Criminal (22 page)

Will realized that she’d backed him into a corner. “Still—”

“There’s nothing more to say.” Amanda continued walking. “We have a tentative ID on Ashleigh Snyder. They found her purse in the Dumpster. Her credit cards were there but her license was missing. So was her cash.”

“That sounds familiar.”

“Bless the Sunshine Laws.” Georgia’s freedom of information act was one of the most liberal in the country. Inmates were especially fond of the law.

Will said, “He’s staying at the Four Seasons Hotel.”

“I’m aware of that,” she acknowledged. “We lost track of him for two hours yesterday afternoon, but I’ve made certain that won’t happen again.”

“He’s been out almost two months.”

Amanda didn’t immediately answer. “I’ve never understood time off for good behavior. It’s prison. Shouldn’t you be on your best behavior at all times?”

“No one told me when he got out.”

“That’s the thing about having a sealed juvenile record, Will. They aren’t allowed to notify you unless you ask them to.”

“He was supposed to die in there.”

“I know.”

One of the patrolmen called out, “Dr. Wagner?”

Amanda said, “You two go on.” She waited for the cop to join her.

Will kept walking. Faith had to jog to keep up. She asked, “What was that about?”

He could only shake his head as they entered the mouth of the parking lot. The ground sloped downward. In the back of the lot, a group of detectives formed a half circle around the body. The woman was in front of a large Dumpster area. Brick walls horseshoed the metal container. The tall metal doors stood open. The lock was hanging off the latch, the ring broken. Someone had already marked it with a yellow tag so it could be catalogued as evidence.

Will glanced around, feeling watched. Or maybe he was just being paranoid. He scanned the area. The community center was on the opposite side of the parking lot. More apartments edged the perimeter. Their white garage doors were like teeth against the gum of the red brick. There was a playground in the distance, with brightly colored tunnels and swings. The Coca-Cola building loomed on the horizon.

If he squinted at the view back across the interstate, he could pick out the familiar salmon-colored façade of the Four Seasons Hotel.

“Another case solved by the glorious GBI.” Leo Donnelly laughed around the cigarette in his mouth. As usual, the homicide detective was dressed in a tan suit that was probably already wrinkled when he picked it up off the floor this morning. His new partner, a young guy named Jamal Hodge, nodded at Faith.

Leo winked at her. “Lookin’ good across the chest, Mitchell. I guess you’re still nursing?”

“Fuck off, Leo.” Faith took her notebook out of her purse. “When’d the call come in?”

Leo pulled out his own notebook. “Four thirty-eight in the cheery a.m. Janitor comes on shift, sees her and freaks. His name’s Otay Keehole.”

“Utay Keo,” Jamal corrected.

“Lookit Poindexter here.” Leo shot him a nasty look. “Ooo-Tay is a student at Tech. Twenty-four years old. Lives with his baby mama. No priors.”

Faith asked, “How’s he look for this?”

Jamal supplied, “Not likely.”

Leo made a show of closing his notebook. He took a drag on his cigarette, staring at Jamal. “Janitor’s two years out of Cambodia. Works off his student visa. Voluntarily submitted to fingerprinting and DNA. No record. No motive. I’m sure he’s popped a few whores in his day—who hasn’t?—but he doesn’t even have a car. Took the bus here.”

Will asked, “You ID’d the victim off her credit cards?”

Jamal held out his hands, indicating Leo should answer.

“We’re pretty sure it’s Snyder,” Leo said. “Face is a mess, but the blonde hair is a giveaway.”

Will asked, “Have you notified the family?”

“Mom’s dead. Daddy’s flying back from a business trip in Salt Lake. Should be here this afternoon.”

Jamal added, “We asked for dental records.”

“Great, thanks,” Faith mumbled. She was probably thinking about the father’s long flight home, the moment at the morgue when his life would forever be changed.

They all turned back to the Dumpster. The crowd had dispersed so the crime scene techs could begin the arduous process of cataloguing the scene.

Will looked down at the woman’s twisted body. Long blonde hair draped across her face. She was on her back. Her arms were turned, wrists open to the sky. Her face was a bloody pulp, probably unrecognizable to even her closest friends. Her fingernails were painted bright red. Blood glued her clothes to her skin. Will could guess what was underneath the tight T-shirt and flowered skirt.

Leo said, “Here’s something you don’t see every day: guy pummeled her gut until her intestines shit out. You can’t find that kind of thing on YouTube.” He chuckled to himself. “At least, not until I figure out how to work the camera on my phone.”

“Lord help us,” Jamal muttered. He headed toward Charlie Reed, the GBI crime scene investigator.

“Come on, Hodge,” Leo called to his back. “It’s funny.”

Faith said, “Smart, Leo. You really want to piss off the deputy chief’s grandson?”

Will glanced at Faith. Her voice sounded a little shaky. She had never been good around bodies, but through sheer determination she held her own. One crack in her shell and Leo or someone like him would turn Faith into a joke every squad room was laughing about by morning roll call. Faith had once told Will that working with Leo was like watching a wind-up monkey that couldn’t quite get the cymbals to meet.

Will knew better than to ask if she was okay. Instead, he knelt beside the body, keeping his distance so he wouldn’t taint the area. The crime scene photographers weren’t waiting for the sun. Their digital cameras and computers were laid out on a folding table. One of the women turned on the diesel generator. The xenon lights flickered. The victim’s hand showed stark against the asphalt. Her red manicured nails glistened as if they were still wet.

Faith asked Leo, “What’s this building? Is it still a community center?”

“Dunno.” Leo shrugged. “Guess they named it after that guy on the radio.”

Will stood up too quickly. He fought a wave of dizziness. “Clark Howell was the publisher of
The Atlanta Constitution
.”

“No shit?” Leo asked.

“He’s chock-full of fascinating trivia today,” Faith said. “Do you have any leads?”

“What’s it to you?”

Faith put her hands on her hips. “Don’t be an asshole, Leo. You know this is a state case. Do you have any leads, or should I ask Jamal?”

Leo reluctantly offered, “I made some calls, checked with downtown. There’s nobody on our books what would knock the shit out of a girl like this.” He laughed at his own joke. “Literally.”

“She have any enemies?”

“Y’all should know more about that than me.”

“What about a drug problem?”

Leo sniffed, rubbing his nose. “Nothing serious, from what I’ve heard.”

“Coke or meth?”

“She’s a student. What do you think?”

“Meth,” Faith said. “And watch the generalities, Leo. My kid goes to Tech. He doesn’t hit anything harder than Red Bull.”

“Sure.”

“Faith,” Amanda called. She was at the edge of the parking lot, waving them over. Faith shot Leo a nasty look as they headed toward Amanda.

Leo yelled at their backs, “No, don’t thank me, Officers. It was my pleasure.”

Amanda was digging around in her purse when they joined her. She pulled out her BlackBerry. The case was still cracked from her fall. She scrolled through her emails while she talked. “Patrol found a jogger who saw a suspicious green minivan circling the area shortly after four this morning.”

“He just came forward?” Faith looked at her watch. “Was he jogging for two hours?”

“That sounds like a good question to start with. He lives there, apartment two-six-twenty.” Amanda indicated the building across the street. “Make sure you get him on paper. All the t’s crossed and i’s dotted.”

Will said, “I’ll talk to him.” He made to go, but Amanda stopped him.

“Faith, you do this.”

Faith gave him a look of apology before heading toward the apartment building.

Amanda held up a finger, silencing Will. She read a few more emails before dropping her BlackBerry into her purse. “You know you can’t work this case.”

“I don’t see how you’re going to stop me.”

“This has to look good on paper. We can’t have it falling apart in court.”

“It held up in court the last time and he still got out.”

“Welcome to the criminal justice system. I rather thought you were familiar with it by now.”

Will stared across the interstate. Rush hour was gearing up. Cars were starting to clog the fourteen lanes. He saw a sign for one of the Emory hospitals. Sara had gone to Emory University. Grady was part of their teaching system. She would be getting ready for work right now. Showering, drying her hair. Will usually walked the dogs before he left. He wondered if she missed that.

Amanda said, “Give me time to do this right, Will. It has to be done right.”

Will shook his head. He didn’t care about the means, just the end. “We need to work his case from the beginning.”

“What do you think I’ve been doing?” she asked. “I’ve had two teams on this since I found out. We’re dealing with a thirty-plus-year time gap in a city that tears itself down every five years. His old stomping ground is currently a twelve-story office complex.”

“I’ll check it. Faith can go with me.”

“It’s already been checked top to bottom.”

“Not by me.”

She wasn’t looking at him. Like Will, she was staring over the interstate. “Motive, means, and opportunity.” It was Amanda’s mantra.

Will said, “You know he’s got all three.”

She gave a tight nod of her head. If Will hadn’t been watching, he would’ve missed it. He studied her profile. She seemed to be as tired as he was. There were dark circles under her eyes. Her makeup was caked into the creases around her eyes and mouth.

She said, “I have to say, I love what you did with the basement.”

Will’s hands clenched. The cuts opened up along his fingers.

“Did you find what you were looking for?”

His jaw popped when he opened his mouth to speak. “Why were you there?”

“That’s a very interesting question.”

“How long have you known about my father?”

“You work for me, Will. It’s my job to know everything about you.”

“Why did that reporter call you?”

“It makes for a good story, I suppose—your chosen path of law and order. Your rise from the ashes. Atlanta’s symbol is the phoenix. What a fitting dovetail.”

He turned and headed toward North Avenue, the bridge over the interstate. Amanda’s stride was half as long as Will’s. She had to work to match his pace.

She asked, “Where are you going?”

“To talk to my father.”

“To what end?”

“You’ve read his file. You know he has a pattern. He kills one, he keeps one. He’s probably already picked her out.”

“Shall I put out an APB on a missing prostitute?”

She was mocking him. “You know he’s looking for another girl.”

“I told you we’ve got eyes on him. He hasn’t left his room.”

“Except for yesterday afternoon.”

She stopped trying to keep up. “You will
not
talk to him.”

Will turned around. Amanda never raised her voice. She didn’t scream. She didn’t stamp her foot. She never cursed. She managed to scare everyone by reputation. For the first time in fifteen years, he saw through her. She was nothing, really. An old woman with her arm in a sling and secrets she would carry to her grave.

She said, “I’ve issued a standing order to have you arrested the minute you step one foot in that hotel. Understood?”

He stared his hate into her. “I should’ve left you to rot in that basement.”

“Oh, Will.” Her voice was filled with regret. “I have a feeling that by the end of this, we’re both going to wish you had.”

thirteen

Present Day

SUZANNA FORD

She missed
Dancing with the Stars
. She missed Bobo, her little dog who’d died when she was ten. She missed her grandmother, who’d died when Suzanna was eleven, and her grandfather, who’d died a few months later. She missed Adam, the goldfish who’d died the night they brought him home from the store. Suzanna had found him in the tank just floating on his side. His eye was blank. She could see her reflection in it.

Suzanna called the store to complain.

“Just flush ’em down the toilet,” the manager said. “Come by tomorrow and we’ll give you a new one.”

Suzanna had felt uneasy at the prospect. It felt wrong. Did Adam mean nothing? Was he that replaceable? Just plop another fish in the tank and forget he even existed? Call that one Adam, too. Feed him Adam’s food. Let him swim through Adam’s secret treasure box and pink coral castle?

In the end, there was nothing else to do. Suzanna flushed him down the toilet. As the water circled around the bowl, she saw his fin flip up. The glass orb of his eyeball turned to her, and she had seen something like panic.

In her dreams, Suzanna was the fish. She was Adam One, because of course the temptation was too great—they had gone back the next day and gotten a free Adam Two.

That was the entirety of the dream:

Suzanna One, helpless, staring up at the ceiling as she spun, spun, spun quickly down the drain.

fourteen

July 14, 1975

MONDAY

Amanda leaned against her Plymouth as she waited for Evelyn in the parking garage of the Sears building. The air did not move in the underground facility. The coolness afforded from the poured concrete walls was no match for the scorching heat. Even at seven in the morning, Amanda could feel sweat dripping down her neck and into her collar.

Neither she nor Evelyn had been up for the barbecue after leaving the morgue on Saturday evening. Hank Bennett. The misidentified girl. The red fingernails. The broken hyoid bone. It was a lot to process, and neither of them seemed up to having a coherent conversation. They’d both talked in monosyllables, Amanda because of the things she’d seen with Pete Hanson, and Evelyn—most probably—because she’d been unsettled about seeing Rick Landry again. No matter their reasons, Evelyn had gone home to her husband and Amanda had gone home to her empty apartment.

If Sunday brought anything, it was a welcome sense of normalcy. Amanda had cooked breakfast for her father. They’d gone to church. She’d cooked Sunday dinner. All the while, Duke had been notably more cheerful. He’d made a few jokes about the preacher. He was feeling bullish on his case. He’d spoken with his lawyer again. Lars Oglethorpe’s reinstatement was definitely good news for the men Reginald Eaves had fired.

Amanda doubted it was good news for her.

Evelyn’s station wagon made a tight turn, the tires squealing against the concrete. She backed into the space beside the Plymouth, calling through the open window, “Did Kenny call you yesterday?”

Amanda felt a shock of panic. “Why would Kenny call me?”

“I gave him your number.”

For a few seconds, Amanda was too flustered to do anything but stare. “Why would you give him my phone number?”

“Because he asked for it, silly. Why do you sound so surprised? And why are you just standing there?”

Amanda shook her head as she got into the car. Men like Kenny Mitchell didn’t ask for her phone number. “That’s very nice of you to put him up to this, but let’s not waste time on something that’s not going to happen.”

“You can—” Evelyn stopped, but only for a moment before she blurted out, “You can wear Tampax, right?”

Amanda pressed her fingers into her eyelids, not caring whether or not she smudged her makeup. “If I say yes, can we please change the subject?”

Evelyn wouldn’t be daunted. “You know, Pete’s a real doctor. He can write you a prescription, no questions asked, and if you slip the guy at the Plaza Pharmacy a few extra bucks, he won’t be a jerk about it.”

Amanda fanned her face. The heat was even more stifling inside the car. She tried not to think about her telephone ringing in her empty apartment yesterday.

“It’s legal now, sweetheart. You don’t have to be married to get birth control anymore.”

Amanda’s laugh was genuine this time. “I think you’re jumping to a lot of conclusions.”

“Maybe, but it’s fun, isn’t it?”

It was humiliating, actually, but Amanda tried to hide that fact by looking at her watch again. “Did this consume your entire Sunday, or did you manage to think at all about what we’ve been doing?”

Evelyn rolled her eyes. “Are you kidding? It’s all that’s been on my mind for the last week. I was so distracted this morning I put salt instead of sugar in Bill’s coffee. Poor man drank half the cup before he realized what I’d done.” She paused for a breath. “What about you?”

“I’ve been going over Butch’s notes.” Amanda pulled the homicide detective’s notebook out of her purse. “See this here?” She pointed to the page for Evelyn’s benefit. The letters
CI
were circled twice.

“Confidential informant,” Evelyn said. She flipped back through the notebook. “Does he say anything else about it? A name, maybe?”

“Nothing, but a lot of Butch’s cases rely on CIs.” Most of them did, actually. The man was very good at finding criminals and lowlifes who were willing to parlay information into a get-out-of-jail-free card. “He never names his sources.”

“Oh, that’s sneaky.” She scanned the pages, stopping on a crude drawing of the apartment where Jane Delray had lived. “He left out the bathroom. Did he even search the place?” She answered her own question. “Of course he didn’t. Why would he?”

Amanda checked the time again. She didn’t want to be late for roll call. “We should go over what we’re doing today. I can call my friend at the Housing Authority when I get to work. Maybe we can find out who rented that apartment.”

Evelyn paused for a moment as she switched gears. “I’ll call Cindy Murray at the Five and see if she has time to check the confiscated-license box for a Lucy Bennett. At least we’ll have a photograph of her.”

“I don’t know what good it’ll do. Pete will have to sign off on the ID. It came from her own brother.” Neither she nor Evelyn had the nerve to contradict Hank Bennett’s identification of his sister. “Bennett hasn’t laid eyes on her in five or six years. Do you think he knew it wasn’t Lucy?”

“I think all he cared about was not being late for his dinner date.”

They were both silent. Amanda felt a ping-pong sensation inside her head. Thoughts kept bouncing around, getting lost. It was just too much to keep up with.

Evelyn was obviously feeling the same. She said, “Bill and I started a puzzle last night—bridges of the Pacific Northwest. Zeke picked it out for Father’s Day last month—and I thought, ‘This is exactly how I’ve felt all week. Like there are all of these different little pieces to a puzzle floating around out there, and if I could only put them together, maybe I’d be able to see the full picture.’ ”

“I know what you mean. All I do is ask myself questions, and I can’t seem to get a satisfactory answer to any of them.”

“Hey, I’ve got a crazy idea.”

“You cannot imagine my surprise.”

Evelyn gave her a sarcastic grimace, then leaned into the back seat of the station wagon.

“What are you doing?”

She snaked her body around into the back seat. Her legs went up. Amanda swatted the woman’s feet out of her face. She scanned the parking lot, praying they were not being watched.

“Evelyn,” she said. “What on earth?”

“Got it.” Finally, she shimmied back into her seat. She had a pack of construction paper in her hands. “Zeke’s crayons melted into the carpet. Bring your pen.” She pushed open the door.

Amanda got out of the car and followed her around to the front of the wagon. Evelyn took a piece of paper off the top of the pack and, using Amanda’s pen, wrote, “
HANK BENNETT
” on the page. Next, she took another page and wrote, “
LUCY BENNETT
,” then on another put, “
JANE DELRAY
.” She added “
MARY
” and “
KITTY TREADWELL
” into the mix, then “
HODGE
,” “
JUICE/DWAYNE MATHISON
,” and finally, “
ANDREW TREADWELL
.”

“What are you doing?” Amanda asked.

“Puzzle pieces.” She spread the multicolored pages out on the Falcon’s hood. “Let’s put it together.”

Amanda took in the disparate words. The idea wasn’t so crazy after all. “We should do it chronologically.” She moved the names around as she spoke. “Hank Bennett came into the station, and then Sergeant Hodge sent us to Techwood. Make a new one for Tech.” Evelyn scribbled the word onto a new sheet. “We need to subcategorize these.” Amanda took the pen and started filling in details: dates, times, what they’d been told. The Fury’s engine clicked in the heat. The metal hood singed her skin.

Evelyn suggested, “I’ll make a timeline.”

Amanda handed her the pen. She pointed to the different pages as she called out the sequence. “Hank Bennett goes to Sergeant Hodge last Monday. Hodge immediately sends us out to Techwood to take a rape report.” She looked at Evelyn. “Hodge won’t tell us why he sent us in the first place. Obviously, there wasn’t a rape. Why did he send us there?”

“I’ll ask him again this morning, but he wouldn’t tell me the last four times.”

Amanda felt the need to tell her, “You were very brave to do that.”

“Fat lot of good it did.” Evelyn waved away the compliment. “Juice, the pimp, doesn’t belong in here.”

“Unless he’s the one who killed Jane.”

“That doesn’t seem likely. Juice was probably in jail when it happened. Or having the crap beaten out of him for resisting arrest.”

“Okay, let’s push him up here as a remote possibility.” Amanda moved Juice to the periphery. “Next: We’re at the apartment in Techwood. Jane tells us that there are three girls missing: Lucy Bennett, Kitty—who we later find out is Treadwell—and a girl named Mary, last name unknown.”

“Right.” Evelyn wrote down the information, shooting their names off Jane Delray’s.

“Then, a few days later, Jane is murdered.”

“But she was misidentified as Lucy,” Evelyn corrected. “I’ll put an asterisk beside her name, but we should keep it this way just for clarity’s sake.”

“Right. A person who is thought to be Lucy Bennett is murdered.”

“I wonder if the brother had a big life insurance policy on her?”

Amanda supposed being married to an insurance man put these ideas into Evelyn’s head. “Is there a way to check? A registry?”

“I’ll ask Bill, but just talking it out, I think given Lucy’s life, why murder her when she would eventually kill herself with drugs?” Evelyn looked down at the timeline. “It’s not much of a motive.”

“Motive.” There was something they hadn’t considered. “Why would someone want to murder Jane?”

“Are we assuming the killer knew it was Jane whom he was murdering?”

Amanda’s head was starting to hurt. “I think we have to assume that until we find out otherwise.”

“Okay. Motive. Jane was very annoying.”

“True,” Amanda agreed. “But the last person she annoyed other than us was Juice, and if there’s one thing I know about pimps, it’s that they don’t kill their girls. They want them working. They’re product.”

“I’ll call the jail and see when Juice got out, just to make triple sure.” Evelyn tapped the pen against her chin. “Maybe the murderer was someone who saw Jane talking to us at Techwood? The whole compound lit up when we arrived. There’s no way it wasn’t broadcast to the rooftops that Jane was talking to two police officers.”

Amanda felt unsettled by the thought that she might’ve been partly responsible for the girl’s death. “Write that down as a possibility.”

“I hate to think we had anything to do with it. Then again, she wasn’t exactly baking cookies for the PTA.”

“No,” Amanda agreed, but Evelyn had only seen the pictures. “Have you ever had a manicure?”

Evelyn looked at her fingernails, which were clear-coated, just like Amanda’s. “Bill treated me to one last Christmas. I can’t say that I enjoyed having a stranger touch my hands.”

“Jane’s fingernails were perfect. They were filed and polished. I couldn’t’ve done a better job myself.”

“That manicure was ridiculously expensive. I can’t imagine Jane having the money.”

“No, and if she did, she’d spend it on drugs, not getting her fingernails polished.” Amanda remembered, “Pete said something interesting about the attacker. He said the man was angry, uncontrolled.”

“How in the world can he tell that?”

“From the way Jane looked. She was beaten all over.” Amanda tried to think it through, but she found it was easier to talk it out to Evelyn. “I guess we should be asking ourselves what kind of person is capable of this. And then, ask how he would do it. He obviously used his fists, but he had the hammer, too. He busted open the lock on the access door to the roof. But then, we need to consider how he was able to get the better of someone like Jane. She wasn’t bright, but she was street-smart.”

“Who, how, and why,” Evelyn summarized. “Those are very good questions. If Juice isn’t the answer to them, then who is? Someone Jane has seen before. A regular customer who knows where she lives.” Evelyn tapped the pen again. “But, then, this is what we’re saying: He knocked on the door. He gave her a manicure. Then he threw her off the roof.”

“He strangled her before he threw her off the roof.”

Evelyn asked, “Pete told you that?” Amanda nodded. “That seems like a more plausible scenario. Jane screamed like a stuck pig when you kicked her, and that was barely a tap.”

“You didn’t say that at the time.”

“I was scared,” Evelyn admitted. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right,” Amanda told her. “Maybe we could ask around and see if any johns are into choking.”

“I know a gal who works undercover downtown. I’ll see what she knows. But even if there is a guy out there who likes choking women—and something tells me there’s more than one—how are we going to find his real name? And if by some miracle we do find his name, how on earth would we link him to Jane?”

Amanda offered, “Pete scraped some skin out from under Jane’s fingernails. He said he could match the blood type against a suspect. See if he’s a secretor or a nonsecretor.”

“Eighty percent of the population has secretor status. Nearly forty percent is type O-positive. That’s hardly narrowing it down.”

“I didn’t know that,” Amanda admitted. Evelyn was much better at statistics than she was. “Let’s go back to the puzzle before we’re both late for work.” Amanda picked up where they’d left off in the timeline. “Next, we met Mr. Blue Suit, aka Hank Bennett, at the morgue. He admits he hasn’t seen his sister in years, which might explain why he couldn’t identify her.”

“Or, he’s just too arrogant to admit that he can’t.”

That seemed far more likely. “I still find it odd that Lucy Bennett didn’t have a record. She’s been on the game at least a year, probably more.”

“Neither does Kitty Treadwell.” Evelyn looked sheepish. “I radioed dispatch on my way here. They ran through all the variations for me. There was no record for a Kitty Treadwell.”

“How about Jane Delray?”

“She had two pick-ups several years ago, but nothing recently.”

“Then her fingerprints are on file.”

Evelyn frowned. “No, they’re not. I asked. A lot of the older records have been purged.”