[Georgia 01] Genesis (aka Undone)

by Karin Slaughter

  Will finished his call and walked toward her. He glanced at the empty desk where the secretary had been. The woman had left to get Morgan Hollister at least ten minutes ago. Faith had images of the pair of them furiously shredding files, though it was more likely that the woman, a bottle blonde who seemed to have trouble processing even the smallest request, had simply forgotten about them and was on her cell phone in the bathroom.

  Faith asked, "Who were you talking to?"

  "Amanda," he told her, taking a couple of candies out of the bowl on the coffee table. "She called to apologize."

  Faith laughed at the joke, and he joined her.

  Will took some more candy, offering the bowl to Faith. She shook her head, and he continued, "She's doing another press conference this afternoon. Joelyn Zabel's dropping her lawsuit against the city."

  "What prompted that?"

  "Her lawyer realized they didn't have a case. Don't worry, she's going to be on the cover of some magazine next week, and the week after, she's going to be threatening to sue us again because we haven't found her sister's killer."

  It was the first time either of them had voiced their real fear in all of this: that the killer was good enough to get away with his crimes.

  Will indicated the closed door behind the desk. "You think we should just go back?"

  "Give it another minute." She tried to wipe away her forehead print on the window, making the smear worse. The momentum of the tension between them had somehow shifted in the ride over, so that Will was no longer worried about Faith being mad at him. It was now Faith's turn to be worried that she'd upset him.

  She asked, "Are we okay?"

  "Sure we're okay."

  She didn't believe him, but there was no way around someone who kept insisting there wasn't a problem, because all they would do is keep insisting until you felt like you were making the whole thing up.

  She said, "Well, at least we know that bitch runs in the Zabel family."

  "Joelyn's all right."

  "It's hard to be the good sibling."

  "What do you mean?"

  "I mean, if you're the good kid in the family, making good grades, staying out of trouble, et cetera, and your sister's always screwing up and getting all the attention, you start to feel left out, like no matter how good you are, it doesn't matter because all your parents can focus on is your crappy sibling."

  She must have sounded bitter, because Will asked, "I thought your brother was a good guy?"

  "He is," Faith told him. "I was the bad one who got all the attention." She chuckled. "I remember one time, he asked my parents if they would just give him up for adoption."

  Will gave a half-smile. "Everyone wants to be adopted."

  She remembered Joelyn Zabel's awful words about her sister's quest for a child. "What Joelyn said—"

  He interrupted her. "Why did her lawyer keep calling Amanda 'Mandy'?"

  "It's short for Amanda."

  He nodded thoughtfully, and Faith wondered if nicknames were another one of his tics. It would make sense. You would have to know how a name was spelled before you could shorten it.

  "Did you know that sixteen percent of all known serial killers were adopted?"

  Faith wrinkled her brow. "That can't be right."

  "Joel Rifkin, Kenneth Bianchi, David Berkowitz. Ted Bundy was adopted by his stepfather."

  "How is it that you're suddenly an expert on serial killers?"

  "History Channel," he told her. "Trust me, it comes in handy."

  "When do you find time to watch so much television?"

  "It's not like I've got a busy social life."

  Faith looked back out the window, thinking about Will with Sara Linton this morning. From reading the report on Jeffrey Tolliver, Faith gathered he was exactly the kind of cop Will was not: physical, take-charge, willing to do whatever it took to get a case solved. Not that Will wasn't driven, too, but he was more likely to stare a confession out of a suspect instead of beating it out of him. Faith knew instinctively that Will was not Sara Linton's type, which is why she had felt so sorry for him this morning, watching how awkward he was with the woman.

  He must have been thinking about this morning, too, because he said, "I don't know her apartment number."

  "Sara?"

  "She's in the Milk Lofts over on Berkshire."

  "There's bound to be a building di—" Faith stopped herself. "I can write out her last name for you so you can compare it to the directory. There can't be that many tenants."

  He shrugged, obviously daunted.

  "We could look it up online."

  "She's probably not listed."

  The door opened and the bottle-blonde secretary was back. Behind her was an extremely tall, extremely tanned and extremely good-looking man in the most beautiful suit Faith had ever seen.

  "Morgan Hollister," he offered, extending a hand as he walked across the room. "I'm so sorry I left you out here so long. I was on a conference call with a client in New York. This thing with Pauline has put a real spanner in the works, as they say."

  Faith wasn't sure who said that sort of thing, but she forgave him as she shook his hand. He was at once the most attractive and most gay man she had met in a while. Considering they were in Atlanta, the gay capital of the South, this was saying quite a lot.

  "I'm Agent Trent, this is Agent Mitchell," Will said, somehow ignoring the predatory way Morgan Hollister stared at him.

  "You work out?" Morgan asked.

  "Free weights, mostly. A little bench work."

  Morgan slapped him on the arm. "Solid."

  "I appreciate your letting us look through Pauline's things," Will said, although Morgan had made no such offer. "I know the Atlanta police have already been here. I hope it's not too inconvenient."

  "Of course not." Morgan put his hand on Will's shoulder as he led him toward the door. "We're really torn up about Paulie. She was a great girl."

  "We've heard she could be a bit difficult to work with."

  Morgan gave a chuckle, which Faith understood as code for "typical woman." She was glad to hear that sexism was just as rampant in the gay community.

  Will asked, "Does the name Jacquelyn Zabel mean anything to you?"

  Morgan shook his head. "I work with all the clients. I'm pretty sure I'd remember it, but I can check the computer." He put on a sad face. "Poor Paulie. This came as such a shock to all of us."

  "We found temporary placement for Felix," Will told the man.

  "Felix?" He seemed confused, then said, "Oh, right, the little guy. I'm sure he'll be okay. He's a trooper."

  Morgan led them down a long hallway. Cubicles were on their right, windows looking out onto the interstate behind them. Material swatches and schematics riddled the desktops. Faith glanced at a set of blueprints spread out on a conference table, feeling slightly wistful.

  As a child, she had wanted to be an architect, a dream that was derailed promptly at the age of fourteen when she had been kicked out of school for being pregnant. It was different now, of course, but back then, pregnant teenagers were expected to drop off the face of the earth, their names never mentioned again unless it was in reference to the boy who had knocked them up, and then they were only referred to as "that slut who nearly ruined his life by getting pregnant."

  Morgan stopped in front of a closed office door. Pauline McGhee's name was on the outside. He took out a key.

  Will asked, "You always keep it locked?"

  "Paulie did. One of her things."

  "She have a lot of things?"

  "She had a way she liked to do stuff." Morgan shrugged. "I gave her a free hand. She was good with paperwork, good at keeping subcontractors in line." His smiled dropped. "Of course, there was a problem there at the end. She messed up a very important order. Cost the firma lot of money. Not sure she'd still be here if something hadn't happened."

  If Will was wondering why Morgan was talking about Pauline as if she was dead, he didn't press it. Instead, he held
out his hand for the key. "We'll lock up when we're finished."

  Morgan hesitated. He had obviously assumed he would be there while they searched the office.

  Will said, "I'll bring it back to you when we're finished, all right?" He slapped Morgan on the arm. "Thanks, man." Will turned his back to him and went inside the office. Faith followed, pulling the door shut behind her.

  She had to ask, "That doesn't bother you?"

  "Morgan?" He shrugged. "He knows I'm not interested."

  "But, still—"

  "There were a lot of gay kids at the children's home. Most of them were a hell of a lot nicer than the straight ones."

  She couldn't imagine any parent giving up their child for any reason, especially that one. "That's awful."

  Will obviously didn't want to have a conversation about it. He looked around the office, saying, "I'd call this austere."

  Faith had to agree. Pauline's office appeared as if it had never been occupied. There was not a scrap of paper on the desktop. The in and out trays were empty. The design books on the shelves were all arranged in alphabetical order, spines straightened. The magazines stood crisply at attention in colored boxes. Even the computer monitor seemed to be at a precise forty-five-degree angle on the corner of the desk. The only thing of sentimental value on display was a snapshot of Felix on a swingset.

  "He's a little trooper," Will said, mocking Morgan's words about Pauline's son. "I called the social worker last night. Felix isn't handling it very well."

  "What's he doing?"

  "Crying a lot. He won't eat."

  Faith stared at the photograph, the unchecked joy in the young boy's eyes as he beamed at his mother. She remembered Jeremy at that age. He'd been so sweet she'd wanted to eat him up like a piece of candy. Faith had just graduated from the police academy and moved into a cheap apartment off Monroe Drive; the first time either she or Jeremy had lived away from Faith's mother. Their lives had become intertwined in a way she had never known was possible. He was so much a part of her that she could barely stand to drop him off at daycare. At night, Jeremy would color pictures while she filled out her daily reports at the kitchen table. He would sing songs to her in his squeaky little voice while she fixed him supper and made lunches for the next day. Sometimes, he would crawl into bed and curl up under her arm like a kitten. She had never felt so important or needed—not before and certainly not since.

  "Faith?" Will had said something she'd missed.

  She put the photograph back on Pauline's desk before she started bawling like a baby. "Yeah?"

  "I said, what do you want to bet Jacquelyn Zabel's house in Florida was neat like this?"

  Faith cleared her throat, trying to shift her focus. "The room she was using in her mother's house was extremely orderly. I thought it was something she did because the rest of the house was so messy— you know, calm in the storm. Maybe it's because she's a neat freak."

  "Type A personality." Will walked around the desk, opening drawers. Faith looked at what he'd found—a row of colored pencils side by side in a plastic tray. Extra Post-it notes in a squared stack. He opened the next drawer and found a large binder, which he pulled out and put on the desk. He thumbed through the pages, and Faith saw room sketches, swatches, clippings of furniture photos.

  Faith booted up the computer while he looked through the other drawers. She was pretty sure they would find nothing here, but, oddly, it felt as if what they were doing was helping the case. She was clicking with Will again, feeling more like his partner and less like an adversary. That had to be a good thing.

  "Look at this." Will had opened the bottom drawer on the left side. It was a mess—the equivalent of a kitchen junk drawer. Papers were wadded up, and at the bottom were several empty bags of potato chips.

  Faith said, "At least we know she's human."

  "It's weird," he said. "Everything's so neat except this one drawer."

  Faith picked up a balled piece of paper and smoothed it against the desk. There was a list on it, items checked off as they had probably been completed: grocery store; get lamp fixed for Powell living room; contact Jordan about couch swatches. She took out another balled piece of paper, finding much the same.

  Will asked, "Maybe she wadded them up once she finished doing what she needed to do?"

  Faith squinted at the list, blurring her eyes, trying to see it the way Will would. He was so damn good at fooling people into thinking he could read that sometimes Faith forgot he even had a problem.

  Will searched the bookcase, taking down a magazine box from one of the middle shelves. "What's this?" He pulled down another box, then another. Faith could see the dial of a safe.

  Will tried the handle, but there was no luck. He ran his fingers along the seam. "It's concreted into the wall."

  "You want to go ask your buddy Morgan for the combination?"

  "I'd bet some serious money he doesn't know it."

  Faith didn't take the bet. Like Jacquelyn Zabel, Pauline McGhee seemed to enjoy keeping secrets.

  Will said, "Check the computer first, then I'll go look for him."

  Faith looked at the monitor. There was a box asking for a password.

  Will saw it, too. "Try 'Felix'."

  She did, and miraculously, it worked. She made a mental note to change her password from "Jeremy" at home as she clicked open the email program. Faith skimmed the messages as Will went back to the bookshelves. She found the usual correspondence from people working in an office, but nothing personal that would point to a friend or confidant. Faith sat back in the chair and opened the browser, hoping to find an email service in the history. There was no Gmail or Yahoo, but she discovered several websites.

  Randomly, she clicked on one, and a YouTube page came up. She checked the sound as the video loaded. A guitar squeaked through the speakers on the bottom of a monitor, and the words, "I am happy," came up, then, "I am smiling."

  Will stood behind her. She read the words as they faded into the black. "I am feeling. I am living. I am dying."

  The guitar turned angrier with each word, and a photograph came up of a young girl in a cheerleading outfit. The shorts were low on her hips, the top barely enough to cover her breasts. She was so thin that Faith could count her ribs.

  "Jesus," she mumbled. Another picture faded in, this one of an African-American girl. She was balled up on a bed, her back to the camera. Her skin was stretched, her vertebrae and ribs pronounced enough to show each individual piece of bone pressing against the thin flesh. Her shoulder blade stuck out like a knife.

  "Is this some kind of relief site?" Will asked. "Money for AIDS?"

  Faith shook her head as the next picture came up—a model standing in front of a cityscape, her legs and arms as thin as sticks. Another girl came up; a woman actually. Her clavicle jutted out with painful sharpness. The skin across her shoulders looked like wet paper covering the sinew underneath.

  Faith clicked on the browser history button. She pulled up another video. There was different music, but the same sort of intro. She read aloud, "Eat to live. Don't live to eat." The words faded into a photo of a girl who was so painfully thin that she was hard to look at. Faith opened another page, then another. "The only freedom left is the freedom to starve yourself," she read. "Thin is beautiful. Fat is ugly." She looked at the top of the screen, the video category. "Thinspo. I've never heard of it."

  "I don't understand. These girls look like they're starving, but they've got TVs in their rooms, they're wearing nice clothes."

  Faith clicked on another link. "Thinspiration," she said. "Good Lord, I can't believe this. They're emaciated."

  "Is there a news group or something?"

  Faith looked back at the history. She skimmed the list, finding more videos, but nothing that looked like a chat room. She scrolled to the next page and hit pay dirt. "Atlanta-Pro-Anna-dot-com," she read. "It's a pro-anorexia site." Faith clicked on the link, but all that came up was another screen asking for a password. She tried "Feli
x" again, but it didn't work. She read the fine print. "It's asking for a six digit password and Felix is only five letters." She typed in variations on his name, saying them aloud for Will's benefit. "Zero-Felix, one- Felix, Felix-zero . . ."

  Will asked, "How many letters is thinspiration?"

  "Too many," she said, " 'Thinspo' is seven." She tried this, to no avail.

  Will asked, "What's her screen name?"

  Faith read the name in the box above the password. "A-T-L thin." She realized spelling wouldn't help him. "It's shorthand for 'Atlanta Thin.'" She entered in the screen name. "No dice. Oh." Faith mentally kicked herself. "Felix's birthday." She opened up the calendar program and did a search for "birthday." Only two hits came up, one for Pauline and one for her son. "Twelve-eight-oh-three." The screen stayed stagnant. "Nope, didn't work."

  He nodded, absently scratching his arm. "Safes have six-digit combinations, right?"

  "Couldn't hurt to try it." Faith waited, but Will did not move. "One-two-oh-eight-oh-three," she repeated, knowing he was perfectly capable of processing numbers. Still, he didn't move, and finally, she felt something in her brain click. "Oh. I'm sorry."

  "Don't apologize. It's my fault."

  "It's mine." She stood up and went to the safe, spinning the dial to the right, locking onto the twelve, then going left two turns and dialing in eight. It wasn't the numbers Will couldn't manage. It was the left and right.

  Faith dialed in the last number, and was slightly disappointed it had been so easy when she heard the instant thunk of the last tumbler falling into place. She opened the safe and saw a spiral-bound notebook, the sort of thing every schoolkid had, and a single piece of laser paper. She skimmed the page. It was a printed-out email dealing with measuring an elevator so a couch could fit in it, something Faith had never considered had to be done, even though the first refrigerator she'd bought had been too big to fit through the kitchen door. "Work stuff," she told Will, taking out the notebook.