The Silent Wife: From the No. 1 Sunday Times bestselling author comes a gripping new crime thriller (Will Trent Series, Book 10)

by Karin Slaughter

  Will listened to Sara call out all of the details she had found in Jeffrey’s boxes. He could tell she was upset. He wondered if this was hard for her because she knew the victim or because she knew what it felt like to be raped.

  Sara continued, “The day after Tommi was assaulted, Sibyl Adams called me at the clinic. This was late morning, before lunch. I met Sibyl and Tommi at the medical center down the street. The emergency room wasn’t much at the time. The hospital has since been closed. But they had most of the equipment that I needed, and the privacy so that I could help Tommi. I have to say that this was one of the worst sexual assaults I’ve ever seen. The girl would’ve bled to death if Sibyl hadn’t insisted on calling me for help.”

  Faith sat back in the desk. Will could see her gripping her pen.

  Sara said, “I’m on thin ice here because Tommi was my patient. I have a lot of personal information that has to remain confidential. At the time she was interviewed, I was given her verbal permission to discuss her assault with the police so long as nothing was formally filed. What I can tell you is what was transcribed into the notebooks that I read last night.”

  Will could tell she was avoiding saying Jeffrey’s name.

  Sara put on her glasses. She referenced the notes as she told them, “Tommi was orally, vaginally and anally raped. Three of her back molars were broken. There were several anal fissures and bruising up into the colon. The majority of the blood came from the cervix, the head of the uterus that acts as a bridge to the vagina. She was on the verge of prolapse, where the vagina was falling out of its normal position. The rectovaginal septum was perforated. The small bowel had herniated into the back wall of the vagina. This is called a fistula. Bowel contents were leaking into her vagina. That’s what Sibyl smelled. She knew that it was more than Tommi’s period.”

  Faith’s mouth opened. She couldn’t find her breath. “Did you fix it?”

  “I’m not that kind of surgeon. And even if I was, the tissue was too damaged to immediately repair. Tommi had to wait four months before she was healed enough for the surgeries to begin. When we interviewed her, she was recovering from the first two procedures. There was a series of eight operations involving a urologist, a neurologist, a gynecologist and a plastic surgeon.”

  “Four months?” Faith asked. “She lived like that for four months?”

  “Yes.” Sara took off her glasses. Her pained expression made Will’s chest ache. “During my initial treatment, my primary goal was to control the bleeding, then to make her as comfortable as possible. I wanted to have her immediately transported to a trauma center. She refused. Tommi was legally an adult, so she had a right to decline treatment. I finally talked her into letting me call her mother. Both of her parents came to the hospital. Tommi would not allow me to call an ambulance. She insisted that her father drive her to Grady.”

  “Jesus,” Faith said. “That’s more than two hours away.”

  “She was stabilized. I administered morphine and steroids. I spent as much time as I could removing splinters from the soft tissue. Infection was my primary concern, especially with the bowel leak. I asked Tommi for permission to preserve the splinters. She refused. I visualized skin under her fingernails where she had possibly scratched her attacker. She refused to let me collect it. I asked to take vaginal, anal and oral swabs in case the attacker had left DNA. She refused.”

  Will rubbed his jaw. The cop side of him was frustrated, but the human side of him knew that sometimes, the only way to get through a bad thing was to run away from it as fast as you could.

  “Splinters,” Faith said. “From what?”

  Sara held up another photograph. “This.”

  Grant County—Wednesday

  14

  Jeffrey’s phone rang again as he drove onto campus. He’d told Frank to keep all discussions about finding Leslie Truong’s body off of the phones and radios. When a seasoned detective told you something was bad, you knew it was really bad. Jeffrey didn’t want details about the murder leaking out to the press. He had three victims now. Two of them were still alive.

  Barely.

  He looked at the phone. A Sylacauga number flashed on the screen. His mother was calling from her neighbor’s phone. Jeffrey silenced the ringing, but not before Sara saw the caller ID. If she got any satisfaction from knowing that his mother had called three times during the fifteen-minute drive from Avondale, she didn’t show it.

  By silent decree, both he and Sara had retreated to their separate corners. He had no idea what was going on in her mind right now. For Jeffrey’s part, he was doing his best not to think about what Sara had told him on the drive over.

  She had fallen back on dense medical jargon as she had relayed the physical ramifications of Tommi Humphrey’s attack. Jeffrey had tasted blood in his mouth by the time she’d finished. He wanted to write down every word, to memorialize what had happened to the twenty-one-year-old girl in case she ever got to the point where she felt strong enough to file an official complaint.

  Time was not on her side. The abduction alone was a felony charge, but Georgia’s statute of limitations narrowed down her window for filing to seven years. Rape was limited to fifteen years. Unfortunately, Tommi had refused to allow Sara to collect samples from the attack. The slivers, the buccal swabs, the fingernail scrapings—any one of those pieces of evidence could have bought Tommi some breathing room. The law stipulated that the prosecution of kidnapping, aggravated sodomy, and aggravated sexual assault could commence at any time when DNA was used to identify the suspect.

  If fourteen years from now, a defense lawyer asked why Tommi Humphrey had waited so long to come forward, and how she could be so sure about the details, Jeffrey wanted to be there with his dated and time-stamped notebook to cram the details down the asshole’s throat.

  His phone rang again. He tapped the screen to put it on speaker. “What is it, Lena?”

  “I found the guy going by the name Little Bit,” she said. “His name is Felix Floyd Abbot, twenty-three years old. He took off on his fucking skateboard. I had to chase him half a mile. He had a couple of dub sacks on him. Just under the limit for distribution.”

  “Book him. Let him stew. I’ll get to him later.” Jeffrey ended the call. Felix Floyd Abbott, not Daryl, so he still needed to locate the man from Beckey Caterino’s phone book. He told Sara, “Little Bit is the campus pot dealer.”

  Sara nodded. Her hand rested on the door handle. Jeffrey was pulling into the staff parking lot. She was anxious to get this over with.

  He told her, “Thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “For helping with Tommi. For being here.”

  She could’ve said a lot of things that would’ve made him regret his appreciation, but Sara only nodded.

  He parked the car. He looked at the time. Bonita Truong’s plane had landed one hour ago. She had texted Jeffrey that she was heading straight to Grant County as soon as she could rent a car. The woman had at least two hours of driving. He told himself it wasn’t cowardice that kept him from calling her right now. Leslie’s mother would want details. Jeffrey wanted to offer her as many as he could.

  Sara got out of the car before he did. She walked over to Brock’s mortuary van. He was pulling the folded white canvas tent from the funeral home out of the back. Frank was trying and failing to give him a hand. Jeffrey felt a sickness in his gut. Frank hadn’t said anything about a tent. Yesterday’s storm had reached the Carolinas. The scene was bad enough that they had already agreed that they needed to obscure the body.

  “Hey, Brock.” Sara rubbed his arm. “I’m here if you want me. Don’t feel crowded.”

  “Oh, Sara, crowd me all you want. This is something terrible. I’m not sure I can handle this job anymore.”

  “You’ll be fine.” She took the crime scene kit out of the van and looped the strap over her shoulder. “I’ll help you as much or as little as you ask me to.”

  Jeffrey grabbed the stack of tent poles from Fran
k.

  Frank pointed into the woods. “Body’s about three hundred yards thattaway.”

  Jeffrey followed the general direction of Frank’s finger. The area lined up with Kevin Blake’s office window. He imagined the dean was already on the phone with the board, the school lawyers, and the mayor. Jeffrey didn’t care what they were talking about. He wasn’t worried about his job anymore. He was worried about catching the animal who had hurt these women. The town was his responsibility. So far, he had failed three victims, one who didn’t trust the police to take care of her, one who had almost died while they stood around shooting the shit, and another who had been left to make the half-hour trek back to campus on her own and never made it.

  The death of Leslie Truong rested solely on his shoulders.

  Frank said, “Brad says she’s dressed in the same clothes she was wearing yesterday morning at the Caterino crime scene. Yoga stuff, it looks like. Body’s real cold and stiff. She was probably there all night.”

  Jeffrey felt ill. He looked at Sara. She said nothing, but for once, he knew exactly what she was thinking.

  He told Frank, “I had fifteen people out with me searching those woods. How did we miss her?”

  Frank shook his head, not because he didn’t know the answer, but because the answer was obvious. The forest was sprawling. There hadn’t been a moon last night. You could only see what you could see.

  Jeffrey tried again. “Felix Abbott. He goes by the name Little Bit. Do you know him?”

  “No, but Abbott’s a Memminger name.” Frank shook a cigarette out of his pack. “All of ’em are Dew-Lolly pieces of shit.”

  Dew-Lolly was the seedy intersection of two hopeless streets in Memminger County. The area was two counties over, so the occupants were not Jeffrey’s problem. He had often heard the Memminger sheriff refer to some of the county’s more idiotic offenders as a real Dew-Lolly.

  Jeffrey said, “Caterino had a number stored in her phone for someone named Daryl. That name ever come up in connection to Felix Abbott?”

  “Daryl?”

  “No last name. Just Daryl.”

  “Not ringing a bell, but you know my bell is from the Liberty Line.” Frank asked, “Why’re you asking? You looking at either of them?”

  “I’m looking at the entire town.” Jeffrey watched Sara gather the tent stakes and rope. Her jaw was tensed as they set off toward the crime scene. She had seen first-hand the damage to Tommi Humphrey. Of the four of them, only Sara really understood what they might find deep in the woods.

  Brock shifted the heavy canvas tent onto his shoulder. “Sara, please thank your mother for coming by last night. It was sweet of her to sit with Mama. Her asthma’s been acting up something fierce. I’m afraid she’ll end up in the hospital again.”

  Sara rubbed his arm again. “You can call me night or day if she needs help. You know I don’t mind.”

  “Thank you, Sara. That means the world to me.” Brock looked away. He used his sleeve to wipe his eyes.

  Frank said, “Truong was found by a student, Jessa Copeland. Matt’s taking her statement back at the station.”

  “Tell him to stay with her until her family or a friend can take over.”

  “He knows.” Frank lit his cigarette. He was the only one of them who wasn’t carrying anything. Considering his poor health and the three-hundred-yard hike, that probably wasn’t a bad idea. “Copeland, the one what found her, was running in the woods. She got turned around, strayed off the path. That’s when she saw Truong. She recognized her immediately from the message boards. I came out with Matt and Brad. Brad’s still with her.”

  “What does she look like?”

  “Same as Caterino. On her back. Clothes in place. She’s got a mark here.” Frank tapped his fingers on the side of his temple. “Bright red, circular, like the size of a quarter.”

  Sara looked back at Jeffrey.

  Like the head of a hammer.

  Frank said, “It was pretty obvious she was gone, but I felt for a pulse. Matt felt for one. Brad tried, too, then he put his ear to her chest to make sure.”

  Jeffrey got to the bad. “What else?”

  “Blood.” He indicated the lower part of his body. “Everywhere.”

  Sara asked, “Was she lying on an incline, her pelvis lower than her chest?”

  “Nope.”

  “Only two things make blood flow: gravity and a pumping heart. She must’ve been alive for a while.”

  “Dear God,” Brock murmured. “That poor, broken creature.”

  Sara looped her free arm through his. Brock was her age, but he was one of those men who had always presented himself as older. She talked to him in a low, soothing voice. Brock seemed relieved to have the comfort.

  Frank told Jeffrey, “I might hang up my hat alongside Brock’s after this one.”

  “There’s another case, a living victim, who might be connected to this.” Jeffrey wasn’t going to share the details. “We need to look at the sex offender list.”

  “Easy-peasy.”

  Jeffrey tried not to let Frank’s sarcasm get to him. The GBI was mandated by law to maintain a searchable database of registered sex offenders, but the legislators, in their wisdom, hadn’t allocated additional money or resources to make that happen. The backlog was tremendous. Some of the rural counties were still using dial-up to go online. The Department of Justice had found the state’s records deficient almost from the outset.

  That didn’t mean they shouldn’t try.

  Jeffrey told Frank, “Pull somebody off patrol and sit them down in front of a computer.”

  “Why don’t I hang one more exit sign on the Titanic while I’m at it?”

  “You got any better options?” Jeffrey demanded. They had no clues, no suspects, and their only possible witness was lying dead at their second crime scene. “What did Chuck Gaines say?”

  Frank made a face. “He came down here swinging his dick around. I told him to get the hell back to his cave. Matt’s checking the security cameras, but there’s no way this guy parked on campus. He must’ve come up the other side of the woods. Maybe the fire road.”

  “She’s been missing for over twenty-four hours.” Jeffrey took in his surroundings. The woods were dense. Ivy kept tangling around his shoes. “Why do you think she was here all night?”

  “I didn’t see any ligature marks on her ankles or wrists. She’s fit, young. She would’ve fought back. He would’ve tied her up.” Frank horked up some phlegm, then spat it out. “I’m not a coroner, though. And I damn sure ain’t a medical examiner. What happened yesterday, there’s no way I would’ve said Caterino was anything but an accident.”

  Brock said, “We’re lucky you were there, Sara. I’m not sure I would’ve asked the right questions, either.”

  Jeffrey hated that he was thinking about the lawsuit Gerald Caterino might file, which meant that none of them should be tossing around what ifs that they might later be compelled to explain in a deposition.

  He directed his thoughts back toward the case, remembering something Tommi Humphrey had told him, a detail that connected her attacker to Rebecca Caterino’s.

  He asked Frank, “Did you see anything blue on Truong, maybe around her mouth or on her throat?”

  Frank stopped walking. “How did you know?”

  Sara was paying attention now. She asked, “Know what?”

  “Her lips had a blue stain here.” Frank pointed at his mouth. “Reminded me of when Darla was little and she drank too much Kool-Aid.”

  Sara caught Jeffrey’s eye again. The stain wasn’t from Kool-Aid. It was likely from blue Gatorade. That would explain why Truong’s wrists and ankles showed no ligature marks. As with Tommi Humphrey, she had been drugged during the attack.

  Frank asked, “What am I missing?”

  Jeffrey nodded for him to lead the way.

  They formed a single-file line as Frank took them deeper into the forest. Jeffrey readjusted the tent poles to get a better hold. He silently r
eviewed what he knew about the attacks on Tommi Humphrey and Rebecca Caterino. He wanted to have the details at the forefront of his mind when they reached the body.

  The blue Gatorade. The woods. The university. The hammer. The attacker had used bleach on Humphrey. They were guessing that he’d used unscented wipes to clean up Caterino.

  That was a lot, but it wasn’t enough.

  Jeffrey ran through the differences. Caterino was gay. Humphrey straight. One was a freshman. The other a junior. One kept to herself. The other had been surrounded by friends. The photos along the Humphreys hallway had given him a good idea of what Tommi had looked like before the attack. She had been slightly on the heavy side. Her blonde hair was cut in a bob. In the group shots, she had appeared shorter than her friends.

  Caterino was very slight, almost too thin. Her brown hair was shoulder-length. Her approximate height put her around five-six. She was physically active where Tommi had appeared to be more sedentary. As far as they knew, Rebecca hadn’t suffered the same internal damage during her attack.

  Then again, maybe Leslie Truong had interrupted Caterino’s assailant before he’d been able to mutilate her. Jeffrey needed to look at Lena’s notebook again. She would’ve taken down the details from Leslie Truong before releasing her back to campus. Jeffrey had read Lena’s official report, but her notebook could have a piece of information that might offer a lead.

  He was done giving her the benefit of the doubt.

  Jeffrey heard the soft murmur of Brad Stephens’ police radio before he saw the young patrolman. Brad had cordoned off the area with yellow crime scene tape, the same as yesterday morning. A few students were milling around in the distance. They seemed to be inching forward. Some of them had cameras. Brad was keeping an eye on them. He looked more pale than usual. In the last two days, he had been exposed to more violence than he would likely see in his entire career.