Pauline continued, "Anyway, Tom found us in the woods. He hit me in the back of the head with a rock. I don't know what he did to Alex. I didn't see her for a while. I think he was working on her, trying to break her. That was the hardest part. Was she dead? Was he beating her? Torturing her? Or maybe he'd let her go and she was keeping quiet because she was scared of him." She swallowed. "But, it wasn't that."
"What was it?"
"He was keeping her in the basement again. Priming her for the really bad stuff."
"No one heard her down there?"
Pauline shook her head. "Dad was gone, and Mom. . ." She shook her head again. Faith was convinced they would never really know what Judith Coldfield knew about her son's sadistic ways.
Pauline said, "I don't know how long it lasted, but eventually, Alex ended up the same place as me."
"Where was that?"
"In the ground," she said. "It was dark. We were blindfolded. He put cotton in our ears, but we could still hear each other. We were tied up. Still . . .we knew we were underground. There's a taste, right? Kind of like a wet, dirty taste you get in your mouth. He had dug a cave. It must've taken him weeks. He always liked to plan everything, to control every last detail."
"Was Tom with you all the time after that?"
"Not at first. I guess he was still working on his alibi. He just left us there for a few days—tied up so we couldn't move, couldn't see, could barely hear anything. We screamed at first, but . . ." She shook her head as if she could shake away the memory. "He brought us water, but not food. I guess a week went by. I was okay—I'd gone longer than that without eating. But Alex . . . She broke. She kept crying all the time, begging me to do something to help her. Then Tom would come, and I'd beg him to shut her up, to make it so I didn't have to hear it." She went silent again, lost in her memories. "And then one day, something changed. He started in on us."
"What did he do?"
"At first, he just talked. He was all into Biblical stuff—stuff my mom put into his head about him being a replacement for Judas, who betrayed Jesus. She was always saying how I had betrayed her, how she had carried me to be a good kid, but I had turned out rotten, made her family hate her with my lies."
Faith quoted the last sentence she had heard Tom Coldfield utter. "'Oh, Absolom, I am risen.'"
Pauline shivered, as if the words cut through her. "It's from the Bible. Amnon raped his own sister, and once he was finished with her, he cast her out for being a whore." Her torn lips twisted into an approximation of a smile. "Absolom was Amnon's brother. He killed him for raping their sister." She gave a harsh laugh. "Too bad I didn't have another brother."
"Was Tom always obsessed with religion?"
"Not a regular religion. Not normal. He twisted the Bible to suit whatever he wanted to do. That's why he was keeping me and Alex underground—so that we would have a chance to be reborn like Jesus." She looked up at Faith. "Crazy shit, right? He'd go on and on for hours, telling us how bad we were, talking about how he was going to redeem us. He'd touch me sometimes, but I couldn't see . . ." She shuddered again, her whole body shaking from the movement. Felix stirred, and she soothed him back to sleep.
Faith felt her heart thumping in her chest. She could remember her own struggle with Tom, the feel of his hot breath in her ear when he told her, "fight."
Will asked, "What did Tom do when he stopped talking to you and Alex?"
"What do you think he did?" she asked sarcastically. "He didn't know what he was doing, but he knew he liked it when he hurt us." She swallowed, her eyes tearing up. "It was our first time—both of us. We were only fifteen. Girls didn't sleep around a lot back then. We weren't angels or anything, but we weren't sluts, either."
"Did he do anything else?"
"He starved us. Not like what he did to the other women, but bad enough."
"The trash bags?"
She gave a single, tight nod. "We were trash to him. Nothing but trash."
Tom had said as much in the hallway. "No one missed you or Alex when Tom had you in the cave?"
"They thought we'd run away. Girls do that, right? They just run away from home, and if the parents are there to say that the girls are bad, that they lie all the time and can't be trusted, then it's no big deal, right?" She didn't let them answer. "I bet Tom got a hard-on lying to the cops, telling them he had no idea where we'd gone."
"How old was Tom when this happened?"
"Three years younger than me."
"Twelve," Will said.
"No," Pauline corrected. "He hadn't had his birthday yet. He was only eleven when it happened. He turned twelve a month later. Mom had a party. The little freak was out on bail and she threw him a birthday party."
"How did you get out of the cave?"
"He let us go. He said he was going to kill us if we told anybody, but Alex told her parents anyway, and they believed her." She snorted a laugh. "Fuck me if they didn't believe her."
"What happened to Tom?"
"He was arrested. The cops called, and Mom took him down to the station. They didn't come get him. They didn't arrest him. They just called us on the phone and said to bring him in." She paused, collecting herself. "Tom had a psychiatric evaluation. There was all this talk about sending him to adult prison, but he was only a kid, and the shrinks were screaming about how he needed help. Tom could look younger when he wanted—much younger than he actually was. Bewildered, like he didn't understand why people were saying all these bad things about him."
"What did the courts decide to do?"
"He was diagnosed with something. I don't know. Psychopath, probably."
"We have his Air Force records. Did you know he served?" Pauline shook her head, and Faith told her, "Six years. He was discharged in lieu of court martial."
"What does that mean?"
"Reading between the lines, I'd guess that the Air Force didn't want—or know how—to treat his disorder, so they offered him an honorable discharge and he took it." Tom Coldfield's military records were written in the sort of departmental code only a seasoned vet could decipher. As a doctor, Faith's brother Zeke had recognized all the clues. The nail in the coffin was the fact that Tom had never been called back up to serve in Iraq, even at the height of the war when enlistment standards had dropped to almost nonexistent.
Will asked, "What happened to Tom in Oregon?"
Pauline answered in a measured tone. "He was supposed to go to the state hospital, but Mom talked to the judge, said we had family back east and could we take him back and put him in a hospital there so he could be close to the people who cared about him. The judge said okay. I guess they were glad to get rid of us. Sort of like with the Air Force, huh? Out of sight, out of mind."
"Did your mother get him treatment?"
"Hell no," she laughed. "My mother did the same fucking thing all over again. She said Alex and I were lying, that we had run away and gotten hurt by a stranger, and we were trying to pin it on Tom because we hated him and we wanted people to feel sorry for us."
Faith felt a sickness in the pit of her stomach, wondering how a mother could be so blind to her child's suffering.
Will asked, "Is that when you changed your names to Coldfield?"
"We changed them to Seward after what happened to Tom. It wasn't easy. There were bank accounts, all sorts of documents to file to make it legal. My dad started asking questions. He wasn't happy, because he actually had to do something, you know? Go down to the courthouse, get copies of birth certificates, fill out forms. They were in the middle of changing everything over to Seward when I ran away. I guess when they left Michigan, they changed it back to Coldfield. It's not like Oregon was following up on Tom. As far as they were concerned, his case was closed."
"Did you ever hear from Alex McGhee?"
"She killed herself." Pauline's voice was so cold it sent a chill down Faith's spine. "I guess she couldn't take it. Some women are like that."
Will asked, "You're sure your father didn't kno
w what was going on?"
"He didn't want to know," Pauline answered. But there was no way of confirming this. Henry Coldfield had suffered a massive coronary upon hearing what had happened to his wife and son. He'd died en route to the hospital.
Will kept pressing. "Your father never noticed—"
"He traveled all the time. He was gone for weeks, sometimes as much as a whole month. And even when he was home, he was never really home. He was flying his plane or off hunting or playing golf or just doing whatever the hell he wanted to do." Pauline's tone got angrier with every word. "They had this kind of bargain, you know? She kept the house running, didn't ask him to help with anything, and he got to do whatever he wanted so long as he handed over his paycheck and didn't ask any questions. Nice life, huh?"
"Did your father ever hurt you?"
"No. He was never there to hurt me. We saw him at Christmas and Easter. That was about it."
"Why Easter?"
"I don't know. It was always special to my mother. She would dye eggs and hang up streamers and stuff. She would tell Tom the story of his birth, how he was special, how she had wanted a son so badly, how he'd made her life complete."
"Is that why you chose to run away on Easter?"
"I ran away because Tom was digging another hole in the backyard."
Faith gave her a moment to collect her thoughts. "This was in Ann Arbor?"
Pauline nodded, a faraway look in her eyes. "I didn't recognize him, you know?"
"When he abducted you?"
"It happened so fast. I was so damn happy to see Felix. I thought I'd lost him. And then my brain started to make the connection that it was Tom standing there, but it was too late by then."
"You recognized him?"
"I felt him. I can't describe it. I just knew with every part of my body that it was him." She closed her eyes for a few seconds. "When I came to in the basement, I could still feel him. I don't know what he did to me while I was passed out. I don't know what he did."
Faith suppressed a shudder at the thought. "How did he find you?"
"I think he always knew where I was. He's good at tracking people down, watching them, figuring out their habits. I guess I didn't make it too hard, using Alex's name like I did." She gave a humorless laugh. "He called me at work about a year and a half ago. Can you believe that? What are the odds that I'd take a call like that and it would be Tom on the other end?"
"Did you know it was him on the phone?"
"Fuck no. I would've grabbed Felix and run."
"What did he want when he called?"
"I told you. It was a cold call." She shook her head, disbelieving. "He told me about the shelter, that they would take donations and give blank receipts. We've got all these rich clients, and they give away their furniture to charity for the tax write-off. It makes them feel better about ditching a fifty-thousand-dollar living room set and buying an eighty-thousand-dollar one."
Faith couldn't even comprehend the numbers. "So, you decided to refer your clients to the shelter?"
"I was pissed at Goodwill. They give you a timeframe, like between ten and noon. Who can wait for that? My clients are millionaires. They can't sit around all morning waiting for some homeless dude to show up. Tom said the shelter would make an exact appointment and be there on time. And they always were. They were friendly and clean, which, trust me, is saying a lot. I told everybody to use them." She realized what she had said. "I told everybody."
"Including the women on your Internet board?"
She kept silent.
Faith told her what they had found out over the last few days. "Anna Lindsey's firm started giving the shelter legal advice six months ago. Olivia Tanner's bank became a major donor last year. Jackie Zabel called the shelter to pick up things from her mother's house. They all heard about the shelter somewhere."
"I didn't . . . I didn't know."
They still hadn't managed to break into the chat room. The site was too sophisticated, and cracking the passwords no longer had a priority for the FBI, since their guy was already sitting in jail. Faith needed the confirmation, though. She had to hear it from Pauline. "You posted about the shelter, didn't you?"
Pauline still did not answer.
"Tell me," Faith said, and for some reason, the request worked.
"Yeah. I posted it."
Faith hadn't realized that she had been holding her breath. She let it out in a slow stream. "How did Tom know they all had eating disorders?"
Pauline looked up. Some of her color seeped back into her cheeks. "How did you know?"
Faith thought about the question. They knew because they had investigated the women's lives, just as methodically as Tom Coldfield had. He'd followed them around, spied on their most intimate moments. And none of them had known he was doing it.
Pauline asked, "Is the other woman all right? The one I was with."
"Yes." Olivia Tanner was well enough to refuse to talk to the police.
"She's a tough bitch."
"So are you." Faith told her, "It might help to talk to her."
"I don't need help."
Faith didn't bother to argue.
Pauline said, "I knew Tom would find me eventually. I kept training myself. Making sure I could go without food. Making sure I could last." She explained, "When it was me and Alex, he would hurt whoever screamed the loudest, whoever broke first. I made sure it wasn't me. That's how I helped myself."
Will asked, "Your father never asked why your mother wanted to change your names and move?"
"She told him it was to give Tom a fresh start—give us all a fresh start." She gave a humorless laugh, directing her words toward Faith. "It's always about the boys, isn't it? Mothers and their sons. Fuck the daughters. It's the sons they really love."
Faith put her hand to her stomach. The gesture had become second nature over the last few days. All along, she had been thinking that the child inside of her was a boy; another Jeremy who would draw pictures and sing to her. Another toddler who would puff out his chest when he told his friends that his mom was a cop. Another young man who was respectful of women. Another adult who knew from his single mother how hard it was to be the fairer sex.
Now, Faith prayed that she would have a daughter. Every woman they had met on this case had found a way to hate herself long before Tom Coldfield had gotten hold of them. They were used to depriving their bodies of everything from nourishment to warmth to something as vital as love. Faith wanted so show her own child a different path. She wanted a girl she could raise who might have a chance of loving herself. She wanted to see that girl grow into a strong woman who knew her value in the world. And she never wanted either of her children to meet someone as bitter and damaged as Pauline McGhee.
Will told Pauline, "Judith's in the hospital. The bullet just missed her heart."
The woman's nostrils flared. Tears came into her eyes, and Faith wondered if there was still a part of her, no matter how small, that wanted some kind of bond with her mother.
Faith offered, "I can take you to see Judith if you want."
She snorted a laugh, angrily wiping away her tears. "Bitch, don't even. She was never there for me. I'm sure as shit not going to be there for her." She shifted her son on her shoulder. "I need to get him home."
Will tried, "If you could just—"
"Just what?"
He didn't have an answer for her. Pauline stood up and walked to the door, trying to hold Felix as she reached for the knob.
Faith told her, "The FBI will probably be getting in touch with you."
"The FBI can kiss my ass." She managed to get the door open. "And so can you."
Faith watched her walk down the hallway, shifting Felix as she turned toward the elevators. "God," she said softly. "It's hard to feel sorry for her."
"You did the right thing," Will told her.
Faith saw herself in the Tom Coldfield's hallway again, her gun pointed at Pauline's head, Tom bucking on the floor. They weren't trained to
wing suspects. They were trained to fire a rapid bullet spread straight over the center of the chest.
Unless you were Amanda Wagner. Then, you squeezed off a single shot that did enough damage to take them down but not take their life.
Will asked, "If you had to do it again, would you let Pauline kill Tom?"
"I don't know," Faith confessed. "I was operating on auto-pilot. I just did what I was trained to do."
"Considering what Pauline's been through . . ." Will began, then stopped himself. "She's not very nice."
"She's a cold-blooded bitch."
"I'm surprised I haven't fallen in love with her."
Faith laughed. She had seen Angie at the hospital when they brought Will out of surgery. "How is Mrs. Trent doing?"
"She's making sure my life insurance policies are paid up." He took out his phone. "I told her I'd be back by three."
Faith didn't make a comment about the new phone, or the wary look on his face. She supposed Angie Polaski was back in Will's life now. Faith would just have to get used to her, the same way you tolerated an annoying sister-in-law or the boss's whorishly obnoxious daughter.
Will pushed back his chair. "I guess I should go."
"You want me to drive you home?"
"I'll walk."
He only lived a few blocks over, but he'd been in surgery less than seventy-two hours ago. Faith opened her mouth to protest, but Will stopped her.
"You're a good cop, Faith, and I'm glad you're my partner."
There were few things he could have said that would have stunned her more. "Really?"
He leaned down and kissed the top of her head. Before she could respond, he told her, "If you ever see Angie on top of me like that, don't give her a warning, all right? Just pull the trigger."
EPILOGUE
SARA STOOD BACK AS THEY ROLLED HER PATIENT OUT OF THE trauma room. The man had been in a head-on collision with a motorcyclist who thought red lights were only for cars. The cyclist was dead, but the man had a good chance thanks to the fact that he was wearing his seatbelt. Sara was constantly amazed at the number of people she saw in the Grady ER who believed seatbelts were unnecessary. She had seen almost as many in the morgue during her years as coroner for Grant County.
[Georgia 01] Genesis (aka Undone) Page 44
