The Kept Woman (Will Trent 8) Page 5

  Amanda said, ‘Thank you, Doctor, for that litany of multiple choices. How much time do we have to find this woman?’

  Sara took the dig in stride. ‘None of those injuries are the type that can go untreated, even if she manages to stop the bleeding. Given the four-to-five-hour window on time of death and the volume of blood loss, I’d say that without medical intervention she might have two to three more hours before her organs start shutting down.’

  ‘You work the dead, we’ll find the living.’ Amanda turned to Will and Faith. ‘We’ve got a clock ticking. Our number one goal is to locate this woman, get her medical help, then find out what the hell she was doing here in the first place.’

  Collier asked, ‘What about BackDoorMan.com? Does that bring in Rippy?’

  ‘That’ll be Harding’s kink,’ Will said. ‘Rippy has a definite type.’

  Faith supplied, ‘Dark hair, smart mouth, killer body.’

  Collier said, ‘His wife is a blonde.’

  Faith rolled her eyes. ‘I’m a blonde. She’s a bottle.’

  ‘You can discuss hair color after we find the woman.’ Amanda told Collier, ‘Get that partner of yours to run missing persons reports submitted within the last forty-eight hours. Women, young, Rippy’s type.’ Collier nodded, but she wasn’t finished. ‘I need at least ten uniforms to check both warehouses and the office building. Call in a structural engineer on the building; it looks iffy. I want feet, not just eyeballs, on every single floor, every nook and cranny, no stone unturned. Our victim-slash-murderer could be bleeding out or hiding right under our noses. None of us wants to read that headline in the paper tomorrow morning.’

  She turned to Faith. ‘Go to Harding’s place of residence. I’ll have the warrant signed by the time you get there. Harding called himself a private investigator. It makes sense that he was investigating a woman, possibly for Rippy. She could be another victim or she could’ve been blackmailing him for money, or both. Harding will have a file, photographs, notes, hopefully a home address for the girl.’

  She pointed to Will. ‘Go with her. Harding can’t be living in luxury. There will be liquor stores, check-cashers, strip joints in his neighborhood. They’ll probably sell burner phones. Cross the IMEIs with any security footage to see if we can pin a phone number to Harding, then cross-reference the numbers against any that are linked to Kip Kilpatrick or Marcus Rippy.’

  There was a chorus of ‘Yes, ma’am’s,’ all around.

  Will heard metal scraping concrete. The scissor lift had brought Charlie Reed to the second floor. He had a grim look on his face as he approached them.

  Amanda said, ‘Spit it out, Charlie. We’re already against the clock.’

  Charlie fidgeted with his cell phone. ‘I got back the info on the Glock 43.’

  ‘And?’

  Charlie kept his gaze glued to Amanda. ‘Maybe we should—’

  ‘I said spit it out.’

  He took a deep breath. ‘It’s registered to Angie Polaski.’

  Will felt a sudden tightness in his chest. He tasted acid on his tongue.

  Dark hair. Smart mouth. Killer body.

  There was a burning sensation on the side of his face. People staring at him. Waiting for his reaction. A bead of sweat rolled into his eye. He looked up at the ceiling because he didn’t trust himself to look at anything else.

  It was Collier who finally broke the silence with a question. ‘What am I missing here?’ No one answered, so he asked, ‘Who’s Angie Polaski?’

  Sara had to clear her throat before she could speak. ‘Angie Polaski is Will’s wife.’

  TWO

  Sara watched Will brace his hand against the wall to steady himself. She should do something—comfort him, tell him it was going to be all right—but she just stood there struggling against the usual spark of rage that accompanied any mention of his erratic, hateful wife.

  Angie Polaski had been flitting in and out of Will’s life like a mosquito since he was eleven years old. They had grown up together at the Atlanta Children’s Home, both surviving abuse, neglect, abandonment, torture. Not all of this had come at the hands of the system. Of all the pains visited down upon Will during his adolescence, nothing compared to the torments Angie had put him through. Still kept putting him through, because it made a cruel kind of sense that they were all assembled here in this building with a pool of blood congealing around her latest victim.

  Dale Harding was collateral damage. Will was always Angie’s primary target, the one she kept hitting again and again.

  Was this finally the end of her?

  ‘It can’t—’ Will stopped. His eyes scanned the murder room. ‘She can’t be—’

  Sara tried to push down her anger. This wasn’t just another one of Angie’s peevish grabs for attention. She could see Will making the same connections: the violent struggle, the life-threatening injury, the veritable lake of blood.

  Wounded. Dangerous. Desperate.

  Angie.

  ‘She—’ Will stopped again. ‘Maybe she’s—’ He slumped against the wall. His breathing was erratic. ‘Oh God. Oh Jesus.’ He put his hand to his mouth. ‘She can’t be—’ His voice cracked. ‘It’s her.’

  ‘We don’t know that.’ Sara tried to make her voice reassuring. She reminded herself that this wasn’t about Angie. This was about Will. Seeing him in so much pain was like a knife twisting in her chest. ‘Her gun could’ve been stolen, or—’

  ‘It’s her.’ He turned his back to them and walked a few feet away, but not before Sara saw the anguished expression on his face. She felt overwhelmed by her own uselessness. Angie was someone they both desperately wanted to be rid of, but not like this. At least not that Sara would ever say aloud. She had to admit that she had always known that Angie would never gracefully bow out. Even in death—or near-death—she had found a way to drag Will down with her.

  Amanda asked, ‘Charlie, what’s the address on the registration?’

  ‘The same as on her driver’s license.’ Charlie looked at the screen on his phone. ‘Ninety-eight—’

  ‘Baker,’ Will interrupted, still not turning around. ‘That’s her old address. What about the phone number?’

  Charlie read off a number, and Will shook his head. ‘Disconnected.’

  Amanda asked Will, ‘Do you know where she is?’

  He shook his head again.

  ‘When did you last see her?’

  Will paused a moment before answering, ‘Saturday.’

  Sara felt the knife in her chest make a final, violent twist. ‘Saturday?’

  They had slept over at his house. They had made love. Twice. Then Will had told Sara he was going for a run and secretly met with his wife.

  Sara’s mouth could barely form words. ‘You saw her two days ago?’

  Will said nothing.

  Amanda gave a quick, agitated sigh. ‘Do you have a phone number? A place of employment? Any means to get in touch with her?’

  He shook his head to every question.

  Sara stared at his back, his broad shoulders that she had wrapped her arms around. His neck that she had kissed. His thick dirty-blond hair that she’d run her fingers through. Tears welled into her eyes. Had he been seeing Angie all this time? All of those late nights at work. All of those early meetings. All of those two-hour runs and pick-up games of basketball.

  ‘All right.’ Amanda clapped her hands for attention. Her voice was raised to fill the building. ‘Crime scene people, take a fifteen-minute break. Get hydrated. Sit in the air conditioning.’

  There was a groan of appreciation as the white-suited techs made their way toward the exits. They would probably start gossiping as soon as they were outside.

  Sara wiped her eyes before her tears could fall. She was at work. She had to focus on what was in front of her, what she could control. She told Amanda, ‘We can do blood typing in the mobile lab. Results are almost instantaneous.’ She tried in vain to swallow the lump in her throat. ‘It’s not DNA, but we c
an use ABO typing as a rule-out against Angie. Or as a rule-in, depending what her blood type is.’ She had to stop to swallow again. She couldn’t tell if she was making any sense. ‘We can establish a loose narrative. Does the blood type from the spatter on the stairs match the type of the bloody footprints that go toward the room? Do those samples match the blood type inside the room? Is it the same type as the arterial spray? The hand swipe?’ Sara pressed together her lips. How many times was she going to say the word type? Someone could turn it into a drinking game. ‘I’ll need Angie’s blood type. And we’ll need to backstop all of this with DNA. But the blood typing could at least tell us something.’

  Amanda gave a curt nod. ‘Do it. Angie was a cop for ten years. I’ll pull the blood info from her file.’ She sounded uncharacteristically flustered. ‘Faith, hit the phones. We need a current address, phone, employer, anything you can find. Collier, yours and Ng’s orders haven’t changed. I want you to get teams to search the ware—’

  ‘I’ll do it.’ Will started toward the lift, but Amanda clamped her hand down on his arm, stopping him cold.

  ‘Stay here.’ He tried to pull away, but her fingernails dug into his shirtsleeve. ‘That’s an order.’

  ‘She could be—’

  ‘I know what she could be, but you’re going to stay here and answer my questions. Is that understood?’

  Collier coughed into his hand, like the teacher was scolding a student. Faith slapped his arm to shut him up.

  Amanda said, ‘Charlie, take Collier and Faith downstairs, then come back up for me.’

  Faith squeezed Sara’s hand as she walked by. They had a rule that they never discussed Will except in general terms. Sara had never wanted to break that rule more badly than she did right now.

  ‘Amanda.’ Will didn’t wait for the audience to leave. ‘I can’t just—’

  Amanda held up a finger to silence him. At least someone was worried about Sara being humiliated. Again.

  Saturday.

  Two days ago.

  She’d had no idea Will was keeping something from her. What else had she missed? Sara tried to scan back over the last few weeks. Will hadn’t been acting strange. If anything, he had been more attentive, even romantic, which could’ve been the biggest sign of all.

  ‘Amanda,’ Will tried again, his voice lowered as he struggled to sound reasonable. ‘You heard what Sara said. Angie could be bleeding to death. She might have a few hours before . . .’ His words trailed off. They all knew what would happen if Angie didn’t get help. ‘I have to look for her. I’m the only one who knows the kinds of places she’d hide.’

  Amanda gave Will one of her steely glares. ‘I swear on my life, Wilbur, if you take one step off this balcony, I’ll have you in handcuffs before you see sunshine.’

  His eyes burned with hatred. ‘I’ll never forgive you for this.’

  Amanda made a show of pulling out her phone. ‘Add it to the list.’

  Will turned his back to her. His gaze skipped over Sara. Instead of speaking to her, or even acknowledging what was happening, he walked back toward the stairs. Sara expected him to go down anyway, but he turned back around, pacing the length of the balcony like a caged leopard. His teeth were so tightly gritted that Sara could see his jawbone working. His fists were clenched. He stopped again at the top of the stairs, shook his head, mumbled something under his breath.

  Sara could read the word on his lips. Not an apology. Not an explanation.

  Angie.

  He didn’t love Angie. At least not as a husband. At least not according to what he had told Sara. For almost a full year, Will had been searching for his wife in order to file divorce papers. Their marriage was a scam anyway, something they had literally done on a dare. Will had promised Sara that he was doing everything possible to end it. She had never once questioned how a special agent with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation was unable to find a woman who was apparently right in front of his face as recently as two days ago.

  Had he met her at a restaurant? A hotel? Sara felt her tears threatening to return. Had he been with Angie this entire time? Had he played Sara for a fool?

  ‘All right.’ Amanda had waited until the lift settled on the ground floor. ‘Saturday. Where did you see Angie?’

  Slowly Will turned around. He crossed his arms. He looked somewhere over Amanda’s head. ‘Outside my house. Parked on the street.’ He paused, and Sara hoped he was remembering what she had done to him before he left, because it was never going to happen again. ‘I was heading out for a run, and I saw her car. It’s a Chevy Monte Carlo SS, eighty-eight, black with—’

  ‘Red stripes. I’ve already put out a five-state APB.’ Amanda asked Will the question that was burning in Sara’s mind. ‘Why was she at your house?’

  He shook his head. ‘I don’t know. She saw me and she got back into her car and—’

  ‘She didn’t speak to you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘She didn’t go inside?’

  ‘No.’ He caught himself. ‘Not that I know of. But she lets herself in sometimes.’

  Sara looked down at the evidence bags Faith had left on the ground.

  The lipstick.

  Sisley rose cashmere with a scratch down the side of the case. There was no manufacturing defect. This was Sara’s lipstick. She had left it at Will’s last month. In his bathroom. On the sink basin. They had gone out to dinner, and when she had looked for it later, it was nowhere to be found.

  In Angie’s purse. In her hand. Between her fingers. On her mouth.

  Sara felt nauseated.

  Amanda asked Will, ‘Do you know why she was parked outside your house?’

  He shook his head. ‘No.’

  Sara struggled to find her voice. ‘Did she leave a note on my car?’

  ‘No,’ Will said, but how could Sara trust him? They had gone to breakfast after his run. They had spent the day on the couch together and ordered pizza and fooled around and he’d had a million opportunities to tell her that the woman he had spent a year trying to locate had been parked outside his house that very morning. It’s not like Sara would have been angry. Irritated, maybe, but not at Will. She never blamed him for Angie’s bullshit. He knew that because Angie had caused problems for both of them countless times before.

  Which meant that the only reason for Will to hide the visit was because there was more to the story. Like that Angie had been inside his house. Like that she had stolen Sara’s lipstick. What else was Sara missing? Some hair combs. A bottle of perfume. Sara had blamed herself for misplacing things between her apartment and Will’s house, never once considering that Angie was stealing from her.

  And that Will knew.

  Amanda said, ‘Walk me through it. You come out your front door. You see Angie inside her parked car.’

  ‘Standing beside it.’ Will spoke carefully, as if he needed to think before he answered. ‘She saw me, knew that I’d seen her, but she got into her car and—’ He glanced down at the evidence bags. The Chevy ignition key. The old kind that might fit an ’88 Monte Carlo.

  He said, ‘I ran after the car, but she drove off.’

  Sara tried to block out the image of Will chasing Angie down the street.

  Amanda turned to Sara. ‘What note were you asking about?’

  She shrugged, like it was nothing, but it was everything. ‘Sometimes she leaves notes on my car. They say what you’d expect.’

  ‘Recently?’

  ‘The last one was three weeks ago.’ Sara was working her last shift as a pediatrician at Grady Hospital. A four-year-old had mistaken a bag of crystal meth for candy. The boy was in full cardiac arrest when the paramedics brought him in. She had tried for hours to save him. Nothing had worked. And then she had gone out to her car and found the words FUCKING WHORE written in dark eyeliner on her windshield.

  There was no question the missive was from Will’s wife. Angie had a disjointed cursive with Fs that looked like Js and Es that resembled backward 3s. The
two letters appeared in just about every note she’d ever left, starting a year ago, the morning after the first night Will had spent at Sara’s apartment.

  Amanda asked Will, ‘Angie never left notes for you?’

  Will rubbed the side of his jaw. ‘She wouldn’t do that.’

  Sara looked down at the ground. He knew her so well.

  ‘All right.’ Amanda sounded even more flustered than before. ‘I’ll give the two of you five minutes to talk, then you’re back to work.’

  ‘No.’ Will almost shouted the word. ‘I need to look for Angie. You’ve got to let me look for her.’

  ‘And what happens if you find her dead body, Will? Your ex-wife you’ve been trying to divorce so you can be with your new girlfriend? And the medical examiner in charge of the crime scene just happens to be said new girlfriend? And your partner and your boss are working the case, too? How’s that going to read in the paper? Or do you need me to read it for you?’

  Sara could tell from Will’s expression that he hadn’t considered any of this.

  Amanda continued, ‘Your wife murdered—or didn’t murder, according to your girlfriend—a cop who was on Kip Kilpatrick’s payroll, in the service of Marcus Rippy, who you’ve just harassed with a false rape charge for the last seven months, and oh, by the way, this same wife was stalking your girlfriend.’ She had her hands on her hips. ‘Does that sound about right to you?’

  ‘I just want to find her.’

  ‘I know you do, but you’re going to have to let me handle this.’ Amanda told Sara, ‘Five minutes.’ Her low heels made a snapping sound as she walked toward the lift. Sara hadn’t even heard Charlie bring the platform back up.