The Kept Woman Read online

  Dedication

  For my readers

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Monday Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  One Week Earlier

  Present Day Chapter Nine

  Tuesday Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Eleven Days Later: Saturday Chapter Fourteen

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Karin Slaughter

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Prologue

  For the first time in her life, she cradled her daughter in her arms.

  All those years ago, the nurse at the hospital had asked if she wanted to hold her baby, but she had refused. Refused to name the girl. Refused to sign the legal papers to let her go. Hedging her bets, because that’s what she always did. She could remember tugging on her jeans before she left the hospital. They were still damp from her water breaking. The waist was baggy where it had been tight, and she had gripped the extra material in her fist as she walked down the back stairs and ran outside to meet the boy waiting in the car around the corner.

  There was always a boy waiting for her, expecting something from her, pining for her, hating her. It had been like that for as long as she could remember. Ten years old: her mother’s pimp offering to trade a meal for her mouth. Fifteen: a foster father who liked to cut. Twenty-three: a soldier who waged war on her body. Thirty-four: a cop who convinced her it wasn’t rape. Thirty-seven: another cop who made her think he would love her forever.

  Forever was never as long as you thought it was.

  She touched her daughter’s face. Gentle this time, not like before.

  So beautiful.

  Her skin was soft, unlined. Her eyes were closed, but there was a tremble behind the lids. Her breath whistled in her chest.

  Carefully, she stroked back the girl’s hair, tucking it behind her ear. She could’ve done this at the hospital all those years ago. Smoothed a worried forehead. Kissed ten tiny fingers, caressed ten tiny toes.

  Manicured fingernails now. Long toes damaged from years of ballet lessons and late-night dancing and countless other events that had filled her vibrant, motherless life.

  She touched her fingers to her daughter’s lips. Cold. The girl was losing too much blood. The handle of the blade sticking out of her chest pulsed with her heart, sometimes like a metronome, sometimes like the stuck second hand on a clock that was winding down.

  All those lost years.

  She should’ve held her daughter at the hospital. Just that once. She should’ve imprinted some memory of her touch so that her daughter didn’t flinch the way she did now, moving away from her hand the way she would move away from a stranger’s.

  They were strangers.

  She shook her head. She couldn’t go down the rabbit hole of everything she had lost and why. She had to think about how strong she was, that she was a survivor. She had spent her life running on the edge of a razor—sprinting away from the things that people usually ran toward: a child, a husband, a home, a life.

  Happiness. Contentment. Love.

  She realized now that all that running had led her straight to this dark room, trapped in this dark place, holding her daughter for the first time, for the last time, as the girl bled to death in her arms.

  There was a scuffing noise outside the closed door. The slit of light at the threshold showed the shadow of two feet slithering along the floor.

  Her daughter’s would-be killer?

  Her own murderer?

  The wooden door rattled in the metal frame. Just a square of light indicated where the knob had been.

  She thought about weapons: the steel posts in her high heels that she had kicked off as she ran across the road. The knife sticking out of her daughter’s chest.

  The girl was still breathing. The blade of the knife was pressed against something vital inside, holding back the torrent of blood so that her dying was a slow and labored thing.

  She touched her fingers to the knife for just a second before she slowly pulled her hand away.

  The door rattled again. There was a scraping sound. Metal against metal. The square of light narrowed, then disappeared, as a screwdriver was jammed into the opening.

  Click-click-click, like the dry fire of an empty gun.

  Gently, she eased her daughter’s head to the floor. She got on her knees, biting her lip as a sharp pain sliced into her ribs. The wound in her side gaped open. Blood slid down her legs. Muscles started to spasm.

  She crawled around the dark room, ignoring the chalky grit of sawdust and metal shavings grinding into her knees, the stabbing pain beneath her ribs, the steady flow of blood that left a trail behind her. She found screws and nails and then her hand brushed against something cold and round and metallic. She picked up the object. In the darkness, her fingers told her what she was holding: the broken doorknob. Solid. Heavy. The four-inch spindle stuck out like an ice pick.

  There was a final click of the latch engaging. The screwdriver clattered to the concrete floor. The door cracked open.

  She narrowed her eyes against the coming light. She thought about all the ways she had hurt the men in her life. Once with a gun. Once with a needle. Countless times with her fists. With her mouth. With her teeth. With her heart.

  The door opened a few more careful inches. The tip of a gun snaked around the corner.

  She gripped the doorknob so that the spindle shot out between her fingers and waited for the man to come in.

  Monday

  Chapter One

  Will Trent was worried about his dog. Betty was getting her teeth cleaned, which sounded like a ridiculous waste of money for a pet, but when the vet had explained to Will all the terrible things that poor dental hygiene could do to an animal, he had been ready to sell his house in order to buy the little thing a few more precious years.

  Apparently, he wasn’t the only idiot in Atlanta who was ensuring his pet had better health care than many Americans. He glanced at the line of people waiting to enter the Dutch Valley Animal Clinic. A recalcitrant Great Dane was bottlenecking the front door while several cat owners gave each other knowing looks. Will turned back to the street. He wiped the sweat off his neck, unsure whether he was perspiring from the intense, late August heat or from the sheer panic of not knowing whether or not he had made the right decision. He’d never had a dog before. He’d never been solely responsible for an animal’s well-being. He put his hand to his chest. He could still feel the memory of Betty’s heart jangling like a tambourine as he handed her over to the vet tech.

  Should he go back inside and rescue her?

  The sharp beep of a car horn startled him out of his apprehension. He saw a flash of red as Faith Mitchell drove past in her Mini. She made a wide U-turn, then pulled up alongside Will. He was reaching for the handle when she leaned over and pushed open the door.

  “Hurry,” she said, her voice raised over the whine of the air-conditioning, which was set to polar. “Amanda already sent two texts asking where the hell we are.”

  Will hesitated before getting into the tiny car. Faith’s government-issued Suburban was in the shop. There was a baby’s car seat strapped into the backseat, which left approximately thirty inches of space up front into which he could wedge his six-feet-four-inch frame.

  Faith’s phone chirped with a new text. “Amanda.” She said the name like
a curse, which was how most people said it. Deputy Director Amanda Wagner was their boss at the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. She was not known for her patience.

  Will tossed his suit jacket into the backseat then folded himself into the car like a burrito. He tilted his head into the extra few inches afforded by the closed sunroof. The glove box pressed into his shins. His knees almost touched his face. If they were in an accident, the coroner would have to scrape his nose off the inside of his skull.

  “Murder,” Faith said, letting her foot off the brake before he’d even closed the door. “Male, fifty-eight years old.”

  “Nice,” Will said, relishing the death of a fellow human being as only a law enforcement officer can. In his defense, both he and Faith had spent the last seven months pushing boulders up some very steep hills. She had been loaned out to a special task force investigating the Atlanta Public Schools cheating scandal and he had been stuck in the particular hell of a high-visibility rape investigation.

  Faith said, “Atlanta 9-1-1 got the call around five this a.m.” She had an air of giddiness about her as she relayed the details. “An unidentified male caller said there was a dead body near those abandoned warehouses off Chattahoochee. Lots of blood. No murder weapon.” She slowed for a red light. “They’re not releasing cause of death on the radio, so it must be pretty bad.”

  Something inside the car started to beep. Will reached blindly for his seat belt. “Why are we working this?” The GBI couldn’t just walk onto a case. They had to be ordered in by the governor or asked in by the local cops. The Atlanta Police Department dealt with murder on a weekly basis. They didn’t generally ask for help. Especially from the state.

  “The victim is an Atlanta cop.” Faith grabbed his seat belt and buckled him in like he was one of her kids. “Detective first grade Dale Harding, retired. Ever heard of him?”

  Will shook his head. “You?”

  “My mom knew him. Never worked with him. He was in white-collar crimes. Took early medical leave, then popped up doing private security. Mostly knuckle dragging and knee-breaking.” Faith had been with the APD for fifteen years before she’d partnered with Will. Her mother had retired as a captain. Between the two of them, they were familiar with practically everyone on the force. “Mom says that knowing Harding’s reputation, he probably pissed off the wrong pimp or missed the vig with his bookie and got a bat to the head.”

  The car jerked as the light changed. Will felt a sharp jab in his ribs from his Glock. He tried to shift his weight. Despite the frigid air-conditioning, sweat had already glued the back of his shirt to the seat. The skin peeled away like a Band-Aid. The clock on the dash read 7:38 in the morning. He couldn’t let himself think about how sweltering it would be by noon.

  Faith’s phone chirped with a text. Then chirped again. And again. “Amanda.” She groaned. “Why does she break up the lines? She sends three separate sentences in three separate texts. All caps. It’s not fair.” Faith drove with one hand and texted back with the other, which was dangerous and illegal, but Faith was one of those cops who only saw infractions in other people. “We’re about five minutes out, right?”

  “Probably closer to ten with traffic.” Will reached over to steady the steering wheel so they wouldn’t end up on the sidewalk. “What’s the address on the warehouse?”

  She scrolled back through her texts. “It’s a construction site near the warehouses. Three-eighty Beacon.”

  Will’s jaw clamped down so tight that he felt a lightning bolt of pain shoot into his neck. “That’s Marcus Rippy’s nightclub.”

  Faith gave him a startled look. “Are you kidding me?”

  Will shook his head. There was nothing about Marcus Rippy that he would kid about. The man was a pro basketball player who’d been accused of drugging and raping a college student. Will had spent the last seven months building a pretty solid case against the lying asshole, but Rippy had hundreds of millions of dollars to spend on lawyers and specialists and experts and publicists who had all made sure that the case never went to trial.

  Faith asked, “What’s a dead ex-cop doing inside Marcus Rippy’s club less than two weeks after Rippy walks on a rape charge?”

  “I’m sure his lawyers will have a plausible explanation by the time we get there.”

  “Jesus.” Faith dropped her phone into the cup holder and put both hands back on the wheel. She was quiet for a moment, probably considering all the ways this had just turned bad for them. Dale Harding was a cop, but he’d been a bad cop. The hard truth about murder in the big city was that in general, the deceased rarely turned out to be a shining, upstanding citizen. Not to blame the victim, but they tended to be involved in activities—like pissing off pimps and not paying bookies—where it made sense that they would eventually end up murdered.

  Marcus Rippy’s involvement changed everything.

  Faith slowed the car as morning traffic thickened like paste. “I know you said you didn’t want to talk about your case crapping out, but now I need you to talk about it.”

  Will still didn’t want to talk about it. Over a five-hour period, Rippy had repeatedly assaulted his victim, sometimes beating her, sometimes strangling her into unconsciousness. Standing beside her hospital bed three days later, Will could make out the dark lines where Rippy’s fingers had gripped her neck the same way he would palm a basketball. There were other bruises documented in the medical report. Cuts. Lacerations. Tearing. Blunt force trauma. Bleeding. The woman could not speak above a whisper, but she still told her story, and she kept telling it to anyone who would listen until Rippy’s lawyers shut her up.

  Faith asked, “Will?”

  “He raped a woman. He paid his way out of it. He’ll do it again. He probably did it before. And none of that matters because he knows how to handle a basketball.”

  “Wow, that’s a lot of information. Thank you.”

  Will felt the pain in his jaw intensify. “The day after New Year’s Eve. Ten in the morning. The victim was found unconscious inside Marcus Rippy’s house by one of the maids. The maid called Rippy’s head of security, who called Rippy’s business manager, who called Rippy’s lawyers, who eventually called a private ambulance to take her to Piedmont Hospital. Two hours before the victim was reportedly found, around eight a.m., Rippy’s private jet left for Miami with him and his entire family on board. He claims the vacation was on the books all along, but the flight plan was filed half an hour before takeoff. Rippy said he had no idea the victim was in the house. Never saw her. Never talked to her. Didn’t know her name. They’d had a big New Year’s Eve party the night before. A couple of hundred people were in and out of the residence.”

  Faith said, “There was a Facebook post of—”

  “Instagram,” Will said, because he’d had the pleasure of trawling the internet for hours of party footage that people had filmed with their phones. “Someone at the party posted a gif of the victim slurring her words before she threw up into an ice bucket. Rippy’s people had the hospital do a tox screen. She had pot, amphetamines, and alcohol in her system.”

  “You said she was unconscious when they brought her into the hospital. Did she give permission for Rippy’s people to see her drug screen?”

  Will shook his head because it didn’t matter. Rippy’s team had paid off someone at the hospital lab and leaked the results of the blood test to the press.

  “You gotta admit, he’s got a great name for it. Rapey/Rippy.” Faith twisted her lips to the side as she thought it out. “The house is huge, right?”

  “Sixteen thousand square feet.” Will’s head called up the layout he’d studied for so many hours that it was still imprinted in his brain. “It’s shaped like a horseshoe with a swimming pool in the middle. The family lives in the main section, the top of the horseshoe. The two wings off the back have a bunch of guest suites, and there’s a nail salon, an indoor basketball court, massage room, gym, movie theater, playroom for his two kids. You name it, they have it.”


  “So, logically, something bad could happen in one part of the house without someone in the other part knowing.”

  “Without two hundred people knowing. Without the maids and the butlers and the valets and the caterers and the cooks and the bartenders and the assistants and the whoever else knowing.” Will had been given a two-hour tour of the Rippy estate by the family’s chief of security. Cameras were mounted at every possible angle around the exterior of the house. There were no blind spots. Motion sensors detected anything heavier than a leaf landing in the front yard. No one could go in or out of the estate without someone knowing about it.

  Except for the night of the assault. There had been a bad storm. The power kept cutting in and out. The generators were state-of-the-art, but for some reason the external DVR that recorded footage from the security cameras was not jacked into the backup power grid.

  Faith said, “Okay, I saw the news. Rippy’s people said she was a nutjob looking for a payday.”

  “They offered her money. She told them no.”

  “Could’ve been waiting for a higher number.” Faith drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. “Is it possible her wounds were self-inflicted?”

  That had been the contention of Rippy’s lawyers. They’d even found an expert who was willing to testify that the giant finger marks around her neck and back and thighs were made by her own hand.

  “She had this bruise here—” Will indicated his own back. “Like a fist print between her shoulder blades. A big fist. You could see the finger marks, same as the bruises on her neck. She had a severe contusion on her liver. The doctors put her on bed rest for two weeks.”

  “There was a condom with Rippy’s semen—”

  “Found in a hall bathroom. The wife says they had sex that night.”

  “And he leaves the used condom in the hall bath, not the master?” Faith frowned. “Was the wife’s DNA on the outside of the condom?”