Karin Slaughter - Fractured

The phone rang, piercing the solitude. Will debated whether or not to answer. He checked the clock. It was ten in the morning. There was no one in the world right now that he wanted to talk to. Amanda wasn't about to pat him on the back, the press would not know how to get his phone number and Angie was off doing her own thing-whatever that was.

He picked it up before the machine clicked on.

"Hi," Faith said. "Are you busy?"

"Just lying around in my underwear." There was no response. "Hello?"

"Yes." She said the word like a statement, and he realized that yet again he'd blurted out the wrong thing. He was about to apologize when she said, "I told Amanda I'm taking the job."

Several responses came to mind, but Will weighed them out, not trusting himself not to say something stupid. "Good," he managed, more like a croak.

"It's because we caught him." Bernard, she meant. "If we hadn't, I probably would've been fine going back to my little desk in the murder squad and biding my time until retirement."

"You've never struck me as the type of cop who works on a time clock."

"It was a really easy habit to fall into when I was partnered with Leo," she admitted. "Maybe it'll be different with you."

He laughed. "I can honestly say that I've never had a woman look at being stuck with me as a positive thing."

She laughed, too. "At least I can help you with your reports."

Will felt his smile drop. They had not discussed Faith's obvious realization that there were second-graders in her neighborhood who could read better than Will. He said, "I don't need help, Faith. Really." To cut some of the tension, he added, "But, thank you."

"All right," she agreed, but the strain was still there.

He tried to think of something else to say-a joke, a bad pun about his illiteracy. Nothing came except the glaring reminder that there was a reason he did not tell people about his problem. Will did not need help with anything. He could pull his own weight, and had for years.

He asked, "When do you start?"

"It's complicated," she said. "I've got a provisional certificate until I finish my degree, but, basically, I'll be in your office first thing a week from Monday."

"My office?" Will asked, getting a sinking sensation. He knew how Amanda worked. She had come down to his office a year ago and noted that, if Will kept his knees up around his ears, another desk could easily be wedged into the space. "That'll be great," he said, trying to keep things upbeat.

"I've been thinking a lot about Kayla."

He could tell as much from her tone of voice. "You mean the lawsuit?"

"No. Her motivation." Faith was silent again, but this time she seemed to be gathering her thoughts. "Nobody liked Kayla except Emma. Her parents were shitty. The whole school hated her."

"From all reports, she was reviled for a reason."

"But Bernard's such a manipulative bastard, it's hard to tell whether or not she was in it for the thrill or because he told her to do it."

Will did not want to accept that it was possible for a seventeen-year-old girl to be so sadistic. The only thing he knew for certain was that with Warren dead and Bernard pointing his finger at everyone but himself, they would never really know the truth. "I doubt even Kayla knew the difference."

"Mary Clark still doesn't know."

He considered the poor woman, the damage that had been done to her psyche. On the surface, Mary was living a good life: well educated, married with children, teaching at an upscale school. And yet, all of that meant nothing because of something tragic that had happened to her over a decade ago. It was the same way he had thought of Emma early on in this case: everything she survived would make her want to die every day for the rest of her life. If the GBI and the Atlanta police and every other police force in America really cared about stopping crime, they would take all the money they poured into prisons and the courts and homeland security and spend every nickel on protecting children from the bastards who preyed on them. Will could pretty much guarantee the investment would pay off in saved lives.

"I should go," Faith told him. "I'm having lunch with Victor Martinez in two hours and I'm still wearing the same clothes he saw me in last time."

"The guy from Tech?"

"We'll see how long it takes for me to screw it up."

"I can give you some pointers."

"I think I manage that sort of thing well enough on my own."

She made noises about going, and he stopped her. "Faith?"

"Yes?"

Will struggled to make a grand statement, to welcome her into his life, to find a way to make it clear that he was going to do whatever it took to keep things running smoothly. "I'll see you in a week."

"All right."

Will hung up the phone, and a million better things to say came to mind, starting with telling her that he was glad she had made the decision and ending with him begging her to forgive any and all future monkey business. He lay in bed, eyes on the ceiling, and ran through their phone conversation. Will realized that he knew exactly when she had decided to take the job. They were at the copy center, listening to Evan Bernard, Kayla Alexander and Warren Grier planning the abduction of Emma Campano. Both of them were punch-drunk with exhaustion, and their foolish grins must have alarmed Charlie Reed, though the man had held his tongue.

She was right about one thing: as bad as the last few days had been, catching Evan Bernard made it all worthwhile. They had brought Emma Campano home. Warren Grier had meted out his own punishment, but there had been value in what he'd left behind. Kayla Alexander had gotten justice, too, no matter what her involvement had been in the crime. There was a certain satisfaction in those resolutions, a certain reassurance that what you did out on the streets actually mattered.

Yet, Will wondered if Faith knew that her father had an out-of-state bank account with over twenty thousand dollars in it. Will was two weeks into the Evelyn Mitchell case before he thought to check for accounts under her dead husband's name. The savings account was at least twenty years old and the balance had fluctuated over the years but never dropped below five thousand dollars. The last withdrawal had been three years earlier, so it was hard to track where exactly the money had been spent. Evelyn Mitchell was a cop. She would know better than to keep receipts. As a matter of fact, if Will hadn't found the account, he would have assumed from the way she lived her life that she was clean. She had a small mortgage, modest savings and a six-year-old Mercedes she had bought used.

It must have been expensive raising your child's child. Doctors appointments, field trips, schoolbooks. Jeremy wouldn't have had insurance. Will doubted fifteen-year-old Faith's policy covered childbirth. Maybe that's where the money had gone. Maybe she had figured there was nothing wrong with using drug dealers' money to take care of her family.

There were tax issues, of course, but Will did not work for the IRS. He worked for the GBI, and it was his job to present the evidence to the lawyers and let them decide what case they were going to bring. Will had been mildly surprised when he heard that Evelyn Mitchell was being forcibly retired instead of prosecuted. He had been on the job long enough to know that the higher up you were, the less likely you were to swing, but the bank account was the proverbial slam dunk. Now he knew why the woman had escaped with her pension. Amanda must have pulled some pretty long strings to keep her almost-sister-in-law out of prison.

The front door slammed. "Willy?"

He was silent for just a moment, feeling the painful sting of his solitude being interrupted. "In here."

Angie narrowed her eyes when she found him lying in bed. "You're not watching porn, are you?"