Karin Slaughter - Fallen

No chance of that now. Evelyn seemed happy to play the role of nanny in her retirement, but Faith was under no illusion that her life was going to get any easier. Her own retirement was almost twenty years away. The Mini had another three years of payments and would be out of warranty well before that. Emma would expect food and clothing for at least the next eighteen years, if not more. And it wasn’t like when Jeremy was a baby and Faith could dress him in mismatched socks and yard sale hand-me-downs. Babies today had to coordinate. They needed BPA-free bottles and certified organic applesauce from kindly Amish farmers. If Jeremy got into the architectural program at Georgia Tech, Faith was looking at six more years of buying books and doing his laundry. Most worryingly, her son had found a serious girlfriend. An older girlfriend with curvy hips and a ticking biological clock. Faith could be a grandmother before she turned thirty-five.

An unwelcome heat rushed through her body as she tried to push this last thought from her mind. She checked the contents of her purse again as she drove. The gum hadn’t made a dent. Her stomach was still growling. She reached over and felt around inside the glovebox. Nothing. She should stop at a fast-food place and at least get a Coke, but she was wearing her regs—tan khakis and a blue shirt with the letters GBI emblazoned in bright yellow on the back. This wasn’t the best part of town to be in if you were law enforcement. People tended to run, and then you had to chase them, which wasn’t conducive to getting home at a reasonable hour. Besides, something was telling her—urging her—to see her mother.

Faith picked up her phone and dialed Evelyn’s numbers again. Home, cell, even her BlackBerry, which she only used for email. All three brought the same negative response. Faith could feel her stomach flip as the worst scenarios ran through her mind. As a beat cop, she’d been called out onto a lot of scenes where a crying child had alerted the neighbors to a serious problem. Mothers had slipped in the tub. Fathers had accidentally injured themselves or gone into coronary arrest. The babies had lain there, wailing helplessly, until someone had figured out that something was wrong. There was nothing more heart wrenching than a crying baby who could not be soothed.

Faith chided herself for bringing these horrible images to mind. She had always been good at assuming the worst, even before she became a cop. Evelyn was probably fine. Emma’s naptime was at one-thirty. Her mother had probably turned off the phone so the ringing wouldn’t wake the baby. Maybe she’d run into a neighbor while checking the mailbox, or gone next door to help old Mrs. Levy take out the trash.

Still, Faith’s hands slipped on the wheel as she exited onto Boulevard. She was sweating despite the mild March weather. This couldn’t just be about the baby or her mother or even Jeremy’s unconscionably fertile girlfriend. Faith had been diagnosed with diabetes less than a year ago. She was religious about measuring her blood sugar, eating the right things, making sure she had snacks on hand. Except for today. That probably explained why her thinking had gone sideways. She just needed to eat something. Preferably in view of her mother and child.

Faith checked the glovebox again to make sure it was really empty. She had a distant memory of giving Will her last nutrition bar yesterday while they were waiting outside the courthouse. It was that or watch him inhale a sticky bun from the vending machine. He had complained about the taste but eaten the whole bar anyway. And now she was paying for it.

She blew through a yellow light, speeding as much as she dared down a semi-residential street. The road narrowed at Ponce de Leon. Faith passed a row of fast-food restaurants and an organic grocery store. She edged up the speedometer, accelerating into the twists and turns bordering Piedmont Park. The flash of a traffic camera bounced off her rearview mirror as she sailed through another yellow light. She tapped on the brakes for a straggling jaywalker. Two more grocery stores blurred by, then came the final red light, which was mercifully green.

Evelyn still lived in the same house Faith and her older brother had grown up in. The single-story ranch was located in an area of Atlanta called Sherwood Forest, which was nestled between Ansley Park, one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the city, and Interstate 85, which offered the constant roar of traffic, depending on which way the wind was blowing. The wind was blowing just fine today, and when Faith rolled down her window to let in more fresh air, she heard the familiar drone that had marked most every day of her childhood.

As a lifelong resident of Sherwood Forest, Faith had a deep-seated hatred for the men who had planned the neighborhood. The subdivision had been developed after World War II, the brick ranch houses filled by returning soldiers who took advantage of low VA loans. The street planners had unabashedly embraced the Sherwood concept. After taking a hard left onto Lionel, Faith crossed Friar Tuck, took a right on Robin Hood Road, coasted through the fork at Lady Marian Lane, and checked the driveway of her own house on the corner of Doncaster and Barnesdale before finally pulling into her mother’s driveway off Little John Trail.

Evelyn’s beige Chevy Malibu was backed into the carport. That, at least, was normal. Faith had never seen her mother pull nose-first into a parking space. It came from her days in uniform. You always made sure your car was ready to leave as soon as a call came in.

Faith didn’t have time to reflect on her mother’s routines. She rolled into the driveway and parked the Mini nose-to-nose with the Malibu. Her legs ached as she stood; every muscle in her body had been tensed for the last twenty minutes. She could hear loud music blaring from the house. Heavy metal, not her mother’s usual Beatles. Faith put her hand on the hood of the Malibu as she walked toward the kitchen door. The engine was cold. Maybe Evelyn had been in the shower when Faith called. Maybe she hadn’t checked her email or cell phone. Maybe she had cut herself. There was a bloody handprint on the door.

Faith felt herself do a double take.

The bloody print showed a left hand. It was about eighteen inches above the knob. The door had been pulled closed but hadn’t latched. A streak of sunlight cut through the jamb, probably from the window over the kitchen sink.

Faith still couldn’t process what she was seeing. She held up her own hand to the print, a child pressing her fingers to her mother’s. Evelyn’s hand was smaller. Slender fingers. The tip of her ring finger hadn’t touched the door. There was a clot of blood where it should have been.

Suddenly, the music stopped mid-thump. In the silence, Faith heard a familiar gurgling noise, a revving up that announced the coming of a full-on wail. The sound echoed in the carport, so that for a moment, Faith thought it was coming from her own mouth. Then it came again, and she turned around, knowing that it was Emma.

Almost every other house in Sherwood Forest had been razed or remodeled, but the Mitchell home was much the same as when it had first been built. The layout was simple: three bedrooms, a family room, a dining room, and a kitchen with a door leading to the open carport. Bill Mitchell, Faith’s father, had built a toolshed on the opposite side of the carport. It was a sturdy building—her father had never done anything halfway—with a metal door that bolted shut and safety glass in its one window. Faith was ten before she realized that the building was too fortified for something as simple as tool storage. With the tenderness that only an older brother can muster, Zeke had filled her in on the shed’s true purpose. “It’s where Mom keeps her gun, you dumbass.”