—
When you pulled the trigger on a taser, two hooked probes were propelled by an inert nitrogen gas, shooting them out at about 160 feet per second. In civilian units, fifteen feet of insulated, conductive wire facilitated fifty thousand volts being delivered to whomever the probes latched onto. The electrical pulses interrupted sensory and motor function as well as the central nervous system. Will had been shot with a Taser during a training session. He still could not remember the time frame immediately before or after the charge hit him, only that Amanda had been the one to pull the trigger and she had been sporting an incredibly pleased grin when he had finally been able to stand up.
Like bullets in a gun, the Taser devices required cartridges that were preloaded with the wires and probes. Because the Constitutional framers were unable to predict the existence of such a device, there was no inalienable right attached to owning a Taser. Some bright thinker had managed to insert one codicil into their manufacture: All Taser cartridges had to be loaded with AFIDS, or Anti-Felon Identification Dots, which scattered out by the hundreds each time a cartridge was fired. At first glance, these small dots looked like confetti. The design was on purpose; the tiny pieces were so vast in number that it was impossible for a perpetrator to pick them all up to cover his trail. The beauty was that, under magnification, the confetti revealed a serial number that identified which cartridge they came from. Because Taser International wanted to keep the legal community on their side, they had enacted their own tracing program. All you had to do was call them up with the serial number from one of the dots and they would give you the name and address of the person who had purchased the cartridge.
Faith was on hold for less than three minutes when the company came back with a name.
“Shit,” she whispered, then, realizing she was still on the phone, she added, “No. Thank you. That’s all I need.” She closed her cell phone as she reached down to crank the key in the Mini’s ignition. “The Taser cartridge was purchased by Pauline Seward. The address listed is the vacant house behind Olivia Tanner’s place.”
“How were the cartridges paid for?”
“With an American Express gift card. No name on the card. It’s untraceable.” She gave him a meaningful glance. “The cartridges were purchased two months ago, which means he’s been watching Olivia Tanner for at least that long. And since he used Pauline’s name, we have to assume that he was planning on taking her, too.”
“The vacant house is owned by the bank—not the one where Olivia works.” Will had called the number on the Realtor’s sign in the front yard while Faith was dealing with Taser. “It’s been empty almost a year. No one’s looked at it in six months.”
Faith turned, backing out of the driveway. Will raised his hand at Michael Tanner, who was sitting in his Ford Escape, hands gripping the wheel.
Will said, “I didn’t recognize the Taser dots on Felix’s book bag.”
“Why would you? It was confetti on a kid’s satchel. You need a magnifying glass to read the serial numbers.” She added, “If you want to blame someone, blame the Atlanta police for not picking up on it at the scene. Their forensic guys were there. They must have vacuumed the carpets in the car. They just haven’t processed it yet because a missing woman isn’t a priority.”
“The address for the cartridge would have led us to the house behind Olivia Tanner’s.”
“Olivia Tanner was already missing when you saw Felix’s book bag.” She repeated, “The Atlanta police processed the scene. They’re the ones who screwed up.” Faith’s phone rang. She checked the caller ID and decided not to answer it. She laid it out for him. “Besides, knowing the Taser dots on Felix’s bag are from the same lot as the dots we found in Olivia Tanner’s backyard hasn’t exactly given us a huge break. All it tells us is that our bag guy has been planning this for a while and that he’s good at covering his tracks. We knew that when we got up this morning.”
Will thought they knew a lot more than that. They had a link now that tied the women together. “We’ve got Pauline connected to the other victims—‘I will not deny myself’ ties her to Anna and Jackie, and the Taser dots tie her to Olivia.” He thought about it for a few seconds, wondering what else he was missing.
Faith was on the same page. “Let’s go through this from the beginning. What do we have?”
“Pauline and Olivia were both taken yesterday. Both women were shot with the same Taser cartridge.”
“Pauline, Jackie and Olivia all had eating disorders. We’re assuming Anna does, too, right?”
Will shrugged. It wasn’t a big leap, but it was an unknown. “Yeah, let’s assume.”
“None of the women had friends who would miss them. Jackie had the neighbor, Candy, but Candy wasn’t exactly a confidante. All three are attractive, thin, with dark hair, dark eyes. All three worked in well-paid jobs.”
“All of them lived in Atlanta except for Jackie,” Will said, throwing out a flag. “So, how did Jackie get targeted? She’d only been in Atlanta a week, tops, just to clean out her mother’s house.”
“She must have come up before then to help move her mother to the nursing home in Florida,” Faith guessed. “And we’re forgetting the chat room. They could’ve all met there.”
“Olivia didn’t have a computer at home.”
“She could’ve had a laptop that was stolen.”
Will scratched his arm, thinking about that first night in the cave, all the maddening non-clues they had followed up on since, all the brick walls they kept hitting. “This feels like it all starts with Pauline.”
“She was the fourth victim.” Faith considered the situation. “He could’ve been saving the best for last.”
“Pauline wasn’t taken from her home like we assume the other women were. She was taken in broad daylight. Her kid was in the car. She was missed at work because she had an important meeting. The other women weren’t missed by anyone except for Olivia, and there was no way to know that Olivia made that phone call every day to her brother unless our bad guy tapped her phone, which he obviously didn’t.”
“What about Pauline’s brother?” Faith asked. “I keep coming back to the fact that she was scared enough about him to mention him to her son. We can’t find a record of him anywhere. He could have changed his name like Pauline did when she was seventeen.”
Will listed all the men who had come up during the investigation. “Henry Coldfield is too old and has a heart problem. Rick Sigler has lived in Georgia all his life. Jake Berman—who knows?”
Faith tapped her fingers on the steering wheel, deep in thought. Finally she came up with, “Tom Coldfield.”
“He’s around your age. He would’ve been barely pubescent when Pauline ran away.”
“You’re right,” she conceded. “Besides, the Air Force psych evaluation would have flagged him up big-time.”
“Michael Tanner,” Will suggested. “He’s the right age.”
“I’ve got a background check running on him. They would’ve called if something hit.”
“Morgan Hollister.”
“They’re running him, too,” Faith said. “He didn’t seem really cut up about Pauline being gone.”
“Felix said that the man who took his mother was dressed in a suit like Morgan from work.”
“Surely, Felix would’ve recognized Morgan?”
“In a fake mustache?” Will shook his head. “I don’t know. Let’s keep Morgan on the list. We can talk to him at the end of the day if nothing else has come up.”
“He’s old enough to be her brother, but why would she work with him if he was?”
“People do stupid things when they’re being abused,” Will reminded her. “We need to check with Leo and see what he’s come up with. He was working the Michigan police, trying to track down Pauline’s parents. She ran away from home. Who did she run away from?”
“The brother,” Faith said, bringing them back full circle. Her phone rang again. She let it go into voice mail before opening it and dialing in a number. “I’ll see where Leo is. He’s probably out in the field.”
Will offered, “I’ll call Amanda and tell her we need to formally take over the Pauline McGhee case.” He opened his phone just as the stutter of a ring came out. Since the phone had been broken, it had been doing unusual things. Will pressed his ear to the device, saying, “Hello?”
“Hey.” Her voice was cool, casual, like warm honey in his ear. His mind flashed on the image of the mole on her calf, the way he could feel it under his palm when he ran his hand up her leg. “You there?”
Will glanced at Faith, feeling a cold sweat break out over his body. “Yeah.”
“Long time.”
He glanced at Faith again. “Yeah,” he repeated. About eight months had passed since he had come home from work to find Angie’s toothbrush missing from the cup in the bathroom.
She asked, “What’re you up to?”
Will swallowed, trying to generate some spit. “Working a case.”
“That’s good. I figured you were busy.”
Faith had finished her call. She was looking at the road ahead, but if she had been a cat, her ear would’ve been cocked in his direction.
He told Angie, “I guess this is about your friend?”
“Lola’s got some good intel.”
“That’s not really my side of the job,” he told her. The GBI didn’t start cases. They finished them.
“Some pimp’s turned a penthouse into a drug pad. They’ve got all kinds of shit lying around like candy. Talk to Amanda about it. She’ll look good on the six o’clock news standing in front of all that dope.”
Will tried to concentrate on what she was saying. There was just the whir of the Mini’s engine and Faith’s ever-listening ear.
“You there, baby?”
He said, “Not interested.”
“Just pass it on for me. It’s the penthouse in an apartment building called Twenty-one Beeston Place. The name is the same as the address. Twenty-one Beeston.”
“I can’t help you with that.”
“Repeat it back to me so I know you’ll remember it.”
Will’s hands were sweating so much that he worried the phone might slip from his grasp. “Twenty-one Beeston Place.”
“I’ll owe you one.”
He couldn’t resist. “You owe me a million.” But it was too late. She had already hung up the phone. Will kept it to his ear, then said, “All right. Bye,” like he was having a normal conversation with a normal person. To make matters worse, the phone slipped as he tried to close it, the string finally ripping out from under the duct tape. Wires he had never seen before jutted out of the back of the phone.
He heard Faith’s mouth open, the smacking of her lips. He told her, “Leave it be.”
She closed her mouth, kept her hands tight on the wheel as she made a turn against the light. “I called central dispatch. Leo’s on North Avenue. Double homicide.”
The car sped up as Faith blew through a light. Will loosened his tie, thinking it was warm in the car. His arms were starting to itch again. He felt light-headed.
“I’ll try to get Amanda to—”
“Angie was calling in a tip.” The words flooded out before he could stop them. His mind raced to think of a way to get out of saying more, but his mouth hadn’t gotten the memo to shut up. “Some Buckhead penthouse has been turned into a drug den.”
“Oh” was all Faith offered.
“She’s got this girl she used to know back when she worked vice. A prostitute. Lola. She wants out of jail. She’s willing to flip on the dealers.”
“Is it a good tip?”
Will could only shrug. “Probably.”
“Are you going to help her?”
He shrugged again.
“Angie’s an ex-cop. Doesn’t she know somebody in narcotics?”
Will let her figure it out. Angie wasn’t exactly good at leaving bridges unburned. She tended to light them with glee, then throw gasoline on the flames.
Faith obviously reached the same conclusion. She offered, “I can make some calls for you. No one will know you’re involved.”
He tried to swallow, but his mouth was still too dry. He hated that Angie had this effect on him. He hated it even more that Faith was getting a front-row seat to his misery. He asked, “What did Leo say?”
“He’s not answering his phone, probably because he knows it’s me calling.” As if on cue, her phone rang again. Faith checked the ID and again didn’t answer it. Will figured he didn’t have a right to ask her what that was about, considering he’d put a moratorium on discussions of his own phone calls.
He cleared his throat a few times so he could speak without sounding like a pubescent boy. “A Taser gun means distance. He would’ve used a stun gun on them if he was able to get close enough.”
Faith returned to their original conversation. “What else have we got?” she asked. “We’re waiting for DNA results from Jacquelyn Zabel. We’re waiting to hear back from the tech department on Zabel’s laptop and the computer from Pauline’s office. We’re waiting to hear back on any forensic evidence from the vacant house behind Olivia’s.”
Will heard a distinct buzzing, and Faith pulled out her Black-Berry. She drove with one hand as she read the screen. “Phone dump on Olivia Tanner’s line.” She scrolled through. “One number every morning around seven o’clock to Houston, Texas.”
“Seven our time is six Houston time,” Will said. “That’s the only number she called?”
Faith nodded. “Going back for months. She probably used her cell for most of her calls.” She tucked the BlackBerry back in her pocket. “Amanda’s working on a warrant for the bank. They were nice enough to cross-reference their accounts for our missing women’s names—no matches—but they’re not going to give us access to Olivia’s computer, phone or email without a fight. Something about federal banking law. We have to get into that chat room.”
“I have to think if she was using an online group, she’d have access at home.”
“Her brother says she’s at work all the time.”
“Maybe they all met in person. Like AA or a knitting group.”
“It’s hardly something you can pin up on the community bulletin board. ‘Like starving yourself to death? Come join us!’ ”
“How else would they all meet?”
“Jackie is a Realtor, Olivia is a banker who doesn’t write mortgages, Pauline is an interior designer, and Anna does whatever she does—probably something equally as lucrative.” She gave a heavy sigh. “It has to be the chat room, Will. How else would they all know each other?”
“Why do they have to know each other?” he countered. “The only person they have to know is the abductor. Who would have contact with women working in all those different fields?”
“Janitor, cable guy, trash man, exterminator …”
“Amanda’s had information processing going through all those things. If there was a connection, it would be evident by now.”
“Forgive me for not holding out hope. They’ve had two days and they can’t even find Jake Berman.” She cut the wheel, turning onto North Avenue. Two Atlanta police cruisers blocked the scene. They could see Leo in the distance, his hands waving wildly as he screamed at some poor kid in uniform.
Faith’s phone rang again. She dropped it into her pocket as she got out of the car. “I’m not on Leo’s favorite list right now. Maybe you should do the talking.”
Will agreed that was best, especially considering the fact that Leo already looked a couple of notches beyond furious. He was still yelling at the cop when they approached him. Every other word was “fuck” and his face was so red Will wondered if he might be having a heart attack.
Overhead, a police helicopter hovered, what the locals called a ghetto bird. The chopper was so close to the ground that Will could feel his eardrums pulsing. Leo waited for it to move on before demanding, “What the fuck are you doing here?”
Will said, “That missing persons case you gave us—Olivia Tanner. There were Taser dots at the scene that trace back to a cartridge purchased by Pauline Seward.”
Leo muttered another “Fuck.”
“We also found some evidence at Pauline McGhee’s office that connects her back to the cave.”
Leo’s curiosity got the better of him. “You think Pauline’s your doer?”
Will hadn’t even considered the thought. “No, we think she’s been taken by the same man who took the other women. We need to know as much as we can—”
“Not much to tell,” he interrupted. “I talked to Michigan this morning. I was sitting on it, since your partner’s such a ray of fucking sunshine lately.”
Faith opened her mouth but Will held out his hand to stop her. “What did you find out?”
Leo said, “I talked to an old-timer they got on the desk. Name’s Dick Winters. Been on the job thirty years and they got him straddling the phones. You believe that shit?”
“Did he remember Pauline?”
“Yeah, he remembered her. She was a good-looking kid. Sounded like the old guy had a boner for her.”
Will could not possibly care less right now about some skuzzy old cop bird dogging a teenager. “What happened?”
“He picked her up a couple of times for shoplifting, drinking too much and gettin’ loud about it. He never ran her in—just took her back home, told her to straighten up. She was underage, but when she hit seventeen, it was harder to sweep it under the rug. Some store owner got a bee up his ass and pressed charges for the shoplifting. The old cop visits the family to help them out, sees something ain’t right. He tucks his dick back in his pants, realizes it’s time for him to do his job. The girl’s got problems at school, problems at home. She tells the cop that she’s being abused.”
“Was social services called in?”
“Yeah, but little Pauline disappeared before they could talk to her.”
“Did the cop remember the names? The parents? Anything?”
Leo shook his head. “Nothing. Just Pauline Seward.” He snapped his fingers. “He did say there was a brother kind of touched in the head, if you know what I mean. Just a strange little fucker.”
“Strange how?”
“Weird. You know how it is. You get a vibe.”
Will had to ask again, “But the cop doesn’t remember his name?”
“All the records are sealed because she was a juvenile. Throw in family court, and that’s another obstacle,” Leo said. “You’re gonna need a warrant in Michigan to get them open. This was twenty years ago. There was some kind of fire in records ten years back, the old guy says. Might not even be a file to look up.”
“Exactly twenty years?” Faith asked.
Leo gave her a sideways look. “Twenty years come Easter.”
Will wanted to get this straight. “Pauline McGhee, or Seward, went missing twenty years from this Sunday, Easter Sunday?”
“No,” Leo said. “Easter was in March twenty years ago.”
Faith asked, “Did you look it up?”
He shrugged. “It’s always the Sunday following the first full moon that occurs after the spring equinox.”
Will took a minute to realize he was speaking English. It was like a cat barking. “Are you sure?”
“Do you really think I’m that stupid?” he asked. “Shit, don’t answer that. The old guy was sure of it. Pauline bunked on March twenty-sixth. Easter Sunday.”
Will tried to do the math, but Faith beat him to it. “Two weeks ago. That could fit around the time Sara said Anna was probably abducted.” Her phone rang again. “Jesus,” she hissed, checking the caller ID. She flipped open the phone. “What do you want?”
Faith’s expression changed from extreme annoyance to shock, then disbelief. “Oh, my God.” Her hand went to her chest.
Will could only think of Jeremy, Faith’s son.
“What’s the address?” Her mouth dropped open in surprise. “Beeston Place.”
Will said, “That’s where Angie—”
“We’ll be right there.” Faith closed her phone. “That was Sara. Anna woke up. She’s talking.”
“What did she say about Beeston Place?”
“That’s where she lives—they live. Anna has a six-month-old baby, Will. The last time she saw him was at her penthouse at Twenty-one Beeston Place.”
Will had jumped behind the wheel, slamming back the seat, taking off before Faith had even shut her door. He’d raked the gears, pushing the Mini into every turn, bouncing across metal plates covering road construction. On Piedmont, he’d bumped across the median, using the oncoming lane to swerve around traffic at the light. Faith had sat quietly beside him, holding on to the handle over the door, but he could see her teeth gritted with each bump and turn.
Faith said, “Tell me again what she said.”
Will didn’t want to think about Angie right now, didn’t want to consider that she might know there was a kid involved, a baby whose mother had been stolen, a child who had been left alone in a penthouse apartment that had been turned into a crack den.
“Drugs,” he told Faith. “That’s all she said—they were using it as a drug pad.”
She was silent as he downshifted, making a wide turn onto Peachtree Street. Traffic was light for this time of day, which meant that there was a line of cars backed up a quarter of a mile. Will used the oncoming lane again, finally jumping onto the narrow shoulder to avoid a dump truck. Faith’s hands slammed palm-down on the dashboard as he banked into a turn, sliding to a stop in front of Beeston Place Apartments.
The car rocked as Will got out. He ran to the entrance. He could hear the sirens of distant cruisers, an ambulance. The doorman was behind a tall counter reading a newspaper. He was plump, his uniform too small for his large gut.
Will pulled out his ID and flashed it in the man’s face. “I need to get into the penthouse.”
The doorman gave one of the surliest smiles in Will’s recent memory. “You do, do you?” He spoke with an accent, Russian or Ukrainian.
Faith joined them, out of breath. She squinted at his nametag. “Mr. Simkov, this is important. We think a child might be in jeopardy.”
He gave a helpless shrug. “No one gets in unless they’re on the list, and since you’re not on the—”
Will felt something inside of him break. Before he knew what was happening, his hand shot out, grabbing Simkov by the back of his neck and slamming his head into the marble countertop.
“Will!” Faith gasped, her voice going up in surprise.
“Give me the key,” Will demanded, pressing harder against the man’s skull.
“Pocket,” Simkov managed, his mouth pressed so hard against the counter that his teeth scraped the surface.
Will jerked him closer, checked his front pockets and found a ring of keys. He tossed them to Faith, then walked into the open elevator car, fists clenched at his sides.
Faith pressed the button for the penthouse. “Christ,” she whispered. “You’ve proven your point, all right? You can be a tough guy. Now back off it.”
“He watches the door.” Will was so furious he could barely form the words. “He knows everything going on in this building. He’s got the keys to every apartment, including Anna’s.”
She seemed to get that he wasn’t putting on a show. “All right. You’re right. Let’s just take things down a notch, okay? We don’t know what we’re going to find up there.”
Will could feel the tendons in his arms vibrating. The elevator doors opened onto the penthouse floor. He stalked into the hall and waited for Faith to find the correctly labeled key to open the door. She found it, and he put his hand over hers, taking over.
Will didn’t go gently. He took out his gun and slammed the door open.
“Ugh,” Faith gagged, holding her hand to her nose.
Will smelled it, too—that sickly sweet mixture of burning plastic and cotton candy.
“Crack,” she said, waving her hand in front of her face.
“Look.” He pointed to the foyer just inside the door. Curled pieces of confetti had dried in a yellow liquid on the floor. Taser dots.
There was a long hallway in front of him, two doors on one side, both closed. Ahead, he could see the living room. Couches were overturned, their stuffing torn out. Trash was everywhere. A large man lay facedown in the hall, his arms splayed, head turned to the wall. His shirtsleeve was rolled up. A tourniquet was tied around his biceps. A syringe was jutting out of his arm.
Will pointed his Glock in front of him as he went down the hall. Faith took out her own weapon, but he signaled for her to wait. Will could already smell the body decaying, but he checked for a pulse just in case. There was a gun by the man’s foot, a Smith & Wesson revolver with a custom gold grip that made it look like the kind of thing you used to find in the toy section of a dime store. Will kicked the gun away, even though the man was never going to reach for it.
Will motioned in Faith, then went back to the first closed door in the hallway. He waited until she was ready, then threw open the door. It was a closet, all the coats piled onto the floor in a heap. Will kicked the pile with his foot, checking under the coats before going to the next closed door. He waited for Faith again, then kicked open the door.
They both gagged at the stench. The toilet was overflowing. Feces was smeared on the dark onyx walls. A dark brown liquid had puddled in the sink. Will felt his skin crawl. The smell of the room reminded him of the cave where Anna and Jackie had been kept.
He pulled the door closed and indicated that Faith should follow him down the hall toward the main room. They had to step over broken glass, needles, condoms. A white T-shirt was wadded into a ball, blood smeared on the outside. A sneaker was upended beside it, the laces still tied.
The kitchen was off the living room. Will checked behind the island, making sure no one was there, while Faith picked her way around upended furniture and more broken glass.
She said, “Clear.”
“Me too.” Will opened the cabinet under the sink, looking for the trashcan. The bag was white, just like the ones they had found inside the women. The can was empty, the only clean thing in the whole apartment.
“Coke,” Faith guessed, indicating a couple of white bricks on the coffee table. Pipes were scattered around. Needles, rolled-up bills, razor blades. “What a mess. I can’t believe people were living in this.”
Will was never surprised by the depths to which a junkie would stoop, or by the destruction that followed them. He had seen nice suburban houses turned into dilapidated meth dens over the course of a few days. “Where’d everybody go?”
She shrugged. “A dead body wouldn’t scare them enough to leave this much coke behind.” She glanced back at the dead man. “Maybe he’s supposed to be security.”
They searched the rest of the place together. Three bedrooms, one of them a nursery decorated in shades of blue, and two more bathrooms. All of the toilets and sinks were backed up. The sheets were balled up on the beds, the mattresses were overturned. Clothes were ripped out of the closets. All the televisions were gone. There was a keyboard and mouse on the desk in one of the spare rooms, but no computer. Obviously, whoever had taken over the place had stripped it bare.
Will holstered his gun as he stood at the end of the hallway. Two paramedics and a uniformed patrolman were waiting at the front door. He motioned them in.
“Dead as a doornail,” one of the paramedics pronounced, doing only a cursory check for vitals on the junkie by the coat closet.
The cop said, “My partner’s talking to the doorman.” He used a measured tone, directing his words toward Will. “Looks like he fell. Hit his eye.”
Faith shoved her gun into its holster. “Those floors are pretty slippery downstairs.”
The cop nodded his complicity. “Looked slippery.”
Will returned to the nursery. He riffled through the baby clothes on tiny hangers in the closet. He went back to the crib and lifted the mattress.
“Be careful,” Faith warned. “There could be needles.”
“He doesn’t take the kids,” he said, more to himself than Faith. “He takes the women, but he leaves the kids.”
“Pauline wasn’t abducted from her house.”
“Pauline is different.” He reminded her, “Olivia was taken in her backyard. Anna was taken at her front door. You saw the Taser dots. I bet Jackie Zabel was taken at her mother’s house.”
“Maybe a friend has Anna’s baby.”
Will stopped searching, surprised by the desperation in Faith’s tone. “Anna doesn’t have friends. None of these women have friends. That’s why he takes them.”
“It’s been at least a week, Will.” Faith’s voice shook. “Look around you. This place is a mess.”
“You want to turn the apartment over to crime scene?” he asked, leaving the rest of the question unspoken: You want someone else to find the body?
Faith tried another tack. “Sara said that Anna told her that her last name is Lindsey. She’s a corporate lawyer. We can call her office and see—”
Gently, Will lifted the plastic liner of the diaper pail beside the changing table. The diapers were old, certainly not the source of the more pungent smells in the apartment.
“Will—”
He went to the attached bathroom and checked the trash there. “I want to talk to the doorman.”
“Why don’t you let—”
Will left the room before she had finished. He walked into the living room again, checking under the couches, pulling the stuffing out of some of the chairs to see if anything—anyone—was hidden inside.
The cop was testing the coke, pleased with what he found. “This is a righteous bust. I need to call this in.”
“Give me a minute,” Will told him.
One of the paramedics asked, “You want us to stick around?”
Faith said “No” just as Will said “Yes.”
He made himself clear. “Don’t go anywhere.”
Faith asked the man, “Do you know an EMT named Rick Sigler?”
“Rick? Yeah,” the guy said, like he was surprised she’d asked.
Will blocked out their conversation. He went back to the front powder room, breathing through his mouth so the shit and piss wouldn’t make him throw up. He closed the door, then went back to the front entrance, the confetti dots. He stooped down to study them. He was pretty sure they were in dried urine.
Will stood, going out into the hall and looking back in at the apartment. Anna’s penthouse took up the entire top floor of the building. There were no other units, no neighbors. No one who could hear her scream or see her attacker.
The killer would’ve stood outside her door where Will stood now. He glanced down the hall, thinking the man might’ve come up the stairs—or maybe down. There was a fire exit. He could’ve been on the roof. Or maybe the worthless doorman would’ve let him in through the front entrance, even pressed the button for him on the elevator. There was a peephole in Anna’s penthouse door. She would’ve checked it first. All of these women were cautious. Who would she let in? A delivery person. Maintenance. Maybe the doorman.
Faith was coming toward him. Her face was unreadable, but he knew her well enough to know what she was thinking: It’s time to go.
Will looked down the hall again. There was another door halfway down on the wall opposite the apartment.
Faith said, “Will—” but he was already heading for the closed door. He opened it. There was a small metal door inside for the trash chute. Boxes were piled in a stack, recyclables. There was a basket for glass, one for cans. A baby rested in the bin for plastics. His eyes were closed to a slit, his lips slightly parted. His skin was white, waxy.
Faith came up behind Will. She grabbed his arm. Will could not move. The world had stopped spinning. He held on to the doorknob so his knees would not give out on him. A noise came from Faith’s mouth that sounded like a low keening.
The baby turned his head toward the sound, his eyes slowly opening.
“Oh, my God,” Faith breathed. She pushed Will out of the way, dropping to her knees as she reached for the child. “Get help! Will, get help!”
Will felt the world return to normal. “Out here!” he called to the paramedics. “Bring your kit!”
Faith held the baby close as she checked for cuts and bruises. “Little lamb,” she whispered. “You’re okay. I’ve got you now. You’re okay.”
Will watched her with the child, the way she smoothed back his hair and pressed her lips to his forehead. The baby’s eyes were barely open, his lips white. Will wanted to say something, but his words kept getting caught in his throat. He felt hot and cold at the same time, like he might start sobbing right there in front of the world.
“I’ve got you, sweetheart,” Faith murmured, her voice choked with anguish. Tears streamed down her face. Will had never seen her being a mother, at least not with an infant. It broke his heart to see this gentle side of Faith, the part of her that cared so deeply about another human being that her hands shook as she held the child close to her chest.
She whispered, “He’s not crying. Why is he not crying?”
Will finally managed to speak. “He knows no one will come.” He leaned down, cupping his hand around the boy’s head as it rested on Faith’s shoulder, trying not to think about the hours the child had spent alone up here, crying himself out, waiting for someone to come.
The paramedic gasped in surprise. He called to his partner as he took the baby from Faith. The diaper was full. The boy’s belly was distended; his head lolled to the side.
“He’s dehydrated.” The medic checked his pupils for a reaction, lifting his chapped lips to check his gums. “Malnourished.”
Will asked, “Is he going to be okay?”
The man shook his head. “I don’t know. He’s bad off.”
“How long—” Faith’s voice caught. “How long has he been in here?”
“I don’t know,” the man repeated. “A day. Maybe two.”
“Two days?” Will asked, sure he was wrong. “The mom’s been gone at least a week, maybe more.”
“More than a week and he’d be dead.” Gently, the medic turned the child over. “He’s got sores from lying in one place for too long.” He cursed under his breath. “I don’t know how long it takes for this to happen, but someone’s been giving him water, at least. You can’t survive without it.”
Faith said, “Maybe the prostitute …”
She didn’t finish, but Will knew what she was saying. Lola had probably been keeping an eye on Anna’s baby after Anna had been abducted. Then she’d gotten locked up and the kid was left alone. “If Lola was taking care of him,” Will said, “she would need to get in and out of the building.”
The elevator doors slid open. Will saw a second cop standing with Simkov, the doorman. There was a darkening bruise underneath his eye and his eyebrow was split where it had been slammed against the hard marble counter.
“That one.” The doorman pointed triumphantly at Will. “He’s the one who jumped me.”
Will’s fists tightened. His jaw was so clenched he thought his teeth might break. “Did you know this baby was up here?”
The doorman’s sneer was back. “What do I know about a baby? Maybe the night guy was—” He stopped, looking into the open door of the penthouse. “Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” he mumbled, then said something in his foreign tongue. “What did they do up here?”
“Who?” Will asked. “Who was up here?”
“Is that man dead?” Simkov asked, still staring into the trashed penthouse. “Holy Christ, look at this place. The smell!” He tried to go into the apartment, but the cop jerked him back.
Will gave the doorman another chance, carefully enunciating each word of his question. “Did you know this baby was up here?”
Simkov shrugged, his shoulders going up high to his ears. “What the fuck do I know what goes on up here with the rich people? I make eight dollars an hour and you want me to keep up with their lives?”
“There’s a baby,” Will said, so furious that he could barely speak. “A little baby who was dying.”
“So there’s a baby. What the fuck do I care?”
Rage came in a black, blinding intensity, so that it wasn’t until Will was on top of the man, his fist slamming back and forth like a jackhammer, that Will realized what he was doing. And he didn’t stop himself. He didn’t want to stop. He was thinking about that baby lying in his own shit, the killer shoving him into the trash room so he’d starve to death, the prostitute wanting to trade information about him to get her own ass out of the sling and Angie … there was Angie on top of this steaming pile of excrement, pulling Will’s strings like she always did, fucking with his head so that he felt like he belonged in the trash heap with all the rest of them.
“Will!” Faith screamed. She was reaching her hands out in front of her the way you do when you’re talking to a crazy person. Will felt a deep pain in his shoulders as both cops pinned his arms behind his back. He was panting like a rabid dog. Sweat dripped down his face.
“All right,” Faith said, her hands still out as she came closer. “Let’s calm down. Just calm down.” She put her hands on Will, something he realized she had never done before. Her palms were on his face, forcing him to look at her instead of Simkov, who was writhing on the floor. “Look at me,” she ordered, her voice low, like her words were something only they could hear. “Will, look at me.”
He forced himself to meet her gaze. Her eyes were intensely blue, wide open in panic. “It’s all right,” Faith told him. “The baby’s gonna be all right. Okay? All right?”
Will nodded, feeling the cops loosen their grip on his arms. Faith was still standing in front of him, still had her hands on his face.
“You’re all right,” she told him, talking to him in the same tone she had used with the baby. “You’re going to be fine.”
Will took a step back so that Faith would have to let him go. He could tell she was almost as terrified as the doorman. Will was scared, too—scared that he still wanted to beat the man, that if the cops hadn’t been there, if it had just been him and Simkov alone, Will would have beaten him to death with his bare hands.
Faith kept her gaze locked with Will’s just a moment longer. Then she turned her attention to the bloodied pulp on the floor. “Get up, asshole.”
Simkov groaned, curling into a ball. “I can’t move.”
“Shut up.” She jerked Simkov’s arm.
“My nose!” he yelled, so dizzy that the only thing that kept him up was his shoulder slamming into the wall. “He broke my nose!”
“You’re fine.” Faith glanced up and down the hall. She was looking for security cameras.
Will did the same, relieved to find none.
“Police brutality!” the man screamed. “You saw it. You’re all my witnesses.”
One of the cops behind Will said, “You fell, buddy. Don’t you remember?”
“I didn’t fall,” the man insisted. Blood was pooling out of his nose, squeezing through his fingers like water from a sponge.
The other paramedic was starting an IV on the baby. He didn’t look up, but said, “Better be careful where you walk next time.”
And just like that, Will was the kind of cop he had never wanted to be.