Genesis (8 page)

Will held out his hand to Amanda, helping her down the shoulder
as they went into the opposite side of the forest. There were hundreds
of searchers in the area, some from other counties, all spread
out into groups. The Georgia Emergency Management Agency, or
GEMA, had called in the civilian canine corps, the people who had
trained their dogs to scent corpses. The dogs had stopped barking
hours ago. Most of the volunteers had gone home. It was mostly
cops now, people who didn't have a choice. Detective Fierro was out
there somewhere, probably cursing Will's name.

Amanda asked, "How's Faith?"

He was surprised by the question, but then, Amanda had a connection
with Faith that went back several years. "She's fine," he said,
automatically covering for his partner.

"I heard she passed out."

He feigned surprise. "Did you?"

Amanda raised her eyebrows at him. "She hasn't been looking
good lately."

Will assumed she meant the weight gain, which was a little much
for Faith's small frame, but he had figured out today that you did not
discuss a woman's weight, especially with another woman. "She
seems fine to me."

"She seems irritable and distracted."

Will kept his mouth shut, unsure whether Amanda was truly concerned
or asking him to tattle. The truth was that Faith
had
been irritable
and distracted lately. He had worked with her long enough to
know her moods. For the most part, she was pretty even-keeled.
Once every month, always around the same time, she carried her
purse with her for a few days. Her tone would get snippy and she'd
tend to favor radio stations that played women singing along to
acoustic guitars. Will knew to just apologize a lot for everything he
said until she stopped carrying her bag. Not that he would share this
with Amanda, but he had to admit that lately, every day with Faith
seemed like a purse day.

Amanda reached out her hand and he helped her step over a fallen
log. "You know I hate working cases we can't clear," she said.

"I know you like solving cases no one else can."

She chuckled ruefully. "When are you going to get tired of me
stealing all your thunder, Will?"

"I'm indefatigable."

"Putting that calendar to use, I see."

"It's the most thoughtful gift you've ever given me." Leave it to
Amanda to give a functional illiterate a word-a-day calendar for
Christmas.

Up ahead, Will saw Fierro making his way toward them. This side
of the road was more densely forested, and there were limbs and
vines everywhere. Will could hear Fierro cursing as his pant leg got
caught in a prickly bush. He slapped his neck, probably killing an insect.
"Nice of you to join this fucking waste of time, Gomez."

Will made the introductions. "Detective Fierro, this is Dr.
Amanda Wagner."

Fierro tilted up his chin at her in greeting. "I've seen you on TV."

"Thank you," Amanda returned, as if he had meant it as a compliment.
"We're dealing with some pretty salacious details here,
Detective Fierro. I hope your team knows to keep a lid on it."

"You think we're a bunch of amateurs?"

Obviously, she did. "How is the search going?"

"We're finding exactly what's out here—nothing. Nada. Zero."
He glared at Will. "This how you state guys run things? Come in
here and blow our whole fucking budget on a useless search in the
middle of the goddamn night?"

Will was tired and he was frustrated, and it came out in his tone.
"We usually pillage your supplies and rape your women first."

"Ha-fucking-ha," Fierro grumbled, slapping his neck again. He
pulled away his hand and there was a smear of bloody insect on his
palm. "You're gonna be laughing your ass off when I take back my
case."

Amanda said, "Detective Fierro, Chief Peterson asked us to intervene.
You don't have the authority to take back this case."

"Peterson, huh?" His lip curled. "Does that mean you've been
greasing his pole again?"

Will sucked in so much air that his lips made a whistling sound.
For her part, Amanda looked unfazed, though her eyes narrowed,
and she gave Fierro a single nod, as if to say his time would come.
Will wouldn't be surprised if, at some future date, Fierro woke up to
find a decapitated horse's head in his bed.

"Hey!" someone screamed. "Over here!"

All three stood where they were in various stages of shock, anger
and unadulterated rage.

"I found something!"

The words got Will moving. He jogged toward the searcher, a
woman who was furiously waving her hands in the air. She was
Rockdale uniformed patrol, wearing a knit hat on her head and surrounded
by tall switchgrass.

"What is it?" he asked.

She pointed toward a dense pack of low-hanging trees. He saw
that the leaves underneath were disturbed, bare spots of earth showing
in places. "Something caught my light," she said, turning on her
Maglite and shining it into the shadowy area under the trees. Will
didn't see anything. By the time Amanda had joined them, he was
wondering if the patrolwoman had been a little too tired, a little too
anxious to find something.

"What is it?" Amanda asked, just as the light reflected back from
the darkness. It was a small flash that lasted no more than a second.
Will blinked, thinking maybe his tired brain had conjured it, too, but
the patrolwoman found it again—a quick flash like a tiny burst of
powder, approximately twenty feet away.

Will slipped on a pair of latex gloves from his jacket. He took the
flashlight, carefully pushing back branches as he made his way into the
area. The prickly bushes and limbs made it hard going, and he stooped
down low to make forward progress. He shone the light on the
ground, scanning for the object. Maybe it was a broken mirror or a
chewing gum wrapper. All the possibilities ran through his mind as he
tried to locate it: a piece of jewelry, a shard of glass, minerals in a rock.

A Florida state driver's license.

The license was about two feet from the base of the tree. Beside it
was a small pocketknife, the thin blade so coated in blood that it
blended in with the dark leaves around it. Close to the trunk, the
branches thinned out. Will knelt down, picking up the leaves one at a
time as he moved them off the license. The thick plastic had been
folded in two. The colors and the distinctive outline of the state of
Florida in the corner told him where the license had been issued.
There was a hologram in the background to prevent forgeries. That
must have been what the light had picked up on.

He leaned down, craning his neck so he could get a better look,
not wanting to disturb the scene. One of the clearest fingerprints
Will had ever seen was right in the middle of the license. Imprinted
in blood, the ridges were practically jumping off the smooth plastic.
The photograph showed a woman: dark hair, dark eyes.

"There's a pocketknife and a license," he told Amanda, his voice
raised so that she could hear him. "There's a bloody fingerprint on
the license."

"Can you read the name?" She put her hands on her hips, sounding
furious.

Will felt his throat close up. He concentrated on the small print,
making out a
J,
or maybe an
I,
before everything began to jumble
around.

Her fury shot up exponentially. "Just bring the damn thing out."

There was a cluster of cops around her now, all looking confused.
Even twenty feet away, Will could hear them mumbling about procedure.
The purity of the crime scene was sacrosanct. Defense
lawyers chewed apart irregularities. Photographs and measurements
had to be taken, sketches made. The chain of custody could not be
broken, or the evidence would be thrown out.

"Will?"

He felt a drop of rain hit the back of his neck. It was hot, almost
like a burn. More cops were coming up, trying to see what had been
found. They would wonder why Will didn't shout out the name
from the license, why he didn't immediately send off someone to do
a computer check. Was this how it was going to end? Was Will going
to have to pick his way out of this dense covering and announce to a
group of strangers that, at his best, he could only read at a second-grade
level? If that information got out, he might as well go home
and stick his head in the oven, because there wouldn't be a cop in the
city who would work with him.

Amanda started making her way toward him, her skirt snagging
on a prickly vine, various curses coming from her lips.

Will felt another drop of rain on his neck and wiped it away with
his hand. He looked down at his glove. There was a fine smear of
blood on his fingers. He thought maybe he had cut his neck on one of
the limbs, but he felt another drop on the back of his neck. Hot, wet,
viscous. He put his hand to the place. More blood.

Will looked up, into the eyes of a woman with dark brown hair
and dark eyes. She was hanging face-down about fifteen feet above
him. Her ankle was snagged in a patchwork of branches, the only
thing keeping her from hitting the ground. She had fallen at an angle,
face first, snapping her neck. Her shoulders were twisted, her eyes
open, staring at the ground. One arm hung straight down, reaching
toward Will. There was an angry red circle around her wrist, the skin
burned through. A piece of rope was knotted tightly around the
other wrist. Her mouth was open. Her front tooth was broken, a
third of it missing.

Another drop of blood dripped from her fingertips, this time hitting
him on the cheek just below his eye. Will took off his latex glove
and touched the blood. It was still warm.

She had died within the last hour.

P
AULINE MCGHEE STEERED HER LEXUS LX RIGHT INTO THE
handicapped
parking space in front of the City Foods Supermarket. It was
five in the morning. All the handicapped people were probably still
asleep. More importantly, it was too damn early to walk more than
she had to.

"Come on, sleepy cat," she told her son, gently pressing his shoulder.
Felix stirred, not wanting to wake up. She caressed his cheek in
her hand, thinking not for the first time that it was a miracle that
something so perfect had come out of her imperfect body. "Come
on, sweet pea," she said, tickling his ribs until he curved up like a
roly-poly worm.

She got out of the car, helping Felix climb out of the SUV behind
her. His feet hadn't hit the ground before she went over the routine.
"See where we're parked?" He nodded. "What do we do if we get
lost?"

"Meet at the car." He struggled not to a yawn.

"Good boy." She pulled him close as they walked toward the
store. Growing up, Pauline had been told that she should find an
adult if she ever got lost, but these days, you never knew who that
adult might be. A security guard might be a pedophile. A little old
lady might be a batty witch who spent her spare time hiding razor
blades in apples. It was a sad state of affairs when the safest help for a
lost six-year-old boy was an inanimate object.

The artificial lights of the store were a bit much for this time of
morning, but it was Pauline's own fault for not already buying the
cupcakes for Felix's class. She'd gotten the notice a week ago, but she
hadn't anticipated all hell breaking loose at work in between. One of
the interior design agency's biggest clients had ordered a custom-made
sixty-thousand-dollar Italian brown leather couch that wouldn't
fit in the damn elevator, and the only way to get it up to his penthouse
was with a ten-thousand-dollar-an-hour crane.

The client was blaming Pauline's agency for not catching the
error, the agency was blaming Pauline for designing the couch too
big, and Pauline was blaming the dipshit upholsterer whom she had
specifically told to go to the building on Peachtree Street to measure
the elevator before making the damn couch. Faced with a ten-thousand-dollar-an-hour crane bill or rebuilding a sixty-thousand-dollar couch,
the upholsterer was, of course, conveniently forgetting this conversation,
but Pauline was damned if she was going to let him get away
with it.

There was a meeting of all concerned at seven o'clock sharp, and
she was going to be the first one there to get in her side of the story.
As her father always said, shit rolls downhill. Pauline McGhee wasn't
going to be the one smelling like a sewer when the day was over. She
had evidence on her side—a copy of an email exchange with her boss
asking him to remind the upholsterer about taking measurements.
The critical part was Morgan's response:
I'll take care of it.
Her boss
was pretending like the emails hadn't happened, but Pauline wasn't
going to take the fall. Someone was going to lose their job today, and
it sure as hell wasn't going to be her.

"No, baby," she said, pulling Felix's hand away from a package of
Gummi Bears dangling from the shelf. Pauline swore they put those
things at kid level just so their parents would be bullied into buying
them. She had seen more than one mother relent to a screaming kid
just so he'd shut up. Pauline didn't play that game, and Felix knew it.
If he tried anything, she would snatch him up and leave the store,
even if that meant abandoning a half-filled shopping cart.

She turned down the bakery aisle, nearly smacking into a grocery
cart. The man behind the buggy laughed good-naturedly, and
Pauline managed a smile.

"Have a good day," he said.

"You too," she returned.

That, she thought, was the last time she was going to be nice to
anybody this morning. She'd tossed and turned all night, then gotten
up at three so she could run on the treadmill, put her face on, fix
breakfast for Felix and get him ready for school. Long gone were her
single days when she could spend all night partying, go home with
whoever looked good, then roll out of bed the next morning twenty
minutes before it was time to get to work.

Pauline ruffled Felix's hair, thinking she didn't miss it a bit.
Though getting laid every now and then would've been a damn gift
from heaven.

"Cupcakes," she said, relieved to find several stacks lined up along
the front of the bakery counter. Her relief quickly left when she saw
that every single one was pastel with Easter bunnies and multicolored
eggs on top. The note she'd gotten from the school had specified
nondenominational cupcakes, but Pauline wasn't sure what that meant,
other than Felix's extremely expensive private school was brimming
with politically correct bullshit. They wouldn't even call it an Easter
Party—it was a Spring Party that just happened to fall a few days before
Easter Sunday. What religion didn't celebrate Easter? She knew
the Jews didn't get Christmas, but for the love of God, Easter was all
about them. Even the Pagans got the bunny.

"All right," Pauline said, handing Felix her purse. He slung it over
his shoulder the same way she did, and Pauline felt a pang of angst.
She worked in interior design. Just about every man in her life was a
flaming mo. She'd have to make an effort to meet some straight men
soon for both their sakes.

There were six cupcakes in each box, so Pauline scooped up five
boxes, thinking the teachers would want some. She couldn't stand
most of the faculty at the school, but they loved Felix, and Pauline
loved her son, so what was an extra four seventy-five to feed the fat
cows who took care of her baby?

She carried the boxes to the front of the store, the smell making
her feel hungry and nauseated at the same time, like she could eat
every one of them until it made her sick enough to spend the next
hour in the toilet. It was too early to smell anything with frosting,
that was for sure. She turned around and checked on Felix, who was
dragging his feet behind her. He was exhausted, and it was her fault.
She contemplated getting him the bag of Gummi Bears he'd wanted,
but her cell phone started ringing as soon as she put the cupcakes on
the checkout belt and all was forgotten when she recognized the
number.

"Yeah?" she asked, watching the boxes slowly make their way
down the belt toward the slope-shouldered cashier. The woman was
so large that her hands barely met in the middle, like a T. Rex or a
baby seal.

"Paulie." Morgan, her boss, sounded frantic. "Can you believe
this meeting?"

He was acting like he was on her side, but she knew he'd stab her
in the back the minute she let her guard down. She'd enjoy watching
him pack up his office after she produced the email at the meeting. "I
know," she commiserated. "It's horrible."

"Are you at the grocery store?"

He must have heard the beeps from the scanner. The T. Rex was
ringing up each box individually, even though they were all the
same. If Pauline hadn't been on the phone, she would have jumped
over the counter and scanned them herself. She moved to the end of
the checkout and grabbed a couple of plastic bags to expedite the operation.
Cradling her phone between her ear and shoulder, she asked,
"What do you think's gonna happen?"

"Well, it's clearly not your fault," he said, but she would've bet
her right one that the bastard had told his boss that very thing.

"It's not yours, either," she countered, though Morgan had recommended
the upholsterer in the first place, probably because the
guy looked thirteen and waxed his gym-toned legs to shiny perfection.
She knew the little tart was working the gay connection with
Morgan, but he was dead wrong if he thought Pauline was going to
be the odd girl out. It had taken her sixteen years to work her way up
from secretary to assistant to designer. She'd spent endless nights at
the Atlanta School of Art and Design getting her degree, dragging
into work every morning so she could pay the rent, finally getting to
a position where she could breathe a little, could afford to bring a kid
into the world the right way—and then some. Felix had all the right
clothes, all the good toys, and he went to one of the most expensive
schools in the city. Pauline hadn't stopped with her boy, either. She'd
gotten her teeth fixed and laser-corrected her eyes. Every week she
got a massage, every other week she got a facial, and there wasn't a
damn root in her hair that showed anything but sassy brown thanks
to the girl she saw in Peachtree Hills every month and a half. There
was no way in hell she was giving up any of that. Not by a long shot.

It would serve Morgan well to remember where Pauline had
started. She'd worked the secretarial pool back before wire transfers
and online banking, when they kept all the checks in a wall safe until
they could be deposited at the end of the day. After the last office remodel,
Pauline had taken a smaller office just so the safe would end
up in her space. Just in case, she'd even had a locksmith come in after
hours to reset the combination, and she was the only one who knew
it. It drove Morgan crazy that he didn't know the combination, and it
was a damn good thing he didn't, because the copy of the email covering
her ass was locked behind that steel door. For days, she had conjured
countless scenarios of herself opening the safe with a flourish,
shoving the email in Morgan's face, shaming him in front of their
boss and the client.

"What a mess," Morgan sighed, going for the dramatic. "I just
can't believe—"

Pauline took her purse from Felix and dug around for her wallet.
He stared longingly at the candy bars as she slid her debit card
through the reader and went through the motions. "Uh-huh," she
said as Morgan yapped in her ear about what a bastard the client was,
how he wouldn't stand by while Pauline's good name was dragged
through the mud. If anyone had been around to appreciate it, she
would've feigned gagging herself.

"Come on, baby," she said, gently pushing Felix toward the door.
She cradled the phone to her ear as she took the bags by the handles,
then wondered why she had bothered to bag the boxes in the first
place. Plastic boxes, plastic bags; the women at Felix's school would
be horrified on behalf of the environment. Pauline stacked the cupcakes
back together, pressing against the top box with her chin. She
dropped the empty bags in the trash, and used her free hand to dig
into her purse for her car keys as she walked through the sliding
doors.

"This is absolutely the worst thing that's ever happened to me in
my career," Morgan groaned. Despite the crick in her neck, Pauline
had forgotten she was still on the phone.

She pressed the button on the remote to open the trunk of the
SUV. It slid up with a sigh, and she thought about how much she
loved the sound of that tailgate lifting, what a luxury it was to make
enough money so that you didn't even have to open your own trunk.
She wasn't going to lose it all because of some pretty-boy butt waxer
who couldn't be bothered to measure a fucking elevator.

"It's true," she said into the phone, though she hadn't really paid
attention to what Morgan was stating as the God's honest. She put
the boxes in the back, then pressed the button on the bottom of the
trunk to make it close. She was in her car before she realized that
Felix wasn't with her.

"Fuck," she whispered, closing the phone. She was out of the car
in a flash, scanning the parking lot, which had filled up considerably
since she'd been inside the store.

"Felix?" She circled the car, thinking he must be hiding on the
other side. He wasn't there.

"Felix?" she called, running back toward the store. She nearly
slammed into the sliding doors because they didn't open quickly
enough. She asked the cashier, "Did you see my son?" The woman
looked confused, and Pauline tersely repeated, "My son. He was just
with me. He's got dark hair, he's about this tall, he's six years old?"
She gave up, mumbling, "For fucksakes." She ran back to the bakery,
then up and down the aisles.

"Felix?" she called, her heart beating so loud she couldn't hear
herself speak. She went up and down every aisle, jogging, then running,
like a madwoman through the store. She ended up at the bakery,
about to lose her shit. What had she dressed him in today? His
red sneakers. He always wanted to wear his red sneakers because they
had Elmo on the bottom of the soles. Was he in the white shirt or the
blue one? What about his pants? Had she pressed his cargo pants this
morning or put him in jeans? Why couldn't she remember this?

"I saw a child outside," someone said, and Pauline bolted for the
doors again.

She saw Felix walking around the back of the SUV toward the
passenger side. He was wearing his white shirt, his cargo pants and
his red Elmo sneakers. His hair was still wet in the back where she had
smoothed down the cowlick this morning.

Pauline slowed her pace to a fast walk, patting her hand to her
chest as if she could calm her heart. She wasn't going to yell at him,
because he wouldn't understand and it would only make him scared.
She was going to grab him up and kiss every single inch of his body
until he started to squirm and then she was going to tell him that if he
ever left her side again she was going to throttle his precious little
neck.

She wiped away tears as she rounded the rear of the car. Felix was
in the Lexus, the door open, his legs dangling down. He wasn't alone.

"Oh, thank you," she gushed to the stranger. She reached out to
Felix, saying, "He got lost in the store and—"

Pauline felt an explosion in her head. She collapsed to the pavement
like a rag doll. The last thing she saw when she looked up was
Elmo laughing down at her from the bottom of Felix's shoe.