Karin Slaughter - Fallen

She paused again for breath. Will could see that the angle of the sun had changed so that it was shining into her eyes. He got up and tilted down the blinds.

She breathed out an exhausted-sounding “Thank you.”

“Do you want to rest?”

“I want to finish this, and then I never want to talk about it again.”

That sounded exactly like the kind of thing Faith would say. Will knew better than to argue. He sat down in the chair, waiting for her to continue.

Evelyn didn’t start back immediately. For a full minute, she just lay there, her chest rising and falling as she breathed.

Finally, she said, “For about three years after he was born, around once a month, I’d tell Bill and the kids I had to go do paperwork at the office. Usually it was a Sunday while they were at church, because it was easier.” She coughed. Her voice was getting raspier. “But I’d really go to the park up the street, and I would sit on that bench by myself, or if it was raining, I would sit in my car, and I would just cry and cry. Not even Mandy knew about it. I’ve shared everything in my life with her, but not this.” She gave Will a meaningful look. “You don’t know how hard it was for her with Kenny. She couldn’t give him children, and he wanted a family. His own blood. He was very insistent about that. Telling her about how I longed for Caleb would’ve been cruel.”

Will felt a little squeamish hearing something so personal about his boss. He tried to get Evelyn back to the day she’d been abducted. “Caleb tricked you to get you back into the house. That’s why you didn’t take Emma and leave?”

She was silent long enough to let him know that she was aware he was changing the subject. “You can’t fool someone who doesn’t want to be fooled.”

Will wasn’t so sure about that, but he nodded anyway.

“I ran into the kitchen. There was Benny Choo. Of course it was Benny Choo. Carnage everywhere. He was in his element. We had a bit of a struggle, which he won, mostly because he had help. He wanted the money. Everybody wanted the money. The place was filled with angry men demanding money.”

“Except Caleb,” Will guessed.

“Except Caleb,” she confirmed. “He just sat on the couch eating sandwich meat right out of the bag, watching them run around and tear apart my house. I think he loved it. I think it was the most fun he had ever had in his life—watching me sitting there, scared to death, while his friends ran around like chickens with their heads cut off looking for something that he knew wasn’t there.”

“What about the A on the bottom of the chair?”

She gave a stuttered laugh. “That was an arrow. I assumed that the crime scene techs would find it. I wanted them to know that the main culprit was sitting on the couch. Caleb must’ve left hair, fiber, fingerprints.”

Will wondered if Ahbidi Mittal’s team would’ve figured out the message. Will had certainly botched the job.

She asked, “Tell me, did they really dig up my backyard?”

Will realized she meant Caleb’s crew, not Ahbidi Mittal’s. “You told them the money was there?”

She chuckled, probably thinking about the boys running around in the dark with shovels. “I thought it seemed plausible, inasmuch as it’s happened in the movies.”

Will didn’t confess that he’d seen too many of those movies himself.

Abruptly, Evelyn’s demeanor changed. She looked back at the ceiling. The tiles were stained brown. It wasn’t much of a view. Will recognized an avoidance technique when he saw one.

She whispered, “I keep struggling with the fact that I killed my son.”

“He was going to kill you. And Faith. He killed countless more people.”

She kept staring at the tiles. “Mandy told me not to talk to you about the shooting.”

Will knew that Caleb Espisito’s death was being reviewed by the police, but he assumed Evelyn would be cleared in a few days, just as Faith had been. “It was self-defense.”

She let out a slow breath. “I think he wanted me to make a choice between the two of them. Between him and Faith.”

Will didn’t confirm that he shared this opinion.

“He could forgive his father. Hector had a nice life, but he never married and he never had another child. But when Caleb saw what I had—what I had struggled to build back with Bill and the children—he resented the hell out of it. He hated me so much.” Her eyes glistened with tears. “I remember one of the last things I told him before all of this happened was that holding on to that kind of grudge was like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.”

Will guessed this was the kind of advice mothers gave their sons. Unfortunately, he’d had to learn that lesson the hard way. “Do you remember anything about where they kept you?”

“It was a warehouse. Abandoned, I’m sure. I yelled enough to wake the dead.”

“How many men were there?”

“At the house? I think eight. There were only three at the warehouse, counting Caleb. Juan and David were their names. They tried not to use them, but they weren’t very sophisticated, if you get my meaning.”

Juan Castillo had been shot outside of Julia Ling’s warehouse. David Herrera had been shot in cold blood right in front of Evelyn and Faith. Benny Choo, Hironobu Kwon, Hector Ortiz, Ricardo Ortiz. In all, eight people were dead now because of one man’s twenty-year grudge.

Evelyn must have been thinking the same thing. Her voice took on a desperate tone. “Do you think I could’ve stopped him?”

Short of killing Caleb before it happened, Will didn’t see how. “Hate like that doesn’t burn out.”

She didn’t seem comforted. “Bill thought what happened with Faith was my fault. He said that because I was with Hector, I took my eye off my children. Maybe he was right.”

“Faith is pretty determined to do her own thing.”

“You think she takes after me.” She waved away Will’s protest. “No, she is exactly like me. God help her.”

“There are worse things.”

“Hm.” Evelyn’s eyes closed again. Will stared at her face. Her features were almost obscured by the swelling. She was about Amanda’s age, the same kind of cop, but not the same kind of woman. Will hadn’t spent a lot of his life feeling envious of other people’s parents. It was a waste of time to think about what could’ve been. But talking to Evelyn Mitchell, knowing the sacrifices she had made for all of her children, Will couldn’t help but feel a little jealous.

He stood, thinking he should let her sleep, but Evelyn’s eyes opened. She pointed to the pitcher of water. Will helped her drink from the straw. She wasn’t as thirsty this time, but Will saw her hand clench around the morphine trigger.

“Thank you.” She put her head back on the pillow. She pressed the trigger again.

Will didn’t take his seat. “Can I get you anything else before I leave?”

She either didn’t hear the question or chose to ignore it. “I know Mandy is hard on you, but it’s because she loves you.”

Will felt his eyebrows shoot up. The morphine had started working fast.

“She’s so proud of you, Will. She brags about you all the time. How smart you are. How strong. You’re like a son to her. In more ways than you know.”

He felt the need to glance over his shoulder in case Amanda was laughing from the doorway.

Evelyn said, “She should be proud of you. You’re a good man. And I wouldn’t want my daughter partnered with anyone else. I was so happy when you two got together. I only wish it had turned into something more.”

He checked the door one more time. No Amanda. When he turned back around, Evelyn was staring at him.