CHAPTER THIRTEEN
It didn't take Scott and Jennifer more than half an hour to find Brady Oliver at the address provided and bring him in for questioning. He turned out to be a small-time crook with delusions of grandeur and crumbled almost before Andy could even begin to get hard-nosed about the probable legal consequences of passing oneself off as a kidnapper.
"I never took her, I swear! I just found her is all, and why shouldn't I try to make a few bucks on a lucky chance? Her old man would never miss it, and she don't care no more, right?"
Andy stared at him, thinking once again that it was a helluva world they lived in. And feeling a chill. From the sound of it, Samantha Mitchell was already dead. "Where is she, Brady?"
Bloodshot eyes shifted nervously. "First, we gotta talk about this kidnapping rap. 'Cause I never took her, I just found her."
Andy leaned toward him and said gently, "Well, I'll tell you what, Brady. What say I invite Samantha Mitchell's husband in here to meet you? And you can explain it all to him."
"Oh, hell, no, don't do that!"
"Where is she?"
"I just wanted to-"
"Where is she?"
"Alls I'm asking is-"
Andy rose to his feet.
"Okay, okay! There's a dump not too far from my place, an old abandoned building. City wants to tear it down, but there's no money to rebuild, something like that. I go there sometimes and look for stuff I can sell." He rattled off the address, looking acutely unhappy. "First floor, back room."
"She's dead, isn't she, Brady?"
"I didn't do her, I swear!"
Andy felt very tired. He said, "My people are going to go check out the address. You'll wait right here."
"I want a lawyer," Brady whined.
"You haven't been charged with anything. Yet."
"Oh. Well, then, I want a Coke."
Andy left the interview room without responding and before he gave in to the temptation to rid the human gene pool of one extremely stupid and vicious little possible breeder.
As soon as he shut the door behind him, Jennifer came out of the observation room and said, "We heard, Andy. Scott's rounding up the rest and putting forensics on alert. Do you think that piece of scum in there really just found her?"
Nodding, Andy said, "If Brady had killed her, he would have been hiding in the deepest hole he could find and wouldn't have opened his trap, except to ask for a lawyer. Since he just found her, he figures he's safe. Stupid bastard."
"So she's dead?"
"Yeah, she's dead. Come on-let's go. You and Scott can ride with me."
They collected the others from the bullpen and went out to their cars. On the point of getting into his own car, Andy noticed Jennifer still on the sidewalk; she was looking around with a frown, obviously disturbed.
"What?" he asked.
"Did you hear something?"
"I heard a lot. Traffic, voices, a horn blowing a couple of blocks away."
She shook her head, moving toward the passenger side finally but still frowning. "No, something else."
Scott said, "I didn't hear anything weird, Jenn. What'd it sound like?"
"Just… I could have sworn somebody said my name, that's all. My imagination, I guess." She shivered visibly and got into the car.
Andy paused a moment to look around carefully, but he didn't see or hear anything unusual. Even so, he didn't dismiss Jennifer's uneasiness, especially added to the fact that someone had apparently gotten into her locked car not so long ago.
He looked around a final time, then got into the car, making a mental note to do something about security around the station. But that resolution was pushed to the back of his mind by the time they reached the address Brady Oliver had given them.
Loath to disturb any evidence, Andy stationed most of his people around the building with instructions to tape off the entire thing for forensics, while he went in with only Scott and Jennifer as backup.
Their flashlights showed them a dirty, ramshackle place that had long ago been stripped to its bare bones. The floor creaked underfoot, and as they entered they could all hear faint scratchy whisperings and scurryings.
"What the hell's that?" Scott demanded, jumpy and not apologetic about it.
"Rats," Andy told him. "You two stay behind me. We'll check out the room Brady said he found her in first."
With sudden realization, Scott said, "Rats… If the lady's here and she's been dead very long-"
"Don't think about it," Jennifer urged him, her own voice a bit thickened.
Andy hesitated, wondering if he should have left the two of them outside. Both had witnessed scenes of homicide before, but he knew they were very involved in this case and that their emotions were heightened because of that. Still, even that was part of being a cop. He moved on, slow and careful.
The long hallway led to the back of the building, where there were half a dozen rooms, their doors long gone, and empty doorways with broken casings leaned drunkenly open. Andy wondered why the whole building hadn't collapsed long ago. He paused, shining his light around, then moved suddenly toward the doorway to the room on the far left corner.
He could smell the blood.
There was no need to go more than a step into the room. His flashlight found her immediately.
"Oh, Christ," Scott muttered.
Andy said nothing, but he heard Jennifer give a little sigh and didn't have to ask to know what both of them were feeling. Because he felt the same. Horror. Revulsion. Pain. And an overwhelming sadness.
Samantha Mitchell lay spread-eagled on a bloodstained mattress in the far corner. Her naked body was bruised and battered. Her eyes were gone, and her throat was cut almost ear to ear. The rats had indeed gotten to her body.
Even more horribly, a deep slash opened the lower curve of her rounded belly.
And between her thighs lay the pitifully small, curled body of her dead child.
Still connected to her body by the umbilical cord.
"From the moment we met, there was an unusual bond between Christina and me," Maggie said. "Maybe it was because she was the first of his victims to survive the attack, I don't know. Whatever the reason, we both felt it, that closeness."
"She mentioned your name a couple of times when I flew up to visit her," John said, keeping his eyes on the road as he drove. "Didn't say much, just that you were the police sketch artist and that you'd been kind to her. That's one reason I asked Andy about you after she died. And I saw you at the funeral."
Maggie was a little surprised by that; she had made a point of keeping back and being unobtrusive. "I didn't know you saw me then."
"I just caught a glimpse near the end. Didn't know who you were until I recognized you last week in that interview room." He didn't add that something about her had stuck in his mind so that all these weeks later he had remembered her the instant he had seen her at the police station.
"I didn't get to spend much time with Christina," she said. "Just a couple of visits in the hospital, then three or four more after she went home. So much of her energy was just taken up with healing and with getting ready for all the surgeries she knew would follow."
John glanced at Maggie quickly, but he couldn't see her face clearly in the now-and-then glare of passing streetlights. "She talked about the plastic surgery?"
"Yes. She was realistic about it; she knew nothing would make her look the way she did before. But the acid had done so much damage, and she just wanted to look as normal as possible. She said… she didn't want to frighten children when she went out in public."
John was silent for a moment, then said, "That's one of the reasons I've been so sure she didn't kill herself. She wanted to live, Maggie, I know she did. She wanted to heal and go on with her life. She was strong."
"Yes, she was. Stronger than you know."