Amanda was her usual sympathetic self. "Man up, Charlie. Get back down there and find me some evidence I can use to catch this bastard." She patted him on the back, more of a shove to get him moving, then told Will, "Walk with me. We've got to find that pygmy detective you pissed off and make nice with him so he doesn't go crying to Lyle Peterson." Peterson was Rockdale County's chief of police and no friend of Amanda's. By law, only a police chief, a mayor or a district attorney could ask the GBI to take over a case. Will wondered what strings Amanda had managed to pull and how furious Peterson was about it.
"Well." She held out her hands for balance as she stepped over a fallen limb. "You bought some good grace volunteering yourself to go down into that hole, but if you ever do anything that stupid again, I'll have you running stings in the men's bathroom at the airport for the rest of your natural born life. Do you hear me?"
Will nodded. "Yes, ma'am."
"Your victim doesn't look good," she told him, walking past a group of cops who had stopped for a cigarette break. They glared at Will. "There were some complications. I talked to the surgeon. Sanderson. He doesn't sound hopeful." She added, "He confirmed your observation about the teeth, by the way. They were fully intact."
This was typical Amanda, making him work for everything. Will didn't take it as an insult but as a sign that she might be on his side. "The soles of her feet were freshly cut," he said. "She didn't bleed from her feet when she was in the cave."
"Take me through your process."
Will had already relayed the highlights to her over the telephone, but he told her again about finding the sheet of plywood, going down into the hole. He went into more details this time around as he described the cavern, carefully giving her a sense of the atmosphere while trying not to reveal that he had been even more petrified than Charlie Reed. "The slats of the bed were clawed underneath," he said. "The second victim—her hands had to be unbound to make those marks. He wouldn't have left her hands free while she was alone because she could free herself and leave."
"You really think he kept one on top and one on bottom?"
"I think that's exactly what he did."
"If they were both tied up and one of them managed to get a knife, it would make sense that the woman on bottom would keep it hidden while they waited for the abductor to leave."
Will didn't respond. Amanda could be sarcastic and petty and downright mean, but she was also fair in her own way, and he knew that as much as she derided his gut instincts, she had learned over the years to trust him. He also knew better than to expect anything remotely resembling praise.
They had reached the road where Will had parked the Mini all those hours ago. Dawn was coming fast, and the blue cast of light had turned to sepia tones. Dozens of Rockdale County cruisers were blocking off the area. More men milled around, but the sense of urgency had been lost. The press was out there somewhere, too, and Will saw a couple of news helicopters hovering overhead. It was too dark to get a shot, but that probably was not stopping them from reporting every movement they saw on the ground—or at least what they thought they saw. Accuracy wasn't exactly part of the equation when you had to provide news twenty-four hours a day.
Will held out his hand to Amanda, helping her down the shoulder as they went into the opposite side of the forest. There were hundreds of searchers in the area, some from other counties, all spread out into groups. The Georgia Emergency Management Agency, or GEMA, had called in the civilian canine corps, the people who had trained their dogs to scent corpses. The dogs had stopped barking hours ago. Most of the volunteers had gone home. It was mostly cops now, people who didn't have a choice. Detective Fierro was out there somewhere, probably cursing Will's name.
Amanda asked, "How's Faith?"
He was surprised by the question, but then, Amanda had a connection with Faith that went back several years. "She's fine," he said, automatically covering for his partner.
"I heard she passed out."
He feigned surprise. "Did you?"
Amanda raised her eyebrows at him. "She hasn't been looking good lately."
Will assumed she meant the weight gain, which was a little much for Faith's small frame, but he had figured out today that you did not discuss a woman's weight, especially with another woman. "She seems fine to me."
"She seems irritable and distracted."
Will kept his mouth shut, unsure whether Amanda was truly concerned or asking him to tattle. The truth was that Faith had been irritable and distracted lately. He had worked with her long enough to know her moods. For the most part, she was pretty even-keeled. Once every month, always around the same time, she carried her purse with her for a few days. Her tone would get snippy and she'd tend to favor radio stations that played women singing along to acoustic guitars. Will knew to just apologize a lot for everything he said until she stopped carrying her bag. Not that he would share this with Amanda, but he had to admit that lately, every day with Faith seemed like a purse day.
Amanda reached out her hand and he helped her step over a fallen log. "You know I hate working cases we can't clear," she said.
"I know you like solving cases no one else can."
She chuckled ruefully. "When are you going to get tired of me stealing all your thunder, Will?"
"I'm indefatigable."
"Putting that calendar to use, I see."
"It's the most thoughtful gift you've ever given me." Leave it to Amanda to give a functional illiterate a word-a-day calendar for Christmas.
Up ahead, Will saw Fierro making his way toward them. This side of the road was more densely forested, and there were limbs and vines everywhere. Will could hear Fierro cursing as his pant leg got caught in a prickly bush. He slapped his neck, probably killing an insect. "Nice of you to join this fucking waste of time, Gomez."
Will made the introductions. "Detective Fierro, this is Dr. Amanda Wagner."
Fierro tilted up his chin at her in greeting. "I've seen you on TV."
"Thank you," Amanda returned, as if he had meant it as a compliment. "We're dealing with some pretty salacious details here, Detective Fierro. I hope your team knows to keep a lid on it."
"You think we're a bunch of amateurs?"
Obviously, she did. "How is the search going?"
"We're finding exactly what's out here—nothing. Nada. Zero." He glared at Will. "This how you state guys run things? Come in here and blow our whole fucking budget on a useless search in the middle of the goddamn night?"
Will was tired and he was frustrated, and it came out in his tone. "We usually pillage your supplies and rape your women first."
"Ha-fucking-ha," Fierro grumbled, slapping his neck again. He pulled away his hand and there was a smear of bloody insect on his palm. "You're gonna be laughing your ass off when I take back my case."
Amanda said, "Detective Fierro, Chief Peterson asked us to intervene. You don't have the authority to take back this case."
"Peterson, huh?" His lip curled. "Does that mean you've been greasing his pole again?"
Will sucked in so much air that his lips made a whistling sound. For her part, Amanda looked unfazed, though her eyes narrowed, and she gave Fierro a single nod, as if to say his time would come. Will wouldn't be surprised if, at some future date, Fierro woke up to find a decapitated horse's head in his bed.
"Hey!" someone screamed. "Over here!"
All three stood where they were in various stages of shock, anger and unadulterated rage.
"I found something!"
The words got Will moving. He jogged toward the searcher, a woman who was furiously waving her hands in the air. She was Rockdale uniformed patrol, wearing a knit hat on her head and surrounded by tall switchgrass.
"What is it?" he asked.
She pointed toward a dense pack of low-hanging trees. He saw that the leaves underneath were disturbed, bare spots of earth showing in places. "Something caught my light," she said, turning on her Maglite and shining it into the shadowy area under the t
rees. Will didn't see anything. By the time Amanda had joined them, he was wondering if the patrolwoman had been a little too tired, a little too anxious to find something.
"What is it?" Amanda asked, just as the light reflected back from the darkness. It was a small flash that lasted no more than a second. Will blinked, thinking maybe his tired brain had conjured it, too, but the patrolwoman found it again—a quick flash like a tiny burst of powder, approximately twenty feet away.
Will slipped on a pair of latex gloves from his jacket. He took the flashlight, carefully pushing back branches as he made his way into the area. The prickly bushes and limbs made it hard going, and he stooped down low to make forward progress. He shone the light on the ground, scanning for the object. Maybe it was a broken mirror or a chewing gum wrapper. All the possibilities ran through his mind as he tried to locate it: a piece of jewelry, a shard of glass, minerals in a rock.
A Florida state driver's license.
The license was about two feet from the base of the tree. Beside it was a small pocketknife, the thin blade so coated in blood that it blended in with the dark leaves around it. Close to the trunk, the branches thinned out. Will knelt down, picking up the leaves one at a time as he moved them off the license. The thick plastic had been folded in two. The colors and the distinctive outline of the state of Florida in the corner told him where the license had been issued. There was a hologram in the background to prevent forgeries. That must have been what the light had picked up on.
He leaned down, craning his neck so he could get a better look, not wanting to disturb the scene. One of the clearest fingerprints Will had ever seen was right in the middle of the license. Imprinted in blood, the ridges were practically jumping off the smooth plastic. The photograph showed a woman: dark hair, dark eyes.
"There's a pocketknife and a license," he told Amanda, his voice raised so that she could hear him. "There's a bloody fingerprint on the license."
"Can you read the name?" She put her hands on her hips, sounding furious.
Will felt his throat close up. He concentrated on the small print, making out a J, or maybe an I, before everything began to jumble around.
Her fury shot up exponentially. "Just bring the damn thing out."
There was a cluster of cops around her now, all looking confused. Even twenty feet away, Will could hear them mumbling about procedure. The purity of the crime scene was sacrosanct. Defense lawyers chewed apart irregularities. Photographs and measurements had to be taken, sketches made. The chain of custody could not be broken, or the evidence would be thrown out.
"Will?"
He felt a drop of rain hit the back of his neck. It was hot, almost like a burn. More cops were coming up, trying to see what had been found. They would wonder why Will didn't shout out the name from the license, why he didn't immediately send off someone to do a computer check. Was this how it was going to end? Was Will going to have to pick his way out of this dense covering and announce to a group of strangers that, at his best, he could only read at a second-grade level? If that information got out, he might as well go home and stick his head in the oven, because there wouldn't be a cop in the city who would work with him.
Amanda started making her way toward him, her skirt snagging on a prickly vine, various curses coming from her lips.
Will felt another drop of rain on his neck and wiped it away with his hand. He looked down at his glove. There was a fine smear of blood on his fingers. He thought maybe he had cut his neck on one of the limbs, but he felt another drop on the back of his neck. Hot, wet, viscous. He put his hand to the place. More blood.
Will looked up, into the eyes of a woman with dark brown hair and dark eyes. She was hanging face-down about fifteen feet above him. Her ankle was snagged in a patchwork of branches, the only thing keeping her from hitting the ground. She had fallen at an angle, face first, snapping her neck. Her shoulders were twisted, her eyes open, staring at the ground. One arm hung straight down, reaching toward Will. There was an angry red circle around her wrist, the skin burned through. A piece of rope was knotted tightly around the other wrist. Her mouth was open. Her front tooth was broken, a third of it missing.
Another drop of blood dripped from her fingertips, this time hitting him on the cheek just below his eye. Will took off his latex glove and touched the blood. It was still warm.
She had died within the last hour.
DAY TWO
CHAPTER FIVE
PAULINE MCGHEE STEERED HER LEXUS LX RIGHT INTO THE handicapped parking space in front of the City Foods Supermarket. It was five in the morning. All the handicapped people were probably still asleep. More importantly, it was too damn early to walk more than she had to.
"Come on, sleepy cat," she told her son, gently pressing his shoulder. Felix stirred, not wanting to wake up. She caressed his cheek in her hand, thinking not for the first time that it was a miracle that something so perfect had come out of her imperfect body. "Come on, sweet pea," she said, tickling his ribs until he curved up like a roly-poly worm.
She got out of the car, helping Felix climb out of the SUV behind her. His feet hadn't hit the ground before she went over the routine. "See where we're parked?" He nodded. "What do we do if we get lost?"
"Meet at the car." He struggled not to a yawn.
"Good boy." She pulled him close as they walked toward the store. Growing up, Pauline had been told that she should find an adult if she ever got lost, but these days, you never knew who that adult might be. A security guard might be a pedophile. A little old lady might be a batty witch who spent her spare time hiding razor blades in apples. It was a sad state of affairs when the safest help for a lost six-year-old boy was an inanimate object.
The artificial lights of the store were a bit much for this time of morning, but it was Pauline's own fault for not already buying the cupcakes for Felix's class. She'd gotten the notice a week ago, but she hadn't anticipated all hell breaking loose at work in between. One of the interior design agency's biggest clients had ordered a custom-made sixty-thousand-dollar Italian brown leather couch that wouldn't fit in the damn elevator, and the only way to get it up to his penthouse was with a ten-thousand-dollar-an-hour crane.
The client was blaming Pauline's agency for not catching the error, the agency was blaming Pauline for designing the couch too big, and Pauline was blaming the dipshit upholsterer whom she had specifically told to go to the building on Peachtree Street to measure the elevator before making the damn couch. Faced with a ten-thousand-dollar-an-hour crane bill or rebuilding a sixty-thousand-dollar couch, the upholsterer was, of course, conveniently forgetting this conversation, but Pauline was damned if she was going to let him get away with it.
There was a meeting of all concerned at seven o'clock sharp, and she was going to be the first one there to get in her side of the story. As her father always said, shit rolls downhill. Pauline McGhee wasn't going to be the one smelling like a sewer when the day was over. She had evidence on her side—a copy of an email exchange with her boss asking him to remind the upholsterer about taking measurements. The critical part was Morgan's response: I'll take care of it. Her boss was pretending like the emails hadn't happened, but Pauline wasn't going to take the fall. Someone was going to lose their job today, and it sure as hell wasn't going to be her.
"No, baby," she said, pulling Felix's hand away from a package of Gummi Bears dangling from the shelf. Pauline swore they put those things at kid level just so their parents would be bullied into buying them. She had seen more than one mother relent to a screaming kid just so he'd shut up. Pauline didn't play that game, and Felix knew it. If he tried anything, she would snatch him up and leave the store, even if that meant abandoning a half-filled shopping cart.
She turned down the bakery aisle, nearly smacking into a grocery cart. The man behind the buggy laughed good-naturedly, and Pauline managed a smile.
"Have a good day," he said.
"You too," she returned.
That, she thought,
was the last time she was going to be nice to anybody this morning. She'd tossed and turned all night, then gotten up at three so she could run on the treadmill, put her face on, fix breakfast for Felix and get him ready for school. Long gone were her single days when she could spend all night partying, go home with whoever looked good, then roll out of bed the next morning twenty minutes before it was time to get to work.
Pauline ruffled Felix's hair, thinking she didn't miss it a bit. Though getting laid every now and then would've been a damn gift from heaven.
"Cupcakes," she said, relieved to find several stacks lined up along the front of the bakery counter. Her relief quickly left when she saw that every single one was pastel with Easter bunnies and multicolored eggs on top. The note she'd gotten from the school had specified nondenominational cupcakes, but Pauline wasn't sure what that meant, other than Felix's extremely expensive private school was brimming with politically correct bullshit. They wouldn't even call it an Easter Party—it was a Spring Party that just happened to fall a few days before Easter Sunday. What religion didn't celebrate Easter? She knew the Jews didn't get Christmas, but for the love of God, Easter was all about them. Even the Pagans got the bunny.
"All right," Pauline said, handing Felix her purse. He slung it over his shoulder the same way she did, and Pauline felt a pang of angst. She worked in interior design. Just about every man in her life was a flaming mo. She'd have to make an effort to meet some straight men soon for both their sakes.
There were six cupcakes in each box, so Pauline scooped up five boxes, thinking the teachers would want some. She couldn't stand most of the faculty at the school, but they loved Felix, and Pauline loved her son, so what was an extra four seventy-five to feed the fat cows who took care of her baby?
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