Genesis (13 page)

Candy equivocated, and Faith started to dial Leo's number again.

"All right," the woman groaned. "Jesus. We smoked some weed.
She was freaked out about all this shit. She hadn't visited her mom in
a while. None of us knew how bad it had gotten."

"
None of us
meaning who?"

"Me and a couple of the neighbors. We kept an eye on Gwen.
She's an old woman. Her daughters live out of state."

They must have not kept too close an eye on her if they hadn't realized
she was living in a firetrap. "Do you know the other daughter?"

"Joelyn," she answered, nodding toward the list on the fridge.
"She doesn't visit. At least, she hasn't in the ten years I've lived here."

Faith glanced at Will again. He was staring somewhere over
Candy's shoulder. She asked the woman, "The last time you saw
Jackie was a week ago?"

"That's right."

"What about her car?"

"It was in the driveway until a couple of days ago."

"A couple as in two?"

"I guess it's closer to four or five. I've got a life. It's not like I track
the comings and goings of the neighborhood."

Faith ignored the sarcasm. "Have you seen anyone suspicious
hanging around?"

"I told you no."

"Who was the real estate agent?"

She named one of the top realtors in town, a man who advertised
on every available bus stop in the city. "Jackie didn't even meet him.
They handled it all on the phone. He had the house sold before the
sign even went up in the yard. There's a developer who has a standing
offer on all the lots, and he closes in ten days with cash."

Faith knew this was not uncommon. Her own poor house had
been subject to many such offers over the years—none of them
worth taking because then she wouldn't be able to afford a new house
in her own neighborhood. "What about movers?"

"Look at all this shit." Candy slapped her hand against a crumbling
pile of papers. "The last thing Jackie told me was that she was
going to have one of those construction Dumpsters delivered."

Will cleared his throat. He wasn't looking at the wall anymore,
but he wasn't exactly looking at the witness, either. "Why not just
leave everything here?" he asked. "It's mostly trash. The builder is
going to bulldoze it anyway."

Candy seemed appalled by the prospect. "This was her mother's
house. She grew up here. Her childhood is buried under all this shit.
You can't just throw that all away."

He took out his phone as if it had rung. Faith knew the vibration
feature was broken. Amanda had nearly gutted him in a meeting last
week when it had started ringing. Still, Will looked at the display,
then said, "Excuse me." He left by the back door, using his foot to
move a pile of magazines out of the way.

Candy asked, "What's his problem?"

"He's allergic to bitches," Faith quipped, though if that were true,
Will would be covered in a head-to-toe rash after this morning.
"How often did Jackie visit her mother?"

"I'm not her social secretary."

"Maybe if I take you downtown, it'll jog your memory."

"Jesus," she muttered. "Okay. Maybe a couple of times a year—if
that."

"And you've never seen Joelyn, her sister, visit?"

"Nope."

"Did you spend much time with Jackie?"

"Not much. I wouldn't call us friends or anything."

"What about when you smoked together last week? Did she say
anything about her life?"

"She told me the nursing home she sent her mom off to cost fifty
grand a year."

Faith suppressed the urge to whistle. "There goes any profit from
the house."

Candy didn't seem to think so. "Gwen's been failing for a while
now. She won't last the year. Jackie said might as well get her something
nice on her way out."

"Where's the home?"

"Sarasota."

Jackie Zabel lived on Florida's Panhandle, about five hours' drive
away from Sarasota. Not too close and not too far. Faith said, "The
doors weren't locked when we got here."

Candy shook her head. "Jackie lived in a gated community. She
never locked her doors. One night, she left her keys in her car. I
couldn't believe it when I saw them in the ignition. It was dumb luck
that it wasn't stolen." She added ruefully, "But Jackie was always
pretty lucky."

"Was she seeing anyone?"

Candy turned reticent again.

Faith waited her out.

Finally, the woman said, "She wasn't that nice, okay? I mean, she
was fine to get stoned with, but she was kind of a bitch about things,
and men wanted to fuck her, but they didn't want to talk to her afterward.
You know what I mean?"

Faith wasn't in a position to judge. "What things was she a bitch
about?"

"The best way to drive up from Florida. The right kind of gas to
put in your car. The proper way to throw out the freaking trash." She
indicated the cluttered kitchen. "That's why she was doing this all by
herself. Jackie's loaded. She could afford to pay a crew to clean out this
place in two days. She didn't trust anyone else to do it the right way.
That's the only reason she's been staying here. She's a control freak."

Faith thought about the neatly tied bundles out by the street.
"You said she wasn't seeing anyone. Were there any men in her life—
ex-husbands? Ex-boyfriends?"

"Who knows? She didn't confide in me much and Gwen hasn't
known the day of the week for the last ten years. Honestly, I think
Jackie just needed a couple of tokes to take off the edge, and she
knew I was holding."

"Why'd you let her?"

"She was okay when she unclenched."

"You asked if she'd been in a drunk-driving accident."

"I know she got stopped in Florida. She was really pissed about
that." Candy was sure to add, "Those stops are completely bogus.
One measly glass of wine and they're cuffing you like you're some
kind of criminal. They just want to make their quota."

Faith had done many of those stops herself. She knew she had
saved lives just as sure as she knew Candy had probably had her own
run-ins with the cops. "So, you didn't like Jackie, but you spent time
with her. You didn't know her well but you knew she was fighting a
DUI rap. What's going on here?"

"It's easier to go with the flow, you know? I don't like causing
trouble."

She certainly seemed fine with causing it for other people. Faith
took out her notebook. "What's your last name?"

"Smith."

Faith gave her a sharp look.

"I'm serious. It's Candace Courtney Smith. I live in the only other
shitty house on the street." Candy glanced out the window at Will.
Faith saw that he was talking to one of the uniformed patrolman. She
could tell from the way the other man was shaking his head that they
hadn't found anything useful.

Candy said, "I'm sorry I snapped. I just don't like the police
around."

"Why is that?"

She shrugged. "I had some problems a while back."

Faith had already guessed as much. Candy certainly had the angry
disposition of a person who had sat in the back of a squad car on
more than one occasion. "What kind of problems?"

She shrugged again. "I'm only saying this because you're going to
find out about it and come running back here like I'm an ax murderer."

"Go on."

"I got picked up on a solicitation when I was in my twenties."

Faith was unsurprised. She guessed, "You met a guy who got you
hooked on drugs?"

"Romeo and Juliet," Candy confirmed. "Asshole left me holding
his stash. He said I wouldn't go down for it."

There had to be a mathematical formula out there that calculated
to the second how long it took a woman whose boyfriend got her
hooked on drugs to get turned out on the street in order to support
both their habits. Faith imagined the equation involved a lot of
zeroes behind the decimal point.

Faith asked, "How long were you in for?"

"Shit," she laughed. "I flipped on the asshole
and
his dealer. I
didn't spend day one in prison."

Still not surprised.

The woman said, "I stopped the hard stuff a long time ago. The
weed just keeps me mellow." She glanced at Will again. Obviously,
there was something about him that was making her nervous.

Faith called her on it. "What are you so worried about?"

"He doesn't look like a cop."

"What does he look like?"

She shook her head. "He reminds me of my first boyfriend, all
quiet and nice, but his temper." She smacked her hand into her palm.
"He beat me pretty bad. Broke my nose. Broke my leg once when I
didn't earn out for him." She rubbed her knee. "Still hurts me when
it's cold."

Faith saw where this was going. It wasn't Candy's fault that she'd
tricked herself out to get high and more than likely failed her share of
Breathalyzers. The evil boyfriend was to blame, or the stupid cop meeting
his quota, and now Will was getting his turn as the bad guy, too.

Candy was a skilled enough manipulator to know when she was
losing her audience. "I'm not lying to you."

"I don't care about the sordid details of your tragic past," Faith
stated. "Tell me what you're really worried about."

She debated for a few seconds. "I take care of my daughter now.
I'm straight."

"Ah," Faith said. The woman was worried her child would be
taken away.

Candy nodded toward Will. "He reminds me of those bastards
from the state."

Will as a social worker certainly was a better fit than Will as an
abusive boyfriend. "How old is your daughter?"

"She's almost four. I didn't think I'd be able to—all the shit I've
been through." Candy smiled, her face changing from an angry fist
into something that might be called a moderately attractive plum.
"Hannah's a little sweetheart. She loved Jackie a lot, wanted to be like
her with her nice car and her fancy clothes."

Faith didn't think Jackie sounded like the kind of woman who
wanted a three year-old pawing her Jimmy Choos, not least of all because
kids tended to be sticky at that age. "Did Jackie like her?"

Candy shrugged. "Who doesn't like kids?" She finally asked the
question that a less self-absorbed person would've asked ten minutes
ago. "So, what happened? Was she drunk?"

"She was murdered."

Candy opened her mouth, then closed it. "Killed?"

Faith nodded.

"Who would do that? Who would want to hurt her?"

Faith had seen this enough times to know where it was heading. It
was the reason she had held back the true cause of Jacquelyn Zabel's
death. No one wanted to speak ill of the dead, even a fried-out
wanna-be hippie with an anger problem.

"She wasn't bad," Candy insisted. "I mean, she was good deep
down."

"I'm sure she was," Faith agreed, though the opposite was more
likely true.

Candy's lip quivered. "How am I gonna tell Hannah that she's
dead?"

Faith's phone rang, which was just as well because she did not
know how to answer the question. Worse, part of her didn't care now
that she'd wrung out all the information she needed. Candy Smith
was hardly number one on the list of horrible parents, but she wasn't
a stellar human being, either, and there was a three-year-old child out
there who was probably paying for it.

Faith answered the phone. "Mitchell."

Detective Leo Donnelly asked, "Did you just call me?"

"I hit the wrong button," she lied.

"I was about to call you anyway. You put out that BOLO, right?"

He meant the Be On the Look Out Faith had sent around to all the
zones this morning. Faith held up her finger to Candy, asking for a
minute, then walked back into the family room. "What've you got?"

"Not exactly a miss-per," he said, meaning a missing person.
"Uniform patrol found a kid asleep in an SUV this morning, mom
nowhere to be found."

"And?" Faith asked, knowing there had to be more. Leo was a
homicide detective. He didn't get called out to coordinate social
services.

"Your BOLO," he said. "It kind of matches the mom's description.
Brown hair, brown eyes."

"What's the kid saying?"

"Fuck-all," he admitted. "I'm at the hospital with him now.
You've got a kid. You wanna come see if you can get anything out of
him?"

M
EMBERS OF THE PRESS WERE CLUSTERED AROUND THE
entrance of Grady Hospital, momentarily displacing the pigeons but
not the homeless people, who appeared determined to be included in
every background shot. Will pulled into one of the reserved parking
spots out front, hoping they could sneak in unnoticed. The prospect
did not seem likely. News vans had their satellite dishes pointed skyward,
and perfectly pressed reporters stood with mikes in their
hands, breathlessly reporting the tragic story of the child who was
abandoned at City Foods this morning.

Will got out of the car, telling Faith, "Amanda thought the kid
would take the heat off us for a while. She's going to go ballistic
when she finds out they might be connected."

Faith offered, "I'll tell her if you want me to."

He tucked his hands into his pockets as he walked beside her. "If I
get a vote here, I'd rather you snap at me than feel sorry for me."

"I can do both."

He chuckled, although the fact that he'd missed the list of emergency
numbers taped to the refrigerator was about as funny as his inability
to read Jackie Zabel's name off her driver's license while the
woman hung lifeless over his head. "Candy's right, Faith. She called
it in one."

"You would have shown the list to me," Faith defended. "Jackie
Zabel's sister wasn't even home. I doubt a five-minute delay in leaving
a message on her answering machine will make a huge difference."

Will kept his mouth shut. They both knew she was stretching
things. In some cases, five minutes made all the difference in the
world.

Faith continued, "And if you hadn't stayed under that tree with
the license last night, you might not have found the body until daylight.
If ever."

Will saw the reporters were studying each person who walked to
the front entrance of the hospital, trying to ascertain whether or not
they were important to their story.

He told Faith, "One day, you're going to have to stop making excuses
for me."

"One day, you're going to have to get your head out of your ass."

Will kept walking. Faith was right about one thing—she could
snap at him and feel sorry for him at the same time. The revelation
brought him no comfort. Faith's blood ran blue—not the old-money
kind, but the cop kind—and she had the same knee-jerk response
that had been drilled into Angie every single day at the police academy,
every single second on the street. When your partner or your
squad was attacked, you defended him no matter what. Us against
them, damn the truth, damn what was right.

"Will—" Faith was cut off as the reporters swarmed around her.
They had pegged Faith for a cop as she walked across the parking lot
while Will, as usual, had gotten a free pass.

Will held out his hand, blocking a camera, using his elbow to push
away a photographer with an
Atlanta Journal
logo on the back of his
jacket.

"Faith? Faith?" a man called.

She turned around, spotting a reporter, and shook her head as she
kept walking.

"Come on, babe!" the man called. Will thought that with his
scruffy beard and rumpled clothes, he looked just like the kind of
guy who could get away with calling a woman "babe."

Faith turned away, but she kept shaking her head as she walked
toward the entrance.

Will waited until they were inside the building, past the metal detectors,
to ask, "How do you know that guy?"

"Sam works for the
Atlanta Beacon
. He did a ride-along with me
when I was working patrol."

Will seldom thought about Faith's life before him, the fact that
she had worn a uniform and driven a squad car before she became a
detective.

Faith gave a laugh Will didn't quite understand. "We were hot and
heavy for a few years."

"What happened?"

"He didn't like that I had a kid. And I didn't like that he was an
alcoholic."

"Well . . ." Will tried to think of something to say. "He seems all
right."

"He does seem that way," she answered.

Will watched the reporters press their cameras against the glass,
trying desperately for a shot. Grady Hospital was a public area, but
the press needed permission to film inside the building and they had
all learned at one time or another that the security guards had no
qualms about tossing them out on their ears if they started to bug the
patients or—worse—the staff.

"Will," Faith said, and he could tell from her voice that she
wanted to go back to talking about the list on the fridge, Will's glaring
illiteracy.

He said something that he knew would sidetrack her. "Why did
Dr. Linton tell you all that stuff ?"

"What stuff ?"

"About her husband and being a coroner down south."

"People tell me things."

That was true enough. Faith had the cop's gift of being quiet so
that other people talked just to fill the silence. "What else did she
say?"

She smiled like a cat. "Why? Do you want me to put a note in her
locker?"

Will felt stupid again, but this kind of stupid was far worse.

Faith asked, "How's Angie doing?"

He shot back, "How's Victor?"

And they were quiet the rest of the journey through the lobby.

"Hey, hey!" Leo held out his arms as he walked toward Faith.
"Look at the big GBI girl!" He gave her a bear hug that, surprisingly,
Faith allowed. "You're looking good, Faith. Real good."

She waved him off with a disbelieving laugh that would've
seemed girlish if Will hadn't known her better.

"Good to see you, man," Leo boomed, shooting out his hand.

Will tried not to wrinkle his nose at the stench of cigarette
smoke coming off the detective. Leo Donnelly was of average
height and average build and, unfortunately, was a well-below-average
cop. He was good at following orders, but thinking on his
own was something the man just didn't want to do. While this was
hardly surprising in a homicide detective who had come up in the
1980s, Leo represented exactly the kind of cop that Will hated:
sloppy, arrogant, not afraid to use his hands if a suspect needed loosening
up.

Will tried to keep things pleasant, shaking the man's hand, asking,
"How's it going, Leo?"

"Can't complain," he answered, then started to do exactly that
as they walked toward the emergency room. "I'm two years away
from full retirement and they're trying to push me out. I think
it's the medical—y'all remember that problem I had with my prostate."
Neither one of them responded, but that didn't stop Leo.
"Fucking city insurance is refusing to pay for some of my medication.
I'm telling you, don't get sick or they'll screw you six ways to
Sunday."

"What medication?" Faith asked. Will wondered why she was encouraging
him.

"Fucking Viagra. Six bucks a pill. First time in my life I've ever
had to pay for sex."

"I find that hard to believe," Faith commented. "Tell us about this
kid. Any leads on the mom?"

"Zilch. Car's registered to a Pauline McGhee. We found blood at
the scene—not a lot but enough, you know? This wasn't a nosebleed."

"Anything in the car?"

"Just her purse, her wallet—license confirms it's McGhee. Keys
were in the ignition. The kid—Felix—was sleeping in the back."

"Who found him?"

"A customer. She spotted him sleeping in the car, then got the
manager."

"He was probably exhausted from fear," Faith murmured. "What
about video?"

"The only working camera outside sweeps back and forth across
the front of the building."

"What happened to the other cameras?"

"Bad guys shot them out." Leo shrugged, as if this was to be expected.
"The SUV was just out of the frame, so we've got no footage
of the car. We've got McGhee walking in with her kid, walking out
alone, running back in, running back out. My guess is she didn't notice
the kid was gone until she got to her car. Maybe somebody outside
kept him hidden, then used him as bait to lure her close enough,
then smash and grab."

"Anyone else on the camera coming out of the store?"

"It pans left to right. The kid was definitely in the store. I'm
guessing whoever snatched him was watching the camera. They
sneaked by when it swept the other side of the lot."

Faith asked, "Do you know what school Felix goes to?"

"Some fancy private school in Decatur. I called them already."
He took out his notebook and showed it to Faith so she could
write down the information. "They said the mom doesn't have an
emergency contact listed. The dad jerked off in a cup; end of involvement.
No grandparents have ever shown up. FYI, personal observation,
folks at her job ain't too crazy about the chick. Sounded
like they thought she was a real bitch." He took a folded sheet of
paper out of his pocket and showed it to Faith. "Here's a copy of her
license. Good-lookin' broad."

Over her shoulder Will looked at the picture. It was black-and white,
but he took a good guess. "Brown hair. Brown eyes."

"Just like the others," Faith confirmed.

Leo said, "We already got guys at McGhee's house. None of the
neighbors seem to know who the hell she is or really care that she's
gone. They say she kept to herself, never waved, never went to the
block parties or whatever they did. We're gonna try her work—it's
some hoity-toity design firm on Peachtree."

"You run a credit check on her?"

"She's flush," Leo answered. "Mortgage looks good. Car's paid
for. Has money in the bank, the market, and an IRA. She's obviously
not working off a cop's salary."

"Any recent activity on her credit cards?"

"Everything was still in her purse—wallet, cards, sixty bucks
cash. Last time she used her debit card was at the City Foods this
morning. We put a flag on everything in case somebody wrote the
numbers down. I'll let you know if we get a hit." Leo glanced
around. They were standing outside the emergency room entrance.
He lowered his voice. "Is this related to your Kidney Killer?"

"Kidney Killer?" Will and Faith asked in unison.

"Y'all are cute," Leo said. "Like the Bobbsey Twins."

"What are you talking about, the Kidney Killer?" Faith sounded
as puzzled as Will felt.

"Rockdale County's leaking worse than my prostate," Leo confided,
obviously delighted to be spreading the news. "They're saying
your first victim had her kidney removed. I guess this is some kind of
organ-harvesting thing. A cult maybe? I hear you can make big bucks
for a kidney, around a hundred grand."

"Jesus Christ," Faith hissed. "That's the stupidest thing I've ever
heard."

"Her kidney wasn't taken?" Leo seemed disappointed.

Faith didn't answer, and Will wasn't about to give Leo Donnelly
any information that he could take back to the squad room. He
asked, "Has Felix said anything?"

Leo shook his head, flashing his badge so they'd be buzzed back
into the ER. "The kid clammed up. I called in social services, but
they got fuck-all out of him. You know how they are at that age.
Little thing's probably retarded."

Faith bristled. "He's probably upset because he saw his mother abducted.
What do you expect?"

"Who the hell knows? You've got a kid. I figured you'd be better
at talking to him."

Will had to ask Leo, "Don't you have kids?"

Leo shrugged. "Do I look like the kind of man who has a good relationship
with his children?"

The question did not really need an answer. "Was anything done
to the boy?"

"The doc says he's okay." His elbow dug into Will's ribs. "Speaking
of the doc, shit, she's something else. Fucking gorgeous. Red
hair, legs up to here."

Faith had a smile on her lips, and Will would have asked her about
Victor Martinez again if Leo hadn't been standing there with his elbow
jammed into Will's liver.

There was a loud beeping from one of the rooms, and nurses and
doctors ran past, crash carts and stethoscopes flying. Will felt his gut
tighten at the familiar sights and sounds. He had always dreaded
doctors—especially the Grady docs who had served the kids at the
children's home where Will grew up. Every time he'd been taken out
of a foster home, the cops had brought him here. Every scrape, every
cut, every burn and bruise, had to be photographed, catalogued and
detailed. The nurses had been doing it long enough to know that
there was a certain detachment needed for the job. The doctors
weren't as practiced. They would yell and scream at social services
and make you think that for once, something was going to change,
but then you found yourself right back in the hospital a year later, a
new doc railing and screaming the same things.

Now that Will was in law enforcement, he understood how their
hands were tied, but that still didn't change the way his gut twisted
every time he walked into the Grady emergency room.

As if he sensed the ability to make the situation worse, Leo patted
Will on the arm, saying, "Sorry about Angie splitting, man. Probably
for the best."

Faith was silent, but Will felt lucky she wasn't capable of shooting
flames from her eyes.

Leo said, "I'll go find out where the doc is. They were keeping the
kid in the lounge, trying to get him to calm down."

He left, and Faith's continued silence as she stared at Will spoke
volumes. He tucked his hands in his pockets, leaning against the wall.
The emergency room wasn't as busy as it had been last night, but
there were still enough people milling around to make it difficult to
have a private chat.

Faith didn't seem to mind. "How long has Angie been gone?"

"A little under a year."

Her breath caught. "You've only been married for nine months."

"Yeah, well." He glanced around, not wanting to have this conversation
here or anywhere else. "She only married me to prove that
she actually was going to marry me." He felt himself smiling despite
the situation. "It was more to win an argument than to actually get
married."