The Silent Wife (Will Trent #10) - Karin Slaughter Page 0,168
that Will had never spoken to the woman.
“The bartender told me he’d make sure she didn’t drive herself home,” Will said. “And then we left. That’s it.”
“I couldn’t tell her.” Faith had sagged into a chair. She looked haunted by the weight of the day. “Callie thinks she won. That’s what she said. ‘I won.’”
No one spoke in the immediate.
Nick pulled at a string on the corner of his briefcase.
Will leaned his back against the wall.
Amanda let out a long, slow breath. She was the most hardened officer of them all, but she was also closely tied to the Mitchell family. Early in her career, she had been partnered with Evelyn, Faith’s mother. She had dated Faith’s uncle. Jeremy and Emma called her Aunt Mandy.
“Nick,” Amanda said. “There’s a bottle of bourbon in the bottom drawer of my desk.”
Nick left at a sprint.
Faith said, “I don’t want a drink.”
“I do.” Amanda was always on her feet, but she sat at the desk beside Faith. She asked Will, “Rod Zanger?”
Will said, “We located him in Cheyenne. He’s been in the Laramie county lock-up for the last three months. He beats his new wife, too.”
Faith put her head in her hands. “I couldn’t tell her. She’s barely holding it together. I’m barely holding it together.”
Amanda asked Will. “The transceiver on her car?”
He said, “We couldn’t ask for it without telling her why.”
“I wasn’t going to do that to her,” Faith said. “I couldn’t take that away from her.”
Amanda nodded for Will to continue.
He said, “Rod’s got an extensive social media presence going back ten years. During the week of the Grant County attacks, he was in Antwerp with Callie Zanger for some kind of tax conference. There are photographs of them on an orange, wooden escalator that’s well-known in the city.”
Amanda said, “My recollection is that he had no alibi for his whereabouts when his wife was abducted?”
“Yes,” Will said. “He always denied it.”
“He didn’t do it.” Faith turned to Amanda, incredulous. “Jesus Christ, can you stop bullshitting around about this? It all lines up. The hair tie. The hammer. The month and time of day. The woods. The fucking blue Gatorade. Everything Callie said lines up, just like everything else lined up this morning when we were all sitting in this same damn room and you were telling us, berating us, warning us, that we couldn’t call this guy a serial killer when every single fucking clue was pointing to a serial killer.”
Amanda ignored the accusation, telling Will, “I want to talk to the detective who worked the Zanger disappearance. Call the super in her building. He might have the hard drives from two years ago lying around his office. If we can get—”
Faith stood up. She was looking at the photos from Leslie Truong’s autopsy. “There are nineteen women, Amanda. Nineteen women who were attacked. Fifteen are dead, and that doesn’t even include Tommi Humphrey. You know what he did to her. You know!”
Amanda took the abuse head-on. “I do.”
“So why the fuck are we pretending this isn’t connected when—” She held up one of the photos. Her voice was shaking. “Look at this! This is what he does. This is what would’ve happened to Callie Zanger if she hadn’t somehow been able to think, to act, to walk out of those woods on her own!”
Amanda let her vent.
“How many more women are out there? He could be hurting another woman right now, Amanda. Right now, because he is a serial killer of women. That is what he is. A fucking serial killer.”
Amanda nodded once. “Yes, we are dealing with a serial killer.”
The admission knocked the wind out of Faith.
Amanda asked, “Does it make you feel better giving it a name?”
“No,” Faith said. “Because you wouldn’t listen to me, but you listened to Miranda Newberry’s stupid fucking spreadsheet.”
“The source of the data is immaterial,” Amanda said. “Chance favors the prepared.”
“Unbelievable.” Faith slumped back into the desk.
Amanda directed her attention to Will. “Excluding Grant County and Alexandra McAllister, we have thirteen separate jurisdictions where bodies were found. For now, we’ll leave out the three cases where the women managed to escape. First thing in the morning, I want you and Faith to divvy up the counties with Nick. We need to light up the phones, start setting appointments and interviews. Keep it casual. Don’t give away too much.”
Will was obviously still concerned about Faith, but he suggested, “We could say we’re doing a state-wide, random check on missing persons cases.”