Genesis (29 page)

"All right," Will said into his cell phone. "Thank you for talking
to me." He ended the call, telling Faith, "Joelyn Zabel says that her
sister struggled with anorexia and bulimia when she was in high
school. She's not sure what was going on recently, but it's a pretty fair
bet that Jackie hadn't given it up."

Faith let the information settle in her brain. "Okay," she finally
said.

"That's it. That's the connection."

"Where does it get us?" she asked, turning off the ignition. "Tech
can't break into Jackie Zabel's Mac. It might take weeks for them to
find the password on Pauline McGhee's computer, and we don't even
know if the anorexia chat room is where she met the other women or
if it was just something she cruised during her lunch hour. Not that
she ate lunch." She looked back up at Olivia Tanner's house. "What
do you want to bet we don't find a damn thing here, either?"

"You're focusing on Felix when you need to be thinking about
Pauline," he said softly.

Faith wanted to tell him he was wrong, but it was true. All she
could think about was Felix in some foster home, crying his eyes out.
She needed to concentrate on the victims, the fact that Jacquelyn
Zabel and Anna were precursors to Pauline McGhee and Olivia
Tanner. How long could the two women endure the torture, the
degradation? Every minute that passed was another minute they
would suffer.

Every minute that passed was another minute Felix was without
his mother.

Will told her, "The way we help Felix is to help Pauline."

Faith breathed a heavy sigh. "It's really starting to annoy me that
you know me so well."

"Please," he muttered. "You are an enigma wrapped in a sticky
bun." He opened the car door and got out. She watched him walk
toward the house with a determined stride.

Faith got out of the car and followed him, noting, "No garage, no
BMW." After her awful phone call with Leo, she had followed up
with the desk sergeant who took the initial report on Olivia Tanner's
disappearance. The woman drove a blue BMW 325, hardly distinctive
in this neighborhood. Tanner was single, worked as a vice president
at a local bank, had no children, and her only living relative was
her brother.

Will tried the front door. Locked. "What's keeping the brother?"

Faith checked her watch. "His plane landed an hour ago. If traffic's
bad . . ." She let her voice trail off. Traffic was always bad in Atlanta,
especially around the airport.

He leaned down, checking under the welcome mat for a key.
When that didn't work, he ran his hand along the top of the doorsill
and checked the flowerpots, coming up empty. "You think we
should just go in?"

Faith suppressed a comment about his eagerness to commit breaking
and entering. She had worked with him long enough to know
that frustration could act like adrenaline to Will, while it acted like
Valium to Faith. "Let's give him another few minutes."

"We should go ahead and call a locksmith in case the brother
doesn't have a key."

"Let's just take this slow, all right?"

"You're talking to me the way you talk to witnesses."

"We don't even know if Olivia Tanner is one of our victims. She
could end up being a bottle blonde and vibrant with tons of friends
and a dog."

"The bank said she hasn't missed a day of work since she started
there."

"She could've fallen down the stairs. Decided to skip town. Run
away with a stranger she met in a bar."

Will didn't answer. He cupped his hands and peered into the front
windows, trying to see inside. The uniform patrolman who had
taken the missing person report yesterday would have already done
this, but Faith let him waste his time as they waited for Michael
Tanner, Olivia's brother, to show up.

Despite his anger, Leo had done them a solid by handing over the
call. Procedure would have dictated a detective be assigned to the
case. Depending on what the detective had on his books, it might
have taken as long as twenty-four hours for Michael Tanner to talk
to someone who could do more than fill out a report. From there, it
might've taken another day before the GBI was alerted to a match on
their profile. Leo had bought them two precious days on a case that
desperately needed help. And they had kicked him in the teeth in
way of thanks.

Faith felt her BlackBerry start to vibrate. She checked the mail,
saying a silent thank you to Caroline, Amanda's assistant. "I've got
Jake Berman's arrest report from the Mall of Georgia incident."

"What's it say?"

Faith watched the flashing file transfer icon. "It'll take a few minutes
to download."

He walked around the house, checking each window. Faith followed
him, keeping her BlackBerry in front of her like a divining
rod. Finally, the first page of the report loaded, and she read from the
narrative title.
"Pursuant to complaints made by patrons of the Mall of
Georgia . . ."
Faith scrolled down, looking for the relevant parts.
"'Suspect then made the typical hand gesture indicating he was interested in
sexual intercourse. I responded by nodding my head twice, at which point he
directed me back toward the stalls at the rear of the men's room.'"
She
skimmed down some more.
"'Suspect's wife and two sons, approximately
age one and three, were waiting outside.'"

"Is the wife's name listed?"

"No."

Will walked up the steps of the deck that lined the back of Olivia
Tanner's house. Atlanta was on the piedmont of the Appalachians,
which meant it was riddled with hills and valleys. Olivia Tanner's
bungalow was at the base of a steep slope, giving her backyard neighbors
a clear view of her house.

"Maybe they saw something?" Will suggested.

Faith looked at the neighbor's house. It was huge, the sort of
McMansion you usually only saw in the suburbs. The top two stories
had large decks and the basement had a terraced seating area with a
brick fireplace. All the shutters and blinds on the back of the house
were closed except for a pair of curtains that were pulled back on one
of the basement doors.

"Looks empty," she said.

"Probably a foreclosure." Will tried Olivia Tanner's back door. It
was locked. "Olivia has been missing since at least yesterday. If she's
one of our victims, that means she was either taken right before or
right after Pauline." He checked the windows. "Are we thinking Jake
Berman might be Pauline McGhee's brother?"

"It's possible," Faith conceded. "Pauline warned Felix that her
brother was dangerous. She didn't want him around her kid."

"She must have been scared of him for a reason. Maybe he's violent.
Maybe the brother is the reason Pauline moved away and
changed her name. She cut all ties at a very young age. She must have
been terrified of him."

Faith listed it out. "Jake Berman was at the scene of the crime.
He's disappeared. He wasn't very cooperative as a witness. He hasn't
left a paper trail except for the one arrest for indecent exposure."

"If Berman is an alias Pauline's brother using, then it's pretty
established. He was arrested and went through the system with the
name intact."

"If he changed it twenty years ago when Pauline ran away from
home, that's a lifetime as far as public records are concerned. They
were still playing catch-up, trying to enter info and old cases into
computers. A lot of those files never made the transition, especially
in small towns. Look at how hard it's been for Leo to track down
Pauline's parents, and they filed a missing persons report."

"How old is Berman?"

Faith scrolled back to the front of the report. "Thirty-seven."

Will stopped. "Pauline is thirty-seven. Could they be twins?"

Faith rifled around in her purse and found the black-and-white
copy of Pauline McGhee's driver's license. She tried to recall Jake
Berman's face, but then remembered she was holding his file in her
other hand. The BlackBerry was still loading. She held it up above
her head, hoping the signal would get stronger.

"Let's go back to the front of the house," Will suggested. They
went around the other side, Will checking the windows, making sure
nothing looked suspicious. By the time they reached the front porch,
the file had finally downloaded.

Jake Berman had a full beard in his arrest photo—the sort of unkempt
kind that suburban dads sported when they were trying to
look subversive. Faith showed Will the picture. "He was clean-shaven
when I talked to him," she said.

"Felix said the man who took his mother had a mustache."

"He couldn't have grown one that quickly."

"We can get a sketch of what Jake would look like without facial
hair, with a mustache, whatever."

"It's Amanda's call whether or not we put that out on the wire."
Releasing a sketch could make Jake Berman panic and go even deeper
into hiding. If he was their bad guy, it could also serve to tip him off.
He might decide to kill any witnesses and leave the state—or worse,
the country. Hartsfield International Airport offered over twenty-five
hundred flights in and out of the city every day.

Will said, "He's got dark hair and dark eyes like Pauline."

"So do you."

Will shrugged, admitting, "He doesn't look like her twin. Maybe
her brother."

Faith was being stupid again. She checked the birthdays. "Berman
had a birthday after he was arrested. He was born eighteen months
before Pauline. Irish twins."

"Was he wearing a suit when he was arrested?"

She scrolled through the file. "Jeans and a sweater. Same as when I
talked to him at Grady."

"Does the report list his occupation?"

Faith checked. "Unemployed." She read the other details, shaking
her head. "This is such a sloppy report. I can't believe a lieutenant
passed this on."

"I've done those stings before. You get ten, maybe fifteen guys a
day. Most of them plead it down or just pay the fine and hope it goes
away. You're not going to be going to court, because the last thing
they want to do is face their accuser."

"What's the 'typical hand gesture' they use to ask for sex?" Faith
asked, curious.

Will did something absolutely obscene with his fingers, and she
wished she hadn't asked.

He insisted, "There has to be a reason Jake Berman is hiding."

"What are our options? He's either a deadbeat, he's Pauline's
brother, or he's our bad guy. Or all three."

"Or none," Will pointed out. "Either way, we've got to talk to
him."

"Amanda's got the whole team looking for him. They're doing all
the derivations on his name they can think of—Jake Seward, Jack
Seward. They're trying McGhee, Jackson, Jakeson. The computer
will run the disambiguations."

"What's his middle name?"

"Henry. So, we've got Hank, Harry, Hoss . . ."

"How can he have an arrest record and we still can't find him?"

"He's not using credit cards. He doesn't have a cell phone bill or a
mortgage. None of his last known addresses have given up anything
useful. We don't know who his employer is or where he's worked in
the past."

"Maybe it's all in his wife's name—the name we don't have."

"If my husband got caught getting his willy winked at the mall
while I was standing outside with our kids . . ." Faith didn't bother to
finish the sentence. "It would help if the lawyer who handled his
public indecency case wasn't a total prick." The man was refusing to
divulge any of his client's information and insisted he had no way to
get in touch with Jake Berman. Amanda was filing warrants to look
into the files, but warrants like that took time—something they were
running out of.

A blue Ford Escape pulled up in front of the house. The man who
got out of the car looked like the textbook example of anxiety, from
his wrinkled brow to the way he was wringing his hands in front of
his slightly paunched belly. He was average looking, balding with
stooped shoulders. Faith would have pegged his occupation as one
that required him to sit in front of a computer for more than eight
hours a day.

"Are you the police officers I spoke with?" the man asked
brusquely. Then, perhaps realizing how abrupt he had been, he tried
again. "I'm sorry, I'm Michael Tanner, Olivia's brother. Are you the
police?"

"Yes, sir." Faith pulled out her ID. She introduced herself and
Will. "Do you have a key to your sister's house?"

Michael seemed worried and embarrassed at the same time, as if
this could all just be a misunderstanding. "I'm not sure we should be
doing this. Olivia likes her personal space."

Faith caught Will's eye. Another woman who was good at putting
up boundaries.

Will offered, "We can call a locksmith if we need to. It's important
we see inside the house in case anything happened. Olivia
might've fallen, or—"

"I've got a key." Michael fished into his pocket and pulled out a
single key on a springy band. "She mailed it to me three months ago.
I don't know why. She just wanted me to have it. I guess because she
knew I wouldn't use it. Maybe I shouldn't use it."

Will said, "You wouldn't have flown all the way from Houston
unless you thought that something was wrong."

Michael's face went white, and Faith caught a glimpse of what the
last few hours of his life must have been like—driving to the airport,
getting on the plane, renting a car, all the while thinking that he was
being foolish, that his sister was fine. All the while knowing in the
back of his brain that the exact opposite was probably true.

Michael handed Will the key. "The policeman I spoke with yesterday
said he sent a patrolman to knock on the door." He paused, as
if he needed them to confirm this had happened. "I was worried they
weren't taking me seriously. I know Olivia is a grown woman, but
she's a creature of habit. She doesn't depart from her routine."