Criminal (Will Trent 6)

Sara asked, “How do you know this?”

Pete didn’t answer the question. “These lines along her torso, inside her arms and legs—a thicker thread was used to keep her from moving. I imagine an upholstery needle was used, probably a waxed thread or maybe a silk-blend yarn. We’ll probably find plenty of fibers to analyze.”

Pete handed Sara the magnifying glass. She studied the lacerations. As with the victim’s eyes and mouth, the skin was ripped apart, flesh hanging down in even intervals. She could see the red dots where the thread had gone in. Not once. Not a few times. The circles were like the holes in Sara’s earlobes where she’d gotten her ears pierced when she was a child.

Amanda said, “She must’ve ripped herself away from the mattress, or whatever she was sewn to, when he started beating her.”

Pete expounded on the hypothesis. “It would be an uncontrollable response. He punches her in the stomach, she curls up into a ball. Mouth opens. Eyes open. And then he punches her again and again.”

Sara shook her head. He was jumping to some pretty quick conclusions. “What am I missing?”

Pete tucked his hands into the empty pockets of his lab coat, silently watching Sara with the same careful intensity he used when he was teaching a new procedure.

Amanda supplied, “This isn’t our killer’s first victim.”

Sara still didn’t understand. She asked Pete, “How do you know?”

Will cleared his throat. Sara had almost forgotten he was in the room.

He said, “Because the same thing was done to my mother.”

seventeen

June 15, 1975

LUCY BENNETT

Father’s Day. It was all over the radio. Richway was having a special sale. Davis Brothers was offering an all-you-can-eat buffet. The disc jockeys were talking about their favorite gifts from years past. Shirts. Ties. Golf clubs.

Lucy’s dad was easy to buy for. They always got him a bottle of scotch. Then two weeks would pass and if there was anything left in the bottle, they’d all get a drink on the Fourth of July while they watched the fireworks explode over Lake Spivey.

Lucy’s dad.

She didn’t want to think about him. About anyone she used to know.

Patty Hearst was suddenly in the news again. Her trial was still a year off, but her defense had decided to leak details about the kidnapping. Lucy already knew what went down with that crazy chick. It happened back when Lucy was on the street. There was no one else to talk about it with back then. Except for Kitty, none of the girls even knew Hearst’s name. Or maybe Kitty was lying. She was good at lying, pretending she knew things when all it was in the end was an excuse to lure you in so she could stab you in the back like a sneaky little bitch.

After Hearst, there was a reporter with the Atlanta Constitution who’d been kidnapped. They demanded a million bucks for his release. They claimed to be from the SLA, too. What they were was idiots. They got snatched up by the cops. They didn’t spend a dime of that money.

A million dollars. What would Lucy do with that kind of dough?

The only bank in town who’d had the ransom cash on hand was C&S. Mills Lane was the bank president. His picture was in the paper a lot. He was the same guy who helped the mayor build the stadium. Not the black mayor, but the one who ran against Lester Maddox.

Lucy felt the gurgle of laughter in her throat.

The Pickrick. Maddox’s restaurant on West Peachtree. He kept axes on the wall. Rumor was he’d smash one through the head of any nigger who dared walk through the front door.

Lucy tried to imagine Juice going through the front door. An ax in his head. Brains spattered everywhere.

Washington-Rawson. The slum they’d torn down to build the Atlanta Stadium. Lucy’s dad told her the story. They were there for a baseball game. The Braves. Chief Noc-a-Homa with his crazy big face running around with an ax he could’ve stolen from Lester Maddox. Lucy’s dad said the stadium was supposed to revitalize the area. There were almost a million and a half residents in the city limits, most of them living on government vouchers. If Atlanta couldn’t strong-arm the nigras out of the city, then they’d just pave over them.

The SLA paved over Patty Hearst. They were a cult. They brainwashed her. Or so said a doctor on the radio. The shrink was a woman, so Lucy took her opinion with a grain of salt, but she claimed that it only took two weeks for a person to become brainwashed.

Two weeks.

Lucy had lasted at least two months. Even after the H had worn off. Even after she had stopped longing for the high. Even after she had learned not to move, not to breathe too deep or too long. Even after she had stopped caring that she had sores on her back and legs from laying for so long in her own piss and shit.

She’d glowed with hate whenever he came into the room. She’d flinched when he touched her. She’d made sounds in her throat, used words that even without moving her mouth, she knew he could understand.

Satan.

Devil.

I’ll kill you dead.

Motherfucker.

And then suddenly, he’d stopped coming. It had to be only a few days. You couldn’t live without water for more than two, three days, tops. So maybe he’d been gone three days. Maybe when he’d come through the door, she’d been crying. Maybe when he brushed back her hair, she didn’t flinch. Maybe when he washed her, she didn’t tense up. And maybe when he finally got on top of her, finally did the things that Lucy had expected him to do from day one, she’d felt herself responding.

And then maybe when he left again, she sobbed for him. Longed for him. Begged for him. Missed him.

Just like she’d done with Bobby, her first love. Just like she’d done with Fred, the guy who cleaned planes at the airport. Then Chuck, who managed the apartment complex. Then countless others who had raped her, beat her, fucked her, left her on the side of the road for dead.

Stockholm syndrome.

That’s what the woman doctor on CBS Radio called it. Walter Cronkite introduced her as a noted authority. She worked with victims of cults and mind-control experiments. She seemed to know what she was talking about, but maybe she was just making excuses, because what she was saying didn’t entirely track.

At least not to Lucy.

Not to the girl who slept in her own excrement. Not to the girl who couldn’t move her arms or legs. Not to the girl who couldn’t open her mouth unless it was cut open for her. Couldn’t blink without the razor sharp edge of his pocketknife slicing through the tiny stitches of thread.

The second Lucy saw an opening, the minute she saw even the sliver of a chance, she would escape. She would run to her freedom. She would crawl on her hands and knees back home. She would find her parents. She would find Henry. She would go to the cops. She would rip her body from this mattress and find a way to get home.

Patty Hearst was a stupid bitch. She was in a closet, but no one held her down. She had a chance. She had ample opportunity. She’d stood with a rifle in that bank, yelling SLA bullshit, when she could’ve just run out the door and asked for help.

If Lucy had a rifle, she’d use it to shoot the man in the head. She’d pound in his skull with the stock. She’d rape him with the long barrel. She’d laugh when the blood poured from his mouth and his eyeballs popped out.

And then she’d find that woman doctor from the radio and tell her that she was dead wrong. Patty Hearst wasn’t helpless. She could’ve gotten away. She could’ve bolted at any time.