Undone (Will Trent 3)

Sara said, "Your time to help her is now. Not back in that forest."

Pete put down his pen. "She's right." He pressed his hands against the chest. "Feels like there's a lot of blood in here, and she made a damn lucky guess about where to sink the blade. Probably hit the heart immediately. I'd agree that the break in the foot as well as the neck came postmortem." He slipped off a glove as he walked to the computer and pulled up the crime-scene photos. "Look at how her head seems to be resting against the branches, tilted. That's not what happens when you snap your neck during a fall. It would be pressed hard against the offending object. When you're alive, your muscles are taught to prevent such an injury. It's a violent event, not a gentle twisting. Good call, kiddo."

Pete beamed at Sara, and she felt herself blush with a student's pride.

"Why would she kill herself ?" Will asked, as if the tortured woman had had everything to live for.

Pete supplied, "She was probably blind, most certainly deaf. I'm surprised she was able to make it up the tree. She wouldn't have heard the searchers, would have no idea that you were looking for her."

"But she—"

"The infrared on the helicopters didn't pick up her signature," Pete interrupted. "But for you being out there, just happening to look up, I imagine the only way you would have found her body is tracking down a DRT call come deer season."

Dead Right There, he meant. All police agencies had their slang, some of it more colorful than others. Hunters were notorious for calling in bodies they'd found DRT.

Pete turned to Sara. "Do you mind?" he asked, nodding toward the bag for the rape kit. Snoopy was an excellent assistant, but Sara got the message: she was back to being an observer. She peeled off her gloves and opened the kit, laying out the swabs and vials. Pete picked up the speculum, pressing open the legs so he could insert it into the vagina.

As with some violent rapes that resulted in homicide, the vaginal walls had stayed clenched post mortem, and the plastic speculum broke as Pete tried to pry it open. Snoopy handed him a metal speculum, and Pete tried again, his hands shaking as he forced open the clamp. It was rough to watch, and Sara was glad that Faith was not there as the wrenching sound of metal parting flesh filled the room. Sara handed Pete a swab, and he inserted the cotton-tipped stick, only to meet resistance.

Pete bent over, trying to find the obstruction. "Dear Lord," he mumbled, his hand scattering the tray of tools as he snatched up a pair of thin-nosed forceps. His voice was absent any charm as he told Sara, "Glove up—help me with this."

Sara snapped on the gloves, wrapping her hands around the speculum as he reached in with the forceps, which were nothing more than a long pair of tweezers. The tips grabbed something, and he pulled back his arm. A long, single piece of white plastic came out, like a silk cloth from a magician's sleeve. Pete kept pulling, layering the plastic into a large bowl. Section after section came, each streaked in dark, black blood, each connected to the next in a perforated line.

"Trash bags," Will said.

Sara could not breathe. "Anna," she said. "We need to check Anna."

CHAPTER TEN

WILL'S OFFICE ON THE THIRD FLOOR OF CITY HALL EAST WAS little more than a storage closet with a window that looked down onto a pair of abandoned railroad tracks and a Kroger grocery store parking lot that seemed to be the meeting place for many suspicious-looking people in very expensive cars. The back of Will's chair was pressed so tightly against the wall that it gouged the sheetrock every time he turned. Not that he needed to turn. He could see the entire office without moving his head. Even getting into the chair was difficult because Will had to squeeze between his desk and the window in order to reach it—a maneuver that made him glad he wasn't planning on having children.

He leaned on his elbow as he watched his computer boot up, the screen flickering, the little icons flashing into place. Will opened his email first, tucking a pair of headphones into his ears so he could hear them through the SpeakText program he'd installed a few years ago. After deleting a couple of sexual enhancement offers and a plea from a deposed Nigerian president, he found a note from Amanda and a policy-change notice on the state health insurance plan that he sent to his private email so he could muddle through his loss of covered items from the comfort of his own home.

Amanda's email needed no such study. She always wrote in all caps and she seldom bothered with proper sentence construction. UPDATE ME was plastered across the screen in a thick, bold font.

What could he tell her? That their victim had eleven kitchen garbage bags shoved up inside her? That Anna, the victim who had survived, had the same number inside of her? That twelve hours had passed and they were no closer to finding out who had taken the women, let alone what pattern connected the two victims?

Blind, possibly deaf, possibly mute. Will had been in the cave where the women were kept. He could not imagine the horrors they experienced. Seeing the torturer's instruments had been bad enough, but he imagined not seeing them would be worse. At least the burden of Jackie Zabel's death was off his shoulders, though knowing that the woman had chosen death when help was so nearby brought him no comfort.

Will could still hear the compassionate tone Sara Linton had used as she'd explained how Zabel had taken her life. He could not remember the last time a woman had talked to him that way—tried to throw him a life vest instead of yelling at him to swim harder the way Faith did or, worse, grabbing onto his legs and pulling him farther down the way Angie always tried.

Will slumped back in his chair, knowing he should put Sara out of his mind. There was a case in front of him that needed his undivided attention, and Will made himself focus on the women he could actually have an impact on.

Both Anna and Jackie had probably escaped from the cave at the same time, Jackie unable to hear or see, Anna most probably blind. There would have been no way for the two damaged women to communicate with each other except through touch. Had they held hands, stumbling together blindly as they'd tried to find their way out of the forest? Somehow, they'd been separated, lost from each other. Anna must have known she was on a road, felt the cool asphalt on the soles of her bare feet, heard the roar of an approaching car. Jackie had gone the other way—finding a tree, climbing to what must have felt like safety. Waiting. Every creak of the tree, every movement of the branches, sending panic through her body as she waited for her abductor to find her and take her back to that cold, dark place.

She would have been holding her license, her identity, in one hand and the means of her death in the other. It was an almost incomprehensible choice. Climb down, walk aimlessly to look for help, risking possible capture? Or plunge the blade into her chest? Fight for her life? Or seize control and end it on her own terms?

The autopsy bore witness to her decision. The blade had pierced her heart, severing the main artery, filing the chest with blood. According to Sara, Jackie had probably passed out almost instantly, her heart stopping even as she fell from the tree. Knife dropping. Driver's license dropping. They had found aspirin in her stomach. It had thinned her blood so that it was still dripping long after her death. This was the hot splatter on Will's neck. Looking up, seeing her hand reaching down, he had thought she was grasping for freedom, but she had actually managed to find it on her own.