[Georgia 01] Genesis (aka Undone)

by Karin Slaughter

  Beside her, Will remained silent. As usual, she had no idea what was going through his mind. He'd been quiet the entire trip, and did not speak until she pulled into the visitors' parking lot in front of the Rockdale County police station.

  He asked, "Are you finished being mad?"

  "Hell, no, I'm not finished. They lied to us. They haven't even faxed us the damn crime-scene report. How the hell can we work a case when they're holding back information that could—"

  "Think about why they did it," Will countered. "One woman is dead, the other's just as good as, and they're still hiding evidence from us. They don't care about the people involved, Faith. All they care about is their egos, and showing us up. They're leaking information to the press, they're refusing to cooperate. You think us going in there with guns blazing is going to get us what we want?"

  Faith opened her mouth to answer, but Will was already getting out of the car. He walked around to the driver's side and opened her door like they were on a date.

  He told her, "Trust me on this one thing, Faith. You can't push a string."

  She waved his hand away. "I'm not going to eat shit from Max Galloway."

  "I'll eat it," he assured her, holding out his hand like she needed help getting out of the car.

  Faith grabbed her purse from the back seat. She followed him up the sidewalk, thinking it was no wonder everyone who met Will Trent took him for a certified public accountant. She could not fathom the man's meagerness of ego. In the year she had worked with him, the strongest emotion she'd seen Will display was irritation, usually at her. He could be moody or wistful and God knew he could beat himself up about a lot of things, but she'd never seen him truly angry. He'd once been alone in a room with a suspect who had just hours before tried to put a bullet in his head, and the only feeling Will had shown was empathy.

  The uniformed patrolman behind the front counter obviously recognized Will. His lip went up into a sneer. "Trent."

  "Detective Fierro," Will replied, though the man was obviously no longer a detective. His sizable stomach pressed against the buttons of his patrol uniform like the filling oozing out of a jelly doughnut. Considering what Fierro had said to Amanda about greasing Lyle Peterson's pole, Faith was surprised the man wasn't using a wheelchair.

  Fierro said, "I should've put that board back over your head and left you in that cave."

  "I'm really glad you didn't." Will indicated Faith. "This is my partner, Special Agent Mitchell. We need to speak with Detective Max Galloway."

  "About what?"

  Faith was over the niceties. She opened her mouth to blast him, but Will cut her off with a look.

  He said, "Maybe we could talk to Chief Peterson if Detective Galloway isn't available."

  Faith added, "Or we could talk to your buddy Sam Lawson at the Atlanta Beacon and tell him those stories you've been feeding him are just your way of covering your fat ass for all the mistakes you've made in this case."

  "You are some kind of bitch, lady."

  "I haven't even started," Faith told him. " Get Galloway out here right now before we put our boss on this. She already took your shield. What do you think she's going to take next? My guess is your little—"

  "Faith," Will said, more a warning than a word.

  Fierro picked up the phone, punched in an extension. "Max, you got a couple'a cocksuckers wanna talk to you." He dropped the phone back into the cradle. "Down the hall, take your first right, first room on the left."

  Faith led the way because Will would not know how to. The station was the usual 1960s government building with plenty of glass block and very poor ventilation. The walls were lined with commendations, photographs of police officers at city barbecues and fundraisers. As instructed, she took a right and stopped in front of the first door on the left.

  Faith read the sign on the door. "Asshole," she breathed. He'd sent them to an interrogation room.

  Will leaned across and opened the door. She saw him register the table bolted to the floor, the bars running along the sides so that suspects could be cuffed down while they were interviewed. All he said was, "Ours is more homey."

  There were two chairs, one on either side of the table. Faith threw her purse in the one with its back to the two-way mirror, crossing her arms, not wanting to be sitting when Galloway entered the room. "This is bullshit. We should get Amanda involved in this. She wouldn't put up with this goat roping."

  Will leaned against the wall, tucked his hands into his pockets. "If we get Amanda in on this, then they've got absolutely nothing to lose. Let them save a little face by jerking us around. What does it matter, if we get the information we need?"

  She glanced at the two-way mirror, wondering if there was a peanut gallery. "I'm filing a formal report when this is over. Obstruction of justice, impeding an active case, lying to a police officer. They bumped that fat fuck Fierro back to uniform. Galloway's gonna be lucky if he gets to be county dog catcher."

  Down the hall, she heard a door open, then click closed. Seconds later, Galloway stood in the doorway, looking every bit the ignorant hick he had the night before.

  "I heard you wanted to talk to me."

  Faith told him, "We just talked to the Coldfields."

  Galloway nodded at Will, who returned the gesture, his back still against the wall.

  Faith demanded, "Is there a reason you didn't tell me about the other car last night?"

  "I thought I had."

  "Bullshit." Faith didn't know which was making her angrier, the fact that he was playing at this like it was some kind of game or that she felt compelled to use the same tone she used when she was about to put Jeremy on restriction.

  Galloway held up his hands, smiling at Will. "Your partner always this hysterical? Maybe it's her time of month."

  Faith felt her fists clench. He was about to see hysterical in the worst way.

  "Listen," Will interrupted, stepping between the two of them. "Just tell us about the car, and anything else you know. We're not going to make trouble for you. We don't want to have to get this information the hard way." Will walked over to the chair and picked up Faith's purse before sitting down. He kept the bag in his lap, which made him look ridiculous, a man standing outside the changing room while his wife tried on clothes.

  He indicated that Galloway should sit across from him, saying, "We've got one victim in the hospital who's probably in an irreversible coma. Jacquelyn Zabel, the woman from the tree, her autopsy didn't give us any leads. There's another woman missing now. She was taken from the parking lot of a grocery store. Her child was left in the left in the back seat. Felix—six years old. He's in custody now, staying with strangers. He just wants his mom back."

  Galloway was unmoved.

  Will continued, "They didn't give you that detective shield for your good looks. There were roadblocks last night. You knew about the second car the Coldfields saw. You were stopping people." He changed tactics. "We didn't go to your boss on this. We didn't get our boss to come down like a hammer. We don't have the luxury of time here. Felix's mom is missing. She could be in another cave, strapped to another bed, with another spot underneath for the next victim. You want that on your head?"

  Finally, Galloway heaved a heavy sigh and sat down. He leaned up in the chair, pulling his notebook out of his back pocket, groaning like it caused him physical pain.

  Galloway said, "They told you it was white, probably a sedan?"

  "Yes," Will answered. "Henry Coldfield didn't know the model. He said it was an older car."

  Galloway nodded. He handed Will his notebook. Will looked down, flipped through the pages like he was taking the information on board, then handed it to Faith. She saw a list of three names with a Tennessee address and phone number. She took her purse back from Will so she could copy the information.

  The detective said, "Two women—sisters—and their father. They were on their way back from Florida, going home to Tennessee. Their car broke down on the side of the road about six m
iles from where the Buick hit our first victim. They saw a white sedan coming. One of the women tried to flag it down. It slowed but didn't stop."

  "Could she see the driver?"

  "Black, baseball cap, loud music thumping. She said she was kind of glad he didn't stop."

  "Did they see a license plate?"

  "Just three letters, alpha, foxtrot, charlie, which pulled up about three hundred thousand cars, sixteen thousand of them are white, half of them are registered in the immediate area."

  Faith wrote down the corresponding letters, A-F-C, thinking the license plate was a bust unless they just happened to stumble on the matching car. She flipped through Galloway's notes, trying to find what else he was hiding.

  Will said, "I'd like to talk to all three of them."

  "Too late," Galloway said. "They went back to Tennessee this morning. The father's an old guy, not doing too well. Sounded like they were taking him home to die. You could call them, maybe drive up there. I'm telling you, though, we got everything out of them that we could."

  Will asked, "Was there anything else at the scene?"

  "Just what you read in the reports."

  "We haven't gotten the reports yet."

  Galloway seemed almost contrite. "Sorry. The girl should've faxed them to you first thing. They're probably buried on her desk somewhere."

  "We can get them before we leave," Will offered. "Can you just run it down for me?"

  "It's what you'd expect. When the cruiser showed up, the guy who stopped, the paramedic, was working on the victim. Judith Coldfield was freaking out about her husband, worried he was having a heart attack. The ambulance came and took the victim away. The old man was better by then, so he waited for the second ambulance. That came a few minutes later. Our guys called in the detectives, started marking out the scene. The usual stuff. I'm being honest here. Nothing came up."

  "We'd like to talk to the cop who was first on the scene, get his impressions."

  "He's fishing in Montana with his father-in-law right now." Galloway shrugged. "I'm not giving y'all the runaround here. The guy's had this vacation planned for a while."

  Faith had found a familiar name in Galloway's notes. "What's this about Jake Berman?" For Will's benefit, she explained, "Rick Sigler and Jake Berman were the two men who stopped to help Anna."

  "Anna?" Galloway asked.

  "That's the name she gave at the hospital," Will told him. "Rick Sigler was the off-duty EMT, right?"

  "Right," Galloway confirmed. "Their story about the movie seemed kind of sketchy to me."

  Faith made a noise of disgust, wondering how many dead ends this guy had to hit before he passed out from sheer stupidity.

  "Anyway," Galloway said, making a point of ignoring Faith. "I ran them both through the computer. Sigler's clean, but Berman's got a record."

  Faith felt her stomach drop. She'd spent two hours on the computer this morning and it had never occurred to her to check the men for a criminal history.

  "Solicitation for lewd acts," Galloway smiled at Faith's stunned reaction. "Guy's married with two kids. Got picked up for screwing another guy in a toilet stall at the Mall of Georgia six months ago. Some teenage kid walked in and found them heel to toe. Goddamn pervert. My wife shops at that mall."

  "Have you talked to Berman?" Will asked.

  "He gave me a bogus number." Galloway shot Faith another scathing look. "The address on his driver's license is out of date, too, and nothing came up on a cross-match."

  She saw a hole in his story and pounced. "How do you know he has a wife and two kids?"

  "It's in the arrest report. He had them with him at the mall. They were waiting for him to come out of the bathroom." Galloway's lips twisted in disgust. "You want my advice, he's the one you should be looking at."

  "The women were raped," Faith said, tossing back his notebook. "Gay men don't go after women. It's sort of what makes them gay."

  "This bad guy strike you as the type of person who likes women?"

  Faith didn't answer him, mostly because he had a point.

  Will asked, "What about Rick Sigler?"

  Galloway took his time folding his notebook closed, sticking it into his pocket. "He came back clean. Been working as a paramedic for sixteen years. Guy went to Heritage High School right down the road from here." His mouth twisted in disgust. "Played on the football team, if you can believe that."

  Will took his time getting to his last question. "What else are you holding back?"

  Galloway looked him right in the eye. "That's all I got, kemo sabe."

  Faith didn't believe him, but Will seemed satisfied. He actually reached out and shook the man's hand. "Thank you for your time, detective."

  FAITH TURNED ON the lights as she walked into her kitchen, dropping her purse on the counter, sinking into the very same chair she'd started her day in. Her head was aching, her neck so tense that it hurt to turn her head. She picked up the phone to check her voicemail. Jeremy's message was short and unusually sweet. "Hi, Mom, just calling to see how you're doing. I love you." Faith frowned, guessing he'd either made a bad grade on his chem test or needed money.

  She dialed his number, but hung up the phone before the call went through. Faith was bone tired, so exhausted that her vision was blurring, and she wanted nothing more than a hot bath and a glass of wine, neither of which was recommended for her current state. She did not need to make matters worse by yelling at her son.

  Her laptop was still on the table, but Faith didn't check her email. Amanda had told her to report to her office by the end of the day to talk about the fact that Faith had passed out in the parking lot at the courthouse. Faith glanced at the clock on the kitchen stove. It was well past the end of the business day, almost ten o'clock. Amanda was probably at home draining the blood from the insects that had gotten caught in her web.

  Faith wondered if her day could get any worse, then decided it was a mathematical improbability, considering the time. She had spent the last five hours with Will, getting in and out of her car, ringing doorbells, talking to whatever man, woman or child answered the door—if they answered the door at all—looking for Jake Berman. All told, there were twenty-three Jake Bermans scattered around the metropolitan area. Faith and Will had talked to six of them, ruled out twelve, and been unable to find the other five, who were either not at home, not at work, or not answering the door.

  If finding the man was easier, maybe Faith wouldn't be so worried about him. Witnesses lied to the police all the time. They gave wrong names, wrong phone numbers, wrong details. It was so common that Faith seldom got annoyed when it happened. Jake Berman was another story, though. Everyone left a paper trail. You could pull up old cell phone records or past addresses and pretty soon, you were staring your witness in the face, pretending like you hadn't wasted half a day tracking them down.

  Jake Berman didn't have a paper trail. He hadn't even filed a tax return last year. At least, he hadn't filed one in the name of Jake Berman—which in turn raised the specter of Pauline McGhee's brother. Maybe Berman had changed his name just like Pauline Seward. Maybe Faith had sat across the table from their killer in the Grady Hospital cafeteria the first night this case had started.

  Or maybe Jake Berman was a tax dodger who never used credit cards or cell phones and Pauline McGhee had walked away from her life because sometimes that's what women did—they just walked away.

  Faith was beginning to understand how that option had its benefits.

  In between knocking on doors, Will had telephoned Beulah, Edna and Wallace O'Connor of Tennessee. Max Galloway had not been lying about the elderly father. The man was in a home, and Faith gathered from Will's part of the conversation that his mind was none too sharp. The sisters were talkative, and obviously tried to be helpful, but there was nothing more they could offer on the white sedan they'd seen barreling down the road just miles from the crime scene other than to say there was mud on the bumper.

  Finding Rick Sigler, the focus of
Jake Berman's Route 316 assignation, had been only slightly more productive. Faith had made the call, and the man had sounded as if he was going to have a heart attack the second she'd identified herself. Rick was in his ambulance, taking a patient to the hospital, scheduled for two more pick-ups. Faith and Will were going to meet him at eight the following morning when he got off work.

  Faith stared at her laptop. She knew that she should put this in a report so that Amanda had the information, though her boss seemed quite capable of finding out things on her own. Still, Faith went through the motions. She slid her computer across the table, opened it, and hit the space bar to wake it up.

  Instead of going into her email program, she launched the browser. Faith's hands hovered over the keys, then her fingers started to move of their own accord: SARA LINTON GRANT COUNTY GEORGIA.

  Firefox shot back almost three thousand hits. Faith clicked on the first link, which took her to a page on pediatric medicine that required a username and password to access Sara's paper on ventricular septal defects in malnourished infants. The second link was on something equally as riveting, and Faith scrolled down to the bottom to find an article about a shooting at a Buckhead bar where Sara had been the attending on call at Grady.

  Faith realized she was being stupid about this. A general search was fine, but even the newspaper articles would tell only half the story. In an officer-involved death, the GBI was always called in. Faith could access actual case files through the agency's internal database. She opened the program and did a general search. Again, Sara's name was all over the place, case after case where she had testified in her capacity as a coroner. Faith narrowed the scope of the search, taking out expert testimony.

  This time, only two matches came up. The first was a sexual assault case that was over twenty years old. As with most browsers, there was a short description of the contents underneath the link, a few lines of text that gave you an idea of what the case was about. Faith scanned the description, moving the mouse to the link without actually clicking. Will's words came back to her, his valiant speech about Sara Linton's privacy.