Fallen (45 page)

Unless Will went in himself. He gripped his rifle. He should go in there. He should do exactly what Faith had done two days before and bust down the door and start shooting.

Amanda’s hand clamped around his wrist. “Don’t you dare leave this room,” she warned him. “I’ll shoot you myself if I have to.”

Will’s teeth started to ache from grinding together. He pulled away from her, banging into a metal lawn chair in the middle of the room. He couldn’t help but take in his surroundings. A high-speed camera was mounted on a tripod, pointing out the window in the door. Roz Levy had covered the glass with black construction paper, leaving a small hole for the lens to peer through. A shotgun was beside the door. No wonder she hadn’t allowed Will into the house. She didn’t want him obstructing her view.

Will looked into the camera viewfinder. The lens was sharper than his scope. He could see sweat dripping down the side of Faith’s face. She was still talking. She was trying to reason with the shooter.

One shooter. One man left standing.

Two bad guys had gone into that house. Both were dressed in black jackets and hats. One had been shot. Will was certain of that, at least. He had watched both kids forcing Evelyn across the lawn and into the house. The one in back had done all of the heavy lifting. He was expendable, just like Ricardo, just like Hironobu Kwon, just like every other man who’d tried to get his hands on Evelyn Mitchell’s money.

But it had never been about the money. Chuck Finn wasn’t pulling the strings. There was no wizard behind the curtain. Here was the head of Roger Ling’s snake: an angry kid with blue eyes and a Tec-9 and some kind of grudge he was intent on carrying out.

Will spoke through clenched teeth. “It’s just him now. This is what he wanted all along.”

“He’ll never spend a dime of that money.”

He struggled to keep his voice down. “He doesn’t care about the money.”

“Then what does he care about?” She grabbed his shoulder and jerked him away from the camera. “Come on, genius. Tell me what he wants.”

Mrs. Levy mumbled, “You know what he wants.” She was loading the cartridges back into her revolver.

“Zip it, Roz. I’ve had enough of you for one day.” Amanda glared at Will. “Enlighten me, Dr. Trent. I’m all ears.”

“He wants to kill her. He wants to kill both of them.” Will finally dropped the biggest I-told-you-so of his life. “And if you had deigned for once to listen to me, none of this would be happening.”

Anger flared in Amanda’s eyes, but she told him, “Go on. Get it all out.”

In the end, it was her acquiescence that sent him over the edge. “I told you we should slow this down. I told you we should figure out what they really wanted before we sent Faith in there with a target on her back.” He closed the space between them, backing her against the washer. “You were so hell-bent on proving your dick is bigger than mine that you didn’t stop to think that I might be right about something.” Will leaned in close enough to feel her breath on his face. “Any blood spilled is on your hands, Amanda.
You
did this to Faith. You did this to all of us.”

Amanda turned her head away from him. She didn’t answer Will, but he could see the truth in her eyes. She knew that he was right.

Her silent acceptance was no consolation, but Will backed off anyway. He had been looming over her like a bully, clutching his rifle so hard that his hands were shaking. Shame crowded out his anger. He made his grip loosen, his jaw relax.

“Ha,” Mrs. Levy laughed. “You gonna take that tone from him, Wag?” She had re-loaded the Python. She snapped the cylinder home, telling Will, “That’s what we used to call her—Wag, because she shut up and wagged her tail like a dog every time a man was around.”

Will was shocked by her words, mostly because he couldn’t imagine anything that could be further from the truth.

Mrs. Levy hefted the Python in her hands. She told Amanda, “Talk about swinging your dick around. You could’ve stopped this twenty years ago if you’d’a had the balls to force Ev to—”

Amanda hissed, “Spare me your sanctimonious bullshit, Roz. If it wasn’t for me standing between you and your cookie recipe, you’d be on death row right now.”

“I warned you when it happened. You don’t mix pigeons and bluebirds.”

“You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. You never have.” Amanda barked more orders into the walkie-talkie. Her voice shook, which worried Will as much as anything that had happened in the last ten minutes. “Take out that black van. I want all four tires down. Clear out this block as quickly as you can. Call in APD to gumshoe it and give me an ETA on SWAT within the next five minutes or don’t bother showing up for work tomorrow.”

Will put his eye back to the camera. Faith was still talking. At least, her mouth was moving. Her arms were crossed over her chest. Will found his mind working through Roz Levy’s mildly racist choice of words: pigeons and bluebirds. Mrs. Levy was full of old adages, like the one she’d told him two days ago: A woman can run faster with her skirt up than a man can with his pants down. It was a strange thing to say about a pregnant fourteen-year-old girl who’d had a baby by the age of fifteen.

Will asked the old woman, “Why didn’t you take that Python over to Evelyn’s when you heard the shots the other day?”

She looked down at the gun. There was a bit of petulance in her tone. “Ev told me not to come over no matter what.”

Will hadn’t pegged her as an order-follower, but maybe her bark was worse than her bite. Poisoning was a coward’s choice, coldblooded murder without the inconvenience of getting your hands dirty. He tried to push her toward the truth. “But you heard gunshots.”

“I assumed Evelyn was taking care of some old business.” She jabbed her thumb Amanda’s way. “Notice she didn’t call
her
for help.”

Amanda rested her chin on the walkie-talkie. She was watching Will like she was waiting for a pot to boil. She was always ten steps ahead of him. She knew where his brain was going even before he did.

She told Mrs. Levy, “I knew Evelyn was seeing Hector again. She told me months ago.”

“Like hell she did. You were as shocked to see that picture as I was when I took it.”

“Does it matter, Roz? After all this time, does it really matter?”

The old woman seemed to think that it did. “It’s not my fault she was willing to gamble away her life for ten seconds of pleasure.”

Amanda laughed, incredulous. “Ten seconds? No wonder you murdered your husband. Is that all the old bastard could give you—ten seconds?” Her tone was cutting, rueful, the same one she’d used on the phone half an hour ago.

There are other things a man can gamble with besides money
.

She was talking about Will and Sara. She was talking about the inherent risks that came with love.

Will turned back to the camera. Faith was still talking. Had Roz Levy set up the camera today, or had it been there all along? The view into the house was clear. What would she have seen two days ago? Evelyn making sandwiches. Hector Ortiz carrying in groceries. They were comfortable around each other. They had a history. A history that Evelyn was trying to hide from her family.

Pigeons and bluebirds.

Will looked up from the camera. “He’s Evelyn’s son.” Both women stopped talking.

Will said, “Hector’s the father, right? That’s the mistake Evelyn made twenty years ago. She had a son by Hector Ortiz. Was the bank account used to help support him?”

Amanda sighed. “I told you, the account doesn’t matter.”

Roz made a disgusted sound. “Well, I’m not going to keep it a secret anymore.” She gleefully told Will, “She couldn’t very well raise a brown baby, could she? I always said just switch it with Faith’s. That girl was wild. No one would’ve been surprised to hear she was running around with some wetback.” She cackled at Will’s stunned expression. “Fast-forward twenty years and she did it anyway.”

“Nineteen years,” Amanda corrected. “Jeremy’s nineteen.” She looked around the room, finally realizing what Roz Levy had been up to. “Christ,” she mumbled. “We should’ve charged you for a front-row seat.”

Will asked, “What happened?”

Amanda pressed her eye to the camera. “Evelyn gave the baby to a girl we worked with. Sandra Espisito. She was married to another cop. They couldn’t have children of their own.”

“Can we get them here? Maybe they could talk to him.”

She shook her head. “Paul was shot in the line of duty ten years ago. Sandra died last year. Leukemia. She needed a bone marrow transplant. She had to explain to her son why he couldn’t be a donor.” She turned back to Will. “He looked into his father’s side of the family first. I suppose Sandra thought it might be easier. Hector invited him to a get-together. That’s how he met Ricardo. That’s how he got mixed up in Los Texicanos. He started using drugs. Pot at first, then heroin, then there was no looking back. Evelyn and Hector had him in and out of rehab.”

Will felt a burning in his gut. “Healing Winds?”

She nodded her head. “This last time, at least.”

“He met Chuck Finn there.”

“I don’t know the details, but I imagine so.”

If Will had known this earlier, there was no way he would’ve let Faith go into that house alone. He would’ve tied her up. He would’ve shoved Amanda inside Mrs. Levy’s trunk. He would’ve called in SWAT from every police force in the country.

Amanda said, “Go ahead and get it out. I deserve it.”

Will had already wasted enough time yelling at her. “What does the back of the house look like?”

She couldn’t process the question. “What?”

“The back of the house. Faith is standing in the foyer. She’s looking into the family room. The whole back wall is windows and a sliding glass door. You said the curtains were pulled closed. They’re thin cotton. Can you see anything like a shadow or movement?”

“No. It’s too bright outside and the lights are off inside.”

“When is SWAT supposed to be here?”

“What are you thinking?”

“We need to get the helicopter.”

For once, she didn’t ask questions. She got on the walkie-talkie and patched directly into the SWAT commander.

Will pressed his eye to the camera as Amanda negotiated the request. Faith was still standing in the foyer. She wasn’t talking anymore. “Is there some reason you didn’t tell me that Evelyn had a love child with Hector Ortiz?”

“Because it would kill Faith,” Amanda told him, seemingly unaware of the irony. Her next words were more directed toward Roz. “And Evelyn didn’t want anyone to know, because it’s nobody’s damn business.”

Will took out his cell phone.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m calling Faith.”

F
AITH’S CELL PHONE VIBRATED IN HER POCKET. SHE DIDN’T
move. She just stared at her mother. Tears were streaming down Evelyn’s face.

“It’s all right,” Faith told her. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Doesn’t matter?” the man echoed. “Thanks a lot, sis.”

Faith flinched at the word. How blind she’d been. How selfish. It all made so much sense now. The extended leave her mother had taken from work. Her father’s sudden business trips and angry silences. Evelyn’s expanding waistline when she’d never been overweight before or since. The vacation she had taken with Amanda the month before Jeremy was born. Faith had been furious when, after nearly eight months of shared imprisonment, Evelyn had announced that she was going to drive to the beach for a week of fun with Aunt Mandy. Faith had felt betrayed. She had felt abandoned. And now, she felt so stupid.

Remember our time together before Jeremy—

That’s what Evelyn had said in the video. She was giving Faith a clue, not strolling down memory lane.
Remember that time. Try to recall what was really going on—not just with you, but with me
.

Back then, Faith had been so wrapped up in herself that all she cared about was her own misery, her own shattered life, her own lost opportunities. Looking back now, she saw the obvious signs. Evelyn wouldn’t go outside during the daytime. She wouldn’t answer the door. She woke at the crack of dawn to shop at a grocery store on the other side of town. The phone rang plenty of times, but Evelyn refused
to answer it. She isolated herself. She cut herself off from the world. She slept on the couch instead of in her marital bed. Except for Amanda, she talked to no one, saw no one, reached out to no one. And all the while, she had given Faith the one thing every child secretly longs for: every ounce of her attention.

And then everything had changed when Evelyn returned from her vacation with Amanda. She called it “my time away,” like she’d gone down to the springs to take the cure. She was different, happier, as if a burden had been lifted from her shoulders. Faith had seethed with jealousy to find her mother so altered, so seemingly carefree. Before the trip, they had luxuriated in their shared misery, and Faith could not understand how her mother could so easily let it go.

Faith was weeks from delivering Jeremy, but Evelyn’s life went back to normal—or as normal as could be expected with a sulky, spoiled, extremely pregnant teenager in the house. She started going back to their regular grocery store. She had lost a few pounds during her time away, and she set about taking off the rest with strict diet and exercise. She forced Faith to take long walks after lunch and eventually started calling old friends, her tone of voice indicating that she’d survived the worst of it and, now that the end was near, was ready to jump back into the fray. Her pillow was no longer on the couch, but back on the bed she shared with her husband. She let the city know she’d be returning after Jeremy was born. She had her hair cut in a new, short style. In general, she started acting like her old self. Or at least a new version of her old self.

There had been cracks in the happy façade, something Faith only now realized.

For the first few weeks of Jeremy’s life, Evelyn cried every time she held him. Faith could remember finding her mother sobbing in the rocking chair, holding Jeremy so close that she was afraid the baby couldn’t breathe. As with everything, Faith was jealous of the bond between them. She had sought ways to punish her mother, keeping Jeremy away from her. Staying out late with him. Taking
him to the mall or the movies or any number of places a baby didn’t belong—just to be spiteful. Just to be mean.