it was clear that Amanda had been badly injured, Will seemed more intent on questioning the woman than helping her. Sara still felt shocked by his tone of voice. She’d never heard such coldness from him before. It was like he was another person, a stranger she did not want to know.

  At least Sara had finally figured out the root of their conversation, though it was through no brilliant deduction of her own. The television over the nurses’ station was always tuned to the news. Closed captioning scrolled mindlessly day and night. The missing girl from Georgia Tech had made the jump to the national news, courtesy of CNN, whose world headquarters was just down the street from the university. The video of Amanda leading the press conference played on an endless loop, reporters flashing up statistics and the sort of non-information required to fill twenty-four-hour programming.

  The latest speculation held that perhaps Ashleigh Renee Snyder had faked her own abduction. Students claiming to be close friends of the missing girl had come forward, giving details about her life, Ashleigh’s fears that her grades were slipping. Maybe she really was hiding somewhere. The theory was not completely without foundation. Georgia had a short history of women pretending to be kidnapped, the most famous being the so-called Runaway Bride, a silly woman who’d wasted several days of police time hiding from her own fiancé.

  “Sara.” A nurse rushed up with a lab report. “I need you to—”

  “Sorry. I’m off duty.”

  “What the hell are you doing back here?” The woman didn’t wait around for an answer.

  Sara checked the board to see if Will had been assigned a room. Generally, a case as mundane as sutures would take hours to get to, but before Sara dealt with Amanda, she’d made certain the admitting nurse hadn’t abandoned Will to the waiting room. He’d been assigned one of the curtains in the back. Sara felt her spine stiffen when she saw Bert Krakauer’s name instead of her own adjacent to Will’s.

  She headed toward the back, a startling sense of ownership quickening her pace. The curtain was open. Will was sitting up in bed. A drape was around his foot. Worst of all, Krakauer had a pair of pick-ups in his hand.

  “No-no-no,” she said, jogging toward the two men.
“What are you doing?”

  Krakauer indicated the needle holder. “They didn’t let you play with these in medical school?”

  Sara gave him a tight smile. “Thanks. I’ll take over from here.” He took the hint, returning the instrument to the tray and taking his leave. Sara gave Will a sharp look as she closed the curtain. “You were going to let Krakauer sew you up?”

  “Why not?”

  “For the same reason you weren’t left rotting in the waiting room.” Sara washed her hands at the sink. “If someone broke into my apartment, would you let another cop investigate it?”

  “I don’t normally work burglaries.”

  Sara wiped her hands dry with a paper towel. Will wasn’t normally this obtuse. “What’s going on?”

  “He said I need stitches.”

  “Not that.” She sat down on the edge of the bed. “You’ve been acting strange since we got here. Is it Amanda?”

  “Why? Did she say something to you?”

  Sara had a creeping sense of déjà vu. She’d spoken briefly to Amanda and gotten the same question about Will. “What would Amanda tell me?”

  “Nothing important. She wasn’t making a lot of sense.”

  “She seemed pretty sharp to me.” Sara resisted the urge to put her hands on her hips like a lecturing schoolmarm. “I saw Ashleigh Snyder on the news.”

  Will sat up. “Did they find her?”

  “No. They’re speculating that she might’ve staged her own kidnapping. One of her friends came forward and said she was about to flunk out of school.”

  Will nodded, but didn’t offer his opinion.

  “Are you working the case?”

  “Nope.” His tone was clipped. “Still keeping Atlanta’s airport toilets safe from horny business travelers.”

  “Why aren’t you on the kidnapping?”

  “You’d have to ask Amanda.”

  Here they were, full circle again.

  “Is she all right?” Will asked, though the question seemed obligatory. “Amanda, I mean.”

  Sara had never been good at staring contests, especially with someone as blatantly pigheaded as the man she’d been sleeping with for the last two weeks. “She has what’s called a Colles’ fracture. Ortho is reducing it right now. She’ll get a cast. She’s pretty banged up, but she’ll be okay. Normally, she’d be sent home, but she lost consciousness, so she’ll have to spend the night.”

  “Good.” He stared at her blankly. Sara got the feeling that she might as well be talking to a brick wall. The tension between them was just as thick.

  She took his hand. “Will—”

  “Thanks for letting me know.”

  Sara waited for him to say more. Then she realized they only had twelve hours before it would be too late to suture his ankle. She slipped on a pair of surgical gloves. She could tell from the mess that Krakauer had already cleaned out the wound. “Your ankle is numb?”

  Will nodded.

  “Let’s see what we have.” She pressed her fingers around the open skin. The laceration was at least an inch long and half as deep. Fresh blood wept out when she forced together the skin. She asked, “You didn’t think to tell me that a nail went into your ankle?”

  “The other doctor said it barely needs a stitch.”

  “The other doctor is never going to have to see your ankle again.” Sara rolled over the stool so she could sit down. She took the scalpel and used the edge to shape the jagged opening into an ellipse. “I’ll make sure there isn’t a scar.”

  “You know that doesn’t matter.”

  Sara looked up at him. There were worse scars on his body. It was something they didn’t talk about. One of the many things they didn’t talk about.

  She tried, again. “What’s going on with you?”

  Will shook his head, looking away. He was obviously still angry, but Sara had no idea why. There was no use asking him. As sweet and kind and gentle as Will Trent was, Sara had learned that he was about as forthcoming as an amnesiac with lockjaw.

  She didn’t know what else to do but start suturing. Her glasses were in her purse, which she assumed was still locked inside her car. Sara leaned in close and hooked the needle into the flesh just beneath Will’s skin. The chromic thread dipped in and out as she placed a single row of interrupted sutures. Pull, knot, cut. Pull, knot, cut. Over the years, Sara’s hands had performed this same action so many times that she went into autopilot, which, unfortunately, gave her mind plenty of time to wander.

  The same question she’d been asking herself for the last two weeks popped into her head: What was she doing?

  She liked Will. He was the first man Sara had really been with since her husband had died. She enjoyed his company. He was funny and smart. Handsome. Incredibly good in bed. He’d met her family. Her dogs adored him. Sara adored his dog. Over the last few weeks, Will had practically moved into her apartment, but in some ways, he still felt like a stranger.

  What little he revealed about his past always came in sugarcoated sound bites. Nothing was ever too bad. No one was that horrible. To hear Will tell it, he’d lived a charmed life. Never mind the cigarette and electrical burns on his body. The jag to his upper lip where the skin had been busted in two. The deep gouge that followed his jawline. Sara kissed these places and rubbed her hands along them as if they didn’t exist.

  “Halfway there.” Sara glanced up at Will again. He was still looking away.

  She tied off the last knot and picked up a new needle threaded with Prolene. She started the running subcuticular row, zigzagging the thread back and forth, all the while berating herself for giving in to Will’s silence.

  When their relationship first started, none of this had mattered. There were far more interesting things Will could do with his mouth other than talk about himself. These last few days, his reticence had started to bother her. Sara found herself wondering if he was capable of giving more, and failing that, if she was willing to settle for less.

  Even if by some miracle he decided to pour out his heart to Sara, there was still the larger problem of his wife. If Sara was being honest, she was afraid of Angie Polaski, and not just because the woman kept leaving nasty notes on the windshield of Sara’s car. Angie lingered in Will’s life like a vaporous poison. The joy that Sara felt as Will showed her around his old neighborhood had quickly dissipated when practically every memory he recalled had something to do with Angie. He didn’t have to say her name. Sara knew that he was thinking about her.

  Which left Sara questioning whether or not there was any space in Will’s life for someone other than Angie Polaski.

  “There.” Sara pulled closed the skin and knotted the loop. “These need to stay in for two weeks. I’ve got some waterproof Band-Aids at home so you can shower. I’ll get you some Tylenol for the pain.”

  “I’ve got some at home.” He stared at his hands as he rolled down the leg of his pants. “I should probably stay there tonight.” He slid on his sock, still not meeting her eyes. “I need to wash some of my shirts. Do the laundry. Check on the dog.”

  Sara stared openly. Will’s jaw was clenched. He was a study in controlled anger. She wasn’t sure if this was directed solely at Amanda anymore. “Are you mad at me?”

  “No.” The answer was short, quick, and obviously a lie.

  “All right.” Sara turned her back to him as she snapped off her gloves. She tossed them into the trashcan, then started cleaning up the suture kit. Behind her, she could hear Will moving around, probably looking for his shoe. Sara normally had a long fuse, but her bad day had made it considerably shorter. She reached under the bed and grabbed his shoe out of the basket.

  She asked, “Do me a favor, sweetheart?”

  He took his time answering. “What?”

  “Don’t talk about what happened tonight, all right?” She tossed the shoe in his general direction. He caught it with one hand, which only served to irritate her more. “Don’t tell me what you think about Amanda, or the hammer, or what she
was doing at the place where you grew up when she’s supposed to be leading a case, and sure as hell let’s not talk about whatever she said to you in the basement that has you so freaked out that you’re emotionally catatonic. At least, more than usual.” Sara stopped for a breath. “Let’s just ignore everything. Okay?”

  He stared at her for a few seconds, then said, “That sounds like an excellent idea.” Will shoved his foot into his shoe. “I’ll see you later.”

  “You bet.” Sara looked down at the digital tablet as if she could actually read the words. Her fingers pressed random keys. She felt Will hesitate a moment, then he yanked back the curtain. His shoes snicked on the floor. Sara kept her head down, counting silently. When she reached sixty, she looked up.

  He was gone.

  “Asshole,” Sara hissed. She slid the tablet onto the counter. Earlier, she’d felt tired, but now she was too wired to be anything but furious. She washed her hands. The water was hot enough to scald her skin, but she just scrubbed harder. There was a mirror over the sink. Her hair was a mess. Specks of dried blood dotted her sleeve. This was the first night she’d come straight home in her work clothes. For the last two weeks, she’d been showering at the hospital, changing into a dress or something more flattering, before seeing Will.

  Was that part of the problem? Maybe the Amanda thing was another issue. There was an earlier moment on the street when Will had looked down at her. Sara had felt him taking in her scrubs, her hair, with a less-than-impressed expression. Will was always impeccably dressed. Maybe he was thinking that Sara hadn’t made much of an effort. Or maybe it went back farther than that. He’d found her crying in her car. Was that what set him off? If so, why had he taken her to the children’s home? The fact that he would share something so personal had made Sara feel as if their relationship was finally moving forward.

  And here they were again, tripping over their feet as they took giant leaps back.

  “Hey, you.” Faith stood at the open curtain. Will’s partner held her five-month-old daughter on one shoulder and a large diaper bag on the other. “What’s going on?”