Karin Slaughter - Fallen

Sara was dubious. “An insurance company took the bullet?”

“People get crazy ideas,” Will said. “Anyway, Bill felt like it wiped out all the good he’d done over the years. Evelyn said that when the cancer came—Bill died of pancreatic cancer three months after his diagnosis—she thought part of the reason he couldn’t fight it was that he had this guilt hanging over his head. And that she had never forgiven him for that, for not fighting the cancer. He just kind of accepted it and then waited to die.”

Pancreatic cancer was not easily vanquished. The chances for long-term survival were less than five percent. “Stress like that can certainly impair your immune system.”

“Evelyn was worried that the same thing was going to happen to her.”

“That she’d get cancer?”

“No. That the investigation would ruin her life, even if she was cleared. That it would hang over her head forever. She said that in all the years since her husband had died, she had never wanted him back more than she did that day so that she could tell him that she finally understood.”

Sara considered the weight of the statement. “That sounds like something an innocent person would say.”

“It does.”

“Does that mean you’re leaning away from your original conclusion?”

“It’s very kind of you to phrase your question so diplomatically.” He grinned. “I don’t know. My case was shut down before I could wrap it up to my satisfaction. Evelyn signed her papers and took her retirement. Amanda didn’t even tell me it was over. I heard it on the news one morning—decorated officer retiring from the force to spend more time with her family.”

“You think she got away with it.”

“I keep coming back to one thing: she was in charge of a team that stole a whole lot of money. Either she turned a blind eye or she’s not as good as she reads on paper.” Will picked at the plastic seam on one of the audiotapes. “And there’s still the bank account. It might not seem like much compared to millions, but sixty thousand is a chunk of change. And it’s in her husband’s name, not hers. Why not change it over now that he’s dead? Why still keep it a secret?”

“All good points.”

He was quiet for a moment, the only sound in the room his thumbnail picking at the plastic seam. “Faith didn’t call me when it happened. I didn’t have my cell, so it would’ve been pointless, but she didn’t call me.” He paused. “I thought maybe she didn’t trust me because it was her mother involved.”

“I doubt she was even thinking about that. You know how your brain just blanks out when something like that happens. Did you ask her about it?”

“She’s got a lot more on her mind right now than holding my hand.” He gave a self-deprecating chuckle. “Maybe I should write about it in my diary.” He started packing up the boxes. “Anyway, I’ll let you get to bed. Did you find anything I should know about?”

Sara pulled out the two files she’d set aside. “These guys might deserve a closer look. They were in the high-dollar busts. One of them was also on Spivey’s defense witness list. I flagged him because he has a history of kidnapping for leverage over rival gangs.”

Will opened the top file.

Sara supplied the name. “Ignatio Ortiz.”

Will groaned. “He’s in Phillips State Prison on a manslaughter attempt.”

“So, it won’t be hard to find him.”

“He runs Los Texicanos.”

Sara was familiar with the gang. She had treated her share of kids who were involved in the organization. Not many of them walked out of the ER in one piece.

Will said, “If Ortiz is wrapped up in this, he’ll never talk to us. If he’s not, then he’ll never talk to us. Whichever it is, driving to the prison would be three or four hours out of our day for nothing.”

“He was going to be called as a witness for Spivey’s defense.”

“Boyd had a surprising number of thugs willing to testify that he hadn’t touched their money. There was a whole roster of criminals willing to stand up for Evelyn’s team.”

“Did you get anything from Boyd at the prison?”

Will frowned. “Amanda interviewed him. They talked in some kind of code. One thing I picked up on was that Boyd said the Asians were trying to cut the Mexicans out of the supply side.”

“Los Texicanos,” Sara provided.

“Amanda told me their preferred method is slitting throats.”

Sara put her hand to her neck, trying not to shudder. “You think that Evelyn was still doing business with these drug dealers?”

He closed Ortiz’s file. “I can’t see how. She doesn’t have any juice without her badge. And I can’t picture her as a kingpin unless she’s some kind of sociopath. Granny-Nanny by day, drug lord by night.”

“You said Ortiz is in prison for attempted manslaughter. Who’d he try to kill?”

“His brother. He found him in bed with his wife.”

“Maybe this is the brother.” Sara opened the next file. “Hector Ortiz,” she told him. “He’s not a bad guy on paper, but he made the defense witness list. I pulled him because he has the same last name as Ignatio.”

Will unclipped the mugshot from the file to get a closer look. “Is your gut still telling you that Evelyn is innocent?”

Sara looked at her watch. She had to be at work in five hours. “My gut has turned in for the night. What is it?”

He held up Hector Ortiz’s photograph. The man was bald with a salt-and-pepper goatee. His shirt was rumpled. He held up his arm to show a tattoo to the camera: a green and red Texas star with a rattlesnake wrapped around it.

Will said, “Meet Evelyn’s gentleman friend.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

THE OPEN-HANDED SLAPS HAD TURNED INTO PUNCHES HOURS ago. Days ago? Evelyn wasn’t sure. She was blindfolded, sitting in total darkness. Something dripped—faucet, gutter, blood—she didn’t know. Her body was so riddled with pain that even when she squeezed her eyes shut and tried to block out every screaming muscle, every broken bone, nothing felt undamaged.

She panted out a laugh. Blood sprayed from her mouth. Her missing finger. There was one bone that wasn’t broken, one piece of flesh that wasn’t bruised.

They had started on her feet, beating the soles with a galvanized metal pipe. It was a form of torture they had apparently seen in a movie, which Evelyn knew because one of them had helpfully coached, “The dude was swinging it back higher, like this.” The sensation Evelyn had felt could not be called pain. It was a searing of the skin that her blood carried like fire through her entire body.

Like most women, it was rape that had always terrified her, but she knew now that there were far worse dangers. There was at least an animalistic logic to the crime of rape. These men were not deriving pleasure from hurting her. Their reward came from the cheers of their friends. They were trying to impress each other, pulling a game of one-upmanship to see who could make her scream the loudest. And Evelyn did scream. She screamed so loud that she was sure that her vocal cords would rupture. She screamed from pain. She screamed from terror. She screamed from anger, fury, loss. She screamed most of all because these competing emotions felt like burning hot lava rushing up her throat.

At one point, they’d had a protracted discussion about where her vagus nerve was located. Three of them took turns, punching her in the general area of her kidneys until, like children hitting a piñata, one hit pay dirt. They’d laughed uncontrollably as Evelyn seized as if electrocuted. The feeling was one of primal terror. She had never in her life felt so close to death. She had urinated herself. She had screamed into the darkness until there was no sound coming out of her mouth.