—
Faith sat in the hospital cafeteria, thinking she felt the same way she’d felt the night of her junior prom: unwanted, fat and pregnant. She looked at the wiry Rockdale County detective sitting across from her at the table. With his long nose and greasy hair hanging down over his ears, Max Galloway had the surly yet perplexed look of a Weimaraner. What’s more, he was a poor sport. Every sentence he uttered to Faith alluded to the GBI taking away his case, beginning with his opening salvo when Faith asked to sit in on the interview with two of the witnesses: “I bet that bitch you work for is already primping her hair for the TV cameras.”
Faith had held her tongue, though she couldn’t imagine Amanda Wagner primping anything. Sharpening her claws, maybe, but her hair was a structure that defied primping.
“So,” Galloway said to the two male witnesses. “You guys were just driving around, didn’t see nothing, and then there’s the Buick and the girl on the road?”
Faith struggled not to roll her eyes. She had worked homicide in the Atlanta Police Department for eight years before she had partnered with Will Trent. She knew what it was like to be the detective on the other side of that table, to have some arrogant jerk from the GBI waltz in and tell you he could run your case better than you could. She understood the anger and the frustration of being treated like an ignorant hick who couldn’t detect your way out of a paper bag, but now that Faith herself was GBI, all she could think about was the pleasure she would feel when she snatched this case right out from under this particularly galling ignorant hick.
As for the paper bag, Max Galloway might as well have had one over his head. He had been interviewing Rick Sigler and Jake Berman, the two men who had come upon the car accident on Route 316, for at least half an hour and still hadn’t noticed that both men were gay as handbags.
Galloway addressed Rick, the emergency medical technician who had helped the woman on the scene. “You said your wife’s a nurse?”
Rick stared at his hands. He had a rose-gold wedding band around his finger and the most beautiful, delicate hands Faith had ever seen on a man. “She works nights at Crawford Long.”
Faith wondered how the woman would feel knowing that her husband was out getting his knob polished while she was pulling the late shift.
Galloway asked, “What movie did y’all go see?”
He’d asked the two men this same question at least three times, only to be given the same answer. Faith was all for trying to trip up a suspect, but you had to have more intelligence than a russet potato to pull off that kind of thing—sadly, this was exactly the type of acumen that Max Galloway did not possess. From where Faith was sitting, it seemed like the two witnesses had just had the misfortune of finding themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time. The only positive aspect of their involvement was that the medic had been able to take care of the victim until the ambulance arrived.
Rick asked Faith, “Do you think she’s going to be okay?”
Faith assumed the woman was still in surgery. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “You did everything you could to help her, though. You have to know that.”
“I’ve been at a million car accidents.” Rick looked back at his hands. “I’ve never seen anything like that before. It was … it was just awful.”
In her normal life, Faith wasn’t a touchy-feely person, but as a cop, she knew when a softer approach was needed. She felt the urge to lean across the table and put her hands over Rick’s, to comfort him and draw him out, but she wasn’t sure how Galloway would react and she didn’t want to make herself any more of an enemy than she already was.
Galloway said, “Did y’all meet at the theater or did you take one car?”
Jake, the other man, shifted in his chair. He’d been very quiet from the beginning, only speaking when he was asked a direct question. He kept glancing at his watch. “I need to go,” he said. “I have to get up for work in less than five hours.”
Faith glanced at the clock on the wall. She hadn’t realized it was coming up on one in the morning, probably because the insulin shot had given her a strange sort of second wind. Will had left two hours ago after giving her a quick rundown of what had happened, dashing off to the crime scene before she could offer to join him. He was persistent, and Faith knew that he would find a way to get this case. She just wished she knew what was taking him so long.
Galloway pushed a pad and pen toward the men. “Give me all your phone numbers.”
The color drained from Rick’s face. “Only call my cell. Please. Don’t call me at work.” He glanced nervously at Faith, then back at Galloway. “They don’t like me to get personal calls at work. I’m out in the bus all day. All right?”
“Sure.” Max sat back in the chair, arms crossed over his chest, staring at Faith. “You hear that, vulture?”
Faith gave the man a tight smile. She could take outright hate, but this passive-aggressive crap was getting on her last nerve.
She took out two business cards and handed one to each man. “Please call me if you think of anything else. Even something that doesn’t seem important.”
Rick nodded, tucking the card into his back pocket. Jake held on to his, and she imagined he was going to toss it into the first trashcan he came across. Faith’s impression was that the men didn’t know each other very well. They had been vague about details pertaining to their friendship, but each had presented a movie-ticket stub when asked. They had probably met in the theater, then decided to go somewhere more private.
A cell phone began to play “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Faith corrected her initial assumption, thinking it was more than likely the University of Georgia fight song, as Galloway flipped open his phone, saying, “Yeah?”
Jake started to stand, and Galloway nodded to him, as if permission to leave had been asked and granted.
“Thank you,” Faith told the two men. “Please call me if you think of anything else.”
Jake was already halfway to the door, but Rick lingered. “I’m sorry I wasn’t much help. There was a lot going on, and—” Tears welled into his eyes. He was obviously still haunted by what had happened.
Faith put her hand on his arm, keeping her voice low. “I really don’t care about what you guys were doing out there.” Rick colored. “It’s none of my business. All I care about is finding out who hurt this woman.”
He looked away. Immediately, Faith knew that she had pushed him in exactly the wrong direction.
Rick gave a tight nod, still not meeting her eye. “I’m sorry I can’t be more help.”
Faith watched him leave, wanting to kick herself. Behind her, she heard Galloway mutter several curses. She turned as he pushed back from the table so hard that his chair clattered to the floor. “Your partner is a fucking lunatic. One hundred fucking percent.”
Faith agreed—Will was never one to do things halfway—but she never badmouthed her partner unless it was to his face. “Is that just an observation, or are you trying to tell me something?”
Galloway tore off the page with the phone numbers and slapped it down on the table. “You got your case.”
“What a surprising turn of events.” Faith flashed him a smile, handing him a card. “If you could please fax all witness statements and preliminary reports to my office. Number’s on the bottom.”
He snatched the card, bumping into the table as he walked away, grumbling, “Keep smiling, bitch.”
Faith leaned down and picked up the chair, feeling a bit woozy as she straightened. The nurse educator had been more of the former than the latter, and Faith was still unsure about what to do with all the diabetic instruments and supplies she had been given. She had notes, forms, a journal and all sorts of test results and papers to give to her doctor tomorrow. None of it made sense. Or maybe she was too shocked to process it all. She had always been very good at math, but the thought of measuring her food and calculating insulin made her brain go all fuzzy.
The final blow had been the result of the pregnancy test that had been kindly tagged on to all the other bloodwork. Faith had been clinging to the possibility that the over-the-counter tests were inaccurate—all three of them. How exact could the technology be for something that you peed on? She had vacillated daily between thinking she was pregnant and thinking that she had a stomach tumor, not exactly sure which news would be more welcome. When the nurse had happily informed her, “You’re going to have a baby!” Faith had felt like she was going to pass out again.
There was nothing she could do about it now. She sat back down at the table, looking at Rick Sigler’s and Jake Berman’s phone numbers. She would have made a bet that Jake’s was false, but Faith wasn’t new to this game. Max Galloway had been annoyed when she had asked to see the men’s driver’s licenses and copied down the information in her notebook. Then again, maybe Galloway wasn’t a total idiot. She’d seen him scribbling down his own copy of the phone numbers while he was on his cell. The thought of Galloway having to come ask Faith for Jake Berman’s details made her smile.
She checked the clock again, wondering what was keeping the Coldfields. Galloway had told Faith the couple had been instructed to come to the cafeteria for their interviews as soon as the ER cleared them, but the couple seemed to be taking their own sweet time. Faith was also curious about what Will had done to make Max Galloway call him a lunatic. She would be the first person to admit that her partner was far from conventional. He certainly had his own way of doing things, but Will Trent was the best cop Faith had ever worked with—even if he had the social skills of an awkward toddler. For instance, Faith would’ve liked to have found out from her own partner that they were assigned to this case rather than hear it from an inbred Weimaraner from Rockdale County.
Maybe it was for the best that she had some time before she talked to Will. She had no idea how she was going to explain why she had passed out in the parking deck at the courthouse without actually having to tell him the truth.
She rifled through the plastic bag filled with diabetic supplies and pulled out the pamphlet the nurse had given her, hoping that this time she would be able to concentrate on it. Faith didn’t get much further than “So, you have diabetes” before she was telling herself once again that there had been some kind of mistake. The insulin shot had made her feel better, but maybe just lying down for a few minutes had done the trick. Did she even have a history of this in her family? She should call her mother, but she hadn’t even told Evelyn that she was pregnant. Besides, the woman was on vacation in Mexico, her first holiday in years. Faith wanted to make sure her mother was close to good medical care when she told her the news.
The person she should really call was her brother. Captain Zeke Mitchell was an Air Force surgeon stationed in Landstuhl, Germany. As a doctor, he would know everything about her condition, which was probably why she cringed at the thought of reaching out to him. When fourteen-year-old Faith announced that she was pregnant, Zeke was just hitting his senior year in high school. His mortification and humiliation had lasted twenty-four hours, seven days a week. At home, he had to watch his slut of a teenage sister swell up like a blimp, and at school, he had to listen to the crude jokes his friends made about her. It was no wonder he’d joined the military straight out of high school.
Then there was Jeremy. Faith had no idea how she would tell her son that she was pregnant. He was eighteen, the same age Zeke had been when she’d ruined his life. If boys did not want to know their sisters were having sex, they sure as hell didn’t want to hear the news about their mothers.
Faith had done most of her growing up with Jeremy, and now that he was in college, their relationship was settling into a comfortable place where they could talk to each other as adults. Sure, she sometimes had flashes of her son as a child—the blanket he used to drag around with him everywhere, the way he constantly used to ask her when he was going to get too heavy for her to carry him—but she’d finally come to terms with the fact that her little boy was now a grown man. How could she pull the rug out from under her son now that he’d finally gotten settled? And it wasn’t just that she was pregnant anymore. She had a disease. She had something that could be carried in families. Jeremy could be susceptible. He had a serious girlfriend now. Faith knew that they were having sex. Jeremy’s children could become diabetic because of Faith.
“God,” she mumbled. It wasn’t the diabetes, but the idea that she could end up being a grandmother before she hit thirty-four.
“How are you feeling?”
Faith looked up to find Sara Linton standing across from her with a tray of food.
“Old.”
“Just from the pamphlet?”
Faith had forgotten it was in her hand. She indicated that Sara should sit. “Actually, I was questioning your medical abilities.”
“You wouldn’t be the first.” She said it ruefully, and not for the first time, Faith wondered what Sara’s story was. “My bedside manner could have been better with you.”
Faith did not disagree. Back in the ER, she had wanted to hate Sara Linton on sight for no other reason than she was the type of woman you’d want to hate on sight: tall and thin with great posture, long auburn hair and that unusual kind of beauty that made men fall all over themselves when she entered a room. It didn’t help matters that the woman was obviously smart and successful, and Faith had felt the same knee-jerk dislike she’d felt in high school when the cheerleaders had bounced by. She’d like to think a new strength of character, a spurt in maturity, had allowed her to overcome the petty response, but the truth was that it was hard for Faith to hate someone who was a widow, especially the widow of a cop.
Sara asked, “Have you had anything to eat since we talked?”
Faith shook her head, looking down at the doctor’s food selection: a scrawny piece of baked chicken on a leaf of wilted lettuce and something that may or may not have been a vegetable. Sara used her plastic fork and knife to cut into the piece of chicken. At least she tried to cut into it. In the end, it was more like a tearing. She moved the roll off her bread plate and passed Faith the chicken.
“Thanks,” Faith managed, thinking that the fudge brownies she had spotted when she walked in were much more appetizing.
Sara asked, “Are you officially on the case?”
Faith was surprised by the question, but then again, Sara had worked on the victim; she was bound to be curious. “Will managed to snag it for us.” She checked the signal on her cell phone, wondering why he hadn’t called yet.
“I’m sure the locals were very happy to step aside.”
Faith laughed, thinking Sara’s husband had probably been a good cop. Faith was a good cop, too, and she knew that it was one in the morning and Sara had said six hours ago that she was at the end of her shift. Faith studied the doctor. Sara had the unmistakable glow of an adrenaline junkie. The woman was here for information.
Sara offered, “I checked on Henry Coldfield, the driver.” She hadn’t eaten anything yet, but then she had come into the cafeteria to find Faith, not choke down a piece of chicken that had hatched just as Nixon was resigning. “The air bag bruised his chest, and the wife took a couple of stitches in her head, but they’re both fine.”
“That’s actually what I’m waiting on.” Faith checked the clock again. “They were supposed to meet me down here.”
Sara looked confused. “They left at least half an hour ago with their son.”
“What?”
“I saw them all talking to that detective with the greasy hair.”
“Motherfucker.” No wonder Max Galloway had looked so smug when he left the cafeteria. “Sorry,” she told Sara. “One of the locals is smarter than I thought. He played me like a violin.”
“Coldfield is an unusual name,” Sara said. “I’m sure they’re in the phone book.”
Faith hoped so, because she didn’t want to have to go crawling back to Max Galloway and give him the satisfaction of relaying the information.
Sara offered, “I could pull the address and phone number off the hospital intake form for you.”
Faith was surprised by the offer, which usually required a subpoena. “That’d be great.”
“It’s not a problem.”
“It’s, uh—” Faith stopped, biting her tongue to keep from telling the other woman that she would be breaking the law. She changed the subject. “Will told me you worked on the victim when she came in.”
“Anna,” Sara supplied. “At least that’s what I think she said.”
Faith tested the waters. Will hadn’t given her the gritty details. “What were your impressions?”
Sara sat back in her chair, arms folded. “She showed signs of severe malnutrition and dehydration. Her gums were white, her veins collapsed. Because of the nature of the healing and the way the blood was clotting, I would assume that the wounds were inflicted over a period of time. Her wrists and ankles showed signs of being bound. She was penetrated vaginally and anally; there were indications that a blunt object was used. I couldn’t really do a rape kit before surgery, but I managed to examine her as best I could. I removed some splinters of wood from under her fingernails for your lab to look at—not pressure-treated from the look of it, but that will have to be confirmed by your guys.”
She sounded like she was giving testimony in court. Every observation had supporting evidence, every educated guess was framed as an estimation. Faith asked, “How long do you think she was kept?”
“At least four days. Though gauging by how malnourished she was, it might be as much as a week to ten days.”
Faith didn’t want to think about the woman being tortured for ten days. “How are you so sure about the four days?”
“The cut on the breast here,” Sara replied, indicating the side of her own breast. “It was deep, already septic, with signs of insect activity. You’d have to talk to an entomologist to pin down the pupation—the developmental stage of the insect—but considering she was still alive, that her body was relatively warm and there was a fresh blood supply to feed on, four days is a solid guess.” She added, “I don’t imagine they’ll be able to save the tissue.”
Faith kept her lips pressed tightly together, resisting the urge to put her hand over her own breast. How many pieces of yourself could you lose and still go on?
Sara kept talking, though Faith had not prompted her. “The eleventh rib, here”—she touched her abdomen—“that was recent, probably earlier today or late yesterday, and done with precision.”
“Surgical precision?”
“No.” She shook her head. “Confidence. There were no hesitation marks, no test cuts. The person was confident in what they were doing.”
Faith thought the doctor seemed pretty confident herself. “How do you think it was done?”
Sara took out her prescription pad and started drawing a bunch of curved lines that only made sense when she explained, “The ribs are numbered in pairs starting at the top and going down, twelve each side, left and right.” She tapped the lines with her pen. “Number one is just under the clavicle and twelve is the last one here.” She looked up to make sure Faith was following. “Now, eleven and twelve at the bottom are considered to be ‘floating,’ because they don’t have an anterior connection. They only connect at the back, not the front.” She drew a straight line to indicate the spine. “The top seven ribs connect at the back and then attach to the sternum—like a big crescent. The next three rows connect roughly to the ribs above. They’re called false ribs. All of this is very elastic so that you can breathe, and it’s also why it’s hard to break a rib with a direct blow—they bend quite a bit.”
Faith was leaning forward, hanging on her every word. “So, this was done by someone with medical knowledge?”
“Not necessarily. You can feel your own ribs with your fingers. You know where they are in your body.”
“But, still—”
“Look.” She sat up straight, raising her right arm and pressing the fingers of her left hand into her side. “You run your hand down the posterior axillary line until you feel the tip of the rib—eleven, with twelve a little farther back.” She picked up the plastic knife. “You slice the knife into the skin and cut along the rib—the tip of the blade could even scrape along the bone as a guide. Push back the fat and muscle, disarticulate the rib from the vertebra, snap it off, whatever, then grab hold and yank it out.”
Faith felt queasy at the thought.
Sara put down the knife. “A hunter could do it in under a minute, but anyone could figure it out. It’s not precision surgery. I’m sure you could Google up a better drawing than the one I’ve made.”
“Is it possible that the rib was never there? That she was born without it?”
“A small portion of the population is born with one pair fewer, but the majority of us have twenty-four.”
“I thought men were missing a rib?”
“You mean like Adam and Eve?” A smile curved Sara’s lips, and Faith got the distinct impression the woman was trying not to laugh at her. “I wouldn’t believe everything they told you in Sunday School, Faith. We all have the same number of ribs.”
“Well, don’t I feel stupid.” It wasn’t a question. “But you’re sure about this, that the rib was taken out?”
“Ripped out. The cartilage and muscle were torn. This was a violent wrenching.”
“You seem to have given this a lot of thought.”
Sara shrugged, as if this was just the product of natural curiosity. She picked up the knife and fork again, cutting into the chicken. Faith watched her struggle with the desiccated meat for a few seconds before she put the utensils back down. She gave a strange smile, almost embarrassed. “I was a coroner in my previous life.”
Faith felt her mouth open in surprise. The doctor had said it the same way you might confide a hidden acrobatic talent or youthful indiscretion. “Where?”
“Grant County. It’s about four hours from here.”
“Never heard of it.”
“It’s well below the gnat line,” Sara admitted. She leaned her arms on the table, a wistful tone to her voice when she revealed, “I took the job so that I could buy out my partner in our pediatric practice. At least I thought I did. The truth was that I was bored. You can only give so many vaccinations and stick so many Band-Aids on skinned knees before your mind starts to go.”
“I can imagine,” Faith mumbled, though she was wondering which was more alarming: that the doctor who had just diagnosed her with diabetes was a pediatrician or that she was a coroner.
“I’m glad you’re on this case,” Sara said. “Your partner is …”
“Strange?”
Sara gave her an odd look. “I was going to say ‘intense.’ ”
“He’s pretty driven,” Faith agreed, thinking this was the first time since she’d met Will Trent that anyone’s first impression of him had been so complimentary. He usually took a while to grow on you, like cataracts or shingles.
“He seemed very compassionate.” Sara held up her hand to stop any protest. “Not that cops aren’t compassionate, but they usually don’t show it.”
Faith could only nod. Will seldom showed any emotions, but she knew that torture victims cut him close to the bone. “He’s a good cop.”
Sara looked down at her tray. “You can have this if you want. I’m not really hungry.”
“I didn’t think you came in here to eat.”
She blushed, caught.
“It’s all right,” Faith assured her. “But if you’re still offering the Coldfields’ information …”
“Of course.”
Faith dug out one of her business cards. “My cell number is on the back.”
“Right.” She read the number, a determined set to her mouth, and Faith saw that not only did Sara know she was breaking the law, she obviously didn’t care. “Another thing—” Sara seemed to be debating whether or not to speak. “Her eyes. The whites showed petechia, but there weren’t any visible signs of strangulation. Her pupils wouldn’t focus. It could be from the trauma or something neurological, but I’m not sure she could see anything.”
“That might explain why she walked out in the middle of the road.”
“Considering what she’s been through …” Sara didn’t finish the sentence, but Faith knew exactly what she meant. You didn’t have to be a doctor to understand that a woman who’d been through that kind of hell might deliberately walk into the path of a speeding car.
Sara tucked Faith’s business card into her coat pocket. “I’ll call you in a few minutes.”
Faith watched her leave, wondering how in the hell Sara Linton had ended up working at Grady Hospital. Sara couldn’t be more than forty, but the emergency room was a young person’s game, the sort of place you ran screaming from before you hit your thirties.
She checked her phone again. All six bars were lit, meaning the signal was bright and clear. She tried to give Will the benefit of the doubt. Maybe his phone had fallen apart again. Then again, every cop on the scene would have a cell phone, so maybe he really was an asshole.
It did occur to Faith as she got up from the table and made her way to the parking lot that she could call Will herself, but there was a reason Faith was pregnant and unmarried for the second time in less than twenty years, and it wasn’t because she was good at communicating with the men in her life.