Genesis (4 page)

Sara stopped short at the foot of the bed, Mary's hand still on her
arm. The patient was lying curled on her side in a fetal position.
Surgical tape held her tightly to the frame of the stretcher, pneumatic
splints binding her right arm and leg. She was awake, her teeth
chattering, murmuring unintelligibly. A folded jacket was under her
head, a cervical collar keeping her neck in line. The side of her face
was caked in dirt and blood; electrical tape hung from her cheek,
sticking to her dark hair. Her mouth was open, lips cut and bleeding.
The sheet they had covered her with was pulled down and the side of
her breast gaped open in a wound so deep that bright yellow fat was
showing.

"Ma'am?" Will asked. "Are you aware of your condition?"

"Move away," Sara ordered, pushing him back harder than she intended.
He flailed, momentarily losing his balance. Sara did not care.
She had seen the small digital recorder he had in his hand and did not
like what he was doing.

Sara put on a pair of gloves as she knelt down, telling the woman,
"I'm Dr. Linton. You're at Grady Hospital. We're going to take care
of you."

"Help . . . help . . . help . . ." the woman chanted, her body shivering
so hard the metal gurney rattled. Her eyes stared blankly ahead,
unfocussed. She was painfully thin, her skin flaky and dry. "Help . . ."

Sara stroked back her hair as gently as she could. "We've got a lot
of people here and we're all going to help you. You just hang on for
me, okay? You're safe now." Sara stood, lightly resting her hand on
the woman's shoulder to let her know she was not alone. Two more
nurses were in the room, awaiting orders. "Somebody give me the
rundown."

She had directed her request toward the uniformed emergency
medical techs, but the man across from her started talking, delivering
in rapid staccato the woman's vitals and the triage performed en
route. He was dressed in street clothes that were covered in blood.
Probably the bystander who had given aid at the scene. "Penetrating
wound between eleventh and twelfth ribs. Open fractures right arm
and leg. Blunt force trauma to the head. She was unconscious when
we arrived, but she gained consciousness when I started working on
her. We couldn't get her flat on her back," he explained, his voice filling
with panic. "She kept screaming. We had to get her in the bus, so
we just strapped her down. I don't know what's wrong with . . . I
don't know what—"

He gulped back a sob. His anguish was contagious. The air felt
charged with adrenaline; understandably so, considering the state of
the victim. Sara felt a moment of panic herself, unable to take in the
damage inflicted on the body, the multiple wounds, the obvious
signs of torture. More than one person in the room had tears in their
eyes.

Sara made her voice as calm as possible, trying to bring the hysteria
down to a manageable level. She dismissed the EMTs and the bystander
by saying, "Thank you, gentlemen. You did everything you
could just to get her here. Let's clear the room now so that we have
space to keep helping her." She told Mary, "Start an IV and prep a
central line just in case." She told another nurse, "Get portable X-ray
in here, call CT and get the surgical on-call." And said to another,
"Blood gas, tox screen, CMP, CBC, and a coag panel."

Carefully, Sara pressed the stethoscope to the woman's back, trying
not to concentrate on the burn marks and crisscrossed slices in the
flesh. She listened to the woman's lungs, feeling the sharp outline of
ribs against her fingers. Breath sounds were equal, but not as strong as
Sara would've liked, probably because of the massive amount of
morphine they had given her in the ambulance. Panic often blurred
the line between helping and hindering.

Sara kneeled down again. The woman's eyes were still open, her
teeth still chattering. Sara told her, "If you have any trouble breathing,
let me know, and I'll help you immediately. All right? Can you
do that?" There was no response, but Sara kept talking to her anyway,
announcing every step of the way what she was doing and why.
"I'm checking your airway to make sure you can keep breathing,"
she said, gently pressing into the jaw. The woman's teeth were reddish
pink, indicating blood in her mouth, but Sara guessed that was
from biting her tongue. Deep scratches marked her face, as if someone
had clawed her. Sara thought she might have to intubate her, paralyze
her, but this might be the last opportunity the woman had to
speak.

That was why Will Trent would not leave. He had been asking
the victim about her condition in order to set up the framework for a
dying declaration. The victim would have to know she was dying before
her last words could be admitted in court as anything other than
hearsay. Even now, Trent kept his back to the wall, listening to every
word being spoken in the room, bearing witness in case he was
needed to testify.

Sara asked, "Ma'am? Can you tell me your name?" Sara paused as
the woman's mouth moved, but no words came out. "Just a first
name, all right? Let's start with something easy."

"Ah . . . ah . . ."

"Anne?"

"Nah . . . nah . . ."

"Anna?"

The woman closed her eyes, gave a slight nod. Her breath had
turned more shallow from the effort.

Sara tried, "How about a last name?"

The woman did not respond.

"All right, Anna. That's fine. Just stay with me." Sara glanced at
Will Trent. He nodded his thanks. She returned to the patient,
checking her pupils, pressing her fingers into the skull to check for
fractures. "You've got some blood in your ears, Anna. You took a
hard knock to your head." Sara took a wet swab and brushed it across
the woman's face to remove some of the dried blood. "I know you're
still in there, Anna. Just hang on for me."

With care, Sara traced her fingers down the neck and shoulder,
feeling the clavicle move. She continued down gently, checking the
shoulders front and back, then the vertebrae. The woman was
painfully undernourished, the bones starkly outlined, her skeleton
on display. There were tears in the skin, as if barbs or hooks had been
imbedded under the flesh, then ripped out. Superficial cuts sliced
their way up and down the body, and the long incision on the breast
already smelled septic; she had been like this for days.

Mary said, "IV's in, saline wide open."

Sara asked Will Trent, "See the doctors' directory by the phone?"
He nodded. "Page Phil Sanderson. Tell him we need him down here
immediately."

He hesitated. "I'll go find him."

Mary supplied, "It's faster to page him. Extension 392." She taped
a loop from the IV to the back of the woman's hand, asking Sara,
"You want more morphine on board?"

"Let's figure out what's going on with her first." Sara tried to examine
the woman's torso, not wanting to move the body until she
knew exactly what she was dealing with. There was a gaping hole in
her left side between the eleventh and twelfth ribs, which would explain
why the woman had screamed when they tried to straighten
her out. The stretching and grinding of torn muscle and cartilage
would have been excruciating.

The EMT had put a compression pack on her right leg and arm
along with two pneumatic splints to keep the limbs stabilized. Sara
lifted the sterile dressing on the leg, seeing bright bone. The pelvis
felt unstable beneath her hands. These were recent wounds. The car
must have hit Anna from the right side, folding her in two.

Sara took a pair of scissors out of her pocket and cut through the
tape that kept the woman immobile on the gurney, explaining,
"Anna, I'm going to roll you onto your back." She braced the
woman's neck and shoulders while Mary took care of the pelvis and
legs. "We'll keep your legs bent, but we need to—"

"No-no-no!" the woman pleaded. "Please don't! Please don't!"
They kept moving and her mouth opened wide, her screams sending
a chill up Sara's spine. She had never heard anything more horrific in
her life. "No!" the woman yelled, her voice catching. "No! Please!
Noooo!
"

She started to violently convulse. Instantly, Sara leaned over the
stretcher, pinning Anna's body to the table so she wouldn't fall onto
the floor. She could hear the woman grunt with each convulsion, as
every movement brought a knife of pain to her side. "Five milligrams
of Ativan," she ordered, hoping to control the seizures. "Stay with
me, Anna," she urged the woman. "Just stay with me."

Sara's words did not matter. The woman had lost consciousness,
either from the seizure or the pain. Long after the drug should have
taken effect, the muscles still spasmed through the body, legs jerking,
head shaking.

"Portable's here," Mary announced, motioning the X-ray technician
into the room. She told Sara, "I'll check on Sanderson and the
OR."

The X-ray technician put his hand to his chest. "Macon."

"Sara," she returned. "I'll help."

He handed her the extra lead apron, then went about preparing
the machine. Sara kept her hand on Anna's forehead, stroking back
her dark hair. The woman's muscles were still twitching when Sara
and Macon managed to roll her onto her back, legs bent to help
control the pain. Sara noticed that Will Trent was still in the room
and told him, "You need to clear out while we do this."

Sara helped Macon take the X-rays, both of them moving as fast
as they could. She prayed that the patient would not wake up and
start screaming again. She could still hear the sound of Anna's
screams, almost like an animal caught in a trap. The noise alone
would set up the belief that the woman knew she was going to die.
You did not scream like that unless you had given up all hope on life.

Macon helped Sara turn the woman back on her side, then went
off to develop the films. Sara took off her gloves and knelt beside the
gurney again. She touched her hand to Anna's face, stroking her
cheek. "I'm sorry I pushed you," she said—not to Anna, but to Will
Trent. She turned to find him standing at the foot of the bed, staring
down at the woman's legs, the soles of her feet. His jaw was clenched,
but she didn't know if that was from anger or horror or both.

He said, "We've both got jobs to do."

"Still."

Gently, he reached down and stroked the sole of Anna's right
foot, probably thinking there was nowhere else to touch her that
wouldn't cause pain. Sara was surprised by the gesture. It seemed almost
tender.

"Sara?" Phil Sanderson was in the doorway, his surgical scrubs
neatly clean and pressed.

She stood up, lightly resting her fingertips on Anna's shoulder as
she told Phil, "We've got two open fractures and a crushed pelvis.
There's a deep incision on the right breast and a penetrating wound
on the left side. I'm not sure about the neurologic; her pupils are
nonresponsive, but she was talking, making sense."

Phil walked over to the body and started his examination. He
didn't comment on the state of the victim, the obvious abuse. His focus
was on the things he could fix: the open fractures, the shattered
pelvis. "You didn't intubate her?"

"Airways are clear."

Phil obviously disagreed with her decision, but then orthopedic
surgeons didn't generally care whether or not their patients could
speak. "How's the heart?"

"Strong. BP is good. She's stable." Phil's surgical team came in to
prep the body for transfer. Mary returned with the X-rays and
handed them to Sara.

Phil pointed out, "Just putting her under could kill her."

Sara snapped the films into the lightbox. "I don't think she'd be
here if she wasn't a fighter."

"The breast is septic. It looks like—"

"I know," Sara interrupted, putting on her glasses so she could
read the X-rays.

"This wound in her side is pretty clean." He stopped his team for
a moment and leaned down, checking the long tear in her skin. "Was
she dragged by the car? Did something metal slice her open?"

Will Trent answered, "As far as I know, she was hit straight on.
She was standing in the roadway."

Phil asked, "Was there anything around that might have made this
wound? It's pretty clean."

Will hesitated, probably wondering if the man realized what the
woman had been through before the car had struck her. "The area
was pretty wooded, mostly rural. I haven't talked to the witnesses
yet. The driver had some chest complaints at the scene."

Sara turned her attention to the X-ray of the torso. Either something
was wrong or she was more exhausted than she'd realized. She
counted the ribs, not quite trusting what she was seeing.

Will seemed to sense her confusion. "What is it?"

"Her eleventh rib," Sara told him. "It's been removed."

Will asked, "Removed how?"

"Not surgically."

Phil barked, "Don't be ridiculous." He strode over, leaning close
to the film. "It's probably . . ."He put up the second film of the chest,
the anterior-posterior, then the lateral. He leaned closer, narrowing
his eyes as if that would help. "The damn thing can't just drop out of
the body. Where is it?"

"Look." Sara traced her finger along the jagged shadow where
cartilage had once held bone. "It's not missing," she said. "It was
taken."

W
ILL DROVE TO THE SCENE OF THE CAR ACCIDENT IN FAITH
Mitchell's Mini, his shoulders slumped, the top of his head pressed
tightly against the roof of the car. He hadn't wanted to waste any
time trying to get the seat adjusted—not when he had taken Faith to
the hospital and especially not now that he was driving to the scene
of one of the most horrific crimes he'd ever seen. The car was holding
its own on the back roads as he traveled down Route 316 at well over
the posted speed limit. The Mini's wide wheelbase hugged every
curve, but Will backed off the gas as he got farther away from the
city. The trees thickened, the road narrowed, and he was suddenly in
an area where it was not uncommon for a deer or possum to wander
onto the road.

He was thinking about the woman—the torn skin, the blood,
the wounds on her body. From the moment he'd seen the medics
wheeling her down the hospital corridor, Will had known that the
injuries had been wrought by someone with a very sick mind. The
woman had been tortured. Someone had spent time with her—
someone well-practiced in the art of pain.

The woman hadn't just appeared on the road out of thin air. The
bottoms of her feet were freshly cut, still bleeding from a walk
through the woods. A pine needle was imbedded in the meaty flesh
of her arch, dirt darkening her soles. She had been kept somewhere,
then somehow managed to walk to her escape. She must have been
held in a location close to the road, and Will was going to find the location
if it took him the rest of his life.

Will realized that he had been using "she," when the victim had a
name. Anna, close to Angie, the name of Will's wife. Like Angie, the
woman had dark hair, dark eyes. Her skin tone was olive and she had
a mole on the back of her calf just down from her knee, the same as
Angie. Will wondered if this was something olive-skinned women
tended to have, a mole on the back of their leg. Maybe this was some
kind of marker that came in the genetic kit along with dark hair and
eyes. He bet that doctor would know.

He remembered Sara Linton's words as she examined the torn
skin, the fingernail scratches around the gaping hole in the victim's
side. "She must have been awake when the rib was removed."

Will shuddered at the thought. He had seen the work of many
sadists over his law enforcement career, but nothing as sick as this.

His cell phone rang, and Will struggled to get his hand into his
pocket without knocking the steering wheel and sending the Mini
into the ditch by the road. Carefully, he opened the phone. The plastic
clamshell had been cracked apart months ago, but he'd managed to
put the pieces back together with Super Glue, duct tape and five
strips of twine that acted as a hinge. Still, he had to be careful or the
whole thing would fall apart in his hand.

"Will Trent."

"It's Lola, baby."

He felt his brow furrow. Her voice had the phlegmy rasp of a
two-pack-an-hour smoker. "Who?"

"You're Angie's brother, right?"

"Husband," he corrected. "Who is this?"

"This is Lola. I'm one'a her girls."

Angie was freelancing for several private detective firms now, but
she had been a vice cop for over a decade. Will occasionally got calls
from some of the women she had walked the streets with. They all
wanted help, and they all ended up right back in jail, where they used
the pay phone to call him. "What do you want?"

"You don't gotta be all abrupt on me, baby."

"Listen, I haven't talked to Angie in eight months."
Coincidentally, their relationship had become unhinged around the
same time as the phone. "I can't help you."

"I'm innocent." Lola laughed at the joke, then coughed, then
coughed some more. "I got picked up with an unknown white substance
I was just holding for a friend."

These girls knew the law better than most cops, and they were especially
careful on the pay phone in the jail.

"Get a lawyer," Will advised, speeding up to pass a car in front of
him. Lightning cracked the sky, illuminating the road. "I can't help
you."

"I got information to exchange."

"Then tell that to your lawyer." His phone beeped, and he recognized
his boss's number. "I have to go." He clicked over before the
woman could say anything else. "Will Trent."

Amanda Wagner inhaled, and Will braced himself for a barrage of
words. "What the hell are you doing leaving your partner at the hospital
and going on some fool's errand for a case that we have no jurisdiction
over and haven't been invited to attend—in a county, I might
add, where we don't exactly have a good relationship?"

"We'll get asked to help," he assured her.

"Your woman's intuition is not impressing me tonight, Will."

"The longer we let the locals play this out, the colder the trail is
going to get. This isn't our abductor's first time, Amanda. This wasn't
an exhibition game."

"Rockdale has this covered," she said, referring to the county that
had police jurisdiction over the area where the car accident occurred.
"They know what they're doing."

"Are they stopping cars and looking for stolen vehicles?"

"They're not completely stupid."

"Yes, they are," he insisted. "This wasn't a dump job. She was
held in the area and she managed to escape."

Amanda was silent for a moment, probably clearing the smoke
coming out of her ears. Overhead, a flash of lightning slashed the
sky, and the ensuing thunder made it hard for Will to hear what
Amanda finally said.

"What?" he asked.

She curtly repeated, "What's the status of the victim?"

Will didn't think about Anna. Instead, he recalled the look in Sara
Linton's eyes when they rolled the patient up to surgery. "It doesn't
look good for her."

Amanda gave another, heavier sigh. "Run it down for me."

Will gave her the highlights, the way the woman had looked, the
torture. "She must have walked out of the woods. There's got to be a
house somewhere, a shack or something. She didn't look like she'd
been out in the elements. Somebody kept her for a while, starved
her, raped her, abused her."

"You think some hillbilly snatched her?"

"I think she was kidnapped," he replied. "She had a good haircut,
her teeth were bleached white. No track marks. No signs of neglect.
There were two small plastic surgery scars on her back, probably
from lipo."

"So, not a homeless woman and not a prostitute."

"Her wrists and ankles were bleeding from being bound. Some of
the wounds on her body were healing, others were fresh. She was
thin—too thin. This took place over amore than a few days—maybe
a week, two weeks, tops."

Amanda cursed under her breath. The red tape was getting pretty
thick. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation was to the state what the
Federal Bureau of Investigation was to the country. The GBI coordinated
with local law enforcement when crimes crossed over county
lines, keeping the focus on the case rather than territorial disputes.
The state had eight crime labs as well as hundreds of crime-scene
techs and special agents on duty, all ready to serve whoever asked for
help. The catch was that the request for help had to be formally
made. There were ways to make sure it came, but favors had to be
played, and for reasons not discussed in polite company, Amanda had
lost her heat in Rockdale County a few months ago during a case involving
an unstable father who abducted and murdered his own children.

Will tried again. "Amanda—"

"Let me make some calls."

"Can the first one be to Barry Fielding?" he asked, referring to the
canine expert for the GBI. "I'm not even sure the locals know what
they're dealing with. They haven't seen the victim or talked to the
witnesses. Their detective wasn't even at the hospital when I left."
She didn't respond, so he prodded some more. "Barry lives in
Rockdale County."

A heavier sigh than the first two came down the line. Finally, she
said, "All right. Just try not to piss off anyone more than usual.
Report back to me when you've got something to move on."
Amanda ended the call.

Will closed the cell phone and tucked it into his jacket pocket just
as the rumble of thunder filled the air. Lightning lit up the sky again,
and he slowed the Mini, his knees pressing into the plastic dashboard.
His plan had been to drive straight up Route 316 until he found the
accident site, then beg his way onto the scene. Stupidly, he had not
anticipated a roadblock. Two Rockdale County police cruisers were
parked nose to nose, closing both lanes, and two beefy uniformed officers
stood in front of each. About fifty feet ahead, giant xenon
work lights illuminated a Buick with a crumpled front end. Crime-scene
techs were all over, doing the painstaking work of collecting
every piece of dirt, rock and glass so they could take it back to the lab
for analysis.

One of the cops came up to the Mini. Will looked around for the
button to roll down the window, forgetting that it was on the center
console. By the time he got the window down, the other cop had
joined his partner. Both of them were smiling. Will realized he must
look comical in the tiny car, but there was nothing to be done about
it now. When Faith had passed out in the parking lot of the courthouse,
Will's only thought was that her car was closer than his and it
would be faster using the Mini to take her to the hospital.

The second cop said, "Circus is thattaway." He pointed his thumb
back toward Atlanta.

Will knew better than to attempt to pull out his wallet from his
back pocket while he was still in the car. He pushed open the door
and clumsily exited the vehicle. They all looked heavenward as a clap
of thunder shook the air.

"Special Agent Will Trent," he told the cops, showing them his
identification.

Both men looked wary. One of them walked away, talking into
the radio mike on his shoulder, probably checking with his boss.
Sometimes local cops were glad to see the GBI on their turf.
Sometimes they wanted to shoot them.

The man in front of him asked, "What's with the monkey suit,
city boy? You just come from a funeral?"

Will ignored the jab. "I was at the hospital when the victim was
brought in."

"We've got several victims," he answered, obviously determined
to make this hard.

"The woman," Will clarified. "The one who was walking on the
road and was hit by the Buick that was being driven by an elderly
couple. We think her name is Anna."

The second cop was back. "I'm going to have to ask you to get
back in your car, sir. According to my boss, you don't have jurisdiction
here."

"Can I talk to your boss?"

"He figured you'd say that." The man had a nasty smile on his
face. "Said to give him a call in the morning, say around ten, ten-thirty."

Will looked past their cruisers to the crime scene. "Can I get his
name?"

The cop took his time, making a show of taking out his pad, finding
his pen, putting pen to paper, printing the letters. With extreme
care, he tore off the page and handed it to Will.

Will stared at the scrawl over the numbers. "Is this English?"

"Fierro, numbnuts. It's Italian." The man glanced at the paper, offering
a defensive "I wrote it clear."

Will folded the note and put it in his vest pocket. "Thank you."

He wasn't stupid enough to think the cops would politely return
to their posts while he got back into the Mini. Will was in no hurry
now. He leaned down and found the pump handle to lower the
driver's seat, then pushed it back as far as it would go. He angled himself
into the car and gave the cops a salute as he did a three-point turn
and drove away.

Route 316 hadn't always been a back road. Before I-20 came
along, 316 had been a main artery connecting Rockdale County and
Atlanta. Today, most travelers preferred the interstate, but there
were still people who used it for shortcuts and other nefarious pursuits.
Back in the late nineties, Will had been involved in a sting operation
to stop prostitutes from bringing johns out here. Even then, the
road was not well traveled. That two cars managed to be here tonight
at the same time as the woman was wildly coincidental. That she had
at that point managed to walk onto the road into the path of one of
them was even more fantastical.

Unless Anna had been waiting for them. Maybe she had stepped
out in front of the Buick on purpose. Will had learned a long time
ago that escape was sometimes easier than survival.

He kept the Mini at a slow crawl as he looked for a side road to
turn down. He had gone about a quarter of a mile before he found it.
The pavement was choppy, the low-riding car feeling each and every
bump. An occasional streak of lightning lit the woods for him. There
were no houses that Will could see from the road, no run-down
shacks or old barns. No lean-tos sheltering old stills. He kept going,
using the bright lights at the crime scene as his guide so that when he
stopped, he found himself parallel to the action. Will pulled up the
emergency brake and allowed himself a smile. The accident site was
about two hundred yards away, the lights and activity making it look
like a football field in the middle of the forest.

Will took the small emergency flashlight out of the glove box and
got out of the car. The air was changing fast, the temperature dropping.
On the news this morning, the weatherman had predicted
partly cloudy, but Will was thinking they were in for a deluge.

He made his way on foot through the thick forest, carefully scanning
the ground as he walked, searching for anything that was out of
place. Anna could have come through here, or she could have been
on the other side of the road. The point was that the crime scene
should not just be confined to the street. They should be out in the
forest, searching within at least a mile radius. The job would not be
easy. The forest was dense, low-lying limbs and bushes blocking forward
progress, fallen trees and sinkholes making the nighttime terrain
even more dangerous. Will tried to get his bearings, wondering
which direction would lead him to I-20, where the more residential
areas were, but gave up after the compass in his head started spinning
toward nowhere.