Fallen (21 page)

“I want you to tell me about the crime scene.”

He rinsed his plate, then started to wash his hands.

“That’s the cold,” Sara said, and then because it was pointless to tell him that because she was left-handed, she’d switched the hot water valve to the right-hand side, she leaned in and adjusted the temperature for him.

Will opened his hand so that she could squirt some soap onto his palm. “Why do you smell like lemon furniture polish?”

“Why did you let me believe Betty belongs to your wife?”

He lathered the soap in his hands. “There are some mysteries that will never be solved.”

She smiled. “Tell me about the crime scene.”

Will told her what they had found: the upturned chairs and broken baby toys. He segued into Mrs. Levy and Evelyn’s gentleman caller, Mittal’s theory about the blood trail, and Will’s own divergent
theory about the same. By the time he got to the part where they had found the gentleman in the trunk, Sara had managed to get him to sit down at the dining room table.

She asked, “Do you think Boyd Spivey was killed because he talked to Amanda?”

“It’s possible, but not likely.” He explained, “Think about the timing. Amanda called the warden two hours before we got to the prison. The prison doc said a serrated knife was used. That’s not something you can make out of your toothbrush. The camera was disabled the day before, which indicates this was planned at least twenty-four hours in advance.”

“So, it was coordinated. Evelyn is taken. Boyd is killed a few hours later. Are the other men from her team safe?”

“That’s a very good question.” He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket. “Do you mind if I make some calls?”

“Of course not.” She got up from the table to give him some privacy. The frying pan was still warm, so she ran cold water over it. The eggs were seared to the metal. She picked at the slime with her thumbnail before giving up and sticking it on the top rack of the dishwasher.

Sara opened Boyd Spivey’s file again. Will had used a pink star to identify him, perhaps as a joke. The man looked the part of a corrupt cop. His moon-shaped face indicated steroid use. His pupils were barely discernible in his beady eyes. His height and weight were closer to a linebacker’s.

She skimmed the details of Spivey’s arrest while listening with half an ear as Will talked with someone at Valdosta State Prison. They discussed whether or not to move Ben Humphrey and Adam Hopkins into solitary confinement, and agreed that it would be best just to step up their monitoring.

Will’s next call was more complicated. Sara assumed he was talking to someone at GBI headquarters about locating the remaining two men through their parole officers.

She opened Spivey’s file and found his personnel record behind
the arrest report. Sara read through the details of the man’s professional life. Spivey had joined the academy fresh out of high school. He’d gone to night school at Georgia State in order to earn a BA in criminal science. He had three children and a wife who worked as a secretary at the Dutch consulate on the outskirts of the city.

Spivey’s promotion onto Evelyn’s team was a coup. The drug squad was one of the most elite in the country. They had all the best weapons and facilities, and enough high-profile bad guys in the Atlanta area to win them plenty of commendations and press time, which Spivey in particular seemed to enjoy. Will had collected newspaper clippings on the team’s most noteworthy busts. Spivey was front and center of every news story, even though Evelyn was the leader of the team. One photo showed a clean-shaven Spivey with enough ribbons on his chest to decorate a girl’s bicycle.

And it still had not been enough.

“Hey.”

Sara looked up from her reading. Will had finished his phone calls.

“Sorry about that. I wanted to make sure they were safe.”

“It’s fine.” Sara wasn’t going to pretend she hadn’t been listening. “You didn’t call Amanda.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Give me some more files to read.”

“You really don’t have to do this.”

“I want to.” Sara was no longer being kind or trying to spend more time in his company. She wanted to know what had made a man like Boyd Spivey turn into such a lowlife.

Will stared at her long enough to make her think he was going to say no. Then he opened one of the boxes. There was an ancient Walkman nestled in a pile of audio cassette tapes. None of them had labels, unless you counted the colored, star-shaped stickers. Will explained, “These are recordings of all the interviews I had with each suspect. None of them said much in the beginning, but they all ended up making deals to cut time off their sentences.”

“They ratted each other out?”

“Not a chance. They had some information on a couple of local councilmen to trade. It gave them some leverage with the prosecutor.”

Sara couldn’t pretend to be shocked over politicians with drug problems. “How much leverage?”

“Enough to get them talking, not enough to make them give up the big fish.” He opened the next box and started pulling out files. As with everything else, they were color-coded. He handed her the green ones first. “Witness testimony for the prosecution.” He stacked the red ones, which were fewer in number. “Witnesses for the defense.” He took out the blue ones. “High-dollar busts—anything where more than two thousand dollars was seized.”

Sara went right to work, carefully reading the next personnel file. Ben Humphrey had been the same kind of cop as Boyd Spivey: solidly built, good at his job, driven to get press, and, in the end, absolutely corrupt. The same proved to be true of Adam Hopkins and Demarcus Alexander, both of whom were praised for their bravery under fire during a bank robbery, both of whom paid cash for their vacation homes in Florida. Lloyd Crittenden had earned his shield after flipping his cruiser six times during the pursuit of a man who’d shot up a seedy bar with a sawed-off shotgun. He also had a mouth on him. There were two write-ups for insubordination, but Evelyn’s yearly reviews had been nothing if not glowing.

The only outlier was Chuck Finn, who seemed more cerebral than his colleagues. Finn had been in the process of earning his PhD in Italian renaissance art when he was busted. His lifestyle wasn’t as lavish as the others’. He’d used his ill-gotten gains to educate himself and travel the world. He must’ve complemented the team in more subtle ways. Evelyn Mitchell had obviously handpicked each man for a reason. Some were leaders. Some, like Chuck Finn, were obviously followers. They all fit the same general profile: overachievers with a reputation in the department for doing whatever had to be done. Three were white. Two were black. One was part Cherokee Indian. All of them had given up everything for cold, hard cash.

Will flipped over the tape in the Walkman. He sat with his eyes closed, headphones tucked into his ears. She could hear the squeak of the wheels working in the tape player.

The next stack of folders detailed all of the high-dollar busts the team had made, and presumably skimmed from, over the years. Sara had thought these files would be the hardest to get through, but they all turned out to be fairly mundane. Such was the nature of the illegal drug trade that most of the men the team had arrested were either dead or incarcerated when Evelyn’s squad was busted. Only a few were still on the street, but they were obviously active. Sara recognized some of the names from the nightly news. Two looked promising for their own reasons. She set their files aside for Will.

Sara checked the time. It was well past midnight and she had an early shift in the morning. As if on cue, her mouth opened in such a wide yawn that her jaw popped. She glanced at Will to make sure he hadn’t seen. There was still a large stack of folders in front of her. She was only halfway through, but she couldn’t make herself stop if she wanted to. It was like trying to put together all the clues in a mystery novel. The good guys were just as corrupt as the villains. The villains seemed to take the graft as a cost of doing business. Both probably had a long list of justifications for their illegal actions.

She tackled the next pile of folders. The six men on Evelyn’s team had never gone to trial, but they must have been close to starting when the deals were made. The prosecution’s list of potential witnesses had been highly screened, but no more so than those representing the defendants. The names would be familiar to Will, but still, Sara carefully read through each file. After a solid hour of comparing statements, she let herself move on to the last file, which she’d held back as a reward for not giving up.

Evelyn Mitchell’s booking photo showed a trim woman with an unreadable expression on her face. She must have felt humiliated to be booked and processed after spending so much time on the other side of the table. Nothing about her expression gave that away. Her mouth was set in a tight line. Her eyes stared blankly ahead. Her hair
was blonde, like Faith’s, with gray streaking through at the temples. Blue eyes, 138 pounds, five-nine—a little taller than her daughter.

Her career was the sort that garnered pioneer awards from the local Women’s Club, which Captain Mitchell had twice received. Her promotion to detective was preceded by a hostage negotiation that had resulted in the freeing of two children and the death of a serial child molester. Her lieutenant rank came almost ten years after passing the test with the highest grade yet recorded. Her captainship was the result of a gender-bias lawsuit filed with the EEOC.

Evelyn had worked her way up the hard way, paying her dues on the street. She had two degrees, one from Georgia Tech, both with honors. She was a mother, a grandmother, a widow. Her children were in what Sara thought of as service—one to her community, the other to his country. Her husband had worked a solidly respectable job as an insurance salesman. In many ways, she reminded Sara of her own mother. Cathy Linton wasn’t the sort of woman to carry a gun, but she was driven to do what she believed was right for herself and her family.

But she would’ve never taken a bribe. Cathy was painfully honest, the sort of person who would turn around and drive fifty miles back to a tourist trap in Florida because they had given her too much change. Maybe this explained why Faith could work with Will. If someone had told Sara that her mother had stolen almost a million dollars, she would’ve laughed in their face. It was the stuff of fairy tales. Faith didn’t just think he was wrong about her mother. She thought he was deluded.

Will changed out another tape.

Sara motioned for him to take off his headphones. “It doesn’t add up.”

“What doesn’t?”

“You said each team member netted just shy of a million dollars. You’ve accounted for sixty thousand, at best, in the out-of-state account that was opened in Bill Mitchell’s name. Evelyn doesn’t drive a Porsche. She doesn’t have a mistress. Faith and her brother weren’t in
private schools, and the only vacations she took were to Jekyll Island with her grandson.”

“It adds up after today,” he reminded her. “Whoever took Evelyn wants that money.”

“I don’t buy it.”

Most cops defended their cases like they would defend their children. Will just asked, “Why?”

“Gut feeling. Instinct. I just don’t buy it.”

“Faith doesn’t know about the bank account.”

“I won’t tell her.”

He sat up, clasping his hands together. “I’ve been listening to my early interviews with Evelyn. She talks about her husband, mostly.”

“Bill, right? He was an insurance agent.”

“He died a few years before the case was brought against Evelyn.”

Sara braced herself for a widow question, but Will went in another direction.

“The year before Bill died, he was sued by the family of a policyholder for a claim denial. They said Bill filled out some paperwork incorrectly. A father of three had a rare kind of heart defect. The company denied treatment.”

This wasn’t a new story to Sara. “They said it was a pre-existing condition.”

“Only it wasn’t—at least not diagnosed. The family got a lawyer, but it was too late. The guy ended up dying because the wrong box was checked on a form. Three days later, his widow gets a letter in the mail from the insurance company saying that Bill Mitchell, the originating agent, made a mistake on the forms and her husband’s treatment was approved.”

“That’s awful.”

“Bill took it hard. He was a very careful man. His reputation was important to him, important to his work. He got an ulcer worrying about it.”

That wasn’t technically how ulcers worked, but she told him, “Go on.”

“He was eventually cleared. They found the original forms. The insurance company had screwed up, not Bill. Some data entry person had clicked the wrong box. No malfeasance, just incompetence.” Will waved this away. “Anyway, what Evelyn said was that Bill never got past it. It made her crazy because he wouldn’t let it go. They argued about it. She thought he was just feeling sorry for himself. She accused him of being paranoid. He said people at work treated him differently. A lot of people thought the company took the bullet and it was really Bill’s mistake.”

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.”