Genesis

  "What about Gretchen?"

  He shrugged. "Hedging my bets."

  Faith groaned, pushing him away. She went back to the elevator and pressed the button. Sam didn't leave, so she told him, "I'm pregnant."

  "I remember."

  "I don't want to break your heart, but the baby's not yours."

  "Doesn't matter."

  She turned to face him. "Are you trying to work out some ghosts because your wife had an abortion?"

  "I'm trying to get back into your life, Faith. I know it has to be on your terms."

  Faith balked at the backhanded compliment. "I seem to recall one of the problems between us, other than you being a drunk, me being a cop, and my mother thinking you were the AntiChrist, was you didn't like the fact that I had a son."

  "I was jealous of the attention you gave him."

  At the time, she had accused him of this very thing. To hear him admit to it now left her nearly breathless.

  "I've grown up," he said.

  The elevator opened. Faith made sure the car was empty, then held the door open with her hand. "I can't have this conversation now. I've got work to do." She got into the elevator and let the doors go.

  "Jake Berman lives in Coweta County."

  Faith nearly lost her hand stopping the doors. "What?"

  He took his notebook out of his pocket and wrote as he talked. "I tracked him down through his church. He's a deacon and a Sunday School teacher. They've got a great website with his picture on it. Lambs and rainbows. Evangelical."

  Faith's brain couldn't process the information. "Why did you find him?"

  "I wanted to see if I could beat you to the punch."

  Faith didn't like where this was going. She tried to neutralize the situation. "Listen, Sam, we don't know that he's a bad guy."

  "I guess you've never been in the men's room at the Mall of Georgia."

  "Sam—"

  "I haven't talked to him," he interrupted. "I just wanted to see if I could track him down when no one else could. I'm tired of Rockdale squeezing my balls. I much prefer it when you do."

  Faith let that comment go, too. "Give me the morning to talk to him."

  "I told you, I'm not looking for a story." He grinned, showing all his teeth. "It was an exercise in faith."

  She narrowed her eyes at him.

  "I wanted to see if I could do your job." He tore off the piece of paper, giving her a wink. "Pretty easy stuff."

  Faith grabbed the address before he changed his mind. He held her gaze as the doors closed, then Faith found herself staring at her mirrored reflection on the back of the doors. She was sweating already, though she supposed in a pinch that could pass for a pregnant glow. Her hair was starting to frizz because, even though it was only April, the temperature was inching up the thermometer.

  She looked at the address Sam had given her. There was a heart around the entire thing, which she found annoying and endearing in equal parts. She didn't quite trust that he wasn't looking for a story in Jake Berman. Maybe the Atlanta Beacon was doing a down-low exclusive, outing married churchgoers who were trolling glory holes and finding raped and tortured women in the middle of the road.

  Could Berman be Pauline's brother? Now that she had an address, Faith wasn't so sure. What were the odds that Jake Berman had hooked up with Rick Sigler, and both men just happened to be on the road at the same time the Coldfields' car hit Anna Lindsey?

  The doors opened, and Faith walked out onto her floor. None of the hall lights were on, and she flipped the switches as she walked toward Will's office. No light seeped from under his door, but she knocked anyway, knowing from his car that he was in the building.

  "Yes?"

  She opened the door. He was sitting at his desk with his hands clasped in front of his stomach. The lights were off.

  She asked, "Everything okay?"

  He didn't answer her question. "What's up?"

  Faith shut the door and opened the folding chair. She saw the back of Will's hand, and that some new scratches had been added to the cuts he'd received while beating Simkov's face. She didn't mention this, instead going to the case. "I got Jake Berman's address. He's in Coweta. That's about forty-five minutes from here, right?"

  "If the traffic's good." He held out his hand for the address.

  She read it off to him. "Nineteen-thirty-five Lester Street."

  He still had his hand out. For some reason, all Faith could do was stare at his fingers.

  Will snapped, "I'm not a fucking idiot, Faith. I can read an address."

  His tone was sharp enough to make the hair on the back of her neck rise. Will seldom cursed, and she had never heard him say "fuck" before. She asked, "What's wrong?"

  "Nothing's wrong. I just need the address. I can't do the interview with Simkov. I'll go find Berman and we'll meet back here after your appointment." He shook his hand. "Now give me the address."

  She crossed her arms. She would die before she gave him the piece of paper. "I don't know what the hell is wrong with you, but you need to get your head out of your ass and talk tome about this before we've got a real problem."

  "Faith, I've only got two testicles. If you want one, you're going to have to talk to Amanda or Angie."

  Angie. With that one word, all the fight seemed to go out of him. Faith sat back in the chair, her arms still crossed, studying him. Will looked out the window, and she could see the faint line of the scar going down the side of his face. She wanted to know how it had happened, how his skin had been gouged from his jaw, but as with everything else, the scar was just another thing they did not talk about.

  Faith put the paper on his desk and slid the address across to him.

  Will gave it a cursory glance. "There's a heart around it."

  "Sam drew it."

  Will folded the paper and put it in his vest pocket. "Are you seeing him?"

  Faith was loathe to use the words "booty call," so she just shrugged. "It's complicated."

  He nodded—the same nod they always used when there was something personal that wasn't going to be discussed.

  She was sick of this. What was going to happen in a month when she started showing more? What was going to happen in a year when she collapsed on the job because she miscalculated her insulin? She could easily see Will making excuses for her weight gain or simply helping her up and telling her she should be careful where she stepped. He was so damn good at pretending the house wasn't on fire even as he ran around looking for water to put it out.

  She threw up her hands in surrender. "I'm pregnant."

  His eyebrows shot up.

  "Victor's the father. I'm also diabetic. That's why I passed out in the garage."

  He seemed too shocked to speak.

  "I should've told you before. That's what my secret appointment is in Snellville. I'm going to the doctor so she can help me with this diabetes thing."

  "Sara can't be your doctor?"

  "She referred me to a specialist."

  "A specialist means it's serious."

  "It's a challenge. The diabetes makes it more difficult. It's manageable, though." She had to add, "At least that's what Sara said."

  "Do you need me to go to your appointment with you?"

  Faith had a glimpse of Will sitting in the waiting room of Delia Wallace's office with her purse in his lap. "No. Thank you. I need to do this on my own."

  "Does Victor—"

  "Victor doesn't know. No one knows except you and Amanda, and I only told her because she caught me shooting up with insulin."

  "You have to give yourself shots?"

  "Yeah."

  She could almost see his mind working, the questions he wanted to ask her but didn't know how to frame.

  Faith said, "If you want another partner—"

  "Why would I want another partner?"

  "Because it's a problem, Will. I don't know how much of a problem, but my blood sugar drops or goes up, and I get emotional, and I either bite your head off or feel like
I'm going to burst into tears, and I don't know how I'm going to do my job with this thing."

  "You'll work it out," he said, always reasonable. "I worked it out. My problem, I mean."

  He was so adaptive. Anything bad that happened, no matter how horrible, he just nodded and moved on. She supposed that was something he'd learned at the orphanage. Or maybe Angie Polaski had drilled it into him. As a survival skill, it was commendable. As the basis of a relationship, it was irritating as hell.

  And there was absolutely nothing Faith could do about it.

  Will sat up in his chair. He did his usual trick, making a joke to ease the tension. "If I get a vote, I would rather you bite my head off than start crying."

  "Back at you."

  "I need to apologize." Suddenly, he was serious again. "For what I did to Simkov. I've never laid hands on anyone like that before. Not ever." He looked her directly in the eye. "I promise it won't happen again."

  All Faith could say was, "Thank you." Of course she didn't agree with what Will had done, but it was hard to shout out recriminations when he was so obviously already doing a good job of hating himself.

  It was Faith's turn to lighten things up. "Let's stay away from good cop/bad cop for a while."

  "Yeah, stupid cop/bitchy cop works a lot better for us." He reached into his vest pocket and handed her back Jake Berman's details. "We should call Coweta and have them put eyes on Berman to make sure he's the right guy."

  The wheels in Faith's brain took their time moving in a new-direction. She looked at Sam's block handwriting, the stupid heart around the address. "I don't know why Sam thinks he can track down the guy in five minutes when our entire data processing division can't find him in two days."

  Faith took out her cell phone. She didn't want to bother with the proper channels, so she called Caroline, Amanda's assistant. The woman practically lived in the building, and she picked up the phone on the first ring. Faith relayed Berman's address and asked her to have the Coweta County field agent verify that this was the Jake Berman they had been looking for.

  "Do you want him to bring the guy in?" Caroline asked.

  Faith thought about it, then decided she didn't want to make the decision on her own. She asked Will, "Do you want them to bring in Berman?"

  He shrugged, but answered, "Do we want to tip him off ?"

  "A cop knocking on his door is a tip-off no matter what."

  Will shrugged again. "Tell him to try to verify Berman's identity from a distance. If it's the right guy, then we'll go down there and snatch him up. Give the agent my cell number. We'll go after you finish talking to Simkov."

  Faith passed this on to Caroline. She ended the call, and Will turned his computer monitor toward her, saying, "I got this email from Amanda."

  Faith slid over the mouse and keyboard. She changed the color settings so her retinas didn't spontaneously combust, then double-clicked on the file. She summarized for Will as she read. "Tech hasn't been able to break into any of the computers. They say the anorexia chat room is impossible to open without a password—it's got some kind of fancy encryption. The warrants for Olivia Tanner's bank should be in this afternoon so we can get into her phone and files." She scrolled down. "Hmm." She read silently, then told Will, "Okay, well, this might be something to take to the doorman. The fire exit door on the penthouse floor had a partial on the handle— right thumb."

  Will knew Faith had spent most of yesterday afternoon combing through Anna Lindsey's building. "How are the stairs accessed?"

  "Either the lobby or the roof," she said, reading the next passage. "The fire escape ladder that runs down the back of the building had another print that matched the one from the door. They're sending it to the Michigan State Police to run comparables. If Pauline's brother has a record, it should come up. If we can get a name, then we're halfway there."

  "We should check for parking tickets in the area. You can't just park anywhere in Buckhead. They're pretty good about catching you."

  "Good idea," Faith said, opening up her email account to send out the request. "I'll open it up to parking tickets in or around the area of all the last known locations of our victims."

  "Son of Sam was caught by a parking ticket."

  Faith tapped the keys. "You've got to stop watching so much television."

  "Not much else to do at night."

  She glanced at his hands, the new scratches.

  He asked, "How did he get Anna Lindsey out of the building? He couldn't have thrown her over his shoulder and taken her down the fire escape ladder."

  Faith sent off the email before answering. "The exit door for the stairs was wired. An alarm would have gone off if anyone had opened the door." She asked, "Did he take her down the elevator and into the lobby?"

  "That's something to ask Simkov."

  "The doorman isn't there twenty-four hours," Faith reminded him. "The killer could've waited for Simkov to clock out, then used the elevator to bring her body down. Simkov was supposed to keep an eye on things after hours, but he was hardly dedicated to his job."

  "There wasn't another doorman to relieve him?"

  "They've been trying to find someone to fill the position for six months," she told him. "Apparently, it's hard to find someone who wants to sit on their ass behind a desk for eight hours a day—which is why they put up with so much bullshit from Simkov. He was willing to double up his shifts, such as they were."

  "What about security tapes?"

  "They tape over them every forty-eight hours." She had to add, "Except for the ones from yesterday, which seem to be missing." Amanda had made sure the tape of Will slamming Simkov's face into the counter had been destroyed.

  Will's face flooded with guilt, but still, he asked, "Anything in Simkov's apartment?"

  "We tossed it upside down. He drives an old Monte Carlo that leaks like a sieve and there aren't any receipts for storage units."

  "There's no way he could be Pauline's brother."

  "We've been so focused on that that we haven't seen anything else."

  "All right, so, let's take the brother out of the equation. What about Simkov?"

  "He's not smart. I mean, he's not stupid, but our killer is choosing women he wants to conquer. I'm not saying our bad guy is a genius, but he's a hunter. Simkov is a pathetic schmuck who keeps porn under his mattress and takes blowjobs to let whores into empty apartments."

  "You've never believed in profiles before."

  "You're right, but we're spinning our wheels everywhere else. Let's talk about our guy," Faith said, something Will usually suggested. "Who's our killer?"

  "Smart," Will admitted. "He probably works for an overbearing woman, or has overbearing women in his life."

  "That's pretty much every man on the planet these days."

  "Tell me about it."

  Faith smiled, taking his words as a joke. "What kind of job does he have?"

  "Something that lets him exist under the radar. He has flexible hours. Watching these women, learning about their habits, takes a lot of time. He's got to have a job that lets him come and go as he pleases."

  "Let's ask the same boring, stupid question one more time: What about the women? What do they have in common?"

  "The anorexia/bulimia thing."

  "The chat room." She shot that one down on her own: "Of course, even the FBI can't find out who the site is registered to. No one has been able to break Pauline's password. How could our guy find it?"

  "Maybe he started the site himself in order to troll for victims?"

  "How would he find out their true identities? Everyone's tall, thin and blonde on the Internet. And usually twelve and horny."

  He was twisting his wedding ring again, staring out the window. Faith couldn't stop looking at the scratches on the back of his hand. In forensic parlance, they would have called the marks defensive wounds. Will had been behind someone who had gouged her fingernails deep into his skin.

  She asked, "How did it go with Sara last night?"
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  Will shrugged. "I just picked up Betty. I think she likes Sara's dogs. She's got two greyhounds."

  "I saw them yesterday morning."

  "Oh, that's right."

  "Sara's nice," Faith told him. "I really like her."

  Will nodded.

  "You should ask her out."

  He laughed, shaking his head at the same time. "I don't think so."

  "Because of Angie?"

  He stopped twisting the ring. "Women like Sara Linton . . ." She saw a flash of something in his eyes that she couldn't quite read. Faith expected him to shrug it off, but he kept talking. "Faith, there's no part of me that's not damaged." His voice sounded thick in his throat. "I don't mean just the things you can see. There's other stuff. Bad stuff." He shook his head again, a tight gesture, more for his own benefit than Faith's. He finally told her, "Angie knows who I am. Somebody like Sara . . ." Again, his voice trailed off. "If you really like Sara Linton, then you don't want her to know me."

  All Faith could think to say was his name. "Will."

  He gave a forced laugh. "We gotta stop talking about this stuff before one of us starts lactating." He took out his cell phone. "It's almost eight. Amanda will be waiting for you in the interrogation room."

  "Are you going to watch?"

  "I'm going to make some calls up to Michigan and annoy the crap out of them until they run those fingerprints we found on Anna's fire escape. Why don't you call me when you're out of your doctor's appointment? If Sam found the right Jake Berman, we can go talk to him together."

  Faith had forgotten about her doctor's appointment. "If he's the right Jake Berman, then we should scoop him up immediately."

  "I'll call you if that's the case. Otherwise, go to your doctor's appointment, then we'll start from scratch like we'd planned."

  She listed it off. "The Coldfields, Rick Sigler, Olivia Tanner's brother."

  "That should keep us busy."

  "You know what's bugging me?" Will shook his head, and she told him, "We haven't gotten the reports from Rockdale County yet." She held up her hands, knowing Rockdale was a sore point. "If we're going to start from the beginning, we need to do just that—get the initial crime-scene report from the first responding cop and go over every detail point by point. I know Galloway said the guy's fishing in Montana, but if his notes are good, then we don't need to talk to him."