AllFreeNovel
Share Us
What had Olivia Tanner's life been like? Faith had worked missing persons cases before. The key to finding out what happened to the women—they were all usually women—was to try to put yourself in their shoes. What were their likes and dislikes? Who were their friends? What was so awful about their boyfriend/husband/ lover that made them want to pick up and leave?
With Olivia, there were no clues, no emotional anchors to pounce on. The woman lived in a lifeless house without a comfortable chair to sink into at the end of the day. All her plates and bowls were unscratched, unchipped and looked unused. Even the coffee cups were sparkling at the bottom. How could Faith relate to a woman who lived in a perfectly kept white box?
Faith returned to the kitchen cabinets, again finding nothing out of place. Even what she would've considered the junk drawer was neat—screwdrivers in a plastic case, hammer resting on a ball of twine. Faith ran her finger along the inside seam of the cabinet, finding no grit or dirt. There was something to be said for a woman who dusted her kitchen cabinets inside and out.
Faith opened the bottom drawer and found an oversized envelope like the kind used for mailing photographs. She opened the top and found a stack of glossy pages that had been neatly cut from magazines. All of them showed models in various stages of undress, no matter whether they were selling perfume or gold watches. These weren't the usual women you found in sweater sets and pearls as they cheerily dusted their houses and cleaned up after adorable children. These models were meant to convey sex, wantonness, and, above all, thinness.
Faith had seen some of these bone-thin models before. She skimmed the pages of Cosmo and Vogue and Elle just like every other person who ever waited in line at the grocery store, but seeing these anorexic women now, knowing that Olivia Tanner had chosen these pictures not because she wanted to remember to buy a new eye shadow or lip gloss, but because she considered the airbrushed skeletons an attainable goal, made Faith feel sick to her stomach.
She thought again about Michael Tanner's words, the torture his sister had put herself through in order to be thin. She couldn't figure out why Will was so certain the woman had been trying to protect her brother. It seemed unlikely that a man who raped his daughter would go after his son, but Faith had been a cop too long to believe criminals followed a logical pattern. Despite her own teenage pregnancy, the Mitchell family was fairly normal. There were no abusive alcoholics or sex-crazed uncles. In matters of severe childhood dysfunction, she always deferred to Will.
He had never outright confirmed anything, but she guessed that he had suffered a great deal of abuse as a child. His upper lip had obviously been busted open and not allowed to heal properly. The faint scar running down the side of his jaw and going into his collar looked old, the type of thing you got as a kid and lived with for the rest of your life. She had worked with Will during the hottest months of the summer and never seen him roll up his shirtsleeves or even loosen his tie. His question about how Olivia Tanner punished herself was especially revealing. Faith often thought that Angie Polaski was a punishment that Will continually brought down on himself.
She heard footsteps on the stairs. Will entered the kitchen, shaking his head. "I hit the redial on the upstairs phone. I got the brother's answering machine in Houston."
There was a book in his hand. "What's that?"
He handed her the slim novel, which had a library band on the spine. The jacket showed a naked woman sitting on her haunches. She was wearing high heels, but the pose was more artistic than kinky, sending the distinct message that this was literature, not trash. So, not the type of book Faith would ever read. She skimmed the back copy and told Will, "It's about a woman who's a diabetic meth addict and her abusive father."
"A love story." He guessed the title. "Expose?"
He was close enough. Faith had figured out that he generally read the first three letters of a word and guessed the rest. More often than not, he was right, but odd words threw him off.
She put the book face-down on the counter. "Did you find a computer?"
"No computer. No diary. No calendar." He opened drawers, finding the television remote. He turned on the set, tilting the screen toward him. "This is the only TV in the house."
"There isn't one in the bedroom?"
"No." Will flipped through the channels, finding the usual digital offerings. "She doesn't have cable. There's not a DSL modem on the junction box in the basement."
"So, she doesn't have high-speed internet," Faith surmised. "Maybe she uses dial-up. She could have a laptop at work."
"Or someone could've taken it."
"Or she just keeps her work at the office. Her brother says she's on the job from sunup till sundown."
He turned off the television. "Did you find anything down here?"
"Aspirin," Faith said, indicating the bottles in the pantry. "What did you mean about Olivia protecting Michael?"
"It's what we were talking about at Pauline's. Did your parents have much time for your brother when you got into trouble?"
Faith shook her head, realizing what he said made perfect sense. Olivia had drawn all the negative attention away from her brother so that he could have some semblance of a life. No wonder the man was racked with guilt. He was a survivor.
Will was looking out the back window, up at the seemingly vacant house behind Olivia's. "Those curtains on the door are bothering me."
Faith joined him by the window. He was right. All the blinds were closed on the back windows except for the curtains that hung open on the basement doors.
Faith raised her voice. "Dr. Tanner, we're going to step outside a minute. We'll be right back."
"All right," the man returned.
His voice still sounded shaky, so Faith added, "We haven't found anything yet. We're still just looking."
She waited. There was no response.
Will held open the back door and they both walked onto the deck.
He said, "Her clothes are all size two. Is that normal?"
"I wish," Faith mumbled, then realized what she had said. "It's thin, but it's not horrible."
She scanned Olivia Tanner's backyard again. Like most in-town lots, it was barely more than a quarter of an acre, fences delineating the property lines and telephone poles springing up every two hundred feet. Faith followed Will down the deck stairs. Olivia's yard was cordoned off by an expensive-looking cedar fence. The boards were flat, the supports on the outside. She asked, "Does this look new to you?"
He shook his head. "It's been pressure-washed. Fresh cedar is more red than that."
They reached the back of the property and stopped. There were marks on the cedar planks. Deep scratches running up the center. Will leaned down, saying, "It looks like someone did this with their feet, probably trying to get over."
Faith glanced up at Olivia Tanner's backyard neighbor again. "It looks vacant to me. You think it's a foreclosure?"
"Only one way to find out." Will went to a different section of the fence and started to lift himself up and over before realizing that Faith was with him. "Do you want to wait for me here? Or we could walk around."
"Do I look that pathetic to you?" She grabbed the top of the fence. They had done this sort of thing at the police academy, but that was several years ago, and hadn't been in a skirt. Faith pretended not to notice when Will gave her an assist from behind, just as she hoped he would pretend not to notice that she was wearing her powder blue granny underwear.
