Undone (39 page)

“Coke,” Faith guessed, indicating a couple of white bricks on the coffee table. Pipes were scattered around. Needles, rolled-up bills, razor blades. “What a mess. I can’t believe people were living in this.”

Will was never surprised by the depths to which a junkie would stoop, or by the destruction that followed them. He had seen nice suburban houses turned into dilapidated meth dens over the course of a few days. “Where’d everybody go?”

She shrugged. “A dead body wouldn’t scare them enough to leave this much coke behind.” She glanced back at the dead man. “Maybe he’s supposed to be security.”

They searched the rest of the place together. Three bedrooms, one of them a nursery decorated in shades of blue, and two more bathrooms. All of the toilets and sinks were backed up. The sheets were balled up on the beds, the mattresses were overturned. Clothes were ripped out of the closets. All the televisions were gone. There was a keyboard and mouse on the desk in one of the spare rooms, but no computer. Obviously, whoever had taken over the place had stripped it bare.

Will holstered his gun as he stood at the end of the hallway. Two paramedics and a uniformed patrolman were waiting at the front door. He motioned them in.

“Dead as a doornail,” one of the paramedics pronounced, doing only a cursory check for vitals on the junkie by the coat closet.

The cop said, “My partner’s talking to the doorman.” He used a measured tone, directing his words toward Will. “Looks like he fell. Hit his eye.”

Faith shoved her gun into its holster. “Those floors are pretty slippery downstairs.”

The cop nodded his complicity. “Looked slippery.”

Will returned to the nursery. He riffled through the baby clothes on tiny hangers in the closet. He went back to the crib and lifted the mattress.

“Be careful,” Faith warned. “There could be needles.”

“He doesn’t take the kids,” he said, more to himself than Faith. “He takes the women, but he leaves the kids.”

“Pauline wasn’t abducted from her house.”

“Pauline is different.” He reminded her, “Olivia was taken in her backyard. Anna was taken at her front door. You saw the Taser dots. I bet Jackie Zabel was taken at her mother’s house.”

“Maybe a friend has Anna’s baby.”

Will stopped searching, surprised by the desperation in Faith’s tone. “Anna doesn’t have friends. None of these women have friends. That’s why he takes them.”

“It’s been at least a week, Will.” Faith’s voice shook. “Look around you. This place is a mess.”

“You want to turn the apartment over to crime scene?” he asked, leaving the rest of the question unspoken:
You want someone else to find the body?

Faith tried another tack. “Sara said that Anna told her that her last name is Lindsey. She’s a corporate lawyer. We can call her office and see—”

Gently, Will lifted the plastic liner of the diaper pail beside the changing table. The diapers were old, certainly not the source of the more pungent smells in the apartment.

“Will—”

He went to the attached bathroom and checked the trash there. “I want to talk to the doorman.”

“Why don’t you let—”

Will left the room before she had finished. He walked into the living room again, checking under the couches, pulling the stuffing out of some of the chairs to see if anything — anyone — was hidden inside.

The cop was testing the coke, pleased with what he found. “This is a righteous bust. I need to call this in.”

“Give me a minute,” Will told him.

One of the paramedics asked, “You want us to stick around?”

Faith said “No” just as Will said “Yes.”

He made himself clear. “Don’t go anywhere.”

Faith asked the man, “Do you know an EMT named Rick Sigler?”

“Rick? Yeah,” the guy said, like he was surprised she’d asked.

Will blocked out their conversation. He went back to the front powder room, breathing through his mouth so the shit and piss wouldn’t make him throw up. He closed the door, then went back to the front entrance, the confetti dots. He stooped down to study them. He was pretty sure they were in dried urine.

Will stood, going out into the hall and looking back in at the apartment. Anna’s penthouse took up the entire top floor of the building. There were no other units, no neighbors. No one who could hear her scream or see her attacker.

The killer would’ve stood outside her door where Will stood now. He glanced down the hall, thinking the man might’ve come up the stairs — or maybe down. There was a fire exit. He could’ve been on the roof. Or maybe the worthless doorman would’ve let him in through the front entrance, even pressed the button for him on the elevator. There was a peephole in Anna’s penthouse door. She would’ve checked it first. All of these women were cautious. Who would she let in? A delivery person. Maintenance. Maybe the doorman.

Faith was coming toward him. Her face was unreadable, but he knew her well enough to know what she was thinking:
It’s time to go
.

Will looked down the hall again. There was another door halfway down on the wall opposite the apartment.

Faith said, “Will—” but he was already heading for the closed door. He opened it. There was a small metal door inside for the trash chute. Boxes were piled in a stack, recyclables. There was a basket for glass, one for cans. A baby rested in the bin for plastics. His eyes were closed to a slit, his lips slightly parted. His skin was white, waxy.

Faith came up behind Will. She grabbed his arm. Will could not move. The world had stopped spinning. He held on to the doorknob so his knees would not give out on him. A noise came from Faith’s mouth that sounded like a low keening.

The baby turned his head toward the sound, his eyes slowly opening.

“Oh, my God,” Faith breathed. She pushed Will out of the way, dropping to her knees as she reached for the child. “Get help! Will, get help!”

Will felt the world return to normal. “Out here!” he called to the paramedics. “Bring your kit!”

Faith held the baby close as she checked for cuts and bruises. “Little lamb,” she whispered. “You’re okay. I’ve got you now. You’re okay.”

Will watched her with the child, the way she smoothed back his hair and pressed her lips to his forehead. The baby’s eyes were barely open, his lips white. Will wanted to say something, but his words kept getting caught in his throat. He felt hot and cold at the same time, like he might start sobbing right there in front of the world.

“I’ve got you, sweetheart,” Faith murmured, her voice choked with anguish. Tears streamed down her face. Will had never seen her being a mother, at least not with an infant. It broke his heart to see this gentle side of Faith, the part of her that cared so deeply about another human being that her hands shook as she held the child close to her chest.

She whispered, “He’s not crying. Why is he not crying?”

Will finally managed to speak. “He knows no one will come.” He leaned down, cupping his hand around the boy’s head as it rested on Faith’s shoulder, trying not to think about the hours the child had spent alone up here, crying himself out, waiting for someone to come.

The paramedic gasped in surprise. He called to his partner as he took the baby from Faith. The diaper was full. The boy’s belly was distended; his head lolled to the side.

“He’s dehydrated.” The medic checked his pupils for a reaction, lifting his chapped lips to check his gums. “Malnourished.”

Will asked, “Is he going to be okay?”

The man shook his head. “I don’t know. He’s bad off.”

“How long—” Faith’s voice caught. “How long has he been in here?”

“I don’t know,” the man repeated. “A day. Maybe two.”

“Two days?” Will asked, sure he was wrong. “The mom’s been gone at least a week, maybe more.”

“More than a week and he’d be dead.” Gently, the medic turned the child over. “He’s got sores from lying in one place for too long.” He cursed under his breath. “I don’t know how long it takes for this to happen, but someone’s been giving him water, at least. You can’t survive without it.”

Faith said, “Maybe the prostitute…”

She didn’t finish, but Will knew what she was saying. Lola had probably been keeping an eye on Anna’s baby after Anna had been abducted. Then she’d gotten locked up and the kid was left alone. “If Lola was taking care of him,” Will said, “she would need to get in and out of the building.”

The elevator doors slid open. Will saw a second cop standing with Simkov, the doorman. There was a darkening bruise underneath his eye and his eyebrow was split where it had been slammed against the hard marble counter.

“That one.” The doorman pointed triumphantly at Will. “He’s the one who jumped me.”

Will’s fists tightened. His jaw was so clenched he thought his teeth might break. “Did you know this baby was up here?”

The doorman’s sneer was back. “What do I know about a baby? Maybe the night guy was—” He stopped, looking into the open door of the penthouse. “Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” he mumbled, then said something in his foreign tongue. “What did they do up here?”

“Who?” Will asked. “Who was up here?”

“Is that man dead?” Simkov asked, still staring into the trashed penthouse. “Holy Christ, look at this place. The smell!” He tried to go into the apartment, but the cop jerked him back.

Will gave the doorman another chance, carefully enunciating each word of his question. “Did you know this baby was up here?”

Simkov shrugged, his shoulders going up high to his ears. “What the fuck do I know what goes on up here with the rich people? I make eight dollars an hour and you want me to keep up with their lives?”

“There’s a baby,” Will said, so furious that he could barely speak. “A little baby who was dying.”

“So there’s a baby. What the fuck do I care?”

Rage came in a black, blinding intensity, so that it wasn’t until Will was on top of the man, his fist slamming back and forth like a jackhammer, that Will realized what he was doing. And he didn’t stop himself. He didn’t want to stop. He was thinking about that baby lying in his own shit, the killer shoving him into the trash room so he’d starve to death, the prostitute wanting to trade information about him to get her own ass out of the sling and Angie… there was Angie on top of this steaming pile of excrement, pulling Will’s strings like she always did, fucking with his head so that he felt like he belonged in the trash heap with all the rest of them.

“Will!” Faith screamed. She was reaching her hands out in front of her the way you do when you’re talking to a crazy person. Will felt a deep pain in his shoulders as both cops pinned his arms behind his back. He was panting like a rabid dog. Sweat dripped down his face.

“All right,” Faith said, her hands still out as she came closer. “Let’s calm down. Just calm down.” She put her hands on Will, something he realized she had never done before. Her palms were on his face, forcing him to look at her instead of Simkov, who was writhing on the floor. “Look at me,” she ordered, her voice low, like her words were something only they could hear. “Will, look at me.”

He forced himself to meet her gaze. Her eyes were intensely blue, wide open in panic. “It’s all right,” Faith told him. “The baby’s gonna be all right. Okay? All right?”

Will nodded, feeling the cops loosen their grip on his arms. Faith was still standing in front of him, still had her hands on his face.

“You’re all right,” she told him, talking to him in the same tone she had used with the baby. “You’re going to be fine.”

Will took a step back so that Faith would have to let him go. He could tell she was almost as terrified as the doorman. Will was scared, too — scared that he still wanted to beat the man, that if the cops hadn’t been there, if it had just been him and Simkov alone, Will would have beaten him to death with his bare hands.

Faith kept her gaze locked with Will’s just a moment longer. Then she turned her attention to the bloodied pulp on the floor. “Get up, asshole.”

Simkov groaned, curling into a ball. “I can’t move.”

“Shut up.” She jerked Simkov’s arm.

“My nose!” he yelled, so dizzy that the only thing that kept him up was his shoulder slamming into the wall. “He broke my nose!”

“You’re fine.” Faith glanced up and down the hall. She was looking for security cameras.

Will did the same, relieved to find none.

“Police brutality!” the man screamed. “You saw it. You’re all my witnesses.”

One of the cops behind Will said, “You fell, buddy. Don’t you remember?”

“I didn’t fall,” the man insisted. Blood was pooling out of his nose, squeezing through his fingers like water from a sponge.

The other paramedic was starting an IV on the baby. He didn’t look up, but said, “Better be careful where you walk next time.”

And just like that, Will was the kind of cop he had never wanted to be.

FAITH’S HANDS WERE STILL SHAKING AS SHE STOOD IN FRONT OF Anna Lindsey’s ICU room. The two cops who had been on guard outside the woman’s door were chatting with the nurses behind the desk, but they kept glancing up, as if they knew what had happened outside Anna Lindsey’s penthouse apartment and weren’t quite sure what to think about it. For his part, Will stood across from her, hands in his pockets, eyes staring blankly down the hallway. She wondered if he was in shock. Hell, she wondered if
she
was in shock.

In both her personal and her private life, Faith had been the focus of a lot of angry men, but she had never witnessed anything like the violence Will had shown. There had been a moment in that hallway outside the Beeston Place penthouse when Faith had been afraid that Will would kill the doorman. It was his face that had shocked her — cold, merciless, driven toward nothing but keeping his fist slamming into the other man’s face. Like everyone else’s mother in the world, Faith’s had always told her to be careful what she wished for. Faith had wished that Will would be a little more aggressive. Now she would give anything to have him back the way he was before.

“They won’t say anything,” Faith told him. “The cops, the paramedics.”

“It doesn’t matter.”