Fallen

CHAPTER THREE

WILL PICKED AT THE COLLAR OF HIS SHIRT. THE MOBILE command vehicle was scorching hot, filled with so many uniforms and suits that there was hardly room to breathe. The noise was equally unbearable. Phones were ringing. BlackBerries chirped. Computer monitors played live feeds from all three of the local news stations. Adding to the cacophony was Amanda Wagner, who had been yelling at the three zone commanders on scene for the last fifteen minutes. The Atlanta chief of police was on his way. So was the director of the GBI. The jurisdictional pissing contest was only going to intensify.

Meanwhile, no one was really working the case.

Will pushed open the door. Sunlight sliced through the dark interior. Amanda stopped yelling for a few seconds, then revved back up as Will closed the door. He took a deep breath of fresh air, scanning the scene from the top of the metal steps. Instead of the usual rapid activity that followed a shocking crime, everyone was milling around waiting for orders. Detectives sat in their unmarked cars checking their email. Six cruisers blocked each end of the street. Neighbors gawked from their front porches. The Atlanta PD crime scene unit van was here. The GBI crime scene unit van was here. The fire truck was still angled in front of the Mitchell house. The EMTs were smoking on the back bumper of their ambulance. Various uniformed officers leaned against emergency vehicles, shooting the breeze, pretending not to care about what was going on in the command center.

Still, they all managed to glare at Will as he stepped down onto the street. Scowls went around. Arms were crossed. A curse was muttered. Someone spat on the sidewalk.

Will didn’t have many friends in the Atlanta Police Department.

The sound of chopping blades filled the air. Will looked up. Two news copters hovered just above the crime scene. They wouldn’t be alone for long. Every ten minutes, a black SWAT MD 500 swept by. An infrared camera was mounted on the nose of the mosquito-like helicopter. The camera could see through dense forests and rooftops, picking out warm-blooded bodies, directing searchers to the bad guys. It was an amazing device, but completely useless in the residential area, where at any given moment there were thousands of people milling around not committing crimes. At best, they were probably picking up the glowing red forms of people sitting on their couches watching their televisions, which in turn showed the SWAT copter hovering overhead.

Will checked the crowd for Sara, wishing she would show up. If he’d been thinking at all when Amanda pulled up on the street, he would’ve told Sara to come with them. He should have anticipated Faith would need help. She was his partner. Will was supposed to take care of her, to have her back. Now, it might be too late.

He wasn’t sure how Amanda had heard about the shootings so quickly, but they were on scene within fifteen minutes of the last shot being fired. The locksmith was just opening the shed door when they rolled up. Faith had been pacing back and forth like a caged animal while she waited for her child to be freed, and she kept pacing long after Emma was in her arms. As soon as she saw Will, Faith started babbling, talking about her backyard neighbor, Mrs. Johnson, her brother Zeke, the shed her father had built when she was little, and a million other things that made absolutely no sense the way she was stringing them together.

At first, Will thought that Faith was in shock, but shocked people don’t pace around squawking like lunatics. Their blood pressure drops so quickly they generally can’t stand. They pant like dogs. They stare blankly at the space in front of them. They talk slowly, not so fast you can barely understand them. Something else was at play, but Will didn’t know if it was some kind of mental break or Faith’s diabetes or what.

Making it worse, by that point, there were twenty cops standing around who knew exactly what a person was supposed to look like when an awful thing happened. Faith didn’t fit the profile. She wasn’t crying. She wasn’t shaking. She wasn’t angry. She was just crazy, totally out of her mind. Nothing she said had a bit of reason. She couldn’t tell them what had happened. She couldn’t walk them through the scene and explain the bloodshed. She was worse than useless, because the answers to all their questions were locked up inside of her head.

And that was when one of the cops had mumbled something about her being under the influence. And then someone else volunteered to get the Breathalyzer out of his car.

Quickly, Amanda had intervened. She dragged Faith across the front lawn, banged on the neighbor’s door—not Mrs. Johnson, who had a dead man in her backyard, but an old woman named Mrs. Levy—and practically ordered her to give Faith a place to collect herself.

By then, the mobile command center had pulled up. Amanda had gone straight into the back of the vehicle and started demanding this case be turned over to the GBI immediately. She knew that she wouldn’t win the territorial fight with the zone commanders. By law, the GBI could not simply waltz in and take over a case. The local medical examiner, district attorney, or police chief generally asked the state for assistance, and usually that only happened when they’d failed to make a case on their own or didn’t want to spend the money or manpower tracking down leads. The only person who could yank this case from Atlanta was the governor, and any politician in the state could tell you that crossing the capital city was a very bad idea. Amanda’s screaming tactics were for show. She didn’t yell when she was angry. Her voice got low, more like a rumble, and you had to strain your ears to hear the insults flying out of her mouth. She was trying to buy them time. Trying to buy Faith time.

In the eyes of the Atlanta PD brass, Faith wasn’t a cop anymore. She was a witness. She was a suspect. She was a person of interest, and they wanted to talk to her about the men she had killed and why her mother had been kidnapped. The Atlanta police weren’t a bunch of yokels. They were one of the best forces in the country. But for Amanda yelling at them, they would’ve had Faith at the station by now, drilling her like they were working a terrorist at Gitmo.

Will couldn’t blame them. Sherwood Forest was not the kind of neighborhood where you’d expect to find a shootout in the middle of a beautiful Saturday afternoon. Ansley Park was a stone’s throw away. Cast the net a bit farther and you’d encompass about eighty percent of the city’s real estate tax revenue—multimillion-dollar homes with tennis courts and au pair suites. Rich people weren’t the type of folks who let bad things happen without assigning blame. Someone would have to pay for this. If Amanda couldn’t find a way to prevent it, that person would probably end up being Faith. And Will was at a loss as to what to do.

Detective Leo Donnelly walked up, his feet shuffling along the asphalt. He had a cigarette dangling out of his mouth. Smoke twined into his eye. He winked to keep it out. “I’d hate to hear that bitch in bed.”

He meant Amanda. She was still screaming, though her words were hard to make out through the closed doors.

Leo continued, “I dunno. Might be worth it. The old ones are tigers when you get ’em in the sack.”

Will suppressed a shudder, not because Amanda was in her mid-sixties, but because Leo was clearly considering the possibilities.

“She knows she’s not going to win this, right?”

Will leaned against one of the police cruisers. Leo had been Faith’s partner for six years, but she had done most of the heavy lifting. At forty-eight, Leo wasn’t an old man by any stretch, but he had aged in cop years. His skin was yellow from an overburdened liver. He’d beaten prostate cancer but the treatment had taken its toll. He was an okay guy but he was lazy, which was perfectly fine if you were a used-car salesman but incredibly dangerous if you were a cop. Faith counted herself lucky that she’d gotten away from the man.

Leo said, “Haven’t seen a clusterfuck like this since the last time I worked a case with you.”

Will took in the scene: the hum of the command center’s generator mixing with the metallic whir coming from the television vans. The cops standing around with their hands resting on their belts. The firemen shooting the breeze with each other. The complete and total lack of activity. He decided he should talk to Leo. “That so?”

“What’s your CSU guy’s name—Charlie?” Leo nodded to himself. “He managed to talk his way into the house.”

Special Agent Charlie Reed was head of the GBI’s crime scene unit and would do anything to get onto a crime scene. “He’s good at his job.”

“Lots of us are.” Leo leaned against the cruiser a couple of feet down from Will. He made a puffing noise with his mouth. “Never known Faith to be a drinker.”

“She’s not.”

“Pills?”

Will gave him the nastiest look he could muster.

“You know I gotta talk to her.”

Will couldn’t keep the derision out of his tone. “You’re in charge of this case?”

“Try not to sound so confident.”

Will didn’t waste his breath. Leo’s time in the sun would be shortlived. As soon as the Atlanta chief of police came onto the scene, he’d kick Leo to the curb and put together his own team. Leo would be lucky if they let him fetch coffee.

“Seriously,” Leo said. “Faith doin’ all right?”

“She’s fine.”

He took a last drag on his cigarette and dropped it to the ground. “Neighbor’s freaked out. Almost watched her granddaughters get shot down.”

Will tried to keep his expression blank. He knew a little bit about what had happened here, but not much. The guys from the tactical team had gotten bored after standing around for five minutes with nothing to break. The details of the crime scene had leaked like a rusty pipe. Two bodies in the house. One in the neighbor’s backyard. Two guns on Faith—her Glock and a Smith and Wesson. Her shotgun on the floor of the bedroom. Will had stopped listening when he’d overheard a cop who’d just arrived on scene saying that he’d seen Faith with his own two eyes and she was as high as a kite.

For his part, Will only knew two things to be true: he had no idea what had happened in that house, and Faith had done the right thing.

Leo cleared his throat and spit a chunk of phlegm onto the asphalt. “So, Granny Johnson said she heard some screaming in the backyard. She looks out the kitchen window and sees the shooter—Mexican guy—aiming down on her grandkids. He squeezes off a shot, takes out some bricks on the house. Faith runs up to the fence and shoots him dead. Saves the little girls.”

Will felt some of the weight lift off his chest. “Lucky for them Faith was there.”

“Lucky for Faith the neighbor’s a good witness.”

Will started to stick his hands in his pockets, too late remembering he was still in his running shorts.

Leo chuckled. “I like these new uniforms. You supposed to be the cop in the Village People?”

Will crossed his arms over his chest.

“Los Texicanos,” Leo said. “The guy in the backyard. He’s affiliated, got tats all over his chest and arms.”

“What about the other two?”

“Asian. Both of ’em. No idea if they’re ganged up. Don’t look like it. Don’t dress like it. Bodies are clean—no tats.” Leo took his time lighting another cigarette. He blew out a steady stream of smoke before continuing. “Scott Shepherd over there—” He nodded toward a beefy-looking young man in tactical gear. “Says he had his team suited up outside the house waiting for backup. They heard a gun go off. It’s a possible hostage situation, right? One officer inside, two if you count Evelyn. Imminent danger. So, they breech the door.” Leo took another hit off his cigarette. “Scott sees Faith standing there in the hall, feet spread, Glock out in front of her. She sees Scott, doesn’t say a word, just takes off into the bedroom. They go in after her and find a dead guy laid out on the carpet.” Leo touched his finger to his forehead. “She nailed him right between the eyes.”

“Must’ve had a good reason.”

“Wish I knew that reason. He didn’t have a gun in his hand.”

“The other guy did. The one who ran into the backyard and shot at the kids.”

“You’re right. He did.”

“Fingerprints?”

“We’re working on it.”

Will would’ve bet his house that they would find two sets of prints—one from the Asian and one from the Mexican. “Where’d you find the third guy?”

“Laundry room. Bullet to the head. Nasty shot, took off half his skull. We dug a thirty-eight out of the wall.”

Faith’s Glock was a .40-caliber. “Does the S&W take a thirty-eight?”

“Yep.” Leo pushed away from the car. “Nothing on the mother yet. We got teams out looking for her. She ran the drug squad, but I think you already know that, Ratatouille.”

Will forced his jaw not to clench. About the only thing Leo was really good at was pushing buttons. This was the reason for the nasty stares and hostile stances from Will’s brothers in blue. Every cop out here knew that Will Trent was the reason Evelyn Mitchell had been forced into retirement. One of the most loathsome jobs he had at the GBI was investigating corrupt cops. Four years ago, he’d made a solid case against Evelyn’s narcotics squad. Six detectives had gone to prison for skimming money off drug busts and taking cash to look the other way, but Captain Mitchell had walked away scot-free, her pension and most of her good reputation intact.

Leo said, “Tell the kid I can give her ten more minutes, tops, but then she’s gotta get her shit together and start talking to me.” He leaned in closer. “I heard the dispatch call. She was told to stay outta the house. She needs to be real clear on why she went in anyway.”

Leo started to leave, but Will asked him, “How did she sound?”

He turned around.

“The phone call to dispatch. How did she sound?”

Unsurprisingly, Leo hadn’t considered the question. He did now, and quickly started nodding his head. “Maybe a little scared, but clearheaded. Calm. In control.”

Will nodded, too. “That sounds exactly like Faith.”

Leo flashed a grin, but Will couldn’t tell if he was relieved or just playing his usual role of smartass. “I meant that about the shorts, man.” Leo slapped him on the arm. “You should try to get those pretty legs of yours on TV.”

Leo waved to the reporters standing at the yellow tape line. They pressed forward as one, thinking he was going to give them a statement. There was a collective groan as he walked away. The cops holding the line pushed them back just because they could. Will knew they couldn’t care less about crowd control. Their eyes kept going to the command center like they expected an announcement from on high. The cops were just as eager as the reporters to find out what had happened. Maybe more so.

Captain Evelyn Mitchell had served with the Atlanta force for thirty-nine years. She had come up the hard way, clawing her way out of the secretarial pool, advancing to meter reader, then traffic cop, and finally being given a twenty-two and a badge that wasn’t made of plastic. She was part of a group known for being first: first women driving solo, first women detectives. Evelyn was the first female lieutenant on the Atlanta force, then the first female captain. No matter the reasons for her retirement, she had more medals and commendations than all of the cops on scene combined.

Will had learned a long time ago that police officers were blindly loyal. He’d also learned that there was a distinct pecking order to that loyalty. It was like a pyramid, with every cop in the world at the bottom and your partner at the top. Faith had been with the Atlanta Police Department since she joined up, but she’d moved to the GBI two years ago, partnering with Will, who wasn’t exactly the most popular guy in class. Leo might still be halfway on Faith’s side, but as far as the general members of the APD were concerned, she had lost her spot on their pyramid. Especially since the first cop on scene, an eager young rookie, had been rushed into emergency surgery after Faith elbowed his testicles up into his brain stem.

Will saw a flash of yellow as the tape line was lifted. Sara had put up her hair, pinning it tightly behind her head. The linen dress she was wearing looked worse for wear. She had a folded pair of jeans under her arm. At first Will thought she looked confused, but the closer she got, the more he thought she looked annoyed, maybe even angry. Her eyes were red rimmed. Her cheeks were flushed.

She handed him the jeans. “Why do you need me here?”

He put his hand at her elbow and led her away from the reporters. “It’s Faith.”

She crossed her arms, keeping some distance between them. “If she needs medical attention, you should take her to the hospital.”

“We can’t do that.” Will tried not to focus on the coldness in her voice. “She’s at the neighbor’s house. We don’t have much time.”

“I heard what happened on the radio.”

“We think there’s a drug connection. Keep that to yourself.” Will stopped walking. He waited for her to look at him. “Faith’s not acting right. She’s confused, not making sense. They want to talk to her, but—” He didn’t know what to say. Amanda had told Will to make the call to Sara. She knew the woman had been married to a cop, and assumed that her allegiance hadn’t died with the man. “This could be really bad for Faith. She killed two men. Her mother’s been kidnapped. They’re going to be eyeballing her for a lot of reasons.”

“Did she overreact?”

“There was a hostage situation. The kids next door were in the line of fire.” Will skated over the missing details. “She shot one guy in the head and one in the back.”

“Are the children okay?”

“Yes, but—”

The back doors of the command center banged opened. Chief Mike Geary, the zone commander for Ansley and Sherwood Forest, jumped down from the steps. He was in full uniform, a scratchy, dark blue polyester that was too tight across the pouch of his stomach. He blinked up at the sun, a deep line creasing his well-tanned forehead. Like most of the old guard, he kept his gray hair clipped in a militarystyle crew cut. Geary put on his hat and turned back around to hold out his hand to Amanda. Something stopped him just shy of touching her, though, and he dropped his hand before she could take it.

“Trent,” he barked. “I want to talk to your partner right now. Go get her. We’re taking her to the station.”

Will shot Amanda a look as she navigated the rickety stairs in her high heels. She shook her head once. There was nothing more she could do.

To his surprise, it was Sara who saved them. “I have to examine her first.”

Geary wasn’t pleased to be met with resistance. “Who the hell are you?”

“I’m a trauma doc from the Grady ER.” Sara deftly left out her name. “I’m here to evaluate Agent Mitchell so that any testimony she gives will be admissible.” She tilted her head to the side. “I’m sure it’s not your policy to take statements under duress.”

Geary snorted. “She’s not under duress.”

Sara raised an eyebrow. “Is that your official position? Because I would hate to have to testify that you conducted a coercive interrogation against medical advice.”

Confusion clouded in on Geary’s anger. Doctors were usually more than willing to help the police, but they had the power to shut down any interview if they thought it would jeopardize their patient. Still, Geary tried. “What kind of medical treatment does she need?”

Sara didn’t back down. “I can’t tell you that until I evaluate her. She could be in shock. She could be injured. She could need hospitalization. Maybe I should just transfer her to the hospital right now and start running tests.” Sara turned around to call to the EMTs.

“Wait.” Geary hissed out a curse, telling Amanda, “Your bullshit stalling tactics are being noted, Deputy Director.”

Her smile was fake sweetness and light. “It’s always nice to be recognized for something.”

Geary announced, “I want her blood drawn and taken to an independent lab for a full tox screen. You think you can do that, Doctor?”

Sara nodded. “Of course.”

Will put his hand back under Sara’s arm and led her toward the neighbor’s house. As soon as they were out of earshot, he said, “Thank you.”

Again, she pulled away from him as they walked up the driveway. By the time they reached the front porch, she was several feet ahead, though the distance between them felt more like a chasm. This wasn’t the Sara from half an hour ago. Maybe it was the crime scene, though Will had seen her on a crime scene before. Sara had been a coroner at one time. She was far from out of her element. Will didn’t know what to do about the change. He had spent a lifetime gauging the moods of other people, but getting a read on this particular woman was beyond his abilities.

The door opened and Mrs. Levy peered at them from behind her thick glasses. She was wearing a yellow housedress that was frayed at the collar. A white apron with baby geese waddling around the hem was wrapped around her thin waist. Her heels hung out of the back of her matching yellow bedroom slippers. She was somewhere north of eighty, but her mind was sharp and she clearly cared for Faith. “Is this the doctor? I was told to only let a doctor in.”

Sara answered, “Yes, ma’am. I’m the doctor.”

“Well, aren’t you pretty? Come on in. What a crazy day this has been.” Mrs. Levy stepped aside, throwing wide the door so they could come into the foyer. Her breath whistled through her false teeth. “I’ve had more visitors this afternoon than I’ve had all year.”

The living room was sunken a few steps and furnished much as it probably had been when Mrs. Levy first bought the house. Harvest gold wall-to-wall shag carpet was flattened to the floor. The couch was a tightly cushioned, mustard-colored sectional. The only update to the décor was a recliner that looked like the kind that had a mechanical lift to make it easier to get in and out of. The only light in the room came from the flickering console television set. Faith was slumped on the couch with Emma held to her shoulder. All of the talk had drained out of her. Her spirit seemed to have gone with it. This was more what Will had been expecting when he’d heard that Faith was involved in a shooting. She tended to go quiet when she was really upset. But this wasn’t quite right, either.

She was too quiet.

“Faith?” he said. “Dr. Linton is here.”

She stared at the muted television, not answering. In some ways, Faith looked worse than she had before. Her lips were as white as her skin. Sweat gave her face a luminescence. Her blonde hair was matted to her head. Her breathing was shallow. Emma made a cooing sound, but Faith didn’t seem to notice.

Sara turned on the overhead light before kneeling in front of her. “Faith? Can you look at me?”

Faith’s eyes were still on the set. Will took the moment to slip on his jeans over his shorts. He felt a lump in his back pocket and pulled out his watch and wallet.

“Faith?” Sara’s voice became louder, firmer. “Look at me.”

Slowly, she looked at Sara.

“Why don’t you give me Emma?”

Her words slurred. “Sh’sleeping.”

Sara wrapped her hands around Emma’s waist. Gently, she lifted the baby from Faith’s shoulder. “Look at her. She’s gotten so big.” Sara did a cursory exam, looking into Emma’s eyes, checking her fingers and toes, then her gums. “I think she’s a little dehydrated.”

Mrs. Levy offered, “I’ve got a bottle ready, but she wouldn’t let me give it to her.”

“Why don’t you go get it now?” Sara motioned for Will to come over. He took Emma. She was surprisingly heavy. He put her on his shoulder. Her head fell against his neck like a moist sack of flour.

“Faith?” Sara spoke succinctly, as if she was trying to get an old person’s attention. “How are you feeling?”

“Took her to the doctor.”

“You took Emma?” Sara cupped Faith’s face in her hand. “What did the doctor say?”

“Dunno.”

“Can you look at me?”

Faith’s mouth moved like she was chewing gum.

“What’s today, sweetie? Can you tell me what day of the week it is?”

She pulled away her head. “No.”

“That’s all right.” Sara pressed open Faith’s eyelid. “When’s the last time you had something to eat?”

She didn’t answer. Mrs. Levy came back with the bottle. She handed it to Will, and he cradled Emma in his arm so that she could drink.

“Faith? When is the last time you had something to eat?”

Faith tried to push Sara away. When that didn’t work, she pushed harder.

Sara kept talking, holding down Faith’s hands. “Was it this morning? Did you eat breakfast this morning?”

“Go ’way.”

Sara turned to Mrs. Levy. “You’re not diabetic, are you?”

“No, dear, but my husband was. Passed away almost twenty years ago, bless his soul.”

Sara told Will, “She’s having an insulin reaction. Where’s her purse?”

Mrs. Levy supplied, “She didn’t have it when they brought her here. Maybe she left it in the car.”

Again, Sara directed her words to Will. “She should have an emergency kit in her purse. It’s plastic. It says ‘Glucagon’ on the side.” She seemed to remember herself. “It’s oblong, about the size of a pen case. Bright red or orange. Get it for me now, please.”

Will took the baby with him, jogging toward the front door and out into the yard. The lots in Sherwood Forest were larger than most, but some of them were long and narrow rather than wide. Will could see directly into Evelyn Mitchell’s bathroom from Mrs. Levy’s carport. He could see a man standing in the long hallway. Will wondered not for the first time how the old woman hadn’t heard the gun-fight next door. She wouldn’t be the first witness who didn’t want to get involved, but Will was surprised by her reticence.

It didn’t occur to him until he was a few feet from the Mini that Faith’s car was part of the crime scene. There were two cops standing on the other side of the car, four more in the carport. Will scanned the interior. He saw the plastic case Sara had told him about mixed in with various lady items on the passenger’s seat.

He told the cops, “I need to get something out of the car.”

“Tough shit,” one of them shot back.

Will indicated Emma, who was sucking on the bottle like she’d been on a ten-mile hike. “She needs her teething thing. She’s teething.”

The cops stared at him. Will wondered if he’d screwed up. He’d changed his share of diapers at the children’s home, but he had no idea when babies got their teeth. Emma was four months old. All her food came from Faith or a bottle. As far as he could tell, she didn’t need to chew anything.

“Come on.” Will held up Emma so they could see her little pink face. “She’s just a tiny baby.”

“All right,” one of them relented. He walked around the car and opened the door. “Where is it?”

“It’s that red plastic thing. Looks like a pen case.”

The cop didn’t appear to find this odd. He picked up the kit and handed it to Will. “She all right?”

“She was just thirsty.”

“I meant Faith, dipshit.”

Will tried to take the kit, but the man wouldn’t let go.

He repeated his question. “Is Faith going to be okay?”

Will realized there was more going on here. “Yes. She’s going to be fine.”

“Tell her Brad says we’re gonna find her mom.” He let go of the kit and slammed the door.

Will didn’t give the man time to change his mind. He jogged back to the house, trying not to jostle the baby. Mrs. Levy still stood sentry at the door. She opened it before Will could knock.

The scene inside had changed. Faith was lying on the couch. Sara was cupping the back of her head, making her drink from a can of Coke.

Sara immediately started in on Will. “You should’ve called in the medics first thing,” she admonished. “Her blood sugar is too low. She’s stuporous and diaphoretic. Her heart is racing. This isn’t something you play around with.” She took the kit from him and popped it open. Inside was a syringe filled with a clear liquid and a vial of white powder that looked a lot like cocaine. Sara cleaned the needle with a cotton ball and some rubbing alcohol that she had obviously gotten from Mrs. Levy. She talked as she pressed the syringe into the vial and squirted in the liquid. “I’m assuming she hasn’t eaten since breakfast. The adrenaline from the confrontation in the house would’ve giving her an enormous sugar kick, but it made the crash harder, too. Considering what happened, I’m surprised she didn’t slip into a coma.”

Will took her words as hard as they were meant to be. No matter what Amanda said, he should’ve pulled an EMT in here half an hour ago. He had been worried about Faith’s career when he should’ve been worried about her life. “Is she going to be okay?”

Sara shook the vial, mixing the contents before drawing them back into the syringe. “We’ll know soon enough.” She lifted Faith’s shirt and swabbed a patch of skin on her belly. Will watched the needle go in, the rubber stopper sliding down the plastic cylinder as the liquid was injected.

Sara asked, “Are you worried they’ll think she was impaired when she shot those two men?”

He didn’t answer.

“Her comedown was probably hard and immediate. She would’ve been slurring her words. She probably appeared intoxicated.” Sara cleaned up the kit, putting everything back in its place. “Tell them to look at the facts. She shot one man in the head and one in the back, probably from a distance, with two innocent bystanders downrange. If she’d been impaired, there’s no way she would’ve been able to make those shots.”

Will glanced at Mrs. Levy, who probably didn’t need to be hearing this conversation. She waved off his concerns. “Oh, don’t worry about me, dear. I don’t remember much of nothin’ these days.” She held out her arms for Emma. “Why don’t you let me take care of the little lamb?” Carefully, he transferred the baby to Mrs. Levy. The old woman walked off toward the back of the house. Her bedroom slippers made a slapping sound on her dry heels.

Will asked Sara, “What about the diabetes? Can they say it was that?”

Her tone was businesslike. “How was she acting when you got here?”

“She looked …” He shook his head, thinking he never wanted to see Faith that bad off again. “She looked like she’d lost her mind.”

“Do you think a mentally or chemically altered person could’ve killed two men with a single shot to each?” Sara put her hand on Faith’s shoulder. Her tone softened. “Faith, can you sit up for me, please?”

Slowly, Faith moved to right herself. She looked groggy, as if she had just woken from a long nap, but her color was coming back. She put her hands to her head, wincing.

Sara told her, “You’ll have a headache for a while. Drink as much water as you can tolerate. We need your tester to see where you are.”

“It’s in my purse.”

“I’ll try to get another one from one of the ambulances.” She took a bottle of water off the coffee table and twisted off the cap. “Switch to water. No more Coke.”

Sara left without looking at Will. Her back felt like a wall of ice. He didn’t know what to do with that, so he ignored it, sitting on the coffee table in front of Faith.

She took a long drink of water before she spoke to him. “My head is killing me.” The shock of what happened came back to her like a bolt of lightning. “Where’s my mother?” She tried to stand, but Will kept her down. “Where is she?”

“They’re looking for her.”

“The little girls—”

“They’re fine. Please, just stay here for a second, okay?”

She looked around, some of her wildness returning. “Where’s Emma?”

“She’s with Mrs. Levy. She’s asleep. I called Jeremy at the school—”

Her mouth opened. He could see her life coming back to her in spurts. “How did you tell him?”

“I talked to Victor. He’s still the dean of students. I knew you wouldn’t want me to send a cop to Jeremy’s classroom.”

“Victor.” Faith pressed her lips together. She had dated Victor Martinez for a while, but they had broken up almost a year ago. “Please tell me you didn’t mention Emma.”

Will couldn’t remember exactly what he’d told Victor, but he guessed Faith hadn’t gotten around to telling the man that he had a daughter. “I’m sorry.”

“It doesn’t matter.” She put down the bottle of water, her shaking hands spilling some onto the carpet. “What else?”

“We’re trying to track down your brother.” Dr. Zeke Mitchell was a surgeon in the Air Force, stationed somewhere in Germany. “Amanda reached out to a friend at Dobbins Air Reserve. They’re cutting through some of the red tape.”

“My phone …” She seemed to realize where she’d left it. “Mama has his number by the phone in the kitchen.”

“I’ll get it as soon as we’re finished,” Will promised. “Tell me what happened.”

She took a stuttered breath. He could see her struggle with the knowledge of what she had done. “I killed two people.”

Will held both her hands. Her skin was still cold and clammy. She had a slight tremor, but he didn’t think it was from her blood sugar issues. “You saved two little girls, Faith.”

“The man in the bedroom—” She stopped. “I don’t understand what happened.”

“Are you confused again? Do you need me to get Dr. Linton?”

“No.” She shook her head for so long he thought maybe he should get Sara anyway. “She’s not bad, Will. My mom is not a dirty cop.”

“We don’t need to talk about—”

“Yes, we do,” Faith insisted. “Even if she was, which she’s not, she’s been retired for five years. She’s not on the job anymore. She doesn’t go to the fundraisers or the events. She doesn’t talk to anybody from that old life. She plays cards on Fridays with some of the ladies in the neighborhood. She goes to church every Wednesday and Sunday. She watches Emma while I’m at work. Her car is five years old. She just made the last mortgage payment on the house. She’s not mixed up in anything. There’s no reason for anybody to think …” Her lip started to tremble. Tears threatened to fall.

Will told her the concrete things he could point to. “There’s a mobile command center outside. All the highways are being watched. Evelyn’s photo is on all the news stations. Every cruiser policing the metro area has her picture. We’re lighting up all the snitches to see if they’ve heard anything. They’ve trapped and traced all your phones in case any ransom demands are made. Amanda pitched a fit, but they put one of their detectives in your house to monitor all mail and calls. Jeremy’s at your house. They’ve got a plainclothes assigned to him. You’ll get somebody, too.”

Faith had worked kidnapping cases before. “Do you really think there’s going to be a ransom demand?”

“It could happen.”

“They were Texicanos. They were looking for something. That’s why they took her.”

Will asked, “What were they looking for?”

“I don’t know. The house was turned upside down. The Asian said he’d trade my mother for whatever they were looking for.”

“The Asian said he’d trade?”

“Yes, he had a gun on the Texicano—the one in the backyard.”

“Hold on.” They were doing this the wrong way. “Work with me, Faith. Treat your memory like a crime scene. Start from the beginning. You had that in-service this morning, right? Computer training?”

She started to nod. “I was late getting home by almost two hours.” She laid out every detail from her morning until now, how she had tried to call her mother, how she’d heard music playing in the house when she got out of her car. Faith hadn’t realized that something was wrong until well after the music stopped. Will let her run through the story—the torn-up house, the dead man she’d found and the two that she had killed herself.

When she was finished, he played it all back in his head, seeing Faith standing in the carport by the shed, going back to her car. Despite her recent medical issues, her memory seemed crystal clear now. She had called dispatch, and then she had gotten her gun. Will felt this detail picking at a spot in his brain. Faith knew that Will was home today. They had talked about it yesterday afternoon. She was complaining about having to go do computer training, and he told her he was going to wash his car and take care of the yard. Will lived 2.3 miles away from where they were sitting. He could’ve gotten here in under five minutes.

But Faith hadn’t called him.

“What is it?” she asked. “Did I miss something?”

He cleared his throat. “What was the song that was playing when you pulled up?”

“AC/DC,” she said. “ ‘Back in Black.’ ”

The detail seemed strange. “Is that what your mom usually listens to?”

She shook her head. She was obviously still in shock, her mind reeling from what had happened.

He wrapped his hands around her arms, trying to get her to concentrate. “Think this through, all right?” He waited for her to look at him. “There are two dead men in the house. Both are Asian. The guy in the backyard is Mexican. Los Texicanos.”

She focused herself. “The Asian in the bedroom—he was wearing this loud Hawaiian shirt. He sounded southside.” She meant his accent. “He had a gun on the Texicano. He was threatening to kill him.”

“Did he say anything else?”

“I shot him.” Her lip started to tremble again.

Will had never seen Faith cry and he didn’t want to now. “The guy in the shirt had a gun pointed at someone’s head,” he reminded her. “The Texicano was already beaten up, possibly tortured. You feared for his life. That’s why you pulled the trigger.”

She nodded, though he could see self-doubt brimming in her eyes.

He said, “After Hawaiian Shirt went down, the Texicano ran out into the yard, right?”

“Right.”

“And you chased after him, and he raised his gun toward those little girls and fired, so you shot him, too, right?”

“Yes.”

“You were protecting the hostage in the bedroom and you were protecting those two girls in your neighbor’s backyard. Right?”

“Yes,” she said, her voice stronger. “I was.”

She was getting back to her old self. Will allowed himself to feel a little bit of relief. He dropped her hands. “You remember the directive, Faith. Deadly force is authorized when your life or the lives of others are at stake. You did your job today. You just have to articulate what you were thinking. People were in danger. You shoot to immediately stop the threat. You don’t shoot to wound.”

“I know.”

“Why didn’t you wait for backup?”

She didn’t answer.

“The dispatcher told you to wait outside. You didn’t wait outside.”

Faith still didn’t answer.

Will sat back on the table, hands between his knees. Maybe she didn’t trust him. They had never talked openly about the case he’d built against her mother, but he knew Faith assumed that it was the detectives on the squad, not the captain in charge, who had messed up. As smart as she was, she was still naïve about the politics of the job. Will had noticed in every corruption case he’d worked that the heads that tended to roll in this business were the ones that didn’t have gold stars on their collars. Faith was too low on the food chain to have that kind of protection.

He said, “You must’ve heard something inside. A yell? A gunshot?”

“No.”

“Did you see something?”

“I saw the curtain move, but that was after—”

“Good, that’s good.” He leaned forward again. “You saw someone inside. You thought your mother might be in there. You sensed an immediate danger to her life and went in to secure the scene.”

“Will—”

“Listen to me, Faith. I’ve asked a lot of cops these same questions, and I know what the answer is supposed to be. Are you listening to me?”

She nodded.

“You saw someone inside the house. You thought your mother might be in serious danger—”

“I saw blood on the carport. On the door. A bloody handprint on the door.”

“Exactly. That’s good. That gives you cause to go in. Someone was badly injured. Their life was at stake. The rest of it happened because you were provoked into a situation where deadly force was justified.”

She shook her head. “Why are you coaching me? You hate when cops lie for each other.”

“I’m not lying for you. I’m trying to make sure you keep your job.”

“I don’t give a shit about my job. I just want to get my mother back.”

“Then stick to what we just talked about. You won’t do anybody any good sitting in a jail cell.”

He could read the shock in her eyes. As bad as things were right now, it had never occurred to her that they could get worse.

There was a loud knock at the door. Will started to get up, but Mrs. Levy beat him to it. She sashayed down the hall with her arms swinging. He guessed she’d put Emma in one of the beds and hoped she’d thought to stack some pillows around her.

Geary was the first to come in, then Amanda, then a couple of older-looking men, one black, one white. Both had bushy eyebrows, clean-shaven faces, and the kind of brass and ribbons on their chests that came from a glorious career of riding a desk. They were window dressing, here to make Geary look important. If he were a rap star, they would’ve been called a posse. Because he was a zone commander, they were called support staff.

“Ma’am,” Geary mumbled to Mrs. Levy as he took off his hat. His boys followed suit, tucking their hats under their arms, just like the boss. Geary walked toward Faith, but the old woman stopped him.

“Can I get y’all some tea or perhaps some cookies?”

Geary snapped, “We’re conducting an investigation, not a tea party.”

Mrs. Levy seemed unfazed. “Well, then. Please, make yourself at home.” She winked at Will before turning on her heel and heading back down the hallway.

Geary said, “Stand up, Agent Mitchell.”

Will felt his stomach tense as Faith stood. None of her earlier shakiness was on display, though her shirt was untucked and her hair was still a mess. She said, “I’m ready to make a statement if—”

Amanda interrupted, “Your lawyer and a union rep are waiting at the station.”

Geary scowled. He obviously didn’t care about Faith’s legal representation. “Agent Mitchell, you were told to wait for backup. I don’t know how they do it in the GBI, but the men on my force follow orders.”

Faith glanced at Amanda, but told Geary evenly, “There was blood on the kitchen door. I saw a person inside the house. My mother’s S&W was missing. I feared there was an immediate threat to her life, so I went into the house to secure her safety.” She couldn’t have said it better if Will had supplied a script.

Geary asked, “The man in the kitchen?”

“He was dead when I entered the house.”

“The one in the bedroom?”

“He had my mother’s revolver pointed at another man’s head. I was protecting the life of the hostage.”

“And the man in the yard?”

“The hostage. He took the revolver after I shot the first man. The front door was breached and my attention was diverted. He ran into the backyard with the gun, which he fired at two young girls. I had my shot and I took it to save their lives.”

Geary glanced at his brass window dressing as he decided what to do. The two men seemed unsure themselves, but ready to back up the boss without question. Will felt himself tense, because this was the part where things either went down hard or easy. Perhaps an overriding loyalty to Evelyn Mitchell persuaded the man to take a softer approach. He told Faith, “One of my officers will drive you to the station. Take a moment to collect yourself if you need to.”

He started to put his hat back on, but Amanda stopped him.

“Mike, I feel the need to remind you of something.” She gave him that same sweet smile as before. “The GBI has original jurisdiction over all drug cases in the state.”

“Are you telling me you’ve found evidence that narcotics are a factor in these shootings?”

“I’m not telling you much of anything, am I?”

He glared at her as he put his hat back on. “Don’t think I’m not going to find out why you’ve been wasting my time.”

“That sounds like a wonderful use of your resources.”

Geary stomped toward the door, his minions scrambling after him. Outside, Sara was coming up the front porch steps. She quickly put her hands behind her back, hiding the blood sugar monitor she had borrowed.

“Dr. Linton.” Geary took off his hat again. His men followed suit. “I’m sorry I didn’t recognize your name earlier.” Will assumed this was because Sara hadn’t offered it. Obviously, someone else had filled him in. “I knew your husband. He was a good cop. A good man.”

Sara kept her hands behind her back, twisting the plastic monitor. Will recognized the look she gave the men—she didn’t want to talk. For Geary, she managed a dry “Thank you.”

“Please let me know if I can ever be of assistance.”

She nodded. Geary put on his hat, and the gesture was mimicked like a wave at a football game.

Faith spoke as soon as the door was closed. “The Texicano in the yard said something to me before he died.” Her mouth moved as she tried to remember what she’d heard. “ ‘Alma’ or ‘al-may.’ ”

“Almeja?” Amanda asked, giving the word an exotic sound.

Faith nodded. “That’s right. Do you know what it means?”

Sara opened her mouth to speak, but before she could get a word out, Amanda provided, “It’s Spanish slang for ‘money.’ It means ‘clams.’ Do you think they were looking for cash?”

Faith shook her head and shrugged at the same time. “I don’t know. They never really said. I mean, it makes sense. Los Texicanos means drugs. Drugs mean money. Mom worked in narcotics. Maybe they think she …” Faith glanced at Will. He could practically read her mind. After his investigation, a lot of people thought that Evelyn Mitchell was just the kind of cop who had stacks of cash lying around her house.

Sara took advantage of their silence. “I should go.” She handed Faith the blood sugar monitor. “You need to follow your schedule religiously. Stress is going to make it harder. Call your doctor and talk about your dosage, whatever adjustments you need to make, what signs you need to look for. Are you still seeing Dr. Wallace?” Faith nodded. “I’ll call her service on my way home and tell her what happened, but you need to be on the phone with her as soon as possible. This is a stressful time, but you have to stay on your routine. Understood?”

“Thank you.” Faith had never been easy with gratitude, but her words were more heartfelt than anything Will had ever heard come from her mouth.

Will asked Sara, “Are you going to do a tox screen for Geary?”

She directed her words to Amanda. “Faith works for you, not APD. They need a warrant to draw her blood and I’m guessing you don’t want to go to the trouble.”

Amanda asked, “Hypothetically, what would a tox screen find?”

“That she wasn’t intoxicated or impaired by any of the substances they test for. Do you want me to do a blood draw?”

“No, Dr. Linton. But I appreciate your help.”

She left without another word, or even a glance Will’s way.

Amanda suggested, “Why don’t you go check on the merry widow?”

Will thought she meant Sara, then logic intervened. He walked to the back of the house to find Mrs. Levy, but not before seeing Amanda pull Faith into a tight hug. The gesture was shocking coming from a woman whose maternal instincts were more closely related to those of a dingo.

Will knew that Faith and Amanda shared a past that neither woman ever talked about or even acknowledged. While Evelyn Mitchell was blazing a trail for women in the Atlanta Police Department, Amanda Wagner was doing the same in the GBI. They were contemporaries, about the same age, with the same ball-breaking attitudes. They had also been lifelong friends—Amanda had even dated Evelyn’s brother-in-law, Faith’s uncle—a detail Amanda had failed to mention to Will when she assigned him to investigate the narcotics squad that was headed by her old friend.

He found Mrs. Levy in the back bedroom, which seemed to have been turned into a catchall for whatever struck the old woman’s fancy. There was a scrapbooking station, something Will only recognized because he had worked a shooting in the suburbs where a young mother had been murdered while she was pasting crinkle-cut photographs of a beach vacation onto colored construction paper. There was a pair of roller skates with four wheels. A tennis racket leaned against the corner. Various types of cameras were laid out on the daybed. Some were digital, but most were the old-fashioned kind that used film. He guessed from the red light over the closet door that she developed her own photographs.

Mrs. Levy was sitting in a wooden rocking chair by the window. She had Emma in her lap. Her apron was wrapped around the baby like a blanket. The little geese were reversed across the hem. Emma’s eyes were closed as she sucked fiercely on the bottle in her mouth. The noise reminded Will of the baby in The Simpsons.

“Why don’t you have a seat?” the old woman offered. “Emma seems to be perking up just fine.”

Will sat on the bed, careful not to jostle the cameras. “It’s a good thing that you just happened to have a bottle for her.”

“It is, isn’t it?” She smiled down at the baby. “Poor lamb missed her nap with all this excitement.”

“Do you have a crib for her, too?”

She gave a raspy chuckle. “I assume you’ve already looked in my bedroom.”

He hadn’t been that bold, but Will took this as an opening. “How often do you watch her?”

“Usually just a few times a week.”

“But lately?”

She winked at him. “You’re a smart one.”

He was more lucky than smart. It had struck him as odd that Mrs. Levy just happened to have a baby bottle lying around when Emma needed it. He asked, “What’s Evelyn been up to?”

“Do I look rude enough to pry into someone’s business?”

“How can I answer that without insulting you?”

She laughed, but relented easily enough. “Evelyn never said, but I’m assuming she had a gentleman friend.”

“For how long?”

“Three or four months?” She seemed to be asking herself a question. She nodded her answer. “It was just after Emma was born. They started out slowly, maybe once a week or every two, but I’d say in the last ten days it’s been more frequent. I stopped keeping a calendar when I retired, but Ev asked me to watch Emma three mornings in a row last week.”

“It was always in the morning?”

“Usually from around eleven to about two in the afternoon.”

Three hours seemed like a long enough time for an assignation. “Did Faith know about him?”

Mrs. Levy shook her head. “I’m certain Ev didn’t want the kids to find out. They loved their father so much. As did she, mind you, but it’s been ten years, at least. That’s a long time to go without companionship.”

Will guessed she was speaking from experience. “You said your husband’s been dead for twenty years.”

“Yes, but I didn’t like Mr. Levy very much and he didn’t care for me at all.” She used her thumb to stroke Emma’s cheek. “Evelyn loved Bill. They had some bumps along the way, but it’s different when you love them. They’re gone and your life splinters in two. It takes an awful long time to put it back together.”

Will let himself think about Sara for just a second. The truth was that he never stopped thinking about her. She was like the news crawl that ran at the bottom of the television while his life, the main story, played on the screen. “Do you know the gentleman’s name?”

“Oh, no, dear. I never asked. But he drove a very nice Cadillac CTS-V. That’s the sedan, not the coupe. Black on black and the stainless steel grill on the front. A very throaty V8. You could hear it blocks away.”

Will was momentarily too surprised to respond. “Are you a car person?”

“Oh, not at all, but I looked it up on the Internet because I wanted to know how much he paid for it.”

Will waited her out.

“I’m guessing around seventy-five thousand dollars,” the old woman confided. “Mr. Levy and I bought this house for less than half that.”

“Did Evelyn ever tell you his name?”

“She never acknowledged it. Despite what you men want to think, we ladies don’t sit around talking about y’all all the time.”

Will allowed a smile. “What did he look like?”

“Well, bald,” she said, as if this was to be expected. “A bit paunchy around the middle. He wore jeans most of the time. His shirts were often wrinkled and he kept the sleeves rolled up, which I found rather perplexing because Evelyn always liked a sharply dressed man.”

“What age do you think he is?”

“Without the hair, it’s hard to tell. I’d put him around Evelyn’s age.”

“Early sixties.”

“Oh.” She seemed surprised. “I thought Evelyn was in her forties, but I suppose that doesn’t make sense with Faith being in her thirties. And the baby’s not a baby anymore, is he?” She lowered her voice as if she was afraid someone would hear. “I guess it’s coming up on twenty years now, but that’s not the kind of pregnancy you forget. There was that bit of a scandal when she started to show. Such a pity how folks behaved. We’ve all had our bit of fun now and then, but as I told Evelyn at the time, a woman can run faster with her skirt up than a man can with his pants down.”

Will hadn’t considered Faith’s teenage predicament beyond thinking it unusual she had kept the child, but it had probably rocked the neighborhood to have a pregnant fourteen-year-old in their refined midst. It was almost commonplace now, but back then, a girl in Faith’s predicament was generally suddenly called away to tend a never-before-mentioned frail aunt or given what was euphemistically called an appendectomy. A handful of less fortunate ones ended up in the children’s home with kids like Will.

He asked, “So, the man in the expensive car is in his early sixties?” She nodded. “Did you ever see them being affectionate?”

“No, but Evelyn wasn’t the showy type. She would get in the car with him and he would drive off.”

“No kiss on the cheek?”

“Not that I ever saw. Mind you, I never even met him. Evelyn would drop Emma off here, then go back to her house and wait.”

Will let that sink in. “Did he ever go into her house?”

“Not that I could tell. I guess people do things differently now. In my day, a man would knock on your door and escort you to his car. There was none of this pulling up and beeping the horn.”

“Is that what he did—beep the horn?”

“No, son, that was just a figure of speech. I suppose Ev must’ve been looking out the window, because she always came out as soon as he pulled up.”

“Do you know where they went?”

“No, but like I said, they were usually gone for a couple’a–three hours, so I assumed they were seeing a movie or having lunch.”

That was a lot of movies. “Did the man show up today?”

“No, and I didn’t see anyone in the street, either. No cars, no nothing. The first I heard there was trouble was when the sirens came. Then I heard the gunshots, of course, one and then about a minute later one more. I know what gunfire sounds like. Mr. Levy was a hunter. Back then, all the policemen were. He used to make me go so I could cook for them.” She rolled her eyes. “What a boring gasbag he was. Rest his soul.”

“Lucky man to have you.”

“Lucky for me he’s not around anymore.” She stood with difficulty from the rocker, keeping the baby steady in her arms. The bottle was empty. She put it on the table and offered Emma to Will. “Take her for a second, will you?”

He put Emma on his shoulder and patted her back. She gave an unusually rewarding burp.

Mrs. Levy narrowed her eyes. “You’ve been around babies before.”

Will wasn’t about to get into his life story. “They’re easy to talk to.”

She rested her hand on his arm before going to the closet. Will had been right. There was a darkroom set up in the small space. He stood in the doorway, careful not to block her light as she thumbed through a stack of five-by-seven photographs. Her hands had a slight tremor, but she seemed steady on her feet.

She explained, “Mr. Levy never set much store by my hobbies, but he was called onto a crime scene one day and they asked if anyone knew a photographer. Twenty-five dollars they paid—just for taking pictures! The old bastard wasn’t going to say no to that. So he called me and told me to bring my camera. When I didn’t faint over the mess—this was a shotgun incident—they said I could do it again.” She nodded toward the bed. “That Brownie Six-16 helped keep this roof over our heads.”

He knew she meant the box camera. It looked worn but well loved.

“I moved into surveillance work later on. Mr. Levy had drunk himself off the job by then, and of course I’m a woman, so it took some time for them to understand I wasn’t there for flirting and screwing.”

Will felt his face start to redden. “Was this with the Atlanta Police Department?”

“Fifty-eight years!” She seemed as surprised as Will that she’d lasted that long. “I may be a bag of bones now, but there was a time Geary and his ass-kissers would’ve snapped to instead of brushing me off like a speck of lint on their shiny trousers.” She picked through another pile of five-by-sevens. Will saw black-and-white shots of birds and various household pets, all taken from a vantage point that implied they were being spied upon rather than admired. “This little so-and-so’s been digging in my flower bed.” She showed Will a picture of a gray and white cat with dirt on its nose. The lighting was harsh in the black-and-white print. The only thing missing was a board over his chest with his name and inmate number.

“Here.” Finally, she found what she was looking for. “This is him. Evelyn’s gentleman friend.”

Will looked over her hunched shoulder. The photo was grainy, obviously taken from behind the blinds covering the front window. The lens pressed open thin, plastic slats. A tall, older man leaned against a black Cadillac. His palms rested on the hood, forearms twisted out. The car was parked in the street, its front tires turned against the curb. Will parked his car the same way. Atlanta was a city of hills, resting on the piedmont of the Appalachian Mountains. If you drove a car with a manual transmission, you always banked the wheels against the curb to keep the car from rolling.

“What is it?” Faith stood in the doorway. Will passed her the baby, but she seemed more concerned with the photograph. “Did you see something?”

“I was showing him Snippers.” Mrs. Levy had somehow pulled a sleight of hand. The photo of the man was gone and in its place was the flower-garden-digging cat.

Emma shifted in Faith’s arms, obviously picking up on her mother’s troubled mood. Faith kissed her on the cheek with several quick smacks and made faces until the baby smiled. Will knew Faith was putting on a show. Tears filled her eyes. She hugged the infant tightly to her chest.

Mrs. Levy spoke. “Evelyn’s a tough old bird. They won’t break her.”

Faith swayed back and forth with the baby the way mothers automatically do. “You didn’t hear anything?”

“Oh, darlin’, you know if I’d’a heard something, I would’ve been over there with my hogleg.” Will recognized the slang for a large-caliber handgun. “Ev’s going to come out of this just fine. She always lands on her feet. You can take that to the bank and cash it.”

“I just—” Faith’s voice caught. “If I’d gotten here sooner, or—” She shook her head. “Why did this happen? You know Mama’s not mixed up in anything bad. Why would someone take her?”

“Sometimes there’s no rhyme or reason to the stupid things people get up to.” The old woman’s shoulders twisted in a slight shrug. “All I know is that you’re gonna eat yourself alive if you keep going down that road asking what if I did this or what if I did that.” She pressed the back of her fingers to Faith’s cheek. “Trust in the Lord to look over her. ‘Lean not into thine own understanding.’ ”

Faith nodded, solemn, though Will had never known her to be religious. “Thank you.”

Amanda’s heels thudded down the carpeted hallway. “I can’t stall them anymore,” she told Faith. “There’s a cruiser outside waiting to take you to the station. Try to shut up and do what your lawyer says.”

“The least I can do is watch the baby,” Mrs. Levy offered. “You don’t need to take her down to that filthy station, and Jeremy wouldn’t know which end the diaper goes on.”

Faith obviously wanted to take her up on the offer, but she hedged, “I don’t know how long I’ll be.”

“You know I’m a night owl. It’s no bother.”

“Thank you.” Faith reluctantly handed the baby to the old woman. She smoothed down Emma’s crop of fine brown hair and kissed the top of her head. Her lips stayed there for a few seconds more, then she left without another word.

As soon as the front door closed, Amanda cut to the chase. “What?”

Mrs. Levy pulled the photograph from under her apron.

“Evelyn had a frequent visitor,” Will explained. Mrs. Levy had a good memory: The man was bald. His jeans were baggy. His shirt was wrinkled, the sleeves rolled up. She’d failed to mention a more important detail, which was that he was Hispanic. The tattoo on his arm was blurry, but Will easily recognized the symbol on his forearm that identified him as Los Texicanos.

Amanda folded the picture in half before sticking it into the pocket of her suit jacket. She asked Mrs. Levy, “Have the uniforms talked to you yet?”

“I’m sure they’ll get around to the little old ladies eventually.”

“I assume you’ll be as cooperative as usual.”

She smiled. “I’m not sure what I can tell them, but I’ll go ahead and lay out some fresh cookies in case they come calling.”

Amanda chuckled. “Careful, Roz.” She motioned for Will to follow her as she left the room.

Will reached into his wallet and pulled out one of his cards for Mrs. Levy. “This has all my numbers. Call me if you remember anything or if you need help with the baby.”

“Thank you, sonny.” Her voice had lost some of its old lady kindness, but she tucked the card into her apron anyway.

Amanda was halfway up the hall by the time Will joined her. She didn’t say anything about the photograph, or Faith’s condition, or the pissing contest she’d had with Geary. Instead, she started giving him orders. “I need you to review all of your case files from the investigation.” She didn’t have to tell him which investigation she meant. “Comb through every witness statement, every CI report, every jail-house snitch’s last hurrah. I don’t care how small it is. I want to know about it.” Amanda stopped. He knew she was thinking about his reading issues.

He kept his voice steady. “It’s not a problem.”

She wouldn’t let him off that easy. “Pull up your panties, Will. If you need help, speak up now so I can deal with it.”

“Do you want me to start now? The boxes are at my house.”

“No. We’ve got an errand to run first.” She stood in the foyer, her hands on her hips. She was a trim woman, and Will often forgot how short she was until he saw her straining her neck to look up at him. “I managed to pry some information loose while Geary was throwing his tantrum. The Texicano in the backyard has helpfully identified himself as Ricardo vis-à-vis the large tattoo on his back. We don’t have a full ID on him yet. He’s mid-twenties, approximately five-nine, and one hundred seventy pounds. The Asian in the bedroom is around forty years of age, slightly shorter and thinner than his Hispanic friend. I would guess he’s not from this part of town. He might’ve been brought in just for this.”

Will remembered, “Faith said he had a southern drawl.”

“That should help narrow things down.”

“He was also wearing a loud Hawaiian shirt. That’s not very gangsterish.”

“We’ll add that to his list of crimes.” She glanced down the hallway, then looked back at Will. “Now, the Asian in the laundry room is an odd story, too, which we know courtesy of the wallet he carried in his back pocket. Hironobu Kwon, age nineteen. He’s a freshman at Georgia State. He’s also the son of a local schoolteacher, Miriam Kwon.”

“He’s not affiliated?”

“Not that we can find. APD swooped up Mama Kwon before we could get to her. We’ll have to find her tomorrow morning to see what she knows.” She pointed her finger at Will. “Softly, softly. We’re still not officially on the case. It’s just you and me until I can find a way in.”

He said, “Faith seems to think the Texicanos were looking for something.” Will tried to gauge Amanda’s expression. Usually it hovered somewhere between amused and annoyed, but now it was completely blank. “Ricardo was beaten to a pulp. He had a gun pointed at his head. He wasn’t looking for anything except to save his life. It’s the Asians we should be talking to first.”

“That seems entirely logical.”

“It points to a larger problem,” he continued. “The Texicanos I can understand, but what would the Asians want with Evelyn? What’s their play?”

“That’s the million-dollar question.”

He put a finer point on it. “Evelyn headed the drug squad. Los Texicanos control the drug trade in Atlanta. They have for the last twenty years.”

“They certainly have.”

Will felt the familiar sting of his head hitting a brick wall. This was the same run-around Amanda always gave him when she had information that she wasn’t going to share. Somehow, this time was worse, because she wasn’t just screwing with his head, she was covering for her old friend.

He tried, “You said that the guy in the Hawaiian shirt was probably brought in for ‘this.’ What’s ‘this’? Kidnapping? Finding whatever Evelyn had hidden in her house?”

“I don’t think anyone is finding what they’re looking for today.” She paused to let her meaning sink in. “Charlie’s helping out the locals with the crime scene, but they’re not as weak to his charms as I’d like. His access has been very limited and closely supervised. They say they’ll share lab results. I’m iffy on their ME.”

The Fulton County medical examiner. “Has he shown up?”

“He’s still combing through that apartment fire in People’s Town.” Budget cuts had left the medical examiner’s office devastated. If there was more than one serious crime happening within the city limits, that usually meant the detectives were in for a long wait. “I’d love to get Pete on this.”

She was referring to the GBI’s medical examiner. Will asked, “Can’t he make some phone calls?”

“Unlikely,” she admitted. “Pete’s not exactly covered up in friends. You know how strange he is. He makes you look normal. What about Sara?”

“She’ll keep her mouth shut.”

“I’m aware of that, Will. I saw your do-si-do in the street. I meant do you think she knows anyone in the ME’s office?”

Will shrugged.

“Ask her,” Amanda ordered.

Will doubted Sara would welcome the call, but he nodded his agreement anyway. “What about Evelyn’s credit card statements, phone records?”

“I’ve ordered them pulled.”

“Does she have GPS in her car? On her phones?”

She didn’t really answer him. “We’re going through some backdoor channels. As I said, this isn’t exactly aboveboard.”

“But what you told Geary is right. We’ve got original jurisdiction over drug cases.”

“Just because Evelyn was in charge of the narcotics division doesn’t mean this is drug-related. From what I’ve gathered, they’ve found no indication of drugs in the house or on any of the dead men.”

“And Ricardo, the dead Texicano, of the drug-related Texicanos?”

“Odd coincidence.”

“How about the living, breathing, drug-related Texicano who drives a black Cadillac that Evelyn Mitchell has no qualms about getting into and going for a ride?”

She feigned surprise. “You think he’s affiliated?”

“I saw the tattoo in the photograph. Evelyn’s been seeing a Texicano for at least four months.” Will tried to moderate his tone. “He’s older. He must be higher up in the organization. Mrs. Levy says the visits have stepped up over the last ten days. They’ve been going somewhere together in his car, usually out by eleven and back by two.”

Again, Amanda ignored his point and made her own. “You busted six detectives on Evelyn’s squad. Two of them were paroled for good behavior last year. Both transferred out of state—one to California, one to Tennessee, which is where they were this afternoon when Evelyn was taken. Two are in medium security at Valdosta State, four years away from release and no good behavior in sight. One is dead—drug overdose, which is what I call the thinking man’s karma. The last one is waiting to get his dance card punched at D&C.”

The Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison. Death row. Will reluctantly asked, “Who’d he kill?”

“A guard and an inmate. Strangled a convicted rapist with a towel—no loss there—but then he beat the guard to death with his bare hands. Claimed it was self-defense.”

“Against the guard?”

“You sound like the prosecutor on his case.”

Will tried again. “And Evelyn?”

“What about her?”

“I investigated her, too.”

“You did.”

“We’re not going to talk about the elephant in the room?”

“Elephant? For chrissakes, Will, we’ve got the entire goddamn circus in here.” She opened the front door. The sun cut through the dark house like a knife.

Amanda slipped on her sunglasses as they walked across the lawn toward the crime scene. A pair of uniformed cops were making their way toward Mrs. Levy’s house. They each glowered at Will and gave Amanda a curt nod.

She mumbled to Will, “About time they got going,” as if she hadn’t been the cause of the delay.

He waited until the men started banging on the front door. “I guess you know Mrs. Levy from your days with the APD?”

“GBI. I investigated her for murdering her husband.” Amanda seemed to enjoy Will’s horrified expression. “Never could prove it, but I’m sure she poisoned him.”

“Cookies?” he guessed.

“That was my working theory.” An appreciative smile curved her lips as she picked her way across the grass. “Roz is a wily old coot. Seen more crime scenes than all of us rolled together, and I’m sure she took notes the entire time. I wouldn’t trust half of what she told you. Remember—the Devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.”

Amanda had a point, or at least Shakespeare did. Still, Will reminded her, “Mrs. Levy’s the one who told me about the Texicano visiting Evelyn. She took the picture of him.”

“She did, didn’t she?”

Will felt the question hit him like a slap to the back of his head. Considering Mrs. Levy’s artistic talent lent itself more to unflattering mugshots of household pets, it seemed strange that she just happened to have handy a photograph of the Texicano standing beside his black Cadillac. She was a sharp old lady. She’d been spying for a reason. “We should go back and talk to her.”

“Do you really think she’s going to tell us anything useful?”

Will silently conceded the point. Mrs. Levy seemed to like her games, and with Evelyn missing, they didn’t really have time to play them. “Does Evelyn know she killed her husband?”

“Of course she does.”

“And she still let her watch Emma?”

They had reached Faith’s Mini. Amanda cupped her hands to the glass and peered inside. “She killed a sixty-four-year-old abusive alcoholic, not a four-month-old baby.”

Will guessed somewhere in the world this kind of logic made sense.

Amanda headed toward the house. Charlie Reed was in the carport talking to a bunch of other crime scene unit techs. Some were smoking. One was leaning against a tan Malibu that was parked nose-out to Faith’s Mini. They were all dressed in white Tyvek clean suits that made them look like various sizes of soiled marshmallows. Charlie’s handlebar mustache was the only thing that distinguished him from the clean-shaven men. He saw Amanda and broke away from the group.

She said, “Take me through it, Charlie.”

Charlie glanced back at a portly, dark man whose odd build made the Tyvek suit unflatteringly tight in all the critical areas. The man took a last puff on his cigarette and handed it to one of his co-workers. He introduced himself to Amanda in a clipped, British-sounding accent. “Dr. Wagner, I am Dr. Ahbidi Mittal.”

She indicated Will. “This is Dr. Trent, my associate.”

Will shook the man’s hand, trying not to cringe at the effortless way Amanda rolled out a degree they both knew he’d obtained from a dubious online school.

Mittal offered, “As a courtesy, I’m prepared to show you around the crime scene.”

Amanda gave a cutting glance to Charlie, as if he had any say in the matter.

“Thank you,” Will said, because he knew no one else would.

Mittal handed them each a pair of white booties for their shoes. Amanda grabbed Will’s arm to steady herself as she slipped off her heels and covered her stocking feet. Will was left to hop around on his own. Even without his shoes, his feet were too big, and he ended up looking like Mrs. Levy with her heels hanging off the back of her slippers.

“Shall we start in here?” Mittal didn’t wait for them to acknowledge his invitation. He led them around the back of the Malibu and into the house through the open kitchen door. Instinctively, Will ducked his head as he walked into the low-ceilinged room. Charlie bumped into him and mumbled an apology. The kitchen was small for four people, horseshoe shaped, with the open end facing the laundry room. Will caught the distinct odor of rusty iron that blood gave off when it congealed.

Faith was right—the intruders had been looking for something. The house was a mess. Silverware was scattered on the floor. Drawers had been thrown around. Holes were knocked in the walls. A cell phone and an older-looking BlackBerry were crushed on the floor. The wall phone had been smashed off the hook. Except for the black fingerprint powder and the yellow plastic markers the forensics team had used, nothing had been altered from what Faith said she’d first seen when she entered the house. Even the dead body was still in the laundry room. Faith must have been terrified, not knowing what was coming around the corner, terrified that her mother was injured—or worse.

Will should have been here. He should’ve been the kind of partner Faith knew she could call no matter what.

Mittal said, “I’ve yet to write my report, but I am prepared to share my working theory.”

Amanda rolled her hand in a circle to move things along. “Tell me what you’ve got.”

Mittal’s lips pursed at the commanding tone. “I assume that Captain Mitchell was preparing lunch when the crime commenced.” There were bags of cold cuts on the counter beside a knife and cutting board where Evelyn had obviously been slicing tomatoes. An empty Wonder bread sleeve was wadded up in the sink. The toaster had popped up long ago. Four slices of bread. Evelyn had probably known Faith would need lunch when she got home.

It was a normal enough scene, even pleasant, but for the fact that every item on the counter was spattered or smeared with blood. The toaster, the bread, the cutting board. More blood had dripped down to the floor and pooled onto the tiles. Two sets of red shoe prints crisscrossed the white porcelain, one small, one large; there had been a struggle.

Mittal continued, “Captain Mitchell was startled by a noise, possibly the sliding glass door breaking, which likely made her cut her finger with the knife she was using to slice the tomatoes.”

Amanda noted, “That’s a lot of blood for a kitchen accident.”

Mittal obviously didn’t want any editorial comments. He paused again before continuing, “The infant, Emma, would’ve been here.” He pointed to the counter space beside the fridge, opposite the area where Evelyn had been preparing lunch. “We found a small drop of blood on the counter here.” He pointed to the spot beside an older-model CD player. “There’s a blood trail to and from the shed, so Captain Mitchell was most likely bleeding when she left the kitchen. Her handprint on the door supports this.”

Amanda nodded. “She hears a noise, so she hides the baby to keep her safe, then comes back in with her S&W.”

Charlie’s words came out in a rush, as if he could no longer hold his tongue. “She must’ve wrapped a paper towel around the cut, but it bled through quickly. There’s blood on the kitchen door and the wooden handle of the S&W.”

Will asked, “What about the car seat?”

“It’s clean. She must’ve carried it with her uninjured hand. We’ve got a blood trail back and forth across the carport where she carried Emma to the shed. It’s Evelyn’s blood. Ahbidi’s people already typed it, so we can kinda puzzle it out from that.” He glanced up at Mittal. “Sorry, Ahbi. I hope I’m not stepping on your toes.”

Mittal made an expansive gesture with his hands, indicating Charlie should continue.

Will knew that this was Charlie’s favorite part of the job. There was a swagger to his walk as he went to the open doorway and clasped his hands together near his face as if he held a gun. “Evelyn comes back into the house. Pivots, sees bad guy number one waiting in the laundry room and shoots him in the head. The force spun him around like a pinwheel. That’s the exit wound you see at the back of his head.” Charlie turned back around, hands raised again in a classic Charlie’s Angel pose, which was the best way to make sure you got shot in the chest. “Then bad guy number two comes, probably from over there.” He pointed to the pass-through between the kitchen and dining room. “There’s a struggle. Evelyn loses her gun. See there?”

Will followed his pointing finger to a plastic marker on the floor. Now that Charlie had put the suggestion in his head, he could see the faint, bloody outline of a handgun.

“Evelyn grabs the knife off the counter. Her blood is on the handle, but it’s not on the blade.”

Amanda interrupted, “It’s not just her blood on the knife?”

“No. According to her personnel file, Evelyn is typed as O-positive. We’ve got B-negative coating the blade and here by the fridge.”

They all looked down at a dozen large, round drops of blood on the floor.

Mittal provided, “It’s a passive spatter. No arteries were compromised or there would be a spray pattern. All the samples were sent to the lab for DNA analysis. I imagine we’re looking at a week for results.”

A smile played at Amanda’s lips as she stared at the blood. “Good girl, Ev.” There was a sound of triumph in her voice. “Any of the dead guys B-negative?”

Charlie glanced at Mittal again. The man nodded his acquiescence. “The Asian in the ugly shirt was O-positive, which is a fairly common type across races. It’s Evelyn’s type. It’s my type. The other, the guy we’re calling Ricardo because of his tattoo, was B-negative, but here’s the kicker: he doesn’t have any stab wounds. I mean, he bled at some point. He was obviously tortured. But the blood we’re looking at here is a larger volume than anything—”

Amanda interrupted, “So, we’ve got someone out there with a stab wound whose blood type is B-negative. Is that rare?”

“Less than two percent of the U.S. Caucasian population is B-negative,” Charlie told them. “It’s a quarter of that for Asians, and around one percent for Hispanics. Bottom line, it’s a very rare blood type, which makes it probable that our dead B-negative Ricardo is genetically related to our missing and wounded B-negative.”

“So, we’ve got a wounded man out there, blood type B-negative.”

Charlie was ahead of her for once. “I already put a be-on-the-lookout at all hospitals within a hundred miles for a stab wound of any kind—male, female, white, black, orange. We’ve already had three rule-outs from domestics just in the last half hour. More people get stabbed than I’d realized.”

Mittal made sure Charlie was finished, then pointed to the blood smeared across the floor. “These shoe prints are conducive to a struggle between a small woman and a medium-sized man, probably around seventy kilos. We can tell from the variation of light to dark in the print that there is a medial roll to the foot, or supination.”

Amanda stopped the lesson. “Take me back to the stab wound. Are we talking fatal?”

Mittal shrugged. “The medical examiner’s office would have to give you their opinion. As was stated earlier, there’s no blood spray on the walls or ceiling, from which we can posit that none of the arteries were damaged. This spatter, then, could perhaps be the result of a head wound, where one would find a fair amount of blood with minimal damage.” He looked at Charlie. “Do you concur?”

Charlie nodded, but added, “A gut wound might bleed like this. I’m not sure how long you could last with that. If you trust the movies, not long. If a lung was punctured, then he’d have an hour, tops, before he suffocated. There’s absolutely no arterial spray, so it’s a seeping wound. I don’t disagree with Dr. Mittal about the possibility of a head wound.…” He shrugged, then disagreed anyway. “The blade was coated tip to hilt, which might indicate that the knife plunged into the body.” He saw the frown on Mittal’s face and backpedaled. “Then again, it could be that the victim grabbed the knife, which cut his hand and coated the blade through transfer.” He showed his hand, palm up. “In which case we’d have a B-negative out there with a wounded hand as well.”

Amanda had never embraced the equivocations of crime scene science. She tried to sum it up in absolutes. “So, bad guy B-negative struggles with Evelyn. Then I suppose we bring in the second man, the Asian in the Hawaiian shirt, who later ended up dead in the bedroom. They managed to subdue Evelyn and take away her gun. And then there’s a third man, Ricardo, who was a hostage at one point, and then became a shooter, and then, thanks to Agent Mitchell’s quick action, became dead before he could injure anyone.” She turned to Will. “My money is on Ricardo being hooked up in all of this, torture or not. He pretended to be a hostage to try to leverage Faith.”

Mittal looked uncomfortable with the finality in her tone. “That is an interpretation.”

Charlie tried to smooth things over. “There’s always the chance that—”

There was a sound similar to the rush of a tropical waterfall. Mittal unzipped his clean suit and felt around in his pants pockets. He pulled out his cell phone and said, “If you will excuse me,” before heading back into the garage.

Amanda turned to Charlie. “Brass tacks?”

“They’re not giving me full access, but there’s no reason for me to disagree with what Ahbi’s said so far.”

“And?”

“I don’t want to sound racist,” Charlie began, “but you don’t often see Mexicans and Asians working together. Especially Los Texicanos.”

“Younger kids aren’t as hung up on that sort of thing,” Will offered, wondering if that could be called progress.

Amanda didn’t acknowledge either comment. “What else?”

“The list by the phone.” Charlie pointed to a piece of yellow paper with a bunch of numbers and names. “I took the liberty to call the number for Zeke. I left a message for him to get in touch with you.”

Amanda looked at her watch. “What about the rest of the house? Did forensics find anything?”

“Not that they’ve told me. Ahbi’s not being overtly rude, but he’s not going out of his way to volunteer anything, either.” Charlie paused before adding, “It seems obvious whatever the bad guys were looking for wasn’t found, otherwise they would’ve cleared out the minute Faith pulled up.”

“And we’d be planning Evelyn’s funeral.” Amanda didn’t dwell on the fact. “Whatever they were searching for—what would you guess the size of this mysterious item to be?”

“No telling,” Charlie admitted. “Obviously, they were looking everywhere—drawers, closets, cushions. I think they got angrier as they went through the house and started destroying on top of searching. They ripped open the beds, broke the baby’s toys. There’s a lot of fury in there.”

“How many searchers?”

“I’m sorry, Dr. Wagner.” Mittal was back. He tucked his phone into his pocket but left his white suit gaping open. “That was the ME. He’s been delayed by the discovery of another body at the apartment fire. What was your question?”

Charlie answered for her, perhaps sensing that Amanda’s tone might get them thrown out of the house. “She was asking how many searchers you thought there were.”

Mittal nodded. “An educated guess would be three to four men.”

Will saw the disgusted look on Amanda’s face. It had to be more than three, otherwise all the suspects were dead and Evelyn Mitchell had kidnapped herself.

Mittal continued, “They did not wear gloves. Perhaps they thought Captain Mitchell would relent without a struggle.” Amanda snorted a laugh and Mittal gave another one of his patented pauses. “There are fingerprints on most surfaces, which of course we will share with the GBI.”

Charlie said, “I’ve already called the lab. We’ve got two techs coming in to digitize them and put them in the database. From there it’s only a matter of time before we know if they’re in the system.”

Amanda indicated the kitchen. “Once Evelyn was neutralized, they would’ve started their search in here. They were looking through drawers, so it’s something that would fit in a drawer.” She looked up at Charlie, then Mittal. “Any tire tracks? Footprints?”

“Nothing of consequence.” Mittal walked her over to the kitchen window and started pointing out things in the backyard that had been checked. Will studied the broken CDs on the floor. Beatles. Sinatra. No AC/DC. The player was white plastic, smudged with black fingerprint powder. Will used his thumbnail to press the eject button. The tray was empty.

Amanda’s voice came back to him. “Where did they keep Evelyn while they were tearing up the house?”

Mittal started toward the living room. Will took up the rear as Charlie and Amanda followed the doctor through the path of debris. The setup was similar to Mrs. Levy’s house, minus the sunken aspect of the living room. Opposite the couch and a wingback chair were a wall of bookshelves and a small plasma-screen television with a foot-sized crack in the center. Most of the books were strewn across the floor. The couch and chairs had been gutted, their frames broken. There was a stereo on the shelf by the TV, the old record-playing kind, but the speakers were busted and the arm had been wrenched off the turntable. A small pile of vinyl records had obviously met the hard edge of someone’s heel.

There was a Thonet-style bentwood chair against the wall, the only thing in the room that seemed to have remained intact. The seat was thatched. The legs were scuffed. Mittal pointed to where chunks of veneer had been ripped off. “It appears that duct tape was used. I found adhesive where Captain Mitchell’s feet would’ve been.” He lifted up the chair and moved it away from the wall. A yellow plastic number marker had been placed beside a dark stain. “One can surmise from the blood drops on the carpet that Captain Mitchell’s hands were hanging down. The cut to her finger was still bleeding, but not with any significance. Perhaps my colleague is correct in assuming that she wrapped the wound in a paper towel.”

Amanda leaned down to look at the bloodstain, but Will was more interested in the chair. Evelyn’s hands had been tied behind her back. He used his foot to tilt the chair forward so he could see the bottom of the thatched seat. There was a mark underneath, an arrowhead, drawn in blood.

Will looked out into the room, trying to figure out what the arrow was pointing to. The couch directly across from the chair was gutted, as was the wingback chair to the side. The hardwood floors meant nothing could be hidden under a carpet. Was Evelyn pointing to something in the backyard?

He heard a hiss of air through teeth. Will glanced up to find Amanda giving him such a searing look that he dropped the chair back into place without his brain being aware of what his foot was doing. She gave a slight shake of her head, indicating he should keep his mouth shut about the find. Will glanced at Charlie. They had all three seen the arrow under the chair while Mittal, oblivious, waxed poetic on the efficacy of fingerprinting on porous versus nonporous surfaces.

Charlie opened his mouth to speak, but Amanda talked over him. “Dr. Mittal, in your opinion, was the glass door broken with a found object, such as a rock or lawn ornament?” She glared at Charlie, and Will thought if she was capable of shooting lasers from her eyes, they would’ve sealed Charlie’s mouth shut. “I’m just wondering how well this attack was planned. Did they bring something to break the glass? Did they surround the house? If so, did they know the layout ahead of time?”

Mittal frowned, because these were questions none of them were capable of answering. “Dr. Wagner, these are not scenarios that can be forensically evaluated.”

“Well, let’s just toss it around and see what sticks. Was a brick used to break the glass?”

Charlie started shaking his head. Will recognized the internal conflict. Like it or not, this was Mittal’s crime scene, and there was evidence under the chair—possibly important evidence—that the man had missed. Charlie was obviously torn. As with most things that had to do with Amanda, there was the right thing to do and then there was the thing that she was ordering him to do. Each decision had its consequence.

Mittal was shaking his head, too, but only because Amanda wasn’t making sense. “Dr. Wagner, we have searched every inch of this crime scene, and I am telling you we have not found any more items of substance than what I have already detailed.”

Will knew for a fact they hadn’t checked every inch. He asked, “Has anyone checked the Malibu?”

That took Charlie’s mind off his troubles. His brow furrowed. Will had made the same mistake with Faith’s Mini. All of the violence had taken place inside the house, but the cars were still part of the crime scene.

Amanda was the first to move. She had made her way out to the carport and opened the driver’s side door of the Malibu before anyone thought to ask her what she was doing.

Mittal said, “Please, we’ve not yet processed—”

She gave him a withering look. “Did you think to check the trunk?”

His stunned silence was enough of an answer. Amanda popped the trunk. Will was standing just inside the kitchen doorway, which gave him a raised view of the scene. There were several plastic grocery bags in the trunk, their contents flattened down by the dead body on top of them. As in the kitchen, blood coated everything—soaking into the cereal box, dripping down the plastic wrap around the hamburger buns. The dead man was a big guy. His body was folded almost in two where he’d been bent to fit into the space. A deep gash in his bald head showed splintered bone and bits of brain. His jeans were wrinkled. His shirtsleeves were rolled up. There was a Los Texicanos tattoo on his forearm.

Evelyn’s gentleman friend.