[Georgia 01] Genesis (aka Undone) Page 32

  "That's bulimia. Anorexia denotes starvation. Sometimes anorexics use laxatives, but they don't purge. There's growing evidence about genetic determinism—chromosomal blips that predispose them to the disorder. Usually, there's some kind of environmental trigger that sets it off."

  "Like child abuse?"

  "Could be. Sometimes it's bullying. Sometimes it's body dysmorphia. Some people blame magazines and movie stars, but it's far more complicated than just one thing. Boys are starting to get it more, too. It's extremely difficult to treat because of the psychological component."

  Faith thought about their victims. "Is there a certain type of personality that's drawn to it?"

  Sara considered the question before replying. "I can only tell you that the handful of patients I dealt with who suffered from the disease got extreme pleasure from starving themselves. It takes a huge amount of willpower to fight the body's physiological imperative for food. They might feel like everything else in their life is out of whack, and the only thing they can manipulate is whether or not they put food in their mouths. There's also a physical response to starvation—light-headedness, euphoria, sometimes hallucinations. It can duplicate the same type of high you get from opiates, and the feeling can be incredibly addictive."

  Faith tried to remember how many times she'd made jokes about wishing she had the willpower to be anorexic for a week.

  Sara added, "The biggest problem with treatment is that it's much more socially acceptable for a woman to be too thin than it is for a woman to be overweight."

  "I have yet to meet a woman who is happy with her weight."

  Sara gave a rueful laugh. "My sister is, actually."

  "Is she some kind of saint?"

  Faith had been joking, but Sara surprised her, answering, "Close. She's a missionary. She married a preacher a few years ago. They're helping AIDS babies in Africa."

  "Good God, I hate her and I've never even met her."

  "Trust me, she has her faults," Sara confided. "You said three victims. Does that mean another woman has been taken?"

  Faith realized that Olivia Tanner's status hadn't yet hit the news. "Yes. Keep that under wraps if you can."

  "Of course."

  "Two of them seemed to take a lot of aspirin. The new one we found out about today had six jumbo bottles in her house. Jacquelyn Zabel had a large bottle by her bed."

  Sara nodded, like something was starting to make sense. "It's an emetic in high doses. That would explain why Zabel's stomach was so ulcerated." She added, "And it would explain why she was still bleeding when Will found her. You should tell him that. He was upset about not getting there in time."

  Will had a hell of a lot more than that to be upset about right now. Still, Faith remembered, "He needs your apartment number."

  "Why?" Sara answered her own question. "Oh, his wife's dog."

  "Right," Faith said, thinking the lie was the least she could do for Will.

  "Twelve. It's on the directory." She put her hands back on the edge of the bassinet. "I should take this boy to his mother."

  Faith held open the door and Sara rolled out the bassinet. The hum of the hallway buzzed in her ears until Faith shut the door. She sat on the stool by the counter and lifted her skirt, looking for a spot that wasn't already black and blue from the needles. The diabetes pamphlet had said to move the injection sites around, so Faith checked her stomach, where she found a pristine roll of white fat that she pinched between her thumb and forefinger.

  She held the insulin pen a few inches from her belly but didn't inject herself. Somewhere behind all those Pop-Tarts was a tiny baby with tiny hands and feet and a mouth and eyes—breathing every breath she took, peeing every ten minutes when she ran to the bathroom. Sara's words had brought things home for Faith, but holding Balthazar Lindsey had awakened something in Faith that she had never felt in her life. As much as she had loved Jeremy, his birth was hardly a celebration. Fifteen was not an appropriate age for baby showers, and even the nurses at the hospital had looked at her with pity.

  This time would be different, though. Faith was old enough so that it was acceptable for her to be a mother. She could walk through the mall with her baby on her hip without worrying people would assume she was her own child's older sister. She could take him to the pediatrician and sign all his forms without getting her mother to cosign. She could tell his teachers to go screw themselves during PTA meetings without worrying about being sent to the principal's office herself. Hell, she could drive now.

  She could do it right this time. She could be a good mother from start to finish. Well, maybe not start. Faith catalogued all the things she had done to her baby just this week: ignored him, denied his existence, passed out in a garage, contemplated abortion, exposed him to whatever Sam Lawson was carrying, fallen off a porch step, and risked both their lives trying to stop Will from pounding a Russian doorman's head into the fine, looped carpet lining the penthouse hallway at Beeston Place.

  And here they were now, mother and child in the Grady ICU, and she was about to poke a needle somewhere near his head.

  The door opened.

  "What the hell are you doing?" Amanda demanded. She figured it out for herself quickly enough. "Oh, for the love of God. When were you going to tell me about this?"

  Faith rolled her shirt back down, thinking it was a little late for modesty. "Right after I told you I'm pregnant."

  Amanda tried to slam the door but the hydraulic hinge wouldn't let her. "Goddamm it, Faith. You're never going to get ahead with a baby."

  Her hackles were raised. "I got this far with one."

  "You were a kid in uniform making sixteen thousand dollars a year. You're thirty-three now."

  Faith tried, "I guess this means you won't be throwing me a baby shower."

  Her look would have cut glass. "Does your mother know?"

  "I thought I'd let her enjoy her vacation."

  Amanda slapped her palm to her forehead, which would've been comical if not for the fact that she held Faith's life in her hands. "A dyslexic half-wit with a temper problem and a fertile, fat diabetic who lacks a rudimentary understanding of birth control." She jabbed her finger in Faith's face. "I hope you like that pairing, young lady, because you're going to be stuck with Will Trent forever now."

  Faith tried to ignore the "fat" part, which, honestly, hurt the most. "I can think of worse things than being partnered with Will Trent for the rest of my life."

  "You'd just better be damned glad the security cameras didn't catch his little tantrum."

  "Will's a good cop, Amanda. He wouldn't still be working for you if you didn't believe that."

  "Well—" She cut herself off. "Maybe when he's not putting his abandonment issues on full display."

  "Is he all right?"

  "He'll live," Amanda replied, not sounding too convinced. "I sent him to track down that prostitute. Lola."

  "She's not in jail?"

  "There was a pretty big score in the apartment—heroin, meth, coke. Angie Polaski managed to get Lola kicked for being an informant." Amanda shrugged. She couldn't always control the Atlanta police department.

  "Do you think it's a good idea to have Will looking for Lola, considering how angry he was about that baby being left alone?"

  The old Amanda was back—the one who couldn't be questioned. "We've got two missing women and a serial killer who knows what to do with them. There has to be some movement on this case before it gets away from us. The clock is ticking, Faith. He could be watching his next victim right now."

  "I was supposed to meet with Rick Sigler today—the paramedic who worked on Anna."

  "I sent someone around to Sigler's house an hour ago. His wife was there with him. He adamantly denied knowing anyone named Jake Berman. He barely admitted he was on the road that night."

  Faith could not think of a worse way to question the man. "He's gay. The wife doesn't know."

  "They never do," Amanda countered. "At any rate, he wasn't interested in
talking, and we don't have enough right now to drag him down to the station."

  "I'm not sure he's a suspect."

  "Everyone is a suspect as far as I'm concerned. I read the autopsy report. I've seen what was done to Anna. Our bad guy likes to experiment. He's going to keep doing this until we stop him."

  Faith had been running on adrenaline for the past few hours, and she felt it spark up again at Amanda's words. "Do you want me to watch Sigler?"

  "I've got Leo Donnelly parked outside his house right now. Something tells me you don't want to be trapped in a car with him all night."

  "No, ma'am," Faith answered, and not just because Leo was a chain smoker. He would probably blame Faith for putting him on Amanda's shit list. He would be right.

  "Someone needs to go to Michigan to find the files on Pauline Seward's family. The warrant's being expedited, but apparently nothing past fifteen years is on the computers. We need to find someone from her past and we need to find them fast—the parents, hopefully the brother, if it's not our mysterious Mr. Berman. For obvious reasons, I can't send Will to read through the files."

  Faith put the insulin pen down on the counter. "I'll do it."

  "Do you have this diabetes thing under control?" Faith's expression must've been answer enough. "I'll send one of my agents who can actually do their job." She waved her hand, dismissing any objections Faith might have. "Let's just move on from that until it bites us in the ass again, shall we?"

  "I'm sorry about this." Faith had apologized more in the last fifteen minutes than she had in her entire life.

  Amanda shook her head, indicating she wasn't willing to discuss the stupidity of the situation. "The doorman's asked for a lawyer. We're scheduled to talk to them first thing in the morning."

  "You arrested him?"

  "Detained. He's obviously foreign-born. The Patriot Act gives us twenty-four hours to hold him while we check his immigration status. Hopefully, we can turn his apartment upside down and find something more concrete to hammer him with."

  Faith wasn't one to argue with the true course of justice.

  Amanda asked, "What about Anna's neighbors?"

  "It's a quiet building. The apartment below the penthouse has been vacant for months. They could've set off an atom bomb up there and no one would've known."

  "The dead guy?"

  "Drug dealer. Heroin overdose."

  "Anna's employer didn't miss her?"

  Faith told her what little she'd managed to find out. "She works for a law firm—Bandle and Brinks."

  "Good Christ, this just keeps getting worse. Do you know about the firm?" Amanda didn't give Faith time to answer. "They specialize in bringing lawsuits against municipalities—bad policing, bad social services, anything they can catch you on, they pounce and sue your budget to hell and back. They've sued the state and won more times than I can count."

  "They weren't open to questioning. They won't turn over any of her files without a warrant."

  "In other words, they're being lawyers." Amanda paced the room. "You and I will talk with Anna now, then we'll go back over to her building and turn it upside down before that law firm of hers realizes what we're doing."

  "When's the interview with the doorman?"

  "Eight sharp tomorrow morning. You think you can fit that into your busy schedule?"

  "Yes, ma'am."

  Amanda looked like a parent as she shook her head at Faith again; frustrated, mildly disgusted. "I don't suppose the father's in the picture this time, either."

  "I'm a little too old to be trying something new."

  "Congratulations," she said, opening the door. It would've been nice except for the "idiot" she muttered as she walked into the hall.

  Faith hadn't realized she had been holding her breath until Amanda left the room. Her lips parted in a heavy sigh, and for the first time since this whole diabetes thing started, she jabbed the needle into her skin on the first try. It didn't hurt as much, or maybe she was in such shock that she couldn't feel anything.

  She stared at the wall in front of her, trying to get her head back into the investigation. Faith closed her eyes, visualizing the autopsy photos of Jacquelyn Zabel, the cave where Jacquelyn and Anna Lindsey had been kept. Faith catalogued the horrible things that must have happened to the women—the torture, the pain. She put her hand to her stomach again. Was the child that was growing inside of her a girl? What sort of world was Faith bringing her into; a place where young girls were molested by their fathers, where magazines told them they would never be perfect enough, where sadists could take you away from your life, your own child, in the blink of an eye and thrust you into a living hell for the rest of your life?

  A shudder racked her body. She stood and left the room.

  The cops in front of Anna's door stepped aside. Faith crossed her arms over her chest, feeling a sudden coldness as she entered the room. Anna was lying in bed, Balthazar in the crook of her bony arm. Her shoulder was pronounced, the bone hard against the skin, the same as the girls Faith had seen in the videos on Pauline McGhee's computer.

  "Agent Mitchell has just entered the room," Amanda told the woman. "She's been trying to find out who did this to you."

  The whites of Anna's eyes were clouded, as if she had cataracts. She stared unseeingly toward the door. Faith knew there was no etiquette for these kinds of situations. She had handled rape and abuse cases before, but nothing like this. She had to think the skills translated. You didn't make small talk. You didn't ask them how they were doing, because the answer was obvious.

  Faith said, "I know this is a difficult time. We just have a few questions for you."

  Amanda told Faith, "Ms. Lindsey was just telling me she finished a big case and took off work for a few weeks to spend time with her child."

  Faith asked, "Did anyone else know you were taking time off ?"

  "I left a note with the doorman. People at work knew—my secretary, my partners. I don't talk to the people in my building."

  Faith felt like a large wall had been erected around Anna Lindsey. There was something so cold about the woman that establishing a connection seemed impossible. She stuck to the questions they needed answered. "Can you tell us what happened when you were taken?"

  Anna licked her dry lips, closed her eyes. When she spoke, her voice was little more than a whisper. "I was in my apartment getting Balthazar ready for a walk in the park. That's the last thing I remember."

  Faith knew there could be some memory loss with Taser attacks. "What did you see when you woke up?"

  "Nothing. I never saw anything again after that."

  "Any sounds or sensations you can recall?"

  "No."

  "Did you recognize your attacker?"

  Anna shook her head. "No. I can't remember anything."

  Faith let a few seconds pass, trying to get hold of her frustration. "I'm going to give you a list of names. I need you to tell me if any of them sound familiar."

  Anna nodded, her hand sliding across the sheets to find her son's mouth. He suckled her finger, tiny gulping noises coming from his throat.

  "Pauline McGhee."

  Anna shook her head.

  "Olivia Tanner."

  Again, she shook her head.

  "Jacquelyn, or Jackie, Zabel."

  She shook her head.

  Faith had saved Jackie for last. The two women had been in the cave together. This was the only thing they knew for certain. "We found your fingerprint on Jackie Zabel's driver's license."

  Anna's dry lips parted again. "No," she said firmly. "I don't know her."

  Amanda glanced Faith's way, eyebrows raised. Was this traumatic amnesia? Or something else?

  Faith asked, "What about something called thinspo?"

  Anna stiffened. "No," she said, more quickly this time, her voice louder.

  Faith gave it another few seconds, letting the woman think. "We found some notebooks where you were kept. They had the same words over and over again—'I will not deny m
yself.' Does that mean anything to you?"

  She shook her head again.

  Faith worked to keep the pleading out of her voice. "Can you tell us anything about your attacker? Did you smell something, like oil or gas on him? Cologne? Did you feel any facial hair or any physical—"

  "No," Anna whispered, pressing her fingers along her child's body, finding his hand and taking it in hers. "I can't tell you anything. I don't remember any details. Nothing."

  Faith opened her mouth to speak, but Amanda beat her to the punch, saying, "You're safe here, Ms. Lindsey. We've had two armed guards outside your door since you were brought in. No one can hurt you anymore."

  Anna turned her head toward her baby, making shushing sounds to soothe him. "I am not afraid of anything."

  Faith was taken aback at how certain the woman sounded. Maybe if you survived what Anna had been through, you believed you could endure anything.

  Amanda said, "We think he has two more women right now. That he's doing the same thing to them that he's done to you." She tried again, "One of the woman has a child, Ms. Lindsey. His name is Felix. He's six years old and he wants to be with his mother. I'm sure wherever she is, she's thinking of him right now, wanting to hold him again."

  "I hope she's strong," Anna mumbled. Then, louder, she told them, "As I have said many times now, I don't remember anything. I don't know who did it, or where they took me or why they did it. I just know that it's over now, and I'm putting it behind me."

  Faith could feel Amanda's frustration matching her own.

  Anna said, "I need to rest now."

  "We can wait," Faith told her. "Maybe come back in a few hours."

  "No." The woman's expression turned hard. "I know my legal obligations. I'll sign a statement, or make my mark, or whatever it is blind people do, but if you want to talk tome again, you can make an appointment with my secretary when I'm back at work."

  Faith tried, "But, Anna—"

  She turned her head toward the baby. Anna's blindness had blocked them from her vision, but her actions seemed to block them from her mind.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  SARA HAD FINALLY MANAGED TO CLEAN HER APARTMENT. She could not think of the last time it had looked this good—maybe when she had first seen it with her realtor before she had even moved in. The Milk Lofts had once been a dairy, serviced by the vast farmland that used to cover the eastern part of the city. There were six floors in the building, two apartments on each floor separated by a long hallway with large windows either end. The main living area of Sara's place was what was called an open plan, the kitchen looking onto the enormous living room. Floor-to-ceiling windows that were a bitch to keep clean lined an entire wall, giving her a nice view of downtown when the shades were open. There were three bedrooms in the back, each with their own bathroom. Sara, of course, slept in the master, but no one had ever slept in the guest room. The third room she used as an office and for storage.