"I'm here," Sara said. "I can hear you, sweetie. Try to wake up for me."
Anna's breath quickened in fear. What had happened was starting to dawn on the woman—the agony she had endured, the fact that she could not see.
"You're in the hospital. I know you can't see, but you can hear me. You're safe. Two police officers are right outside your door. No one is going to hurt you."
Anna's hand trembled as it reached up, fingers brushing against Sara's arm. Sara grabbed her hand, held on to it as firmly as she could without causing more pain. "You're safe now," Sara promised her. "No one else is going to hurt you."
Suddenly, Anna's grip tightened, squeezing Sara's hand so tightly that it brought a sharp, shooting pain as the bones crunched together.
The woman was fully alert, wide awake. "Where is my son?"
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
WHEN YOU PULLED THE TRIGGER ON A TASER, TWO HOOKED probes were propelled by an inert nitrogen gas, shooting them out at about 160 per second. In civilian units, fifteen feet of insulated, conductive wire facilitated fifty thousand volts being delivered to whomever the probes latched onto. The electrical pulses interrupted sensory and motor function as well as the central nervous system. Will had been shot with a Taser during a training session. He still could not remember the time frame immediately before or after the charge hit him, only that Amanda had been the one to pull the trigger and she had been sporting an incredibly pleased grin when he had finally been able to stand up.
Like bullets in a gun, the Taser devices required cartridges that were preloaded with the wires and probes. Because the Constitutional Framers were unable to predict the existence of such a device, there was no inalienable right attached to owning a Taser. Some bright thinker had managed to insert one codicil into their manufacture: All Taser cartridges had to be loaded with AFIDS, or Anti-Felon Identification Dots, that scattered out by the hundreds each time a cartridge was fired. At first glance, these small dots looked like confetti. The design was on purpose; the tiny pieces were so vast in number that it was impossible for a perpetrator to pick them all up to cover his trail. The beauty was that, under magnification, the confetti revealed a serial number that identified which cartridge they came from. Because Taser International wanted to keep the legal community on their side, they had enacted their own tracing program. All you had to do was call them up with the serial number from one of the dots and they would give you the name and address of the person who had purchased the cartridge.
Faith was on hold for less than three minutes when the company came back with a name.
"Shit," she whispered, then, realizing she was still on the phone, she added, "No. Thank you. That's all I need." She closed her cell phone as she reached down to crank the key in the Mini's ignition. "The Taser cartridge was purchased by Pauline Seward. The address listed is the vacant house behind Olivia Tanner's place."
"How were the cartridges paid for?"
"With an American Express gift card. No name on the card. It's untraceable." She gave him a meaningful glance. "The cartridges were purchased two months ago, which means he's been watching Olivia Tanner for at least that long. And, since he used Pauline's name, we have to assume that he was planning on taking her, too."
"The vacant house is owned by the bank—not the one where Olivia works." Will had called the number on the realtor's sign in the front yard while Faith was dealing with Taser. "It's been empty almost a year. No one's looked at it in six months."
Faith turned, backing out of the driveway. Will raised his hand at Michael Tanner, who was sitting in his Ford Escape, hands gripping the wheel.
Will said, "I didn't recognize the Taser dots in Felix's bookbag."
"Why would you? It was confetti on a kid's satchel. You need a magnifying glass to read the serial numbers." She added, "If you want to blame someone, blame the Atlanta Police for not picking up on it at the scene. Their forensic guys were there. They must have vacuumed the carpets in the car. They just haven't processed it yet because a missing woman isn't a priority."
"The address for the cartridge would have led us to the house behind Olivia Tanner's."
"Olivia Tanner was already missing when you saw Felix's bookbag." She repeated, "The Atlanta Police processed the scene. They're the ones who screwed up." Faith's phone rang. She checked the caller ID and decided not to answer it. She laid it out for him. "Besides, knowing the Taser dots in Felix's bag are from the same lot as the dots we found in Olivia Tanner's backyard hasn't exactly given us a huge break. All it tells us is that our bag guy has been planning this for a while and that he's good at covering his tracks. We knew that when we got up this morning."
Will thought they knew a lot more than that. They had a link now that tied the women together. "We've got Pauline connected to the other victims—'I will not deny myself ' ties her to Anna and Jackie, and the Taser dots tie her to Olivia." He thought about it for a few seconds, wondering what else he was missing.
Faith was on the same page. "Let's go through this from the beginning. What do we have?"
"Pauline and Olivia were both taken yesterday. Both women were shot with the same Taser cartridge."
"Pauline, Jackie and Olivia all had eating disorders. We're assuming Anna does, too, right?"
Will shrugged. It wasn't a big leap, but it was an unknown. "Yeah, let's assume."
"None of the women had friends who would miss them. Jackie had the neighbor, Candy, but Candy wasn't exactly a confidant. All three are attractive, thin, with dark hair, dark eyes. All three worked in well-paid jobs."
"All of them lived in Atlanta except for Jackie," Will said, throwing out a flag. "So, how did Jackie get targeted? She'd only been in Atlanta a week, tops, just to clean out her mother's house."
"She must have come up before then to help move her mother to the nursing home in Florida," Faith guessed. "And we're forgetting the chat room. They could've all met there."
"Olivia didn't have a computer at home."
"She could've had a laptop that was stolen."
Will scratched his arm, thinking about that first night in the cave, all the maddening non-clues they had followed up on since, all the brick walls they kept hitting. "This feels like it all starts with Pauline."
"She was the fourth victim." Faith considered the situation. "He could've been saving the best for last."
"Pauline wasn't taken from her home like we assume the other women were. She was taken in broad daylight. Her kid was in the car. She was missed at work because she had an important meeting. The other women weren't missed by anyone except for Olivia, and there was no way to know that Olivia made that phone call every day to her brother unless our bad guy tapped her phone, which he obviously didn't."
"What about Pauline's brother?" Faith asked. "I keep coming back to the fact that she was scared enough about him to mention him to her son. We can't find a record of him anywhere. He could have changed his name like Pauline did when she was seventeen."
Will listed all the men who had come up during the investigation. "Henry Coldfield is too old and has a heart problem. Rick Sigler has lived in Georgia all his life. Jake Berman—who knows?"