Karin Slaughter - Fallen

“Will?” That’s all he needed—Amanda’s voice in his head. “What are you doing?”

“Sweating,” he whispered back, wondering if she could’ve asked a more pointless question. He’d had this idea of springing out of the trunk like a superhero. After all this time, he realized he’d probably do well not to roll out onto the ground like a tongue.

“We’re set up at Ida Johnson’s.” Evelyn’s backyard neighbor. Will wasn’t sure how Amanda had sweet-talked the woman into letting a bunch of cops sit in her house. Maybe she’d promised that Faith wouldn’t shoot any more drug dealers in her yard again. “I just heard a call on the scanner. There was a drive-by shooting in East Atlanta. Two dead. Ahbidi Mittal and his team just left Evelyn’s house so they can process the car. High profile. A woman and her kid. White, blonde, middle class, pretty.”

So, now they knew how the kidnappers planned to get Evelyn’s house cleared out. Amanda had made some discreet calls earlier and found out that the CSU team had at least another three days on the house. They knew that Evelyn’s abductors had some drive-by experience. Obviously, these particular bad guys weren’t afraid of killing innocent bystanders, and they knew exactly the right victim profile to make sure every news station in Atlanta halted programming to cover the events live at the scene.

The most troubling part to Will was that this proved they had no problem murdering a mother and her child.

Amanda said, “Evelyn’s backyard is dug up.”

Maybe it was the heat. Will had the image of a dog looking for a bone.

“She must’ve told them the money was in the backyard. Holes are everywhere.”

That had been one of Will’s early guesses. He saw how stupid it was now. People didn’t hide money like that anymore. Even Evelyn had a bank account. Everything was on a file in a computer these days.

He kept his tone low. “Did Mrs. Levy see them digging?”

Amanda was uncharacteristically silent.

“Amanda?”

“She’s not answering her phone right now, but I’m sure she’s just taking a nap.”

He couldn’t swallow. It wasn’t funny anymore now that it might actually happen.

“She’ll have her alarm set to wake her.”

Will wondered how the old woman was going to hear her alarm if she couldn’t hear a phone. And then he stopped worrying, because he was going to pass out from heat stroke long before that happened.

Amanda said, “I’ve got two friends with me and another old gal in the street. She’ll keep an eye on Faith while she’s on route to the house. Bev’s with the Secret Service. She requisitioned a mail truck.”

Will wished that he were more surprised by this information. If Amanda told him that she called an old gal at the White House and borrowed the nuclear codes, he would just nod.

“Everything’s lining up.” Amanda always got chatty right before a case was about to break, and now was no exception. “Faith is waiting at her house. She went to three different banks this morning to support her safe deposit box story. We had one of the managers hand her the cash at the last drop. All the bills are registered. There’s a tracker in the lining of the duffel.” She was silent for a moment. “I think she’ll be okay. Sara got her evened out for now. I’m worried that she’s not taking care of herself.”

Will was worried about that, too. He’d always thought of Faith as indestructible. She seemed capable of handling any crisis. Maybe that had come from being thrust into motherhood before she was ready. Mrs. Levy’s words about the pregnancy scandal rocking the neighborhood kept coming back to him. Faith obviously still carried some shame. She had blushed when she explained her mother’s words to Sara, though Evelyn was obviously just using what might be her last words to her daughter to lift away some of that guilt. Faith’s entire life had been shattered by her pregnancy. Somehow, she had managed to pick up the pieces. Evelyn had been there to offer her support, but Faith had done all the heavy lifting. Getting her GED. Joining the Academy. Going back to college. Raising her kid. She was one of the strongest women Will had ever met. In some ways, she was even stronger than Amanda.

And she deserved the truth.

Will whispered, “Why did you lie to Faith about her father being a gambler?”

Amanda didn’t answer.

He started to ask her again. “Why did you—”

“Because he was,” Amanda said. “I would think after this morning, you would recognize that there are other things a man can gamble with besides money.”

Will swallowed the last bit of saliva in his mouth. He wasn’t up to Amanda’s riddles right now. “Evelyn was on the take.”

“She made a big mistake a long time ago, and she’s been paying for it ever since.”

He struggled to keep his voice quiet. “She took money—”

“I’ll make you a promise, Will. If we get Evelyn out of this, then she’ll tell you the whole truth about everything. You can have a whole hour with her. She’ll answer any question you have.”

He glanced around the trunk, the slit of light coming through the cracked rubber seal. “And if we don’t?”

“Then it won’t matter, will it?” He heard talking in the background. “I need to go. I’ll call you when I have news.”

Will shifted the rifle again so that he could end the call. He closed his eyes and tried to clear his mind. A bead of sweat glided down his back. There was a stinging sensation near the base of his spine where Sara had scratched him.

He shook his head, trying to clear the image from his mind so that his rifle didn’t file a complaint for sexual assault. Will thought about the rifle sitting in the witness stand, using its trigger to wipe a tear from its scope.

He shook his head again. The heat was really getting to him. He started going over the case to focus his mind. Amanda always wanted him to talk it out from the beginning. It was the best way to see what they had missed. In the heat of the moment, it was hard to put together the pieces. Now, Will went through the last few days step-by-step, examining all the angles, reviewing all the lies and half-truths the bad guys had told them as well as the lies and half-truths Amanda had spun.

As before, Will’s mind kept coming back to Chuck Finn. It was a process of elimination. Chuck was the only man from Evelyn’s former team who was not accounted for. He had been at Healing Winds with Hironobu Kwon. He obviously knew Roger Ling, who called him Chuckleberry Finn.

Roger had also talked about cutting off the head of the snake. There had to be one person in charge. Chuck could very well be that person. He ticked a lot of boxes: He had a personal vendetta against Evelyn Mitchell for turning him in. His life in prison wasn’t a cakewalk. He’d gone from being a well-respected police officer to having to watch his back in the shower room.

The man had probably developed his habit inside the joint, then reveled in it the minute he’d been paroled. Heroin and crack added up to an expensive habit. Even if Chuck was clean now, his money would be long gone. Of all the detectives Will investigated, Chuck was the one who had the least to show for his crimes. He’d shot his wad on luxury travel, seeing every corner of the world in the style of a multimillionaire. The trip to Africa alone had cost around a hundred thousand dollars. The only person Will interviewed who seemed to really be upset about the charges against Chuck Finn was his travel agent.

Will guessed he would find out soon enough whether or not Chuck was really behind all of this. He heard the carport door open, the shuffle of bedroom slippers across the concrete. The trunk cracked open, daylight pouring in like water. He saw Mrs. Levy pad by with a white garbage bag in her hand. There was the clatter of a plastic Herbie Curbie garbage can as she threw away the trash.