"Pauline McGhee—"
"Leo is drawing a blank on the brother. He says her house is clean—no documents, no indication of parents, relatives. No record of an alias, but that's easy enough to hide if you pay the right people enough money. Pauline's neighbors haven't changed their story, either: They either don't know her or don't like her. Either way, they can't tell us anything about her life. He talked to the teachers at the kid's school. Same thing. I mean, Christ, her son is in care right now because the mother doesn't have any close friends who are willing take him."
"What's Leo doing now?"
She checked her watch. "Probably trying to figure out how to knock off early." She rubbed her eyes again, obviously tired. "He's running McGhee's fingerprints, but that's a long shot unless she's ever been arrested."
"Is he still worried about us treading on his case?"
"Even more so than before." Faith pressed her lips together. "I bet it's because he's been sick. They do that, you know—look at what your insurance is costing, try to push you out if you're too much of a drain on the system. God forbid you have a chronic disease that requires expensive medication."
Thankfully, that wasn't something Will or Faith had to worry about yet. He said, "Pauline's abduction could be separate from our case, something as simple as an argument that set off her brother, or a stranger abduction. She's an attractive woman."
"If she's not connected to our case, it's more likely someone she knew is involved."
"So, that's the brother."
"She wouldn't have warned the kid about him unless she was worried." Faith added, "Of course, there's also that Morgan guy— arrogant bastard. I was ready to slap him through the phone when I talked to him. Maybe there was something going on between him and Pauline."
"They worked together. She could've pushed him too far and he snapped. That happens a lot when men work with bossy women."
"Ha-ha," Faith allowed. "Wouldn't Felix recognize Morgan if he was the abductor?"
Will shrugged. Kids could block out anything. Adults weren't bad at it, either.
Faith pointed out, "Neither of our two known victims has children. Neither of them has been reported missing, as far as we know. Jacquelyn Zabel's car is gone. We have no idea if Anna has a car, since we don't even know her last name." Her tone was getting sharper as she ticked off each dead end. "Or her first name. It could be something other than Anna. Who knows what Sara heard?"
"I heard it," Will defended. "I heard her say "Anna."
Faith skipped over his response. "Do you still think there might be two abductors?"
"I'm not sure about anything right now, except that whoever is doing this is no amateur. His DNA is everywhere, which means he probably doesn't have a criminal record he's worried about. We don't have any clues because he didn't leave any. He's good at this. He knows how to cover his tracks."
"A cop?"
Will let the question go unanswered.
Faith reasoned it out. "There's something he's doing that makes women trust him—lets him get close enough to snatch them without anyone seeing."
"The suit," Will said. "Women—men, too—are more likely to trust a well-dressed stranger. It's a class judgement, but it's true."
"Great. We just need to round up all the men in Atlanta who were wearing suits this morning." She held up her fingers, ticking off a list. "No fingerprints on the trash bags found in either woman. Nothing to trace on any of the items found in the cave. The bloody print on Jacquelyn Zabel's driver's license belongs to Anna. We don't know her last name. We don't know where she lived or worked or if she has family." Faith had run out of fingers.
"The abductor obviously has a method. He's patient. He excavates the cave, gets it ready for his captives. Like you said, he probably watches the women before he abducts them. He's done this before. Who knows how many times."
"Yeah, but his victims haven't lived to talk about it, or we'd have something come up in the FBI database."
Will's desk phone rang, and Faith picked it up. "Mitchell." She listened for a few beats, then took her notepad out of her purse. She wrote in neat block letters, but Will was incapable of deciphering the words. "Can you follow up on that?" She waited. "Great. Call me on my cell."
She hung up the phone. "That was Leo. The prints came back from Pauline McGhee's SUV. Her real name is Pauline Agnes Seward. She had a missing persons report filed in Ann Arbor, Michigan, back in '89. She was seventeen. According to the report, her parents said there was some kind of argument that set things off. She was off the straight and narrow—doing drugs, sleeping around. Her prints were on file because of a shoplifting rap she pleaded nolo on. The locals made a cursory search, put her in the database, but this is the first hit they've had in twenty years."
"That jibes with what Morgan said. Pauline told him she ran away from home when she was seventeen. What about the brother?"
"Nothing came up. Leo's going to do a deeper background search." Faith put the pad back in her pocketbook. "He's trying to track down the parents. Hopefully, they're still in Michigan."
"Seward doesn't sound like a common name."
"It's not," she agreed. "Something would've come up in the computer if the brother was involved in a serious crime."
"Do we have an age range? A name?"
"Leo said he'd get back to us as soon as he found something."
Will sat back in his chair, leaned his head against the wall. "Pauline still isn't part of our case. We don't have a pattern to match her with."
"She looks like our other victims. No one likes her. She's not close to anyone."
"She might be close to her brother," Will said. "Leo says Pauline had Felix through a sperm donor, right? Maybe the brother is the donor?"
Faith made a noise of disgust. "God, Will."
Her tone made him feel guilty for suggesting such a thing, but the fact was their job was all about thinking of the worst things that could happen. "Why else would Pauline warn her son that his uncle is a bad man she needed to protect him from?"
Faith was reluctant to answer. Finally, she said, "Sexual abuse."
"I could be way off," he admitted. "Her brother could be a thief or an embezzler or a drug addict. He could be a con."
"If a Seward had a record in Michigan, Leo would have already pulled him up on the computer search."
"Maybe the brother's been lucky."
Faith shook her head. "Pauline was scared of him, didn't want her son around him. That points to violence, or fear of violence."
"Like you said, if the brother was threatening or stalking her, there'd be a report somewhere."
"Not necessarily. He's still her brother. People don't run to the police when it's a family matter. You know that."
Will wasn't so sure, but she had a point about Leo's computer search. "What would make you warn Jeremy away from your brother?"