Fallen (6 page)

Sara’s hands were sweating so badly she could barely turn the doorknob. She cringed as she rushed outside, thinking Angie would come running after her or worse, call her out on the lie.

The truth was that Sara had never seen a scar on Will’s arm, because she’d never seen his bare arm. He always wore long-sleeved shirts. He never rolled up the sleeves or unbuttoned the cuffs. She had made an educated guess. Will was left-handed. If he’d tried to kill himself while his hateful wife was cheering him on, he’d sliced open his right arm, not his left.

W
ILL PICKED AT THE COLLAR OF HIS SHIRT. THE MOBILE
command vehicle was scorching hot, filled with so many uniforms and suits that there was hardly room to breathe. The noise was equally unbearable. Phones were ringing. BlackBerries chirped. Computer monitors played live feeds from all three of the local news stations. Adding to the cacophony was Amanda Wagner, who had been yelling at the three zone commanders on scene for the last fifteen minutes. The Atlanta chief of police was on his way. So was the director of the GBI. The jurisdictional pissing contest was only going to intensify.

Meanwhile, no one was really working the case.

Will pushed open the door. Sunlight sliced through the dark interior. Amanda stopped yelling for a few seconds, then revved back up as Will closed the door. He took a deep breath of fresh air, scanning the scene from the top of the metal steps. Instead of the usual rapid activity that followed a shocking crime, everyone was milling around waiting for orders. Detectives sat in their unmarked cars checking their email. Six cruisers blocked each end of the street. Neighbors gawked from their front porches. The Atlanta PD crime scene unit van was here. The GBI crime scene unit van was here. The fire truck was still angled in front of the Mitchell house. The EMTs were smoking on the back bumper of their ambulance. Various uniformed officers leaned against emergency vehicles, shooting the breeze, pretending not to care about what was going on in the command center.

Still, they all managed to glare at Will as he stepped down onto
the street. Scowls went around. Arms were crossed. A curse was muttered. Someone spat on the sidewalk.

Will didn’t have many friends in the Atlanta Police Department.

The sound of chopping blades filled the air. Will looked up. Two news copters hovered just above the crime scene. They wouldn’t be alone for long. Every ten minutes, a black SWAT MD 500 swept by. An infrared camera was mounted on the nose of the mosquito-like helicopter. The camera could see through dense forests and rooftops, picking out warm-blooded bodies, directing searchers to the bad guys. It was an amazing device, but completely useless in the residential area, where at any given moment there were thousands of people milling around not committing crimes. At best, they were probably picking up the glowing red forms of people sitting on their couches watching their televisions, which in turn showed the SWAT copter hovering overhead.

Will checked the crowd for Sara, wishing she would show up. If he’d been thinking at all when Amanda pulled up on the street, he would’ve told Sara to come with them. He should have anticipated Faith would need help. She was his partner. Will was supposed to take care of her, to have her back. Now, it might be too late.

He wasn’t sure how Amanda had heard about the shootings so quickly, but they were on scene within fifteen minutes of the last shot being fired. The locksmith was just opening the shed door when they rolled up. Faith had been pacing back and forth like a caged animal while she waited for her child to be freed, and she kept pacing long after Emma was in her arms. As soon as she saw Will, Faith started babbling, talking about her backyard neighbor, Mrs. Johnson, her brother Zeke, the shed her father had built when she was little, and a million other things that made absolutely no sense the way she was stringing them together.

At first, Will thought that Faith was in shock, but shocked people don’t pace around squawking like lunatics. Their blood pressure drops so quickly they generally can’t stand. They pant like dogs.
They stare blankly at the space in front of them. They talk slowly, not so fast you can barely understand them. Something else was at play, but Will didn’t know if it was some kind of mental break or Faith’s diabetes or what.

Making it worse, by that point, there were twenty cops standing around who knew exactly what a person was supposed to look like when an awful thing happened. Faith didn’t fit the profile. She wasn’t crying. She wasn’t shaking. She wasn’t angry. She was just crazy, totally out of her mind. Nothing she said had a bit of reason. She couldn’t tell them what had happened. She couldn’t walk them through the scene and explain the bloodshed. She was worse than useless, because the answers to all their questions were locked up inside of her head.

And that was when one of the cops had mumbled something about her being under the influence. And then someone else volunteered to get the Breathalyzer out of his car.

Quickly, Amanda had intervened. She dragged Faith across the front lawn, banged on the neighbor’s door—not Mrs. Johnson, who had a dead man in her backyard, but an old woman named Mrs. Levy—and practically ordered her to give Faith a place to collect herself.

By then, the mobile command center had pulled up. Amanda had gone straight into the back of the vehicle and started demanding this case be turned over to the GBI immediately. She knew that she wouldn’t win the territorial fight with the zone commanders. By law, the GBI could not simply waltz in and take over a case. The local medical examiner, district attorney, or police chief generally asked the state for assistance, and usually that only happened when they’d failed to make a case on their own or didn’t want to spend the money or manpower tracking down leads. The only person who could yank this case from Atlanta was the governor, and any politician in the state could tell you that crossing the capital city was a very bad idea. Amanda’s screaming tactics were for show. She didn’t yell when she was angry. Her voice got low, more like a rumble, and you had to
strain your ears to hear the insults flying out of her mouth. She was trying to buy them time. Trying to buy Faith time.

In the eyes of the Atlanta PD brass, Faith wasn’t a cop anymore. She was a witness. She was a suspect. She was a person of interest, and they wanted to talk to her about the men she had killed and why her mother had been kidnapped. The Atlanta police weren’t a bunch of yokels. They were one of the best forces in the country. But for Amanda yelling at them, they would’ve had Faith at the station by now, drilling her like they were working a terrorist at Gitmo.

Will couldn’t blame them. Sherwood Forest was not the kind of neighborhood where you’d expect to find a shootout in the middle of a beautiful Saturday afternoon. Ansley Park was a stone’s throw away. Cast the net a bit farther and you’d encompass about eighty percent of the city’s real estate tax revenue—multimillion-dollar homes with tennis courts and au pair suites. Rich people weren’t the type of folks who let bad things happen without assigning blame. Someone would have to pay for this. If Amanda couldn’t find a way to prevent it, that person would probably end up being Faith. And Will was at a loss as to what to do.

Detective Leo Donnelly walked up, his feet shuffling along the asphalt. He had a cigarette dangling out of his mouth. Smoke twined into his eye. He winked to keep it out. “I’d hate to hear that bitch in bed.”

He meant Amanda. She was still screaming, though her words were hard to make out through the closed doors.

Leo continued, “I dunno. Might be worth it. The old ones are tigers when you get ’em in the sack.”

Will suppressed a shudder, not because Amanda was in her mid-sixties, but because Leo was clearly considering the possibilities.

“She knows she’s not going to win this, right?”

Will leaned against one of the police cruisers. Leo had been Faith’s partner for six years, but she had done most of the heavy lifting. At forty-eight, Leo wasn’t an old man by any stretch, but he had aged in cop years. His skin was yellow from an overburdened liver. He’d
beaten prostate cancer but the treatment had taken its toll. He was an okay guy but he was lazy, which was perfectly fine if you were a used-car salesman but incredibly dangerous if you were a cop. Faith counted herself lucky that she’d gotten away from the man.

Leo said, “Haven’t seen a clusterfuck like this since the last time I worked a case with you.”

Will took in the scene: the hum of the command center’s generator mixing with the metallic whir coming from the television vans. The cops standing around with their hands resting on their belts. The firemen shooting the breeze with each other. The complete and total lack of activity. He decided he should talk to Leo. “That so?”

“What’s your CSU guy’s name—Charlie?” Leo nodded to himself. “He managed to talk his way into the house.”

Special Agent Charlie Reed was head of the GBI’s crime scene unit and would do anything to get onto a crime scene. “He’s good at his job.”

“Lots of us are.” Leo leaned against the cruiser a couple of feet down from Will. He made a puffing noise with his mouth. “Never known Faith to be a drinker.”

“She’s not.”

“Pills?”

Will gave him the nastiest look he could muster.

“You know I gotta talk to her.”

Will couldn’t keep the derision out of his tone. “You’re in charge of this case?”

“Try not to sound so confident.”

Will didn’t waste his breath. Leo’s time in the sun would be shortlived. As soon as the Atlanta chief of police came onto the scene, he’d kick Leo to the curb and put together his own team. Leo would be lucky if they let him fetch coffee.

“Seriously,” Leo said. “Faith doin’ all right?”

“She’s fine.”

He took a last drag on his cigarette and dropped it to the ground.
“Neighbor’s freaked out. Almost watched her granddaughters get shot down.”

Will tried to keep his expression blank. He knew a little bit about what had happened here, but not much. The guys from the tactical team had gotten bored after standing around for five minutes with nothing to break. The details of the crime scene had leaked like a rusty pipe. Two bodies in the house. One in the neighbor’s backyard. Two guns on Faith—her Glock and a Smith and Wesson. Her shotgun on the floor of the bedroom. Will had stopped listening when he’d overheard a cop who’d just arrived on scene saying that he’d seen Faith with his own two eyes and she was as high as a kite.

For his part, Will only knew two things to be true: he had no idea what had happened in that house, and Faith had done the right thing.

Leo cleared his throat and spit a chunk of phlegm onto the asphalt. “So, Granny Johnson said she heard some screaming in the backyard. She looks out the kitchen window and sees the shooter—Mexican guy—aiming down on her grandkids. He squeezes off a shot, takes out some bricks on the house. Faith runs up to the fence and shoots him dead. Saves the little girls.”

Will felt some of the weight lift off his chest. “Lucky for them Faith was there.”

“Lucky for Faith the neighbor’s a good witness.”

Will started to stick his hands in his pockets, too late remembering he was still in his running shorts.

Leo chuckled. “I like these new uniforms. You supposed to be the cop in the Village People?”

Will crossed his arms over his chest.

“Los Texicanos,” Leo said. “The guy in the backyard. He’s affiliated, got tats all over his chest and arms.”

“What about the other two?”

“Asian. Both of ’em. No idea if they’re ganged up. Don’t look like it. Don’t dress like it. Bodies are clean—no tats.” Leo took his time lighting another cigarette. He blew out a steady stream of smoke before
continuing. “Scott Shepherd over there—” He nodded toward a beefy-looking young man in tactical gear. “Says he had his team suited up outside the house waiting for backup. They heard a gun go off. It’s a possible hostage situation, right? One officer inside, two if you count Evelyn. Imminent danger. So, they breech the door.” Leo took another hit off his cigarette. “Scott sees Faith standing there in the hall, feet spread, Glock out in front of her. She sees Scott, doesn’t say a word, just takes off into the bedroom. They go in after her and find a dead guy laid out on the carpet.” Leo touched his finger to his forehead. “She nailed him right between the eyes.”

“Must’ve had a good reason.”

“Wish I knew that reason. He didn’t have a gun in his hand.”

“The other guy did. The one who ran into the backyard and shot at the kids.”

“You’re right. He did.”

“Fingerprints?”

“We’re working on it.”

Will would’ve bet his house that they would find two sets of prints—one from the Asian and one from the Mexican. “Where’d you find the third guy?”

“Laundry room. Bullet to the head. Nasty shot, took off half his skull. We dug a thirty-eight out of the wall.”

Faith’s Glock was a .40-caliber. “Does the S&W take a thirty-eight?”

“Yep.” Leo pushed away from the car. “Nothing on the mother yet. We got teams out looking for her. She ran the drug squad, but I think you already know that, Ratatouille.”

Will forced his jaw not to clench. About the only thing Leo was really good at was pushing buttons. This was the reason for the nasty stares and hostile stances from Will’s brothers in blue. Every cop out here knew that Will Trent was the reason Evelyn Mitchell had been forced into retirement. One of the most loathsome jobs he had at the GBI was investigating corrupt cops. Four years ago, he’d made a solid
case against Evelyn’s narcotics squad. Six detectives had gone to prison for skimming money off drug busts and taking cash to look the other way, but Captain Mitchell had walked away scot-free, her pension and most of her good reputation intact.

Leo said, “Tell the kid I can give her ten more minutes, tops, but then she’s gotta get her shit together and start talking to me.” He leaned in closer. “I heard the dispatch call. She was told to stay outta the house. She needs to be real clear on why she went in anyway.”