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."
CHAPTER TWO
WILL 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, sh
owing 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.