CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

8:48 PM

Betty’s toenails clicked along the road as Will took her for her evening walk. He had tried to take the dog running their first day together, but ended up having to carry her most of the way. It had unnerved him the way she had adapted to the up and down jogging of her body, tongue lolling out, back legs tucked neatly into the palm of Will’s hand, body pressed close to his chest as he tried to ignore the strange looks people were giving him.

Poncey-Highlands was a middle-of-the-road kind of neighborhood with its mixture of struggling artists, gay men and the occasional homeless person. From his back porch, Will could see the Carter Center, which housed President Carter’s library, and Piedmont Park was a short jog away. On the weekends, Ponce de Leon took him straight up to Stone Mountain Park, where he rode his bike, hiked the trails or just sat back and enjoyed the sunrise as it peered over the largest chunk of exposed granite in North America.

As beautiful as the north Georgia mountains had been, Will had missed the familiarity of home, knowing instinctively where everything was, the areas that were safe, the restaurants that looked shady on the outside but had the best food and service in the city. He loved the diversity, the fact that there was a Mennonite church across from a rainbow-colored hippie commune at the end of his street. The way the homeless people went through your trash and yelled at you if there wasn’t anything good inside. Atlanta had always been his town, and if Amanda Wagner knew how happy he was to be back, she would have jerked him up to the hills faster than he could say, “chicken-fried steak.”

“Hiya.” A passing jogger flirted, his cut chest glistening in the evening moonlight. Having lived in a city with a large gay population for his entire life, Will had learned to take these casual passes as flattering rather than a challenge to his manhood. Of course, walking a six-pound dog on a hot pink leash (it was the only one he could find that was long enough) was asking for attention no matter where you lived.

Will smiled to himself at the thought of how ridiculous he must look, but his smile didn’t last long as his brain returned to the topic that had been plaguing his thoughts for most of the day.

He was stalled in the case and the more he thought about it, the more his initial bad feelings about Michael Ormewood were amplified. The detective came off as an okay guy when he was right in front of you, but closer examination showed some flaws, the biggest being that he had used his job to force women to have sex with him. That was the one detail Will could not get past. Prostitutes weren’t walking the streets for the great sex and stimulating conversation. They took money, and Will guessed you could construe that as consent, but there hadn’t been any money exchanged when Michael had done it. He had used the power the badge gave him to control the women. That was rape in Will’s mind.

Yet Will was having a hard time thinking of the guy he’d spent most of the last two days with as a rapist. Father, husband, seemingly a well-respected cop, sure. But rapist? There were definitely two sides to the man, and the more Will thought about it, the less he was certain about either one of them.

Working with the GBI, most of Will’s time was consumed with chasing down horrendous criminals, but if his stint in the mountains had taught him one thing, it was that people were very seldom either really good or really bad. In Blue Ridge, where poverty and plant closings and a strike at the local mine had practically crippled the small mountain community, the line between right and wrong had been blurred. Will had learned a lot up there, not just about human nature but about himself.

Region eight of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation was the largest district in the state, serving fourteen counties and stretching all the way to the Tennessee as well as North Carolina state line. The men Will met at the northwest Georgia field office were pretty callous about the locals, as if they were above the people they were meant to be serving. Will’s chief was called “Yip” Gomez for reasons Will had never been able to determine, and the man had jokingly told Will the first time they met to give up on trying to enjoy any of the local talent. “I’ve already had all the ladies who still have their own teeth,” he had laughed. “Slim pickin’s, my boy. Slim pickin’s.”

Will’s face must have betrayed his thoughts—Angie always said he had more estrogen than was good for him—because Yip had given Will every crap assignment in the district after that. He’d been totally excluded from the sting operation that resulted in the biggest bust in the office’s history. Working with the locals, Yip had helped break up a cockfighting enterprise that reached into three different states and twelve counties. The case had implicated a neighboring town’s mayor, who’d had his own La-Z-Boy ringside so he wouldn’t miss any of the action. Even though the tip-off had come from a bunch of angry wives who were pissed off at their husbands for gambling away their paychecks, that still did not take away from the glory of the sting operation. Yip and the boys had celebrated at the Blue Havana on 515 that night while Will had been stuck in his car, casing an abandoned chicken farm that had reportedly been turned into a meth lab. Not that he wanted to drink with these men, but the point was he hadn’t been invited.

Though he was always left out of the more glamorous busts, Will liked to think that what he did up in the mountains was important work. Meth was a nasty drug. It turned people into subhumans, made them leave their kids on the side of the road, open their legs for anything that would get them high. Will had seen plenty of lives ruined by meth well before he got to Blue Ridge. He didn’t need a primer to help him want to break apart every lab in his jurisdiction. The work was dangerous. The so-called chemists who made the compound were taking their lives into their own hands. A single spark could ignite the whole building. Dust from the manufacturing process could clog up your lungs like Play-Doh. Haz Mat had to be called in to clear the area before Will could go in and collect any evidence. The cleanup on these labs alone was bankrupting the local police and sheriff’s departments and the state wasn’t about to lend a helping hand.

Will sometimes thought that for a certain type of mountain dweller, meth was the new moonshine, a product they trafficked in to keep their kids clothed and fed. He had a hard time reconciling the junkies he saw on the streets of Atlanta with some of the everyday people brewing meth up in the hills. Not that Will was saying they were angels. Some of them were awful, just plain trash doing whatever they could to finance their habit. Others weren’t so black and white. Will would see them in the grocery store or at the local pizza place or coming out of church with their kids on Sundays. They generally didn’t partake of the product. It was a job for them, a way—to some, the only way they saw—to make money. People were dying, lives were being ruined, but that wasn’t their business.

Will didn’t know how they could section things off so neatly, but in Michael Ormewood, he saw the same tendency. The detective did his job—by all accounts he did it well—but then there was this other part of him that made him hurt the very people he was supposed to be helping.

Betty made some business under a bush and Will leaned down, using a baggie to scoop it up. He dropped the bag into a trashcan as he made his way back toward the house. Will caught himself glancing into his neighbor’s windows as he passed, wondering when the old woman would be back. As if she sensed his thoughts, Betty pulled at her leash, tugging him toward the driveway.

“All right,” he soothed, using his key to open the front door. He knelt to unsnap her leash, and she skittered across the room, jumping onto the couch and ensconcing herself on the pillows. Every morning before he left for work, he propped the pillows up on the back of the couch and every evening Betty had managed to push them down to make herself a bed. He could have called it a throne, but that was an embarrassing thought for a grown man to have about a little dog.

Will went to his room and took off his jacket. He was unbuttoning his vest when the phone rang. At first, he didn’t recognize the high-pitched voice on the phone.

“Slow down,” Will said. “Who is this?”

“It’s Cedric,” the boy cried. “Jasmine’s gone.”

Cedric must have been waiting for Will, because the front door opened and the boy ran out of building nine as soon as Will pulled his car into the lot.

“You gotta do something,” the boy demanded. His face was puffy from crying. Gone was the wannabe gangster from that morning. He was a scared little kid who was worried about his sister.

“It’s going to be okay,” Will told him, knowing the words meant nothing but feeling compelled to say them.

“Come on.” Cedric took his hand and dragged him toward the building.

Will followed the boy up the three flights of stairs. On the landing, he was about to ask Cedric what was going on, but then he saw the old woman standing in the doorway.

She was in a faded purple housedress with matching socks that slouched down around her thick ankles. A cane was in one hand, a cordless telephone in the other. She wore glasses with black plastic rims and her hair stood out in disarray. A frown creased her face.

“Cedric,” she said, her deep tone resonating through the long hallway. “What are you doing with that man?”

“He a cop, Granny. He gonna help.”

“He is a cop,” the old woman corrected, sounding like a schoolteacher. “And I doubt that very seriously.”

Will was still holding Cedric’s hand, but he used his other one to find the badge in his pocket. He took a step forward to show it to the woman. “Cedric told me that your granddaughter is missing.”

She scrutinized the badge and the identification underneath. “You don’t look much like a cop.”

“No,” Will admitted, tucking his ID back into his pocket. “I’m trying to learn to take that as a compliment.”

“Cedric,” the woman snapped. “Go clean your room.”

“But, Gran—” She stopped him with a sharp look that sent him running.

The old woman opened the door wider and Will saw that her apartment was an exact duplicate of Aleesha Monroe’s. The couch obviously served as a bed; a pillow, sheets and a blanket were neatly folded on the end. Two wingback chairs flanked the couch, slipcovers hiding obvious flaws underneath. The kitchen was clean but cluttered, dishes drying on a rack. Several pairs of underclothes hung from a laundry stand that was tucked into the corner. The bathroom door was open but the bedroom door was closed, a large poster of SpongeBob SquarePants taped to the outside.

“I’m Eleanor Allison,” she informed him, hobbling toward the chair by the window. “I suppose you want to sit down?”

Will realized that his mouth had dropped open. Books were everywhere—some packed into flimsy-looking cases that looked ready to fall over, more stacked around the floor in neat piles.

“Are you surprised that a black woman can read?”

“No, I just—”

“You like to read yourself?”

“Yes,” Will answered, thinking he was only telling a partial lie. For every three audiobooks he listened to, he made himself read at least one complete book. It was a miserable task that took weeks, but he made himself do it to prove that he could.

Eleanor was watching him, and Will tried to mend things. He guessed. “You were a teacher?”

“History,” she told him. She rested her cane beside her leg and propped her foot on a small stool in front of the chair. He saw that her ankles were wrapped in bandages.

She explained, “Arthritis. Had it since I was eighteen years old.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Not your fault, is it?” She motioned him toward the chair opposite but he did not take a seat. “Tell me something, Mr. Trent. Since when does a special agent from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation give a hill of beans about a missing black girl?”

He was getting annoyed with her assumptions. “There weren’t any white ones missing today, so we drew straws.”

She gave him a sharp look. “You’re not funny, young man.”

“I’m not a racist pig, either.”

She locked eyes with him for a moment, then nodded as if she’d made up her mind about him. “For goodness’ sake, sit.”

Will finally did as he was told, sinking so low into the old chair that his knees were practically around his ears.

He tried to get to the point. “Cedric called me.”

“And how do you know Cedric?”

“I met him this morning. I was out here with a detective from the Atlanta Police Department investigating the death of the young woman who lived upstairs.”

“Young woman?” she echoed. “She was forty if she was a day.”

Will had heard Pete Hanson say as much during the autopsy, but hearing the old woman say it now somehow gave it more resonance. Aleesha Monroe had been at least twenty-five years older than the other victims. What had made the killer break from his usual target group?

Eleanor asked, “Why is the GBI mixed up in the death of a drug-addicted prostitute?”

“I’m with a division that reaches out to local law enforcement when help is needed.”

“That’s a very fine response, young man, but you’ve not really answered my question.”

“You’re right,” he admitted. “Tell me when you realized that Jasmine was missing.”

She studied him, her gaze steely, lips pursed. He forced himself not to look away, wondering how she had been in the classroom, if she was one of the types who let the dumb kids sit in the back or if she would have dragged him by the ear to the front row, yelling at him for not knowing the answer to the question on the board.

“All right,” Eleanor decided. “I assumed Jasmine was in her room doing homework. When I called her for supper, she didn’t come. I looked in the room and she wasn’t there.”

“What time was this?”

“Around five o’clock.”

Will glanced at his watch, but the digital clock on the TV told him the actual time. “So, to your knowledge, she’s been gone about five hours?”

“Are you going to tell me I need to wait another day before it matters?”

“I wouldn’t drive all the way down here to tell you that, Ms. Allison. I would just call you on the phone.”

“You think she’s just another black girl run off with a man, but I’m telling you, I know that girl.”

“She wasn’t in school today,” Will reminded her.

The old woman looked down. Will saw that her hands were like claws in her lap, arthritis twisting them into unusable lumps. “She was suspended for back-talking a teacher.”

“Cedric, too?”

“This is turning adversarial,” she noted, but she still kept talking. “I don’t get around very easily, especially since they took my Vioxx away. Their mother has been incarcerated for more than half of Cedric’s life. She’s a heroin addict, just like Aleesha Monroe. The only difference is that my Glory got caught.”

Will knew better than to interrupt.

“I laid down the law with Glory. Stayed up nights, followed her whenever she left the house. I was that child’s skin, I was so close to her. She hated every minute of it—still hates me now—but I was her mother and that’s what I was going to do. Same with them.” With difficulty, she lifted a hand, indicating the closed bedroom door. Will saw a shadow move underneath and guessed that Cedric was listening.

Eleanor continued, “Glory pretty much let those two run wild. She didn’t care what they did so long as she didn’t get into trouble and could still keep putting that needle in her veins.” The woman sighed, lost in her own memories. “Jasmine’s as wild as Glory was, and I can’t keep up with her. It took me five minutes to walk to that doorway tonight to see what Cedric was running on about.”

Will wanted to say that he was sorry, but knew she would only correct him, remind him that her condition, the miserable way she must have spent her life trying to do the right thing while the walls fell in around her, was not his fault.

Eleanor told him, “Cedric was a baby when Glory lost custody.” She managed to lean forward. “He’s a smart boy, Mr. Trent. A smart boy with a future if I can keep him out of this mess long enough for him to grow.” She pressed her lips together. “There’s something he’s not telling me. He loves his sister and she loves him—loves him like a mother because that’s what she had to be when Glory was busy shooting that trash into her system.” She paused. “I think I have more influence on him. And there’s no denying Jasmine loves him. She doesn’t want him mixed up in the life around here, the thugs and the gang bangers and the hoodlums. She embraces it, but she knows her baby brother can do better.”

Will asked, “Has Jasmine run away before?”

“Twice, but always because there was a fight. We didn’t fight yesterday. We haven’t fought all week, for a change. Jasmine wasn’t angry with me, or at least no more angry than any teenager is at the person in charge.”

“Does she have a boyfriend?”

“Boy? He’s fifteen years older than she is.”

“What’s his name?”

“Luther Morrison. He lives on Basil Avenue, about three miles from here, in the Manderley Arms. I already called him. He says she’s not there.” She explained, “Each time she ran away before, I called him. Both times he told me she was there. Luther pretends that he believes Jasmine is seventeen, but he knows that child’s age just as sure as I’m sitting here and he’ll do anything I say to keep me from calling the cops on him.”

Will had to ask, “Why haven’t you called the police on him? She’s thirteen, he’s almost thirty. That’s statutory rape.”

“Because I learned with her mother that a girl who’s set on destroying herself will not be stopped. If I get this one arrested, she’ll just go to the next one, and he’ll be even worse than this Morrison, if that’s possible.”

“Gran?” Cedric asked. He was still in the bedroom, peeking around the edge of the door. “I finished cleaning the room.”

“Come here, child.” She reached out her arm for him and he came. She told Will, “I called the police as soon as I realized Jasmine was missing. I’m sure you can guess their response.”

“They told you to give it twenty-four hours, maybe forty-eight if they know she’s run away before.”

“Correct.”

Will addressed his words to Cedric. “You sounded pretty upset when you called me. Can you tell me why?”

Cedric looked at his grandmother, then back at Will. His shoulders went up into a shrug.

The old woman stirred, reaching into the front pocket of her housedress. “Walk Mr. Trent out and check the mail for me, baby. Mr. Trent?” Will struggled to get out of the chair. “Thank you for your concern.”

“Please don’t bother,” he said, noticing that she was trying to stand. “I’ll let you know what I find out.” He reached out to shake her hand, remembering at the last moment that the arthritis would make it too painful. She grabbed his hand before he could stop her, and he was surprised by the intensity of her grip. “Please,” she begged. “Please find her, Mr. Trent.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, knowing that she was proud and that it took everything she had to ask him for help.

He followed Cedric down the stairs and out into the parking lot. The overhead lights cast a strange glow over everything and Will realized that it was only a few hours past the time that Aleesha Monroe had been murdered on Sunday night. Cedric walked to the grassy area by the mailboxes where Jasmine had jumped him this morning.

Will watched the boy slip his key into the lock, waiting until he’d retrieved the mail to tell him, “This is serious, Cedric.”

“I know.”

“You’ve got to tell me what you know about Jasmine. Why did she tell you not to talk to the cops?”

“She said y’all are bad.”

That was a sentiment shared by pretty much everyone within a five-mile radius. “Tell me what happened on Sunday.”

“Nothing.”

“That’s not going to work this time, Cedric. Jasmine’s gone, and you heard your granny in there. I know you were listening at the door. I saw your shadow underneath.”

Cedric licked his lips, sorting through the mail.

Will knelt down in front of him, put both his hands on Cedric’s shoulders. “Tell me.”

“There was a man,” Cedric finally admitted his grammar improved now that his guard was down. “He paid Jazz some money to make a phone call. That’s all.”

“What kind of phone call?”

“To the police. To say Leesha was being hurt.”

Will looked over his shoulder at the pay phone. The booth was dark, the overhead light busted out. “He told her to call from the pay phone?”

Cedric nodded. “Didn’t make no sense. She could’a used her cell. Everybody knows y’all can’t trace a cell.”

“Did he pay her?” Will guessed.

“Twenty bucks,” Cedric admitted. “And then he gave her a dime for the phone.”

Will dropped his hands and sat back on his heels. “What’s that phone cost, about fifty cents?”

“Yeah,” Cedric answered. “Jazz told him that a dime don’t buy shit, and then he got all nervous and gave her two quarters.”

Will wondered what the odds were that they’d find two quarters in the coin box that had the murderer’s fingerprints on them. Then he wondered if it was Aleesha’s murderer who had paid the girl to make the call. Why would the killer pay someone to report his own crime?

Will asked, “Did you recognize the man?”

The boy went back to shuffling the mail in his hands.

“Do you think you’d remember him if you saw a picture of him?”

“He was white,” Cedric said. “I didn’t see him too good. I was over here.”

Will turned back to the phone booth. The lights around the parking lot and the mailboxes were strong enough to blind a grown man, but none of them would have illuminated the pay phone.

He asked Cedric, “What do you think happened?”

He didn’t answer right away. Instead, he started shuffling the mail again. “She always told me before,” he said. “When she was going off with Luther, she always told me so I wouldn’t worry.”

“After Jasmine made the call, which way did the man go when he left?”

Cedric pointed up the street toward the exit.

“He didn’t have a car?”

“Don’t know,” the boy admitted. “We was out here on our way to Freddy’s, and then he hollered us over. Jazz told me to go on see Freddy, but I stayed around to make sure she was okay.”

Will wondered at the girl going up to a strange man in the dark. Maybe she was heading down that wrong path faster than her grandmother thought.

He asked, “Where’s Freddy’s?”

Cedric pointed across the street to another building.

“Did Jasmine go with you after she made the call?”

“After, yeah.”

“And the man left up the street, toward the main road?”

Cedric nodded, chewing his bottom lip like he had more to say. Will gave him some time, and eventually, the boy said, “Jazz say she heard screaming in the stairs. Leesha was yelling.”

“What was she yelling?”

“Jazz don’t know. She was just yelling like she was being hurt, but she done that before, you know? Leesha takes up men sometimes and they kind of mean, but she say she don’t mind.”

“Cedric,” Will said, putting his hands back on the boy’s shoulders. “I need you to be straight with me now. Did Jasmine see who was hurting Aleesha? Did anyone talk to her, say anything to her?”

Cedric shook his head. “She told me she didn’t see nothing, didn’t hear nothing.”

“Was she saying it like she did today, where if you thought about it awhile, you might think that what she was really saying was that maybe she did hear something, but she just wasn’t going to tell anybody?”

“No,” Cedric insisted. “She would’a told me.”

Will didn’t know if that was true or not. Jasmine wanted to protect her brother. She wouldn’t have told him something that might put him in danger.

Cedric reached into his pocket and took out a twenty-dollar bill. “This is what she wanted,” he told Will. “I took the money he gave her for making the phone call. That’s why she was chasing me.” He was trying to give Will the money.

“Hold on to it for me,” Will said, knowing he couldn’t do anything with the bill. “Jasmine didn’t leave because you took the money, Cedric. You know that, right?”

The boy shrugged, and the mail slipped from his hands. Will bent down to help pick it up. From the colors, he gathered they were mostly bills with about ten pieces of junk mail thrown in. Will probably had the same limited-time offers waiting for him back home.

He looked up at the mailboxes. “Cedric?”

“Yeah?”

“Did Aleesha have a mailbox here?”

“Yeah,” Cedric answered, pointing to one of the higher boxes.

Will stood, making note of the number. “Let’s get you back inside, okay?”

“I’m all right.”

“I need to check something in Aleesha’s apartment. Let me walk you up.”

Cedric was slow going up the stairs. He used his key to get into his grandmother’s apartment, but didn’t go inside. Instead, he watched Will continue up to Aleesha Monroe’s place. Will felt the boy’s silent disapproval burning into his back: Where are you going? You promised you’d help.

Will still had the key in his vest pocket from earlier. He slipped it into the lock and turned it to the side, hearing the bolt engage. He tried the knob but the door did not open. Will was the first person to admit—at least to himself—that he had trouble with left and right, and God knows it got worse when he was tired, but even he had opened enough locks to know which direction to turn a key in order to open it. He slid the key back into the lock and tried the other way, hearing the bolt click again. This time, the door opened.

The apartment still had that same feel to it, like something bad had happened. He stood in the doorway with only the light from the hall illuminating the room. Will saw a drop of blood on the floor and knelt beside it. Without thinking, he put his fingers to the drop to check whether or not it was dry.

His fingers came back clean, but Will hadn’t noticed the drop the first time he had come into the apartment. He flipped on the lights, thinking about the lock. This morning, Jasmine and Cedric had been making a racket when Will was locking the door. Michael and Will had run down the stairs at full speed. Maybe Will hadn’t locked the door all the way. He’d certainly been in a hurry.

But Will remembered locking that door, hearing the bolt catch.

He checked the apartment, making sure nothing was missing. Because of his reading problem, Will doubted he had a photographic memory, but he could memorize scenes. He remembered where things went and he knew when they were out of place.

Still, something was off. The room just felt different.

The junk drawer looked the same, the ring of keys still tucked into the corner under a couple of store receipts. Will checked through them until he found a smaller key like the one Cedric had. Every cop who came into this building had to pass those mailboxes. Will had, too, though, and he hadn’t asked if Monroe had any mail. Then again, Will wasn’t the lead detective on the case. With Michael on leave, the inimitable Leo Donnelly was now in charge.

Will made sure to lock the door, checking it twice before heading back down the stairs. As with every other surface in the Homes, the mailboxes were sprayed with graffiti, and Will identified Aleesha’s by the obscene drawing that pointed up to it. He slid in the key and turned the lock with some difficulty. He found the problem when the door swung open. The small compartment was packed with mail. Will took out the envelopes in clumps, noting the colors and the bright logos adorning the outsides. There was a plain white envelope in with the rest. A bulge was in the bottom corner, and he felt it with his fingers, guessing something metal was inside. From the shape, he thought it might be a cross. Someone had addressed the envelope by hand in a looping cursive that Will could not begin to decipher.

He looked at his watch, really looked at it like he never did, until he could make out the time. It was almost midnight. Angie would probably be getting home from work soon.

         

Will sat on Angie’s front porch, the hard concrete making his bottom numb. He had no idea where she was and his cell phone battery had finally died, so he wasn’t even sure of the time.

He had put the phone to good use before it had quit on him, calling a contact at the Atlanta police, making sure the report on Jasmine Allison wasn’t filed away like the thousands of other missing persons reports the city collected each year. They had put out an APB on Jasmine, and Luther Morrison had found a highly annoyed cop knocking at his front door. The patrolman had searched the house and discovered an underage girl there, but it wasn’t the underage girl they were looking for.

Will had a bad feeling about Jasmine’s disappearance. According to Cedric, Jasmine had seen something, talked to someone who was connected to the murder. That made her either valuable or expendable, depending on who you talked to, but as far as the city of Atlanta was concerned, Will’s bad feeling didn’t warrant an all-out manhunt.

This train of thought had persuaded Will to break down and call Michael Ormewood to find out if the girl had said anything to him before she’d escaped up the stairs. Michael could have been the last person to see her. Unfortunately, the detective either wasn’t home or wasn’t picking up the phone.

Angie’s black Monte Carlo SS pulled into her driveway. The engine sounded like it was running on gravel, and he couldn’t help but wince at the knocking that continued when she turned off the ignition. Will had spent a year restoring that car for her. Nights, weekends, a whole vacation. He had been on a mission to give her something nice, prove that he could build something with his hands without being told by a stupid manual that bolt A matches with nut C. The fresh oil stains on the driveway were like a kick in the face.

Angie threw open the car door and demanded, “What the fuck are you doing here?”

He couldn’t help but notice that she was dressed for work. The way she sat in the car gave him and everyone else on this side of the street a clear view right up her short skirt.

Will asked, “What did you do to the car?”

“Drove it.” She got out and slammed the door so hard the car shook.

“There’s oil all over the driveway.”

“You don’t say.”

“Did you even get it serviced?”

“Where would I do that?”

“There are ten billion garages around here. You can’t throw a rock without hitting one.”

“If I was going to throw a rock, it’d be at your head, you stupid shit.” She pushed him away from the front door so that she could open it. “I’m tired and I’m pissed off and I just want to get to bed.” She tossed him a look over her shoulder, like she was just waiting for him to say something about joining her.

He said, “I need to talk to you.”

“Will, why didn’t you use your key?” She didn’t have to crane her neck to look at him and he realized she was still wearing her high heels. She said, “You still have your key. Why did you sit out here in the cold?”

He smelled alcohol on her breath. “Have you been drinking?”

She sighed, giving him another whiff of what had to be whiskey. “Come in,” she said, shoving her key into the lock. “My neighbors get enough of a show with me flashing my cootch every time I get out of the fucking car.”

Will followed her inside and closed the door behind him.

She kicked off the stilettos by the couch and slid into a pair of pink flip-flops. Angie hated going barefoot.

“You don’t need to be here.” She flipped on the hall lights, talking and undressing as she walked toward the bedroom. “I’ve had the shittiest day of my life. All the girls are freaked out about Aleesha and they just kept fucking crying all night, as if my day wasn’t bad enough already.” He saw her naked back, the slope down her spine that disappeared into her pink panties, right before she slammed her bedroom door. “Three o’clock, I got a call from Lieutenant Canton,” she continued, her voice muffled through the door. “He made me come in early and work with that fucker Ormewood all afternoon to find some stupid files from back when he was in Vice.”

Will remembered that Michael had said he’d go through the files, but he was surprised the man had followed through, considering the state he was in the last time Will had seen him.

“I had to spend two hours sitting in this God damn skirt”—he heard something thump against the wall and assumed it was the skirt—“with that asshole breathing down my neck, joking with me like he was my best fucking friend.”

Will had used his key about an hour earlier to put Aleesha Monroe’s mail on the coffee table so he didn’t have to hold it all night. He sat down on the couch now and went through it, stacking the letters into neat piles for Angie.

“I swear to God, Will,” Angie began, coming back up the hallway. “Some days I look at those girls and think they get better treatment from their pimps than I do from these cocksuckers I have to work with.”

The flip-flops slapped against her heels as she walked into the kitchen. He heard the refrigerator door open, then ice hitting a glass. She opened a bottle and poured something, then slammed the refrigerator again. Seconds later, she sat on the couch beside him, kicked off the shoes, and took a healthy swig from the glass.

Will couldn’t help it. His spine straightened like a Catholic schoolgirl’s. “Are you going to drink that in front of me?”

She pushed her bare foot against his leg, saying, “Just until you start to look pretty.”

“Don’t do that.”

“Don’t do what?” she teased, nudging him again.

He turned to look at her, which was exactly what she had been waiting for. Angie was lying back on the couch, her foot still pressed against his leg. She had put on a short black robe and nothing else. The belt was tied loosely around her waist and he could see a tuft of hair between the folds.

Will felt his throat tighten. His mouth was so full of saliva that he pressed his lips together to keep from drooling.

She said, “I guess you found out my guy’s a pedophile.”

Will stood up so quickly he got a head rush. “What?”

“Shelley,” she said matter-of-factly. “I’m assuming you pulled his sheet?”

Will put his hand to his eyes, like taking away his ability to see her would change what he had just heard. “He’s a pedophile?”

She gave him a funny smile. “You realize you’re yelling?”

Will lowered his voice. “You asked me to check up on a pedophile for you?” He walked to the fireplace, wanting to punch his fist through the brick. “What the hell are you thinking? Is that who you’re seeing now? Jesus, I was worried about Ormewood and now you’re—”

“What did he say?”

Her tone had changed, and the air in the room seemed to turn cold along with it.

He asked, “What did who say?”

She sat up on the couch, crossing her legs, covering herself with the robe. “You know damn well what I’m talking about.”

“No,” he countered. “I don’t.”

She put her glass on the table by the mail. “What’s this?”

“I know you slept with him.”

“Real gentleman, that Michael Ormewood. Told you all the details, did he?” She gave a dry laugh as she thumbed through one of the stacks of mail he’d brought. “What fun it must have been for y’all to compare notes. No wonder the fucker was so happy this afternoon.”

“He didn’t tell me anything,” Will said. “I figured it out on my own.”

“Give the detective a gold star.” She lifted her glass as if to toast him, then took a long drink. He watched her throat work as she swallowed and swallowed until the glass was empty.

Will turned his back to her, looking at the painting over the mantel. It was a triptych, three canvases hinged together to make one image when it was open, another image when it was closed. He had always assumed she liked the duplicity of the piece. It was just like Angie, one thing inside, another out. Just like Michael Ormewood, come to think of it. What a perfect pair.

“Aleesha’s mail,” Angie finally noticed. “Did you just find this?”

He nodded.

“Why didn’t Michael’s team check for it before?”

Will cleared his throat. “I don’t know.”

“Junk, junk, bill, bill.” He heard the envelopes slapping the table as she rifled through them one by one. “What’s this?”

Will didn’t answer, but then she wasn’t really asking him.

He heard her open the envelope, take out the letter. “Nice cross,” she said. “I remember seeing Aleesha wear it sometimes.”

He looked up at the painting, wishing it was a mirror that would show him what was inside of her. Maybe it was. Two abstract images, neither one of them making a bit of sense.

Will felt her behind him, her hand snaking into his jacket pocket. She took out his digital recorder. “This is new.” She was standing so close that he could feel the heat from her body.

He heard her fiddling with the machine and turned around. “It’s the orange button.”

She held out the recorder. Will saw that her finger was already on the button. He gently pressed his thumb against her index finger and the recorder came on.

“Thanks.”

Will couldn’t look at her. He turned back around, leaning on the mantel again. She returned to the couch and sat down. The ice in the glass made a noise. She’d probably forgotten it was empty.

“ ‘Dear Mama,’ ” Angie finally read. “ ‘I know you think that I am writing to ask for money, but I just want to tell you that I don’t want anything from you anymore. You always blamed me for leaving but you were the one who left us. You were the one who made me the pariah. The Bible tells us that the sins of the parent are visited on the child. I am the outcast, the untouchable who can only live with the other pariah, because of your sins.’ ” Angie told him, “She spells her name differently when she signs it: A-L-I-C-I-A instead of A-L-E-E-S-H-A.”

Will made a disgusted sound in the back of his throat. She had to know that she might as well be speaking Chinese to him.

“She spells her name correctly—the more common way—when she signs it. She probably changed the spelling when she hit the streets.” Angie kept talking and he couldn’t stop listening. “Postmark says she mailed it two weeks ago. There’s a stamp that says they returned the letter because she didn’t put enough postage on it. I guess the cross probably put it over the weight limit or maybe it got caught in one of the machines.” She paused. “Are you going to talk to the mother? This zip code isn’t far from here, probably about ten miles. I wonder if she even knows her daughter is dead.”

Will turned around. Angie held the envelope in her hand, flipped it over to make sure she didn’t miss anything on the back. She looked up, saw him staring at her, and asked, “Will?”

He told her, “If I could snap my fingers and make it like I’d never even met you, I’d do it.”

She put down the envelope. “I wish you could, too.”

“What are you doing with a guy like that?”

“He can be charming when he wants to.”

She meant Michael. “Was it before or after you found out he was using the girls?”

“Before, you asshole.”

He gave her a sharp look. “I don’t think you’ve got a right to be angry at me right now.”

She gave in. “Yeah, you’re right.”

“So Shelley’s a pedophile?”

She smiled, like it was funny. “And a murderer.”

“You think this is some kind of joke?”

She leaned her elbows on her knees, giving that coy smile that said she was open to anything. “Don’t be mad at me, baby.”

“Don’t put sex in the way of this.”

“It’s the only way I know how to communicate with people,” she joked, something a psychiatrist had once told her. Will wasn’t sure whether or not Angie had slept with the woman, but the observation was dead-on.

“Angie, please.”

“I told you this was a bad night for you to be here.” She stood up and put the envelope in his hand. “Come on, Willy,” she said, pulling him toward the door. “You need to go home.”