Genesis (35 page)

"What do you know about thinspo?"

"Not a lot," the doctor admitted. "I know it's a word for pro-anorexia
propaganda, usually on the Internet."

"Three of our victims have a connection to it."

"Anna's still very thin," Sara observed. "Her liver and kidney
functions are off, but I thought that was because of what she'd been
through, not anything she'd done to herself."

"Could she be anorexic?"

"It's possible. I really didn't consider the disorder because of her
age. Anorexia is generally a teenage issue." Sara recalled, "Pete
flagged up something similar during Jacquelyn Zabel's autopsy. She
was very thin, but then again, she was starved and denied water for at
least two weeks. I just assumed she had started out slightly underweight.
Her frame was small." She leaned down to Balthazar and
stroked the side of his cheek. "Anna couldn't have had a baby if she
was starving herself. Not without serious complications."

"Maybe she got it under control long enough to have him," Faith
guessed. "I'm never quite sure which is which—is anorexia where
they throw up?"

"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?