Genesis (27 page)

"Are you sure about that?"

"It's like when people are around well trained dogs, you know?
They want a dog, but they want
that
dog, not a new one they'd have
to work with and train on their own."

"Did she like your kids?"

Joelyn cleared her throat. "She never met them."

Will gave the woman some time. "She was picked up on a DUI
before she died."

Joleyn was surprised. "Really?"

"Was she much of a drinker?"

She shook her head vehemently. "Jackie didn't like being out of
control."

"The neighbor, Candy, says they smoked some grass together."

Her lips parted in surprise. She shook her head again. "I don't buy
it. Jackie never did shit like that. She liked it when other people
drank too much, got out of hand, but she never did it herself. You're
talking about a woman who's weighed the same weight since she was
sixteen years old. Her ass was so tight it squeaked when she walked."
She thought about it some more, shook her head again. "No, not
Jackie."

"Why was she cleaning out your mother's house? Why not pay
someone else to do the dirty work?"

"She didn't trust anybody else. She always had the right way to do
things, and whoever you were, you were always doing it wrong."

That, at least, jibed with what Candy said. Everything else was a
completely different picture, which made sense considering that
Joelyn was not particularly close to her sister. He asked, "Does the
number eleven mean anything to you?"

She furrowed her brow. "Not a damn thing."

"What about the words 'I will not deny myself '?"

She shook her head again. "But it's funny . . . As rich as she was,
Jackie denied herself all the time."

"Denied herself what?"

"Food. Alcohol. Fun." She gave a rueful laugh. "Friends. Family.
Love." Her eyes filled with tears—the first real tears Will had seen
her cry. He pushed away from the door and left, finding Faith waiting
in the hallway for him.

"Anything?" she asked.

"She lied about the adoption thing. At least she said she did."

"We can check it out with Candy." Faith took out her phone and
flipped it open. She talked to Will as she dialed. "We were supposed
to meet Rick Sigler at the hospital ten minutes ago. I called him to
postpone, but he didn't pick up."

"What about his friend, Jake Berman?"

"I put some uniforms on it first thing. They're supposed to call if
they find him."

"You think it's odd that we can't track him down?"

"Not yet, but talk to me at the end of the day if we still can't find
him." She put the phone to her ear, and Will listened as she left a
message for Candy Smith to return her call. Faith closed the phone
and gripped it in her hand. Will felt dread well up inside him, wondering
what she was going to say next—something about Amanda, a
diatribe against Sara Linton, or Will himself. Thankfully, it was
about the case.

She said, "I think Pauline McGhee is part of this."

"Why?"

"It's just gut. I can't explain it, but it's too coincidental."

"McGhee is still Leo's case. We've got no jurisdiction over it, no
reason to ask him for a piece of it." Still, Will had to ask, "You think
you can nuance him?"

She shook her head. "I don't want to make trouble for Leo."

"He's supposed to call you, right? When he tracks down Pauline's
parents in Michigan?"

"That's what he said he'd do."

They stood at the elevator, both quiet.

Will said, "I think we need to go to Pauline's work."

"I think you're right."

F
AITH PACED THE LOBBY OF XAC HOMAGE, THE RIDICULOUSLY
named design firm that employed Pauline McGhee. The offices took
up the thirtieth floor of Symphony Tower, an architecturally awkward
skyscraper that loomed over the corner of Peachtree and
Fourteenth Street like a large speculum. Faith shuddered at the image,
thinking about what she had read in Jacquelyn Zabel's autopsy
report.

In keeping with the pretentiousness of their name, Xac Homage's
window-lined lobby was furnished with low-to-the-floor couches
that were impossible to sit in without either clenching every muscle
in your ass or just falling back into a slouch that you would need help
getting out of. Faith would've gone for the slouch if she hadn't been
wearing a skirt that was prone to riding up even when she wasn't sitting
like a gangster's whore in a rap video.

She was hungry but didn't know what to eat. She was running out
of insulin and she still wasn't sure she was calculating the dosages
correctly. She hadn't made an appointment with the doctor Sara
had recommended. Her feet were swollen and her back was killing
her and she wanted to beat her head against the wall because she
could not stop thinking about Sam Lawson no matter how hard she
tried.

And she had a sneaking suspicion from the way Will kept giving
her sidelong glances that she was acting like a raving lunatic.

"God," Faith mumbled, pressing her forehead into the clean glass
that lined the lobby. Why did she keep making so many mistakes?
She wasn't a stupid person. Or maybe she was. Maybe all these years
she had been fooling herself, and she was, in fact, one of the stupidest
people on earth.

She looked down at the cars inching along Peachtree Street, ants
scurrying across the black asphalt. Last month at her dentist's office,
Faith had read a magazine article that posited that women were genetically
wired to become clingy with the men they had sex with for
at least three weeks after the event because that's how long it took for
the body to figure out whether or not it was pregnant. She had
laughed at the time, because Faith had never felt clingy with men. At
least not after Jeremy's father, who had literally left the state after
Faith had told him she was pregnant.

And yet, here she was checking her phone and her email every ten
minutes, wanting to talk to Sam, wanting to see how he was doing
and find out whether or not he was mad at her—as if what had happened
was her fault. As if he had been such a magnificent lover that
she couldn't get enough of him. She was already pregnant; it couldn't
be her genetic wiring that was causing her to act like a silly schoolgirl.
Or maybe it was. Maybe she was just a victim of her own
hormones.

Or maybe she shouldn't be getting her science from
Ladies Home
Journal
.

Faith turned her head, watching Will in the elevator alcove. He
was on his cell phone, holding it with both hands so it wouldn't fall
apart. She couldn't be mad at him anymore. He had been good with
Joelyn Zabel. She had to admit that. His approach to the job was different
than hers, and sometimes that worked for them and sometimes
that worked against them. Faith shook her head. She couldn't dwell
on these differences right now—not when her entire life was on the
edge of a gigantic cliff, and the ground would not stop shaking.

Will finished his call and walked toward her. He glanced at the
empty desk where the secretary had been. The woman had left to get
Morgan Hollister at least ten minutes ago. Faith had images of the
pair of them furiously shredding files, though it was more likely that
the woman, a bottle blonde who seemed to have trouble processing
even the smallest request, had simply forgotten about them and was
on her cell phone in the bathroom.

Faith asked, "Who were you talking to?"

"Amanda," he told her, taking a couple of candies out of the bowl
on the coffee table. "She called to apologize."

Faith laughed at the joke, and he joined her.

Will took some more candy, offering the bowl to Faith. She
shook her head, and he continued, "She's doing another press conference
this afternoon. Joelyn Zabel's dropping her lawsuit against the
city."

"What prompted that?"

"Her lawyer realized they didn't have a case. Don't worry, she's
going to be on the cover of some magazine next week, and the week
after, she's going to be threatening to sue us again because we haven't
found her sister's killer."

It was the first time either of them had voiced their real fear in all
of this: that the killer was good enough to get away with his crimes.

Will indicated the closed door behind the desk. "You think we
should just go back?"

"Give it another minute." She tried to wipe away her forehead
print on the window, making the smear worse. The momentum of
the tension between them had somehow shifted in the ride over, so
that Will was no longer worried about Faith being mad at him. It was
now Faith's turn to be worried that she'd upset him.

She asked, "Are we okay?"

"Sure we're okay."

She didn't believe him, but there was no way around someone
who kept insisting there wasn't a problem, because all they would do
is keep insisting until you felt like you were making the whole thing
up.

She said, "Well, at least we know that bitch runs in the Zabel
family."

"Joelyn's all right."

"It's hard to be the good sibling."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, if you're the good kid in the family, making good
grades, staying out of trouble, et cetera, and your sister's always
screwing up and getting all the attention, you start to feel left out,
like no matter how good you are, it doesn't matter because all your
parents can focus on is your crappy sibling."

She must have sounded bitter, because Will asked, "I thought
your brother was a good guy?"

"He is," Faith told him. "I was the bad one who got all the attention."
She chuckled. "I remember one time, he asked my parents if
they would just give him up for adoption."

Will gave a half-smile. "Everyone wants to be adopted."

She remembered Joelyn Zabel's awful words about her sister's
quest for a child. "What Joelyn said—"

He interrupted her. "Why did her lawyer keep calling Amanda
'Mandy'?"

"It's short for Amanda."

He nodded thoughtfully, and Faith wondered if nicknames were
another one of his tics. It would make sense. You would have to
know how a name was spelled before you could shorten it.

"Did you know that sixteen percent of all known serial killers
were adopted?"

Faith wrinkled her brow. "That can't be right."

"Joel Rifkin, Kenneth Bianchi, David Berkowitz. Ted Bundy was
adopted by his stepfather."

"How is it that you're suddenly an expert on serial killers?"

"History Channel," he told her. "Trust me, it comes in handy."

"When do you find time to watch so much television?"

"It's not like I've got a busy social life."

Faith looked back out the window, thinking about Will with Sara
Linton this morning. From reading the report on Jeffrey Tolliver,
Faith gathered he was exactly the kind of cop Will was not: physical,
take-charge, willing to do whatever it took to get a case solved. Not
that Will wasn't driven, too, but he was more likely to stare a confession
out of a suspect instead of beating it out of him. Faith knew instinctively
that Will was not Sara Linton's type, which is why she had
felt so sorry for him this morning, watching how awkward he was
with the woman.

He must have been thinking about this morning, too, because he
said, "I don't know her apartment number."

"Sara?"

"She's in the Milk Lofts over on Berkshire."

"There's bound to be a building di—" Faith stopped herself. "I
can write out her last name for you so you can compare it to the directory.
There can't be that many tenants."

He shrugged, obviously daunted.

"We could look it up online."

"She's probably not listed."

The door opened and the bottle-blonde secretary was back.
Behind her was an extremely tall, extremely tanned and extremely
good-looking man in the most beautiful suit Faith had ever seen.

"Morgan Hollister," he offered, extending a hand as he walked
across the room. "I'm so sorry I left you out here so long. I was on a
conference call with a client in New York. This thing with Pauline
has put a real spanner in the works, as they say."

Faith wasn't sure who said that sort of thing, but she forgave him
as she shook his hand. He was at once the most attractive and most
gay man she had met in a while. Considering they were in Atlanta,
the gay capital of the South, this was saying quite a lot.

"I'm Agent Trent, this is Agent Mitchell," Will said, somehow
ignoring the predatory way Morgan Hollister stared at him.

"You work out?" Morgan asked.

"Free weights, mostly. A little bench work."

Morgan slapped him on the arm. "Solid."

"I appreciate your letting us look through Pauline's things," Will
said, although Morgan had made no such offer. "I know the Atlanta
police have already been here. I hope it's not too inconvenient."

"Of course not." Morgan put his hand on Will's shoulder as he
led him toward the door. "We're really torn up about Paulie. She was
a great girl."

"We've heard she could be a bit difficult to work with."

Morgan gave a chuckle, which Faith understood as code for "typical
woman." She was glad to hear that sexism was just as rampant in
the gay community.

Will asked, "Does the name Jacquelyn Zabel mean anything to
you?"

Morgan shook his head. "I work with all the clients. I'm pretty
sure I'd remember it, but I can check the computer." He put on a sad
face. "Poor Paulie. This came as such a shock to all of us."

"We found temporary placement for Felix," Will told the man.

"Felix?" He seemed confused, then said, "Oh, right, the little
guy. I'm sure he'll be okay. He's a trooper."

Morgan led them down a long hallway. Cubicles were on their
right, windows looking out onto the interstate behind them.
Material swatches and schematics riddled the desktops. Faith glanced
at a set of blueprints spread out on a conference table, feeling slightly
wistful.

As a child, she had wanted to be an architect, a dream that was derailed
promptly at the age of fourteen when she had been kicked out
of school for being pregnant. It was different now, of course, but
back then, pregnant teenagers were expected to drop off the face of
the earth, their names never mentioned again unless it was in reference
to the boy who had knocked them up, and then they were only
referred to as "that slut who nearly ruined his life by getting pregnant."

Morgan stopped in front of a closed office door. Pauline
McGhee's name was on the outside. He took out a key.

Will asked, "You always keep it locked?"

"Paulie did. One of her things."

"She have a lot of
things
?"

"She had a way she liked to do stuff." Morgan shrugged. "I gave
her a free hand. She was good with paperwork, good at keeping subcontractors
in line." His smiled dropped. "Of course, there was a
problem there at the end. She messed up a very important order.
Cost the firma lot of money. Not sure she'd still be here if something
hadn't happened."

If Will was wondering why Morgan was talking about Pauline as
if she was dead, he didn't press it. Instead, he held out his hand for the
key. "We'll lock up when we're finished."

Morgan hesitated. He had obviously assumed he would be there
while they searched the office.

Will said, "I'll bring it back to you when we're finished, all right?"
He slapped Morgan on the arm. "Thanks, man." Will turned his
back to him and went inside the office. Faith followed, pulling the
door shut behind her.

She had to ask, "That doesn't bother you?"

"Morgan?" He shrugged. "He knows I'm not interested."

"But, still—"

"There were a lot of gay kids at the children's home. Most of
them were a hell of a lot nicer than the straight ones."

She couldn't imagine any parent giving up their child for any reason,
especially that one. "That's awful."

Will obviously didn't want to have a conversation about it. He
looked around the office, saying, "I'd call this austere."

Faith had to agree. Pauline's office appeared as if it had never been
occupied. There was not a scrap of paper on the desktop. The in and
out trays were empty. The design books on the shelves were all
arranged in alphabetical order, spines straightened. The magazines
stood crisply at attention in colored boxes. Even the computer monitor
seemed to be at a precise forty-five-degree angle on the corner of
the desk. The only thing of sentimental value on display was a snapshot
of Felix on a swingset.

"He's a little trooper," Will said, mocking Morgan's words about
Pauline's son. "I called the social worker last night. Felix isn't handling
it very well."

"What's he doing?"

"Crying a lot. He won't eat."

Faith stared at the photograph, the unchecked joy in the young
boy's eyes as he beamed at his mother. She remembered Jeremy at
that age. He'd been so sweet she'd wanted to eat him up like a piece of
candy. Faith had just graduated from the police academy and moved
into a cheap apartment off Monroe Drive; the first time either she or
Jeremy had lived away from Faith's mother. Their lives had become
intertwined in a way she had never known was possible. He was so
much a part of her that she could barely stand to drop him off at daycare.
At night, Jeremy would color pictures while she filled out her
daily reports at the kitchen table. He would sing songs to her in his
squeaky little voice while she fixed him supper and made lunches for
the next day. Sometimes, he would crawl into bed and curl up under
her arm like a kitten. She had never felt so important or needed—not
before and certainly not since.