‘Mine.’ Faith sent the photo to Charlie Reed, who would likely be open to a change of scenery after processing Marcus Rippy’s nightclub for the last seven hours. She texted him the address and told him to process the closet first thing. She wasn’t a scientist, but a five-gallon bucket and a locked closet door with scratches on the back probably meant that someone had been kept inside.
Or it could be more of Harding’s bullshit waste of their time.
Collier said, ‘The closet door was locked when we got here. Why lock the door when there’s nothing in there?’
‘Why did Harding do anything?’ Faith went back into the other bedroom. She sat down in the chair and started putting the cheating spouse files back into the first box. Collier stood in the doorway again. She told him, ‘There’s nothing here, at least not the kind of thing you’d hide behind a rat.’
‘I don’t care what Violet said. That thing looked pregnant.’ Collier sat down on the mattress. It made a farting sound. He gave Faith the exact look that she expected him to give. He pushed the lid off the second box. There were no file folders, just a stack of pages with lots of nude photos on top.
Collier took the pictures. He handed Faith the papers.
She thumbed through them quickly. Hospital admittance records. Arrest warrants. Rehab. Rap sheet. They were all for one person. Delilah Jean Palmer, twenty-two years old, current address the Cheshire Motor Inn, which was a known hangout for prostitutes. There was no family listed. From birth, Palmer had been a ward of the state.
She was also a current model for BackDoorMan.com. Palmer’s most recent booking photo showed the same woman from the racy pictures Sara had found inside Dale Harding’s wallet. Her hair was different in each photo, sometimes platinum blonde, sometimes her natural brown, sometimes purple or pink.
‘It’s her.’ Collier leaned over, his shoulder pressed against Faith’s arm. He showed her a larger image of the wallet-sized photos: Delilah Palmer leaning over a kitchen counter, her head turned back toward the camera, mouth open, approximating sexual excitement. He said, ‘I’m gonna guess she’s not a real blonde. See, I’m a fast learner, Mitchell. You should keep me around.’
Faith knew that the GBI’s computer division was already looking into BackDoorMan.com, but she told Collier, ‘Why don’t you check the website?’
‘Good idea.’ He took out his phone. With any luck, he would waste the next hour looking at porn so that she could get some work done.
So, basically like every romantic relationship Faith had ever had in her life.
She returned to the documents for a more careful reading. She realized she was holding Delilah Palmer’s juvenile records, which was strange, because juvenile records were usually sealed. Palmer’s first arrest was at the age of ten for selling OxyContin at John Wesley Dobbs Elementary in east Atlanta. Faith had spent quite some time at Dobbs while helping the state build a RICO case against the Atlanta Public Schools system for widespread cheating on standardized tests. Some of the faculty had hosted a fish and grits sit-down dinner where they erased and changed the answers on students’ Scantrons. Meanwhile, 99.5 percent of their struggling student body qualified for free or assisted lunch.
Faith studied Palmer’s first booking photo from twelve years ago. The girl’s hands were so small that she couldn’t hold the reader board straight for the camera. The top of her head didn’t reach the first line in the ruler painted on the wall behind her. There were scabs on her face. Her short brown hair was unwashed. She had dark circles under her eyes, either from lack of sleep, lack of food, or lack of belonging.
Delilah would’ve been an oddity at Dobbs, and not just because she had entered the drug trafficking trade at such an early age. Last month, when Faith was preparing documents for the RICO trial, she had to explain to the district attorney that she hadn’t made a mistake in her charts. In 2012, Dobbs did not have a 5 percent white student body. They had a total of five white students. Had the demographics been reversed, there was no way the city would’ve allowed that level of corruption to go unchecked for so long.
Faith flipped to Delilah’s next arrest. More Oxy sales at age twelve and then again at fifteen. By sixteen, Delilah had dropped out of school and was slinging heroin, which was what happened when you couldn’t afford Oxy anymore. A single 80 milligram, pill could run sixty to one hundred dollars, depending on the market. The same money for a bag of heroin could keep you high for days.
She flipped ahead to the charging sheets. Parole. Diversion treatment. More parole. Rehab.
Despite her criminal history, Delilah Palmer had never spent more than a night in jail.
Her first prostitution arrest came at the end of her sixteenth year. There were four more arrests for solicitation, two more for selling pot and heroin respectively, all accompanied by a free one-night accommodation in the Fulton County jail.
Faith scanned the names of the arresting officers. Some of them were familiar. Most of them were from zone six, which made sense because criminals were like everybody else. They tended to stay in their own neighborhoods.
Dale Harding had also worked in zone six. He had obviously kept an eye on Delilah Palmer for most of her life. Reading between the lines, Faith guessed that he’d called in every favor he had to keep the girl from doing serious time.
Collier said, ‘You gonna share or do I have to guess?’
‘You smell like vomit.’
‘I just threw up. Didn’t you hear me in the bathroom? It, like, echoed.’
She handed him Delilah Palmer’s rap sheet. ‘Two bedrooms, two beds. Someone was staying here with Harding.’
‘You think it was this Palmer chick?’ He frowned. ‘She ain’t much, but she could do better than Harding.’
Faith thought about the locked closet, the bucket, the sewage smell. Harding could’ve been doing his own rehab. Cold turkey in a closet was a hell of a lot cheaper than fifteen grand for in-patient treatment. Again. That might better explain the squalor. This place certainly looked like a junkie was living here.
‘Didja see over there?’ Collier nodded toward a retainer on the floor. ‘My sisters all wore those after they got their braces off. Like, not the same retainer, different ones, but they were all small, just like that one. Meaning it’s sized like what a girl would wear in her mouth.’
Faith couldn’t understand why he used so many words to say just one thing. ‘What about the website?’
‘Nothing popped out.’ He laughed. ‘Pun intended. I’m more of a front-door man myself. Especially the knockers.’
Faith felt the strain of her eyes rolling.
‘You know what, Mitchell? When I first met you, I figured we’d end up in a bedroom looking at porn.’
Faith started to stand.
‘Hold on.’ He grabbed a stack of photographs from the box. ‘Lookit these. Delilah’s been modeling for a while. The BackDoorMan.com ones, I’d say they started when she was around sixteen. The earlier ones don’t have a website or identifying marks, but I’d put her closer to twelve, maybe thirteen.’
Faith put the photos side by side with the mugshots from Delilah’s various arrests. Collier’s estimate was off by a few years. Faith could pin down the age back to the girl’s first arrest at ten years old. The illicit image was heartbreaking. Delilah was dressed in lace panties and a bra that must have been clipped in the back so it wouldn’t slide down to her feet. She didn’t have a waist yet, or curves, or anything but baby fat that the heroin would eventually wear away. Faith looked at her dull, lifeless eyes. Everything about the girl reeked of abandon.