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She couldn't imagine any parent giving up their child for any reason, especially that one. "That's awful."
Will obviously didn't want to have a conversation about it. He looked around the office, saying, "I'd call this austere."
Faith had to agree. Pauline's office appeared as if it had never been occupied. There was not a scrap of paper on the desktop. The in and out trays were empty. The design books on the shelves were all arranged in alphabetical order, spines straightened. The magazines stood crisply at attention in colored boxes. Even the computer monitor seemed to be at a precise forty-five-degree angle on the corner of the desk. The only thing of sentimental value on display was a snapshot of Felix on a swingset.
"He's a little trooper," Will said, mocking Morgan's words about Pauline's son. "I called the social worker last night. Felix isn't handling it very well."
"What's he doing?"
"Crying a lot. He won't eat."
Faith stared at the photograph, the unchecked joy in the young boy's eyes as he beamed at his mother. She remembered Jeremy at that age. He'd been so sweet she'd wanted to eat him up like a piece of candy. Faith had just graduated from the police academy and moved into a cheap apartment off Monroe Drive; the first time either she or Jeremy had lived away from Faith's mother. Their lives had become intertwined in a way she had never known was possible. He was so much a part of her that she could barely stand to drop him off at daycare. At night, Jeremy would color pictures while she filled out her daily reports at the kitchen table. He would sing songs to her in his squeaky little voice while she fixed him supper and made lunches for the next day. Sometimes, he would crawl into bed and curl up under her arm like a kitten. She had never felt so important or needed—not before and certainly not since.
"Faith?" Will had said something she'd missed.
She put the photograph back on Pauline's desk before she started bawling like a baby. "Yeah?"
"I said, what do you want to bet Jacquelyn Zabel's house in Florida was neat like this?"
Faith cleared her throat, trying to shift her focus. "The room she was using in her mother's house was extremely orderly. I thought it was something she did because the rest of the house was so messy— you know, calm in the storm. Maybe it's because she's a neat freak."
"Type A personality." Will walked around the desk, opening drawers. Faith looked at what he'd found—a row of colored pencils side by side in a plastic tray. Extra Post-it notes in a squared stack. He opened the next drawer and found a large binder, which he pulled out and put on the desk. He thumbed through the pages, and Faith saw room sketches, swatches, clippings of furniture photos.
Faith booted up the computer while he looked through the other drawers. She was pretty sure they would find nothing here, but, oddly, it felt as if what they were doing was helping the case. She was clicking with Will again, feeling more like his partner and less like an adversary. That had to be a good thing.
"Look at this." Will had opened the bottom drawer on the left side. It was a mess—the equivalent of a kitchen junk drawer. Papers were wadded up, and at the bottom were several empty bags of potato chips.
Faith said, "At least we know she's human."
"It's weird," he said. "Everything's so neat except this one drawer."
Faith picked up a balled piece of paper and smoothed it against the desk. There was a list on it, items checked off as they had probably been completed: grocery store; get lamp fixed for Powell living room; contact Jordan about couch swatches. She took out another balled piece of paper, finding much the same.
Will asked, "Maybe she wadded them up once she finished doing what she needed to do?"
Faith squinted at the list, blurring her eyes, trying to see it the way Will would. He was so damn good at fooling people into thinking he could read that sometimes Faith forgot he even had a problem.
Will searched the bookcase, taking down a magazine box from one of the middle shelves. "What's this?" He pulled down another box, then another. Faith could see the dial of a safe.
Will tried the handle, but there was no luck. He ran his fingers along the seam. "It's concreted into the wall."
"You want to go ask your buddy Morgan for the combination?"
"I'd bet some serious money he doesn't know it."
Faith didn't take the bet. Like Jacquelyn Zabel, Pauline McGhee seemed to enjoy keeping secrets.
Will said, "Check the computer first, then I'll go look for him."
Faith looked at the monitor. There was a box asking for a password.
Will saw it, too. "Try 'Felix'."
She did, and miraculously, it worked. She made a mental note to change her password from "Jeremy" at home as she clicked open the email program. Faith skimmed the messages as Will went back to the bookshelves. She found the usual correspondence from people working in an office, but nothing personal that would point to a friend or confidant. Faith sat back in the chair and opened the browser, hoping to find an email service in the history. There was no Gmail or Yahoo, but she discovered several websites.
Randomly, she clicked on one, and a YouTube page came up. She checked the sound as the video loaded. A guitar squeaked through the speakers on the bottom of a monitor, and the words, "I am happy," came up, then, "I am smiling."
Will stood behind her. She read the words as they faded into the black. "I am feeling. I am living. I am dying."
The guitar turned angrier with each word, and a photograph came up of a young girl in a cheerleading outfit. The shorts were low on her hips, the top barely enough to cover her breasts. She was so thin that Faith could count her ribs.
"Jesus," she mumbled. Another picture faded in, this one of an African-American girl. She was balled up on a bed, her back to the camera. Her skin was stretched, her vertebrae and ribs pronounced enough to show each individual piece of bone pressing against the thin flesh. Her shoulder blade stuck out like a knife.
"Is this some kind of relief site?" Will asked. "Money for AIDS?"
Faith shook her head as the next picture came up—a model standing in front of a cityscape, her legs and arms as thin as sticks. Another girl came up; a woman actually. Her clavicle jutted out with painful sharpness. The skin across her shoulders looked like wet paper covering the sinew underneath.
Faith clicked on the browser history button. She pulled up another video. There was different music, but the same sort of intro. She read aloud, "Eat to live. Don't live to eat." The words faded into a photo of a girl who was so painfully thin that she was hard to look at. Faith opened another page, then another. "The only freedom left is the freedom to starve yourself," she read. "Thin is beautiful. Fat is ugly." She looked at the top of the screen, the video category. "Thinspo. I've never heard of it."
"I don't understand. These girls look like they're starving, but they've got TVs in their rooms, they're wearing nice clothes."
Faith clicked on another link. "Thinspiration," she said. "Good Lord, I can't believe this. They're emaciated."
"Is there a news group or something?"
Faith looked back at the history. She skimmed the list, finding more videos, but nothing that looked like a chat room. She scrolled to the next page and hit pay dirt. "Atlanta-Pro-Anna-dot-com," she read. "It's a pro-anorexia site." Faith clicked on the link, but all that came up was another screen asking for a password. She tried "Felix" again, but it didn't work. She read the fine print. "It's asking for a six digit password and Felix is only five letters." She typed in variations on his name, saying them aloud for Will's benefit. "Zero-Felix, one- Felix, Felix-zero . . ."
