—
Will had forced himself to get up at his usual time of five o’clock. His run had been sluggish, his shower far from bracing. He was standing over the kitchen sink, his breakfast cereal soggy in the bowl, when Betty nudged his ankle to stir him from his stupor.
He found Betty’s leash by the door and stooped down to clip it onto her collar. She licked his hand, and despite himself, he petted her little head. Everything about the Chihuahua was an embarrassment. She was the kind of dog a young starlet would carry in a leather satchel, hardly Will’s speed. Making it worse, she was roughly six inches off the ground, and the only leash at the pet store that was long enough for him to comfortably hold came in hot pink. The fact that it matched her rhinestone collar was something many attractive women had pointed out to him in the park—right before they’d tried to set up Will with their brothers.
Betty had been an inheritance of sorts, abandoned by Will’s next-door neighbor a couple of years ago. Angie had hated the dog on sight, and chastised Will for what they both knew was the truth: A man who was raised in an orphanage was not going to drop off a dog at the pound, no matter how ridiculous he felt when they were out in public.
There were more shameful aspects about his life with the dog that even Angie did not know about. Will worked odd hours, and sometimes when a case was breaking, he barely had time to go home and change his shirt. He had dug the pond in the backyard for Betty, thinking that watching the fish swim would be a nice way for her to pass the time. She had barked at the fish for a couple of days, but then she’d gone back to sitting on the couch, whiling away the hours until Will came home.
He half suspected the animal was playing him, that she jumped on the couch when she heard his key in the lock, pretending that she’d been waiting there all day when in fact she had been running in and out of the dog door, romping it up with the koi in the backyard, listening to his music.
Will patted his pockets, making sure he had his phone and wallet, then clipped his paddle holster onto his belt. He left the house, locking the door behind him. Betty’s tail was pointed in the air, swishing back and forth like crazy, as he walked her toward the park. He checked the time on his cell phone. He was supposed to meet Faith at the coffee shop across from the park in half an hour. When cases were in full swing, he usually had her pick him up there instead of home. If Faith ever noticed that the coffee shop was right beside a dog day care center called Sir Barks-A-Lot, she’d been kind enough not to mention it.
They crossed the street against the light, Will slowing his pace so he didn’t run over the dog, much as he had done with Amanda the day before. He did not know which was worrying him more—the case, in which they had very little to go on, or the fact that Faith was obviously mad at him. God knew Faith had been mad before, but this particular anger had a tinge of disappointment to it.
He felt her pushing him, even though she wouldn’t say the words. The problem was that she was a different cop than Will was. He had long known that his less aggressive way of approaching the Job was at odds with her own, but rather than being a point of contention, it was a contrast that had worked for them both. Now he wasn’t so sure. Faith wanted him to be one of those kinds of cops that Will despised—someone who goes in with his fists swinging and worries about the consequences later. Will hated those cops, had worked more than a few cases where he’d gotten them kicked off the force. You couldn’t say you were one of the good guys if you did the same thing the bad guys did. Faith had to know this. She’d grown up in a cop’s family. Then again, her mother had been forced out of the job for improper conduct, so maybe Faith did know it and just didn’t care.
Will couldn’t accept that reasoning. Faith was not just a solid cop; she was a good person. She still insisted her mother was innocent. She still believed that there was a distinct line between good and bad, right and wrong. Will couldn’t just tell her that his way was best—she would have to see it for herself.
He had never walked a beat like Faith, but he had walked into plenty of small communities and learned the hard way that you don’t piss off the locals. By law, the GBI was called in by the bosses, not the detectives and patrolmen on the street. They were invariably still working their cases, still thinking they could crack them on their own and highly resentful of any outside interference. Chances were, you would need something from them later on, and if you left them in the gutter, took away all chances of them saving face, they would actively work to sabotage you, damn the consequences.
Case in point was Rockdale County. Amanda had made an enemy of Lyle Peterson, the chief of police, while she was working another case with him. Now that they needed cooperation from the local force, Rockdale was balking in the form of Max Galloway, who was straddling the line between being a jerk and being grossly negligent.
What Faith needed to realize was that the cops weren’t always selfless in their actions. They had egos. They had territories. They were like animals marking their spots: If you encroached on their space, they didn’t care about the bodies stacking up. It was just a game to some of them, one they had to win no matter who was hurt in the process.
As if she could read his mind, Betty stopped near the entrance of Piedmont Park to do her business. Will waited, then took care of the mess, dropping the bag into one of the trashcans as they cut through the park. Joggers were out in force, some with dogs, some alone. They were all bundled up to fight the cold in the air, though Will could tell from the way the sun was burning off the fog that it would be warm enough by noon so that his collar would start to rub against his neck.
The case was twenty-four hours old and he and Faith had a full day—talk to Rick Sigler, the paramedic who had been on the scene when Anna was hit by the car; track down Jake Berman, Sigler’s hookup; then interview Joelyn Zabel, Jacquelyn Zabel’s awful sister. Will knew he shouldn’t make snap judgments, but he’d seen the woman all over the television news last night, both local and national. Apparently, Joelyn liked to talk. Even more apparently, she liked to blame. Will was grateful he had been at the autopsy yesterday, had had the burden of Jacquelyn Zabel’s death removed from his long list of burdens, or the sister’s words would have cut into him like a thousand knives.
He wanted to search Pauline McGhee’s house, but Leo Donnelly would probably protest. There had to be a way around that, and if there was any one thing Will wanted to do today, it was find a way to bring Leo on board. Rather than sleep, Will had thought about Pauline McGhee most of last night. Every time he closed his eyes, he mixed up the cave and McGhee, so that she was on that wooden bed, tied down like an animal, while Will stood helplessly by. His gut was telling him that something was going on with McGhee. She had run away once before, twenty years ago, but she had roots now. Felix was a good kid. His mother would not leave him.
Will chuckled to himself. He of all people should know that mothers left their sons all the time.
“Come on,” he said, tugging Betty’s leash, pulling her away from a pigeon that was almost as big as she was.
He tucked his hand into his pocket to warm it, his mind staying focused on the case. Will wasn’t stupid enough to take full credit for the majority of the arrests he made. The fact was that people who committed crimes tended to be stupid. Most killers made mistakes, because they usually were acting on the spur of the moment. A fight broke out, a gun was handy, tempers flared and the only thing to figure out when it was all over was whether or not the prosecution was going to go for second-or first-degree murder.
Stranger abductions were different, though. They were harder to solve, especially when there was more than one victim. Serial killers, by definition, were good at their jobs. They knew they were going to murder. They knew who they were going to kill and exactly how they were going to do it. They had practiced their trade over and over again, perfecting their skills. They knew how to evade detection, to hide evidence or simply leave nothing at all. Finding them tended to be a matter of dumb luck on the part of law enforcement or complacency in the killer.
Ted Bundy had been captured during a routine traffic stop. Twice. BTK—who signed his letters taunting the cops with those initials, indicating he liked to bind, torture and kill his victims—was tripped up by a computer disc he accidentally gave his pastor. Richard Ramirez was beaten by a vigilante whose car he tried to steal. All captured by happenstance, all with several murders under their belts before they were stopped. In most serial cases, years passed, and the only thing the police could do was wait for more bodies to show up and pray that happenstance brought the killers to justice.
Will thought about what they had on their guy: a white sedan speeding down the road, a torture chamber in the middle of nowhere, elderly witnesses who could offer nothing usable. Jake Berman could be a lead, but they might never find him. Rick Sigler was squeaky clean except for being a couple of months behind on his mortgage, hardly shocking considering how bad the economy was. The Coldfields were, on paper, exemplars of an average retired couple. Pauline McGhee had a brother she was worried about, but then she might be worried about him for reasons that had nothing to do with their case. She might not have anything to do with their case at all.
The physical evidence was equally as thin. The trash bags found in the victims were of the sort you would find in any grocery or convenience store. The items in the cave, from the marine battery to the torture devices, were completely untraceable. There were plenty of fingerprints and fluids to enter into the computer, but nothing was coming back as a match. Sexual predators were sneaky, inventive. Almost eighty percent of the crimes solved by DNA evidence were actually burglaries, not assaults. Glass was broken, kitchen knives were mishandled, ChapStick was dropped—all inevitably leading back to the burglar, who generally already had a long record. But, with stranger rape, where the victim had no previous contact with the assailant, it was looking for a needle in a haystack.
Betty had stopped so she could sniff around some tall grass by the lake. Will glanced up, seeing a runner coming toward them. She was wearing long black tights and a neon green jacket. Her hair was pulled up under a matching ball cap. Two greyhounds jogged beside her, heads up, tails straight. They were beautiful animals, sleek, long-legged, muscled. Just like their owner.
“Crap,” Will muttered, scooping up Betty in his hand, holding her behind his back.
Sara Linton stopped a few feet away, the dogs heeling beside her like trained commandos. The only thing Will had ever been able to teach Betty to do was eat.
“Hi,” Sara said, her voice going up in surprise. When he didn’t respond, she asked, “Will?”
“Hi.” He could feel Betty licking his palm.
Sara studied him. “Is that a Chihuahua behind your back?”
“No, I’m just happy to see you.”
Sara gave him a confused smile, and he reluctantly showed her Betty.
Noises were made, some cooing, and Will waited for the usual question.
“Is she your wife’s?”
“Yes,” he lied. “Do you live around here?”
“The Milk Lofts off North Avenue.”
She lived less than two blocks from his house. “You don’t seem like a loft person.”
The confused look returned. “What do I seem like?”
Will had never been particularly skilled at the art of conversation, and he certainly didn’t know how to articulate what Sara Linton seemed like to him—at least not without making a fool of himself.
He shrugged, setting Betty down on the ground. Sara’s dogs stirred, and she clicked her tongue once, sending them back to attention. Will told her, “I’d better go. I’m meeting Faith at the coffee place across the park.”
“Mind if I walk with you?” She didn’t wait for an answer. The dogs stood and Will picked up Betty, knowing she would only slow them down. Sara was tall, nearly shoulder-to-shoulder with him. He tried to do some calculations without staring. Angie could almost put her chin on his shoulder if she rose up on her tiptoes. Sara would’ve had to make very little effort to do the same. Her mouth could have reached his ear if she wanted it to.
“So.” She took off her hat, tightened her ponytail. “I’ve been thinking about the trash bags.”
Will glanced her way. “What about them?”
“It’s a powerful message.”
Will hadn’t thought of them as a message—more like a horror. “He thinks they’re trash.”
“And what he does to them—takes away their senses.”
Will glanced at her again.
“See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.”
He nodded, wondering why he hadn’t thought about it that way.
She continued, “I’ve been wondering if there’s some kind of religious angle to this. Actually, something Faith said that first night got me thinking about it. God took Adam’s rib to make Eve.”
“Vesalius,” Will mumbled.
Sara laughed in surprise. “I haven’t heard that name since my first year in medical school.”
Will shrugged, saying a silent prayer of thanks that he’d managed to catch the History Channel’s Great Men of Science week. Andreas Vesalius was an anatomist who, among other things, proved that men and women have the same number of ribs. The Vatican almost put him in prison for his discovery.
Sara continued, “Also, there’s the number eleven.” She paused, as if she expected him to answer. “Eleven trash bags, eleventh rib. There must be a connection.”
Will stopped walking. “What?”
“The women. They each had eleven trash bags inside them. The rib that was taken from Anna was the eleventh rib.”
“You think the killer is hung up on the number eleven?”
Sara continued walking and Will followed. “If you consider how compulsive behaviors manifest themselves, like substance abuse, eating disorders, checking behaviors—where someone feels compelled to check things, like the lock on the door or the stove or the iron—then it makes sense that a serial killer, someone who is compelled to kill, would have a specific pattern he likes to follow, or in this case a specific number that means something to him. It’s why the FBI keeps their database, so you can cross-reference methods and look for patterns. Maybe you could look for something significant surrounding the number eleven.”
“I don’t even know if it’s set up to search that way. I mean, it’s all about things—knives, razors, what they do, generally not how many times they do it unless it’s pretty blatant.”
“You should check the Bible. If there’s a religious significance to the number eleven, then maybe you’ll be able to figure out the killer’s motivation.” She shrugged as if she was finished, but added, “Easter’s this Sunday. That could be part of the pattern, too.”
“Eleven apostles,” he said.
She gave him that strange look again. “You’re right. Judas betrayed Christ. There were only eleven apostles left. There was a twelfth to replace him—Didymus? I can’t remember. I bet my mother would know.” She shrugged again. “Of course, it could all be a waste of your time.”
Will had always been a firm believer that coincidences were generally clues. “It’s something to look into.”
“What about Felix’s mother?”
“She’s just a missing person for now.”
“Did you find the brother?”
“The Atlanta police are looking for him.” Will didn’t want to give away any more than that. Sara worked at Grady, where cops were in and out of the emergency room all day with suspects and witnesses. He added, “We’re not even sure she’s connected to our case.”
“I hope for Felix’s sake she’s not. I can’t imagine what it’s like for him being abandoned, stuck in some awful state home.”
“Those places aren’t so bad,” Will defended. Before he realized what he was saying, he told her, “I grew up in state care.”
She was as surprised as he was, though obviously for different reasons. “How old were you?”
“A kid,” he answered, wishing he could take back his words, but unable to stop adding more. “Infant. Five months.”
“And you weren’t adopted?”
He shook his head. This was getting complicated and—worse—embarrassing.
“My husband and I …” She stared ahead, lost in thought. “We were going to adopt. We’d been on the list for a while and …” She shrugged. “When he was killed, it all … it was just too much.”
Will didn’t know if he was supposed to feel sympathetic, but all he could think about was how many times as a kid he’d gone to a meet-and-greet picnic or barbecue, thinking he’d be going home with his new parents, only to end up back in his room at the children’s home.
He felt inordinately grateful to hear the high-pitched horn from Faith’s Mini, which she’d illegally parked in front of the coffee shop. She got out of the car, leaving the engine running.
“Amanda wants us back at the station.” Faith lifted her chin toward Sara in greeting. “Joelyn Zabel moved up her interview. She’s fitting us in between Good Morning America and CNN. We’ll have to run Betty back home afterward.”
Will had forgotten about the dog in his hand. She had her snout tucked into the space between the buttons on his vest.
“I’ll take her,” Sara offered.
“I couldn’t—”
“I’m home all day doing laundry,” Sara countered. “She’ll be fine. Just come by after work and get her.”
“That’s really—”
Faith was more impatient than usual. “Just give her the dog, Will.” She stomped off back to her car, and Will shot Sara a look of apology.
“The Milk Lofts?” he asked, as if he had forgotten.
Sara took Betty in her hands. He could feel how cold her fingers were as they brushed against his skin. “Betty?” she asked. He nodded, and she told him, “Don’t worry if you’re late. I don’t have any plans.”
She smiled, hefting Betty like she was a glass of wine being offered in a toast.
Will walked across the street and got into Faith’s car, glad that no one else had been in the passenger’s seat since the last time he’d ridden with Faith so he didn’t look like a monkey bending himself into the cramped space.
Faith cut straight to the chase as she pulled away from the curb. “What were you doing with Sara Linton?”
“I just ran into her.” Will wondered why he felt so defensive, which quickly led to him wondering why Faith was being so hostile. He guessed she was still angry with him about his interaction with Max Galloway the day before, and he didn’t know what to do about the situation other than try to distract her. “Sara had an interesting question, or theory, about our case.”
Faith merged into traffic. “I’m dying to hear it.”
Will could tell she wasn’t, but he ran down Sara’s theory for her anyway, highlighting the number eleven, the other points she had raised. “Easter’s this Sunday,” he said. “This could have something to do with the Bible.”
To her credit, Faith seemed to be considering it. “I don’t know,” she finally said. “We could get a Bible back at the station, maybe do a computer search for the number eleven. I’m sure there are a lot of religious nutballs out there with web pages.”
“Where in the Bible does it say something about a rib being taken from Adam to make Eve?”
“Genesis.”
“That’s the old stuff, right? Not the new books.”
“Old Testament. It’s the first book in the Bible. It’s where it all begins.” Faith gave him the same sideways glance Sara had. “I know you can’t read the Bible, but didn’t you go to church?”
“I can read the Bible,” Will shot back. Still, he preferred Faith’s nosiness to her fury, so he kept talking. “Remember where I grew up. Separation of church and state.”
“Oh, I didn’t think about that.”
Probably because it was an enormous lie. The children’s home couldn’t sanction religious activities, but there were volunteers from just about every local church who sent vans to pick up the children every week and cart them off to Sunday School. Will had gone once, realized that it really was a school, where you were expected to read your lessons, then never went back.
Faith pressed, “You’ve never been to church? Really?”
Will shut his mouth, thinking he had foolishly opened the wrong door.
Faith slowed the car as they pulled up to a light. She mumbled to herself, “I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who’s never been to church.”
“Can we change the subject?”
“It’s just strange.”
Will stared blankly out the window, thinking he had been called strange at one point or another by every person he had ever met. The light changed, and the Mini rolled ahead. City Hall East was a five-minute drive from the park. This morning, it seemed to be taking hours.
Faith said, “Even if Sara’s right, she’s doing it again, trying to talk her way onto this case.”
“She’s a coroner. At least, she used to be. She helped Anna at the hospital. It’s normal for her to want to know what’s going on.”
“This is a murder investigation, not Big Brother,” Faith countered. “Does she know where you live?”
Will hadn’t considered the possibility, but he wasn’t as paranoid as Faith. “I don’t see how.”
“Maybe she followed you.”
Will laughed, then stopped when he realized she was being serious. “She lives right down the street. She was just running in the park with her dogs.”
“It’s just all very convenient.”
He shook his head, exasperated. He wasn’t going to let Faith use Sara Linton as a stand-in for her problems with him. “We’ve gotta get past this, Faith. I know you’re ticked at me about yesterday, but going into this interview, we’ve got to be working as a team.”
She accelerated as the light changed. “We are a team.”
For a team, they didn’t talk much the rest of the short trip. It wasn’t until they were at City Hall East, riding up on the elevator, that Faith finally spoke.
“Your tie is crooked.”
Will’s hand went to the knot. Sara Linton probably thought he was a slob. “Better?”
Faith was scrolling through her BlackBerry, even though there was no signal in the elevator. She glanced up and gave him a quick nod before turning her attention back to the device.
He was trying to think of something to say when the doors opened. Amanda was waiting outside the elevator, checking her email just like Faith, except on an iPhone. Will felt like an idiot to be empty-handed, the same way he’d felt when Sara Linton had shown up with her big, impressive dogs and he’d scooped Betty into his palm like a ball of yarn.
Amanda used her finger to scroll through emails, her voice taking on a distracted quality as she led them down the hall toward her office. “Catch me up.”
Faith ran down the list of things they didn’t know, which were innumerable, and the things they did know, which were practically nonexistent. All the while, Amanda read her emails, walking and pretending to listen to Faith tell her what Amanda had surely already read in their report.
Will wasn’t a fan of multitasking, mostly because it was more like half-tasking. It was humanly impossible to give two different things your complete attention. As if to prove this, Amanda looked up from her screen, asking, “What?”
Faith repeated, “Linton thinks there might be a biblical angle.”
Amanda stopped walking. She held the iPhone at her side, giving them her full attention. “Why?”
“Eleventh rib, eleven trash bags, Easter at the end of the week.”
Amanda used her iPhone again, talking as she punched the touch screen. “We’ve got Legal in for Joelyn Zabel. She’s brought her lawyer, so I asked for three of ours. We’ve got to play this as if the world is listening because I’m sure whatever we say to her will be spun back out to the public at large.” She looked at them both meaningfully. “I will do most of the talking. You ask your questions, but don’t extemporize.”
“We’re not going to get anything out of Zabel,” Will said. “Just with the lawyers, we’ve already got four people in the room. Add us and that’s seven, with her at the center of it all, knowing she’s going to have the cameras rolling as soon as she leaves the building. We need to take this down a notch.”
Amanda looked back at her iPhone. “And your brilliant idea for doing this is …?”
Will couldn’t think of one. All he could say was, “Maybe we could talk to her after her television interviews, catch her at her hotel without all the press and attention.”
Amanda did not do him the courtesy of looking up. “Maybe I’ll win the lottery. Maybe you’ll get a promotion. Do you see where these maybes are taking us?”
Frustration and lack of sleep caught up with him. “Then why are we here? Why aren’t you taking Zabel and letting us get on with doing something more useful than giving her source material for her book deal?”
Amanda finally looked up from her iPhone. She handed the device to Will. “I’m at a loss, Agent Trent. Why don’t you read this for me and let me know what you think?”
He felt his vision go sharp, and there was an odd, high-pitched ringing in his ears. The iPhone hung in the air like a well-baited hook. There were words on the screen. That much he could tell. Will tasted blood from biting the edge of his tongue. He reached to take the device, but Faith snatched it from Amanda before he could.
Her voice was terse as she read, “ ‘Eleven generally represents judgment or betrayal in the Bible…. There were eleven commandments originally, but the Catholics combined the first two and the Protestants combined the last two in order to make it an even ten.’ ” She scrolled down. “ ‘The Philistines gave Delilah eleven hundred pieces of silver to bring down Samson. Jesus told eleven parables on the way to his death in Jerusalem.’ ” She paused again, scrolling. “ ‘The Catholic Church accepts eleven books as canonical in the Apocrypha.’ ”
Faith handed back the device to Amanda. “We could do this all day. Flight 11 on 9/11 hit one of the Twin Towers, which themselves looked like the number 11. Apollo 11 made the first moon landing. World War I ended on eleven-eleven. You should get an eleventh circle in hell for what you just did to Will.”
Amanda smiled, tucking the iPhone into her pocket, continuing down the hall. “Remember the rules, children.”
Will didn’t know if she meant the rules that put her in charge or the ones she’d given them about interviewing Joelyn Zabel. There was no time to reflect, however, because Amanda walked through the anteroom to her office and opened the door. She made introductions all around as she went behind her desk and took a seat. Her office was, of course, larger than any other in the building, closer to the size of the conference room on Will and Faith’s floor.
Joelyn Zabel and a man who could only be her lawyer were in the visitors’ seats opposite Amanda. There were two chairs beside Amanda’s desk, one each for Faith and Will, he supposed. The state lawyers were on a couch in the back of the room, three in a row, their black suits and muted silk ties giving them away. Joelyn Zabel’s lawyer was dressed in a blue the color of a shark, which seemed more than fitting, considering his smile reminded Will of the aquatic carnivore.
“Thank you for coming in,” Faith said, shaking the woman’s hand, then taking a seat.
Joelyn Zabel looked like a chubbier version of her sister. Not that she was fat, but she had a healthy curve to her hips whereas Jacquelyn had been boyishly thin. Will caught the scent of cigarette smoke as he shook her hand.
He said, “I’m so sorry about your loss.”
“Trent,” she noted. “You’re the one who found her.”
Will tried to keep eye contact, to not convey the gut-level guilt he still felt for not reaching the woman’s sister in time. All he could think to do was repeat himself. “I’m so sorry about your loss.”
“Yeah,” she snapped. “I got that.”
Will sat down beside Faith, and Amanda clapped her hands together like a kindergarten teacher getting the class’s attention. She rested her hand on top of a manila folder, which Will guessed contained the abridged autopsy summary. Pete had been instructed to leave off the information about the trash bags. Considering the Rockdale County force’s cozy relationship with the press, they were running thin on guilty knowledge to pin down any future suspect.
Amanda began, “Ms. Zabel, I take it you’ve had time to go over the report?”
The lawyer spoke. “I’ll need a copy of that for my files, Mandy.”
Amanda smiled an even sharkier smile than the lawyer had. “Of course, Chuck.”
“Great, so y’all know each other.” Joelyn crossed her arms, her shoulders bunching around her neck. “You want to explain to me what the hell you’re doing to find my sister’s killer?”
Amanda’s smile did not falter. “We’re doing everything we can to—”
“You find a suspect yet? I mean, shit, this guy’s a fucking animal.”
Amanda didn’t answer, which Faith took as her cue to begin. “We agree with you. Whoever did this is an animal. That’s why we need to talk to you about your sister. We need to know about her life. Who her friends were. What her habits were.”
Joelyn’s eyes flashed down a minute, guilty. “I didn’t have much contact with her. We were both pretty busy. She lived in Florida.”
Faith tried to soften things up. “She lived on the Bay, right? Must’ve been nice down there. Good reason to sneak in a vacation with a family visit.”
“Well, yeah, it would’ve been, but the bitch never invited me.”
Her lawyer reached out, touching her arm as a gentle reminder. Will had watched Joelyn Zabel on every major channel, sobbing anew over the tragic death of her sister for each new reporter. He’d not seen one tear drop from her eyes, though she made all the motions of someone who was crying—sniffling, wiping her eyes, rocking back and forth. She wasn’t even doing that now. Apparently, she needed a camera rolling to feel her pain. Even more apparent, the lawyer wasn’t going to let her play anything other than the grieving family member.
Joelyn sniffed, still with no tears. “I loved my sister very much. My mother just moved into a nursing home. She’s got maybe six months left, and this happens to her daughter. The loss of a child is devastating.”
Faith tried to ease into more questions. “Do you have children?”
“Four.” She seemed proud.
“Jacquelyn didn’t have—”
“Fuck no. Three abortions before she was thirty. She was terrified of getting fat. Can you believe that? Her sole reason for flushing them down the toilet is her fucking weight. And then she gets in the shadow of forty, and suddenly she wants to be a mother.”
Faith hid her surprise well. “Was she trying to conceive?”
“Did you not hear me about the abortions? You can look that up. I’m not lying about that.”
Will always assumed that when people insisted they weren’t lying about a particular thing, that meant they were lying about something else. Finding out the what else would be the key to Joelyn Zabel. She didn’t strike him as a particularly caring person, and she would want to make sure her ten minutes of fame stretched out as long as possible.
Faith asked, “Was Jackie looking for a surrogate?”
Joelyn seemed to realize how important her words were. She suddenly had everyone’s rapt attention. She took her time answering. “Adoption.”
“Private? Public?”
“Who the fuck knows? She had a lot of money. She was used to buying what she wanted.” She was gripping the arms of her chair, and Will could see this was a subject she liked talking about. “That’s the real tragedy here—not being able to see her adopt some reject retard who ends up stealing from her or going schizophrenic on her ass.”
Will could feel Faith stiffen beside him. He took over the questioning. “When was the last time you talked to your sister?”
“About a month ago. She was waxing on about motherhood, like she understands the first thing about it. Talking about adopting some kid from China or Russia or something. You know, some of those kids turn out to be killers. They’re abused, just sick in the head. They’re never right.”
“We see that a lot.” Will shook his head sadly, like this was a common tragedy. “Was she making any progress? Do you know what agency she was working with?”
She turned reticent when pressed for details. “Jackie wasn’t into sharing. She was always phobic about her privacy.” She jerked her head toward the state lawyers, who were doing their best to blend in with the upholstery. “I know those tools sitting on the couch aren’t going to let you apologize, but you could at least acknowledge that you fucked up.”
Amanda jumped back in. “Ms. Zabel, the autopsy shows—”
Joelyn gave a belligerent half-shrug. “All it shows is what I already know: You dumbasses were standing around doing nothing while my sister died.”
“Perhaps you didn’t read the report carefully enough, Ms. Zabel.” Amanda’s voice was gentle sounding, the soothing sort of tone she’d used earlier in the hall before humiliating Will. “Your sister took her own life.”
“Only because y’all weren’t doing a damn thing to help her.”
“You realize that she was blind and deaf?” Amanda asked.
Will could tell from the way that Zabel’s eyes shifted to the lawyer that she had not, in fact, realized this.
Amanda removed another folder from the top drawer of her desk. She thumbed through it, and he could see color photos of Jacquelyn Zabel in the tree, in the morgue. Will found this particularly cruel, even for Amanda. No matter how horrible Joelyn Zabel was, she had still lost her sister in the worst way. He saw Faith shift in her seat and knew she was thinking the same thing.
Amanda took her time searching for the right page, which seemed to be buried among the worst of the photographs. Finally, she found the passage relating to the external examination of the body. “Second paragraph,” she said.
Joelyn hesitated before sitting on the edge of her seat. She was trying to get a better look at the photos the way some people slow down to look at a particularly terrible car accident. Finally, she sat back with the report. Will watched her eyes move back and forth as she read, but then they suddenly stopped tracking, and he knew that she wasn’t seeing anything at all.
Her throat worked as she swallowed. She stood up, mumbling “Excuse me” as she bolted from the room.
The air seemed to leave with her. Faith stared straight ahead. Amanda took her time stacking the photos into a neat pile.
The lawyer said, “Not nice, Mandy.”
“Them’s the breaks, Chuck.”
Will stood. “I’m going to stretch my legs.”
He left the room before anyone could respond. Caroline, Amanda’s secretary, was at her desk. Will lifted his chin, and she whispered, “In the bathroom.”
Will walked down the hall, hands in his pockets. He stopped in front of the women’s-room door, pressing it open with his foot. He leaned in. Joelyn Zabel stood in front of the mirror. She had a lighted cigarette in her hand, and she startled when she saw Will.
“You can’t be in here,” she snapped, holding up her fist like she expected some kind of fight.
“No smoking is allowed in the building.” Will walked into the room and put his back against the closed door, keeping his hands in his pockets.
“What are you doing in here?”
“I wanted to make sure you were okay.”
She took a hard hit off the cigarette. “By barging into the ladies’ room? This is off-limits, okay? It’s not allowed.”
Will glanced around. He had never been in a women’s restroom before. There was a comfortable-looking couch with flowers in a vase on the table beside it. The air had the scent of perfume, the paper dispensers were stocked and there was no water splashed around the basin so that you got the front of your pants wet when you washed your hands. It was no wonder women spent so much time in this place.
“Hello?” Joelyn asked. “Crazy man? Get out of the ladies’ room.”
“What aren’t you telling me?”
“I told you everything I know.”
He shook his head. “Cameras aren’t rolling in here. No lawyers, no audience. Tell me what you’re not telling me.”
“Fuck off.”
He felt the door being gently pressed against his back, then close just as quickly. He said, “You didn’t like your sister.”
“No shit, Sherlock.” Her hand shook as she took another hit of smoke into her lungs.
“What did she do to you?”
“She was a bitch.”
The same could be said for Joelyn, but Will kept that to himself. “Was there any specific way this manifested itself toward you, or is that just a general statement?”
She stared at him. “What the hell does that mean?”
“It means that I don’t care what you’re going to do after you leave here. Sue the state. Don’t sue the state. Sue me personally. I don’t care. Whoever killed your sister probably has someone else—some woman who’s being tortured and raped right now as we speak—and your keeping something from me is just as good as saying that what’s happening to this other woman is okay.”
“Don’t put that on me.”
“Then tell me what you’re hiding.”
“I’m not hiding anything.” She turned from the mirror, wiping under her eyes with her fingers so she wouldn’t smudge her makeup. “It’s Jackie who was hiding things.”
Will kept silent.
“She was always secretive, always acting like she was better than me.”
He nodded, like he got it.
“She got all the attention, all the boyfriends.” She shook her head, turning to face Will. She leaned against the counter, hand beside the sink. “My weight went up and down when I was a kid. Jackie used to tease me about being beached whenever we’d go to lay out.”
“You’ve obviously outgrown that problem.”
She shook off the compliment, disbelieving. “Everything always came so easy to her. Money, men, success. People liked her.”
“Not really,” Will disagreed. “None of her neighbors seem too shaken up that she’s missing. They didn’t even notice until the cops knocked on their doors. I got the feeling they were relieved she’s gone.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Your mother’s neighbor, Candy, doesn’t seem too broken up about it, either.”
She was obviously unconvinced. “No, Jackie said Candy was like a toy poodle nipping at her heels, always wanting to hang out with her.”
“That’s not true,” Will said. “Candy wasn’t very fond of her. I’d even say she was less fond of your sister than you are.”
She finished the cigarette, then went into one of the stalls to flush it down the toilet. Will could see her processing this new information about her sister, liking it. Joelyn went back to the sink, leaned against the counter again. “She was always a liar. Lied about little things, things that didn’t even matter.”
“Like what?”
“Like, that she was going to the store when she was going to the library. Like that she was dating one guy when she was really dating another one.”
“Seems kind of devious.”
“She was. That’s a perfect word for her—‘devious.’ She drove our mother nuts.”
“Did she get into much trouble?”
Joelyn snorted a laugh. “Jackie was always the teacher’s pet, always sucking up to the right people. She had them all fooled.”
“Not all of them,” Will pointed out. “You said she drove your mother nuts. Your mom must’ve known what was going on.”
“She did. Spent all kinds of money trying to get Jackie help. It ruined my fucking childhood. Everything was always about Jackie—how she was feeling, what she was out doing, whether she was happy. Nobody worried whether or not I was happy.”
“Tell me about this adoption thing. What agency was she talking to?”
Joelyn looked down, guilt flashing in her eyes.
Will kept his tone neutral. “This is why I’m asking: If Jackie was trying to adopt a child, we’re going to have to go to Florida and find the agency. If there’s an overseas connection, we might have to go to Russia or China to see if their operations are legitimate. If Jackie was trying to contract with a surrogate at home, we’ll have to talk to every woman who might have spoken to her. We’ll have to dig into every agency down there until we find something, anything, that connects to your sister, because she met a very bad person who tortured and raped her for at least a week, and if we can find out how your sister met her abductor, then maybe we can find out who that man is.” He let her consider his words for a few seconds. “Will we find a connection through an adoption agency, Joelyn?”
She looked down at her hands, not answering. Will counted the tiles on the wall behind her head. He was at thirty-six when she finally spoke. “I just said that—the stuff about getting a kid. Jackie was talking about it, but she wasn’t going to do it. She liked the idea of being a mother, but she knew she would never be able to pull it off.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“It’s like when people are around well trained dogs, you know? They want a dog, but they want that dog, not a new one they’d have to work with and train on their own.”
“Did she like your kids?”
Joelyn cleared her throat. “She never met them.”
Will gave the woman some time. “She was picked up on a DUI before she died.”
Joelyn was surprised. “Really?”
“Was she much of a drinker?”
She shook her head vehemently. “Jackie didn’t like being out of control.”
“The neighbor, Candy, says they smoked some grass together.”
Her lips parted in surprise. She shook her head again. “I don’t buy it. Jackie never did shit like that. She liked it when other people drank too much, got out of hand, but she never did it herself. You’re talking about a woman who’s weighed the same weight since she was sixteen years old. Her ass was so tight it squeaked when she walked.” She thought about it some more, shook her head again. “No, not Jackie.”
“Why was she cleaning out your mother’s house? Why not pay someone else to do the dirty work?”
“She didn’t trust anybody else. She always had the right way to do things, and whoever you were, you were always doing it wrong.”
That, at least, jibed with what Candy said. Everything else was a completely different picture, which made sense considering that Joelyn was not particularly close to her sister. He asked, “Does the number eleven mean anything to you?”
She furrowed her brow. “Not a damn thing.”
“What about the words ‘I will not deny myself’?”
She shook her head again. “But it’s funny … As rich as she was, Jackie denied herself all the time.”
“Denied herself what?”
“Food. Alcohol. Fun.” She gave a rueful laugh. “Friends. Family. Love.” Her eyes filled with tears—the first real tears Will had seen her cry. He pushed away from the door and left, finding Faith waiting in the hallway for him.
“Anything?” she asked.
“She lied about the adoption thing. At least she said she did.”
“We can check it out with Candy.” Faith took out her phone and flipped it open. She talked to Will as she dialed. “We were supposed to meet Rick Sigler at the hospital ten minutes ago. I called him to postpone, but he didn’t pick up.”
“What about his friend, Jake Berman?”
“I put some uniforms on it first thing. They’re supposed to call if they find him.”
“You think it’s odd that we can’t track him down?”
“Not yet, but talk to me at the end of the day if we still can’t find him.” She put the phone to her ear, and Will listened as she left a message for Candy Smith to return her call. Faith closed the phone and gripped it in her hand. Will felt dread well up inside him, wondering what she was going to say next—something about Amanda, a diatribe against Sara Linton, or Will himself. Thankfully, it was about the case.
She said, “I think Pauline McGhee is part of this.”
“Why?”
“It’s just gut. I can’t explain it, but it’s too coincidental.”
“McGhee is still Leo’s case. We’ve got no jurisdiction over it, no reason to ask him for a piece of it.” Still, Will had to ask, “You think you can nuance him?”
She shook her head. “I don’t want to make trouble for Leo.”
“He’s supposed to call you, right? When he tracks down Pauline’s parents in Michigan?”
“That’s what he said he’d do.”
They stood at the elevator, both quiet.
Will said, “I think we need to go to Pauline’s work.”
“I think you’re right.”