Genesis (34 page)

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 tact. "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 at
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 out of 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 speed back up again. "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.

F
AITH'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."

"You found that baby," she reminded him. "Who knows how
long it would've taken before somebody—"

"Stop."

There was a loud
ding
as the elevator doors opened. Amanda hit
the ground at a trot. She scanned the hall, taking in who was around,
probably trying to neutralize witnesses. Faith braced herself for
crushing recriminations, lightning-fast suspensions, maybe the loss of
their badges. Instead, Amanda asked them, "Are you both all right?"

Faith nodded. Will just stared at the floor.

"Glad to see you finally grow a pair," Amanda told Will. "You're
suspended without pay for the rest of the week, but don't think for a
goddamn minute that means you're going to stop working your ass
off for me."

Will's voice sounded thick in his throat. "Yes, ma'am."

Amanda strode toward the stairwell. They followed, and Faith
noticed her boss had none of her usual grace, none of her control.
She seemed just as shocked as they were.

"Shut the door."

Faith saw that her hands were still shaking as she pulled it closed.

"Charlie's processing Anna Lindsey's apartment," Amanda told
them, her voice echoing up the stairs. She adjusted her tone. "He'll
call if he finds anything. Obviously, the doorman is off-limits to
you." She meant Will. "Forensics should be back tomorrow morning,
but don't get your hopes up, considering the state of the apartment.
Tech hasn't been able to break into the computers the women
were using. They're running all the password programs they have. It
could take weeks or months to crack it. The anorexia website is
hosted through a shell company in Friesland, wherever the hell that
is. It's overseas. They won't give us registration information, but tech
was able to pull up the stats for the site on the web. They get around
two hundred unique users a month. That's all we know."

Will didn't speak, so Faith asked, "What about the vacant house
behind Olivia Tanner's?"

"The shoe prints are for a men's size eleven Nike sold in twelve
hundred outlets across the country. We found some cigarette butts in
the Coke can behind the bar. We'll try to pull DNA, but there's no
telling who they belong to."

Faith asked, "What about Jake Berman?"

"What the hell do you think?" Amanda took a breath as if to calm
herself. "We've released a sketch and his booking photo through the
state network. I'm sure the press will pick up on it, but we've asked
them to hold off at least twenty-four hours."

Faith's mind was jumbled with questions, but nothing would
come out. She had been standing in Olivia Tanner's kitchen less than
an hour ago and she could not for the life of her remember one detail
about the house.

Will finally spoke. His voice sounded as defeated as he looked.
"You should fire me."

"You're not getting off that easy."

"I'm not kidding, Amanda. You should fire me."

"I'm not kidding either, you ignorant jackass." Amanda tucked
her hands into her hips, looking more like the usual, annoyed
Amanda that Faith was familiar with. "Anna Lindsey's baby is safe because
of you. I think that's a win for the team."

He scratched at his arm. Faith could see that the skin on his
knuckles was broken and bleeding. She was reminded of that moment
in the hallway when she had her hands on his face, the way
she had willed him to be okay because Faith didn't know how she
could handle being in the world if Will Trent stopped being the man
she had shared her life with almost every day for the past year.

Amanda caught Faith's eye. "Give us a minute."

Faith pushed the door open and walked back into the hall. There
was a low hum of activity in the ICU, but nothing like downstairs in
the emergency room. The cops were back at their station in front of
Anna's door, and their eyes followed Faith as she passed.

One of the nurses told her, "They're in exam three."

Faith didn't know why she was being given this information, but
she went to exam three anyway. She found Sara Linton inside. The
doctor was standing by a plastic bassinet. She was holding the baby in
her arms—Anna's baby.

"He's bouncing back," Sara told Faith. "It'll take a couple of days,
but he'll be fine. Mostly, I think being back with his mom again will
help them both."

Faith couldn't be a human being right now, so she made herself be
a cop. "Did Anna say anything else?"

"Not much. She's in a lot of pain. They upped the morphine now
that she's awake."

Faith ran her hand down the baby's back, feeling the soft give of
his skin, the tiny bones of his spine. "How long do you think he was
left alone?"

"The EMT was right. I'd say two days, tops. Otherwise, we'd be
in a very different situation." Sara moved the baby to her other
shoulder. "Someone was giving him water. He's dehydrated, but not
as bad as some I've seen."

"What are you doing here?" Faith asked. The question came out
without any forethought. She heard it sound in her ears, and thought
it was a good one—good enough to repeat. "Why are you here? Why
were you with Anna in the first place?"

Sara gently returned the baby to the bassinet. "She's my patient. I
was checking on her." She tucked a blanket around the infant. "Just
like I checked on you this morning. Delia Wallace's office said you
haven't called."

"I've been a little busy rescuing babies off of trash piles."

"Faith, I'm not the enemy here." Sara's tone took on the annoying
tenor of someone trying to be reasonable. "This isn't just about you
anymore. You have a child inside of you—another life you're responsible
for."

"That's
my
decision."

"Your decision clock is running out. Don't let your body make it
for you, because if it's between the diabetes and the baby, the diabetes
will always win out."

Faith took a deep breath, but that didn't do anything to help matters.
She let loose. "You know, you may be trying to force yourself
onto my case, but I'll be damned if I'll let you force yourself into my
private life."

"Excuse me?" Sara had the gall to sound surprised.

"You're not a coroner anymore, Sara. You're not married to a police
chief. He's dead. You saw him blown to pieces with your own
two eyes. You're not going to get him back by hanging out at the
morgue and shoving your way onto an investigation."

Sara stood there with her mouth open, seemingly incapable of responding.

Shockingly, Faith burst into tears. "Oh, my God, I'm so sorry!
That was so awful." She put her hand to her mouth. "I can't believe I
said—"

Sara shook her head, looking down at the floor.

"I'm so sorry. God, I'm sorry. Please forgive me."

Sara took her time speaking. "I guess Amanda caught you up on
the details."

"I looked it up on the computer. I didn't—"

"Agent Trent read it, too?"

"No." Faith made her voice firm. "No. He said it was none of his
business, and he's right. It's none of my business, either. I shouldn't
have looked. I'm sorry. I am just an awful, awful person, Sara. I can't
believe I said that to you."

Sara bent down to the baby, put her hand to his face. "It's okay."

Faith floundered for something to say, rattling off all the horrible
things she could think about herself. "Look, I lied to you about my
weight. I've gained fifteen pounds, not ten. I eat Pop-Tarts for breakfast,
sometimes for dinner but usually with a Diet Coke. I never exercise.
Ever. The only time I run is when I'm trying to make it to the
bathroom before the commercial's over, and honest to God, since I
got TiVo, I don't even do that anymore."

Sara was still silent.

"I'm so sorry."

She kept fiddling with the blanket, tucking it in tighter, making
sure the baby was in a tight little cocoon.

"I'm sorry," Faith repeated, feeling so awful she thought she
might throw up.

Sara kept her thoughts to herself. Faith was trying to figure out
how to gracefully leave the room when the doctor said, "I knew it
was fifteen pounds."

Faith felt some of the tension start to dissipate. She knew better
than to ruin it by opening her mouth.

Sara said, "No one ever talks to me about him. I mean, in the
beginning, of course, but now no one even says his name. It's like
they don't want to upset me, like saying his name might send me back
to . . ." She shook her head. "Jeffrey. I can't remember the last time I
said that out loud. His name is—was—Jeffrey."

"It's a nice name."

Sara nodded. Her throat worked as she swallowed.

"I saw pictures," Faith admitted. "He was good-looking."

A smile curved Sara's lips. "He was."

"And a good cop. You could tell by the way they wrote the
reports."

"He was a good man."

Faith floundered, trying to think of something else to say.

Sara beat her to it, asking, "What about you?"

"Me?"

"The father."

In her mortification, Faith had forgotten about Victor. She put
her hand to her stomach. "You mean my baby's daddy?"

Sara allowed a smile.

"He was looking for a mother, not a girlfriend."

"Well, that was never Jeffrey's problem. He was very good at taking
care of himself." Her eyes took on a faraway look. "He was the
best thing that ever happened to me."

"Sara—"

She went through the desk drawers and found a glucose monitor.
"Let's test your blood sugar."

This time, Faith was too contrite to protest this time. She held out
her hand, waited for the lancet to pierce her skin.

Sara talked as she went through the procedure. "I'm not trying to
get back my husband. Believe me, if it was as simple as walking onto
a case, I would sign up at the police academy tomorrow."

Faith winced as the needle pierced her skin.

"I want to feel useful again," Sara said, her voice taking on a confessional
tone. "I want to feel like I'm doing more to help people than
prescribing ointments for rashes that would probably go away on
their own and patching up thugs so they can go back on the street and
shoot each other again."

Faith hadn't considered that Sara's motivations might be so altruistic.
She supposed it reflected badly on herself that she always assumed
everyone approached life with selfish intentions. She told
Sara, "Your husband sounded . . . perfect."

Sara laughed as she filled the test strip. "He left his jockstrap hanging
on the bathroom doorknob, he slept around the first time we
were married—which I found out for myself when I came home
from work early one day—and he had an illegitimate son he never
knew about until he was forty." She read the machine, then showed
it to Faith. "What do you think? Juice or insulin?"

"Insulin." She confessed, "I ran out at lunch."

"I gathered." Sara picked up the phone and called one of the
nurses. "You need to get this under control."

"This case is—"

"This case is ongoing, just like all the other cases you've worked
and all the ones you'll work in the future. I'm sure Agent Trent can
spare you for a couple of hours while you get this squared away."

Faith wasn't sure Agent Trent could spare anything at the moment.

Sara checked on the baby again. "His name is Balthazar," she said.

"Here I was thinking we had saved him."

She was kind enough to laugh, but her words were serious. "I'm
board certified in pediatric medicine, Faith. I graduated at the top of
my class at Emory University and I've devoted nearly two decades of
my life to helping people, whether they're living or dead. You can
question my personal motivations all you like, but don't question my
medical abilities."

"You're right." Faith felt even more contrite. "I'm sorry. It's been
a really hard day."

"It doesn't help when your blood sugar is out of whack." There
was a rap on the door, and Sara walked over, taking a handful of insulin
pens from the nurse. She shut the door and told Faith, "You
have to take this seriously."

"I know I do."

"Postponing dealing with it isn't going to work. Take two hours
out of your day to see Delia so that you can get yourself right and focus
on your work."

"I will."

"Mood swings, sudden tempers—these are all symptoms of your
disease."

Faith felt like her mother had just scolded her, but maybe that's
exactly what she needed right now. "Thank you."

Sara put her hands on the bassinet. "I'll leave you to it."

"Wait," Faith said. "You deal with young girls, right?"

Sara shrugged. "I used to a lot more when I had my private practice.
Why?"