—
The drive to the Rockdale County police station was a blur that Faith filled with every expletive she could think of.
“I knew that jackass was lying to me,” she said, cursing Max Galloway and the entire Rockdale police force. “You should’ve seen that smug way he looked at me when he left the hospital.” She slammed her palm into the steering wheel, wishing she were slamming it into Galloway’s Adam’s apple. “Do they think this is some kind of game? Didn’t they see what was done to that woman? For the love of God.”
Beside her, Will remained silent. As usual, she had no idea what was going through his mind. He’d been quiet the entire trip, and did not speak until she pulled into the visitors’ parking lot in front of the Rockdale County police station.
He asked, “Are you finished being mad?”
“Hell, no, I’m not finished. They lied to us. They haven’t even faxed us the damn crime-scene report. How the hell can we work a case when they’re holding back information that could—”
“Think about why they did it,” Will countered. “One woman is dead, the other’s just as good as, and they’re still hiding evidence from us. They don’t care about the people involved, Faith. All they care about is their egos, and showing us up. They’re leaking information to the press, they’re refusing to cooperate. You think us going in there with guns blazing is going to get us what we want?”
Faith opened her mouth to answer, but Will was already getting out of the car. He walked around to the driver’s side and opened her door like they were on a date.
He told her, “Trust me on this one thing, Faith. You can’t push a string.”
She waved his hand away. “I’m not going to eat shit from Max Galloway.”
“I’ll eat it,” he assured her, holding out his hand like she needed help getting out of the car.
Faith grabbed her purse from the back seat. She followed him up the sidewalk, thinking it was no wonder everyone who met Will Trent took him for a certified public accountant. She could not fathom the man’s meagerness of ego. In the year she had worked with him, the strongest emotion she’d seen Will display was irritation, usually at her. He could be moody or wistful and God knew he could beat himself up about a lot of things, but she’d never seen him truly angry. He’d once been alone in a room with a suspect who had just hours before tried to put a bullet in his head, and the only feeling Will had shown was empathy.
The uniformed patrolman behind the front counter obviously recognized Will. His lip went up into a sneer. “Trent.”
“Detective Fierro,” Will replied, though the man was obviously no longer a detective. His sizable stomach pressed against the buttons of his patrol uniform like the filling oozing out of a jelly doughnut. Considering what Fierro had said to Amanda about greasing Lyle Peterson’s pole, Faith was surprised the man wasn’t using a wheelchair.
Fierro said, “I should’ve put that board back over your head and left you in that cave.”
“I’m really glad you didn’t.” Will indicated Faith. “This is my partner, Special Agent Mitchell. We need to speak with Detective Max Galloway.”
“About what?”
Faith was over the niceties. She opened her mouth to blast him, but Will cut her off with a look.
He said, “Maybe we could talk to Chief Peterson if Detective Galloway isn’t available.”
Faith added, “Or we could talk to your buddy Sam Lawson at the Atlanta Beacon and tell him those stories you’ve been feeding him are just your way of covering your fat ass for all the mistakes you’ve made in this case.”
“You are some kind of bitch, lady.”
“I haven’t even started,” Faith told him. “Get Galloway out here right now before we put our boss on this. She already took your shield. What do you think she’s going to take next? My guess is your little—”
“Faith,” Will said, more a warning than a word.
Fierro picked up the phone, punched in an extension. “Max, you got a couple’a cocksuckers wanna talk to you.” He dropped the phone back into the cradle. “Down the hall, take your first right, first room on the left.”
Faith led the way because Will would not know how to. The station was the usual 1960s government building with plenty of glass block and very poor ventilation. The walls were lined with commendations, photographs of police officers at city barbecues and fundraisers. As instructed, she took a right and stopped in front of the first door on the left.
Faith read the sign on the door. “Asshole,” she breathed. He’d sent them to an interrogation room.
Will leaned across and opened the door. She saw him register the table bolted to the floor, the bars running along the sides so that suspects could be cuffed down while they were interviewed. All he said was, “Ours is more homey.”
There were two chairs, one on either side of the table. Faith threw her purse on the one with its back to the two-way mirror, crossing her arms, not wanting to be sitting when Galloway entered the room. “This is bullshit. We should get Amanda involved in this. She wouldn’t put up with this goat roping.”
Will leaned against the wall, tucked his hands into his pockets. “If we get Amanda in on this, then they’ve got absolutely nothing to lose. Let them save a little face by jerking us around. What does it matter, if we get the information we need?”
She glanced at the two-way mirror, wondering if there was a peanut gallery. “I’m filing a formal report when this is over. Obstruction of justice, impeding an active case, lying to a police officer. They bumped that fat fuck Fierro back to uniform. Galloway’s gonna be lucky if he gets to be county dogcatcher.”
Down the hall, she heard a door open, then click closed. Seconds later, Galloway stood in the doorway, looking every bit the ignorant hick he had the night before.
“I heard you wanted to talk to me.”
Faith told him, “We just talked to the Coldfields.”
Galloway nodded at Will, who returned the gesture, his back still against the wall.
Faith demanded, “Is there a reason you didn’t tell me about the other car last night?”
“I thought I had.”
“Bullshit.” Faith didn’t know which was making her angrier, the fact that he was playing at this like it was some kind of game or that she felt compelled to use the same tone she used when she was about to put Jeremy on restriction.
Galloway held up his hands, smiling at Will. “Your partner always this hysterical? Maybe it’s her time of month.”
Faith felt her fists clench. He was about to see hysterical in the worst way.
“Listen,” Will interrupted, stepping between the two of them. “Just tell us about the car, and anything else you know. We’re not going to make trouble for you. We don’t want to have to get this information the hard way.” Will walked over to the chair and picked up Faith’s purse before sitting down. He kept the bag in his lap, which made him look ridiculous, a man standing outside the changing room while his wife tried on clothes.
He indicated that Galloway should sit across from him, saying, “We’ve got one victim in the hospital who’s probably in an irreversible coma. Jacquelyn Zabel, the woman from the tree, her autopsy didn’t give us any leads. There’s another woman missing now. She was taken from the parking lot of a grocery store. Her child was left in the front seat. Felix—six years old. He’s in custody now, staying with strangers. He just wants his mom back.”
Galloway was unmoved.
Will continued, “They didn’t give you that detective shield for your good looks. There were roadblocks last night. You knew about the second car the Coldfields saw. You were stopping people.” He changed tactics. “We didn’t go to your boss on this. We didn’t get our boss to come down like a hammer. We don’t have the luxury of time here. Felix’s mom is missing. She could be in another cave, strapped to another bed, with another spot underneath for the next victim. You want that on your head?”
Finally, Galloway heaved a heavy sigh and sat down. He leaned up in the chair, pulling his notebook out of his back pocket, groaning like it caused him physical pain.
Galloway said, “They told you it was white, probably a sedan?”
“Yes,” Will answered. “Henry Coldfield didn’t know the model. He said it was an older car.”
Galloway nodded. He handed Will his notebook. Will looked down, flipped through the pages like he was taking the information on board, then handed it to Faith. She saw a list of three names with a Tennessee address and phone number. She took her purse back from Will so she could copy the information.
The detective said, “Two women—sisters—and their father. They were on their way back from Florida, going home to Tennessee. Their car broke down on the side of the road about six miles from where the Buick hit our first victim. They saw a white sedan coming. One of the women tried to flag it down. It slowed but didn’t stop.”
“Could she see the driver?”
“Black, baseball cap, loud music thumping. She said she was kind of glad he didn’t stop.”
“Did they see a license plate?”
“Just three letters, alpha, foxtrot, charlie, which pulled up about three hundred thousand cars, sixteen thousand of them are white, half of them are registered in the immediate area.”
Faith wrote down the corresponding letters, A-F-C, thinking the license plate was a bust unless they just happened to stumble on the matching car. She flipped through Galloway’s notes, trying to find what else he was hiding.
Will said, “I’d like to talk to all three of them.”
“Too late,” Galloway said. “They went back to Tennessee this morning. The father’s an old guy, not doing too well. Sounded like they were taking him home to die. You could call them, maybe drive up there. I’m telling you, though, we got everything out of them that we could.”
Will asked, “Was there anything else at the scene?”
“Just what you read in the reports.”
“We haven’t gotten the reports yet.”
Galloway seemed almost contrite. “Sorry. The girl should’ve faxed them to you first thing. They’re probably buried on her desk somewhere.”
“We can get them before we leave,” Will offered. “Can you just run it down for me?”
“It’s what you’d expect. When the cruiser showed up, the guy who stopped, the paramedic, was working on the victim. Judith Coldfield was freaking out about her husband, worried he was having a heart attack. The ambulance came and took the victim away. The old man was better by then, so he waited for the second ambulance. That came a few minutes later. Our guys called in the detectives, started marking out the scene. The usual stuff. I’m being honest here. Nothing came up.”
“We’d like to talk to the cop who was first on the scene, get his impressions.”
“He’s fishing in Montana with his father-in-law right now.” Galloway shrugged. “I’m not giving y’all the runaround here. The guy’s had this vacation planned for a while.”
Faith had found a familiar name in Galloway’s notes. “What’s this about Jake Berman?” For Will’s benefit, she explained, “Rick Sigler and Jake Berman were the two men who stopped to help Anna.”
“Anna?” Galloway asked.
“That’s the name she gave at the hospital,” Will told him. “Rick Sigler was the off-duty EMT, right?”
“Right,” Galloway confirmed. “Their story about the movie seemed kind of sketchy to me.”
Faith made a noise of disgust, wondering how many dead ends this guy had to hit before he passed out from sheer stupidity.
“Anyway,” Galloway said, making a point of ignoring Faith. “I ran them both through the computer. Sigler’s clean, but Berman’s got a record.”
Faith felt her stomach drop. She’d spent two hours on the computer this morning and it had never occurred to her to check the men for a criminal history.
“Solicitation for lewd acts.” Galloway smiled at Faith’s stunned reaction. “Guy’s married with two kids. Got picked up for screwing another guy in a toilet stall at the Mall of Georgia six months ago. Some teenage kid walked in and found them heel to toe. Goddamn pervert. My wife shops at that mall.”
“Have you talked to Berman?” Will asked.
“He gave me a bogus number.” Galloway shot Faith another scathing look. “The address on his driver’s license is out of date, too, and nothing came up on a cross-match.”
She saw a hole in his story and pounced. “How do you know he has a wife and two kids?”
“It’s in the arrest report. He had them with him at the mall. They were waiting for him to come out of the bathroom.” Galloway’s lips twisted in disgust. “You want my advice, he’s the one you should be looking at.”
“The women were raped,” Faith said, tossing back his notebook. “Gay men don’t go after women. It’s sort of what makes them gay.”
“This bad guy strike you as the type of person who likes women?”
Faith didn’t answer him, mostly because he had a point.
Will asked, “What about Rick Sigler?”
Galloway took his time folding his notebook closed, sticking it into his pocket. “He came back clean. Been working as a paramedic for sixteen years. Guy went to Heritage High School right down the road from here.” His mouth twisted in disgust. “Played on the football team, if you can believe that.”
Will took his time getting to his last question. “What else are you holding back?”
Galloway looked him right in the eye. “That’s all I got, kemo sabe.”
Faith didn’t believe him, but Will seemed satisfied. He actually reached out and shook the man’s hand. “Thank you for your time, Detective.”
Faith turned on the lights as she walked into her kitchen, dropping her purse on the counter, sinking into the very same chair she’d started her day in. Her head was aching, her neck so tense that it hurt to turn her head. She picked up the phone to check her voicemail. Jeremy’s message was short and unusually sweet. “Hi, Mom, just calling to see how you’re doing. I love you.” Faith frowned, guessing he’d either made a bad grade on his chem test or needed money.
She dialed his number, but hung up the phone before the call went through. Faith was bone tired, so exhausted that her vision was blurring, and she wanted nothing more than a hot bath and a glass of wine, neither of which was recommended for her current state. She did not need to make matters worse by yelling at her son.
Her laptop was still on the table, but Faith didn’t check her email. Amanda had told her to report to her office by the end of the day to talk about the fact that Faith had passed out in the parking lot at the courthouse. Faith glanced at the clock on the kitchen stove. It was well past the end of the business day, almost ten o’clock. Amanda was probably at home draining the blood from the insects that had gotten caught in her web.
Faith wondered if her day could get any worse, then decided it was a mathematical improbability, considering the time. She had spent the last five hours with Will, getting in and out of her car, ringing doorbells, talking to whatever man, woman or child answered the door—if they answered the door at all—looking for Jake Berman. All told, there were twenty-three Jake Bermans scattered around the metropolitan area. Faith and Will had talked to six of them, ruled out twelve, and been unable to find the other five, who were either not at home, not at work, or not answering the door.
If finding the man was easier, maybe Faith wouldn’t have been so worried about him. Witnesses lied to the police all the time. They gave wrong names, wrong phone numbers, wrong details. It was so common that Faith seldom got annoyed when it happened. Jake Berman was another story, though. Everyone left a paper trail. You could pull up old cell phone records or past addresses and pretty soon, you were staring your witness in the face, pretending like you hadn’t wasted half a day tracking him down.
Jake Berman didn’t have a paper trail. He hadn’t even filed a tax return last year. At least, he hadn’t filed one in the name of Jake Berman—which in turn raised the specter of Pauline McGhee’s brother. Maybe Berman had changed his name just like Pauline Seward. Maybe Faith had sat across the table from their killer in the Grady Hospital cafeteria the first night this case had started.
Or maybe Jake Berman was a tax dodger who never used credit cards or cell phones and Pauline McGhee had walked away from her life because sometimes that’s what women did—they just walked away.
Faith was beginning to understand how that option had its benefits.
In between knocking on doors, Will had telephoned Beulah, Edna and Wallace O’Connor of Tennessee. Max Galloway had not been lying about the elderly father. The man was in a home, and Faith gathered from Will’s part of the conversation that his mind was none too sharp. The sisters were talkative, and obviously tried to be helpful, but there was nothing more they could offer on the white sedan they’d seen barreling down the road just miles from the crime scene other than to say there was mud on the bumper.
Finding Rick Sigler, the focus of Jake Berman’s Route 316 assignation, had been only slightly more productive. Faith had made the call, and the man had sounded as if he was going to have a heart attack the second she’d identified herself. Rick was in his ambulance, taking a patient to the hospital, scheduled for two more pickups. Faith and Will were going to meet him at eight the following morning when he got off work.
Faith stared at her laptop. She knew that she should put this in a report so that Amanda had the information, though her boss seemed quite capable of finding out things on her own. Still, Faith went through the motions. She slid her computer across the table, opened it and hit the space bar to wake it up.
Instead of going into her email program, she launched the browser. Faith’s hands hovered over the keys, then her fingers started to move of their own accord: SARA LINTON GRANT COUNTY GEORGIA.
Firefox shot back almost three thousand hits. Faith clicked on the first link, which took her to a page on pediatric medicine that required a username and password to access Sara’s paper on ventricular septal defects in malnourished infants. The second link was on something equally as riveting, and Faith scrolled down to the bottom to find an article about a shooting at a Buckhead bar where Sara had been the attending on call at Grady.
Faith realized she was being stupid about this. A general search was fine, but even the newspaper articles would tell only half the story. In an officer-involved death, the GBI was always called in. Faith could access actual case files through the agency’s internal database. She opened the program and did a general search. Again Sara’s name was all over the place, case after case where she had testified in her capacity as a coroner. Faith narrowed the scope of the search, taking out expert testimony.
This time, only two matches came up. The first was a sexual assault case that was over twenty years old. As with most browsers, there was a short description of the contents underneath the link, a few lines of text that gave you an idea of what the case was about. Faith scanned the description, moving the mouse to the link without actually clicking. Will’s words came back to her, his valiant speech about Sara Linton’s privacy.
Maybe he was half right.
Faith clicked the second link, opening up the file on Jeffrey Tolliver. This was a cop killing. The reports were lengthy, detailed, the kind of narrative you wrote when you wanted to make sure that every single word held up when you were cross-examined in court. Faith read about the man’s background, his years of service to the law. There were hyperlinks connecting the cases he had worked, some of which Faith was familiar with from the news, some she knew about from shoptalk around the squad room.
She scrolled through page after page, reading about Tolliver’s life, gleaning the character of the man from the respectful way people described him. Faith didn’t stop until she got to the crime-scene photos. Tolliver had been killed by a crude pipe bomb. Sara had been standing right there, seen it all happen, watched him die. Faith braced herself, opening up the autopsy files. The pictures were shocking, the damage horrifying. Somehow, photographs from the scene had gotten mixed in: Sara with her hands out so the camera could document the blood spray. Sara’s face, caught in close-up, dark blood smearing her mouth, eyes looking as flat and lifeless as her husband’s photos from the morgue.
All the files listed the case as still open. No resolution was listed. No arrest. No conviction. Strange, in a cop killing. What had Amanda said about Coastal?
Faith opened up a new browser window. The GBI was responsible for investigating all deaths that occurred on state property. She did a search for deaths at Coastal State Prison in the last four years. There were sixteen in all. Three were homicides—a skinny white supremacist who was beaten to death in the rec room and two African-Americans who were stabbed almost two hundred times between them with the sharpened end of a plastic toothbrush. Faith skimmed the other thirteen: eight suicides, five natural causes. She thought about Amanda’s words to Sara Linton: We take care of our own.
Prison guards called it “paroling an inmate to Jesus.” The death would have to be quiet, unspectacular and wholly believable. A cop would know how to cover his tracks. Faith guessed one of the overdoses or suicides was Tolliver’s killer—a sad, pitiful death, but justice nonetheless. She felt a lightness in her chest, a relief that the man had been punished, a cop’s widow spared a lengthy trial.
Faith closed the files, clicking through them one by one until they were all gone, then opened up Firefox again. She entered Jeffrey Tolliver’s name behind Sara Linton’s. Articles came up from the local paper. The Grant Observer wasn’t exactly in line for a Pulitzer. The front page carried the daily lunch menu for the elementary school and the biggest stories seemed to revolve around the exploits of the high school football team.
Armed with the correct dates, it didn’t take Faith long to find the stories on Tolliver’s murder. They dominated the paper for weeks. She was surprised to see how handsome he was. There was a picture of him with Sara at some kind of formal affair. He was in a tux. She was in a slinky black dress. She looked radiant beside him, a totally different person. Oddly, it was this picture that made Faith feel bad about her clandestine investigation into Sara Linton’s life. The doctor looked so damn blissful in the photograph, like every single thing in her life was complete. Faith looked at the date. The photo had been taken two weeks before Tolliver’s death.
On this last revelation, Faith closed down the computer, feeling sad and slightly disgusted with herself. Will was right at least about this—she should not have looked.
As penance for her sins, Faith took out her monitoring device. Her blood sugar was on the high side, and she had to think for a second about what she needed to do. Another needle, another shot. She checked her bag. There were only three insulin pens left and she had not made an appointment with Delia Wallace as she had promised.
Faith pulled up her skirt, exposing her bare thigh. She could still see the needle mark where she had jabbed herself in the bathroom around lunchtime. A small bruise ringed the injection site, and Faith guessed she should try her luck on the other leg this time. Her hand didn’t shake as much as it usually did, and it only took to the count of twenty-six for her to sink the needle into her thigh. She sat back in her chair, waiting to feel better. At least a full minute passed, and Faith felt worse.
Tomorrow, she thought. She would make an appointment with Delia Wallace first thing in the morning.
She pushed down her skirt as she stood. The kitchen was a mess, dishes stacked in the sink, trash overflowing. Faith was not naturally a tidy person, but her kitchen was generally spotless. She had been called out to too many homicide scenes where women were found sprawled on the floor of their filthy kitchens. The sight always triggered a snap judgment in Faith, as if the woman deserved to be beaten to death by her boyfriend, shot and killed by a stranger, because she had left dirty dishes in her sink.
She wondered what Will thought when he came onto a crime scene. She had been around countless dead bodies with the man, but his face was always inscrutable. Will’s first job in law enforcement had been with the GBI. He had never been in uniform, never been called out on a suspicious smell and found an old woman dead on her couch, or worked patrol, stopping speeders, not knowing if it was going to be a stupid teenager behind the wheel or a gangbanger who would put a gun in his face, pull the trigger, rather than have the points on his license.
He was just so damn passive. Faith didn’t understand it. Despite the way Will carried himself, he was a big man. He ran every day, rain or shine. He worked out with weights. He had apparently dug a pond in his backyard. There was so much muscle under those suits he wore that his body could have been carved from rock. And yet, there he was this afternoon, sitting with Faith’s purse in his lap while he begged Max Galloway for information. If Faith had been in Will’s shoes, she would’ve backed the idiot against the wall and squeezed his testicles until he sang out every detail he knew in high soprano.
But she wasn’t Will, and Will wasn’t going to do that. He was just going to shake Galloway’s hand and thank him for the professional courtesy like some gigantic, half-witted patsy.
She searched the cabinet under the sink for dishwashing powder, only to find an empty box. She left it in the cabinet and went to the fridge to make a note on the grocery list. Faith had written the first three letters of the word before she realized that the item was already on the list. Twice.
“Damn,” she whispered, putting her hand to her stomach. How was she going to take care of a child when she could not even take care of herself? She loved Jeremy, adored everything about him, but Faith had been waiting eighteen years for her life to start, and now that it was here, she was looking at another eighteen-year wait. She would be over fifty by then, eligible for movie discounts through AARP.
Did she want this? Could she actually do it? Faith couldn’t ask her mother to help again. Evelyn loved Jeremy, and she had never complained about taking care of her grandson—not when Faith was away at the police academy, or when she had to work double shifts just to make ends meet—but there was no way that Faith could expect her mother to help out like that again.
Certainly not the baby’s father. Victor Martinez was tall, dark, handsome … and completely incapable of taking care of himself. He was a dean at Georgia Tech, in charge of nearly twenty thousand students, but he could not keep a clean pair of socks in his drawer to save his life. They had dated for six months before he moved into Faith’s house, which had seemed romantic and impetuous until reality set in. Within a week, Faith was doing Victor’s laundry, picking up his dry cleaning, fixing his meals, cleaning up his messes. It was like raising Jeremy again, except at least with her son she could punish him for being lazy. The last straw had come when she had just finished cleaning the sink and Victor had dropped a knife covered in peanut butter on the draining board. If Faith had been wearing her gun, she would have shot him.
He moved out the next morning.
Even with all that, Faith couldn’t help but feel herself softening toward Victor as she gathered up the drawstring on the trash. That was one good difference between her son and her ex-lover: Victor never had to be told six times to take out the trash. It was one of the chores Faith most hated, and—ridiculously—she felt tears well in her eyes as she thought about having to lift the bag and heft it down the stairs, outside, to the garbage can.
There was a knock at the door: three sharp raps followed by the doorbell chime.
Faith wiped her eyes as she walked down the hall, her cheeks so wet that she had to use her sleeve. She still had her gun on her hip, so she didn’t bother to check the peephole.
“This is a switch,” Sam Lawson told her. “Women usually cry when I leave, not when I show up.”
“What do you want, Sam? It’s late.”
“You gonna invite me in?” He wiggled his eyebrows. “You know you wanna.”
Faith was too tired to argue, so she turned around, letting him follow her back to the kitchen. Sam Lawson was an itch she had really needed to scratch for a few years, but now she couldn’t remember why she had bothered. He drank too much. He was married. He didn’t like kids. He was convenient and he knew how to make an exit, which, as far as Faith was concerned, meant he left shortly after he had served his purpose.
Okay, now she remembered why she had bothered.
Sam took a glob of gum out of his mouth and dropped it into the trash. “I’m glad I saw you today. I need to tell you something.”
Faith braced herself for bad news. “Okay.”
“I’m sober now. Almost a year.”
“You’re here to make amends?”
He laughed. “Hell, Faith. You’re about the only person in my life I didn’t screw over.”
“Only because I kicked you to the curb before you could.” Faith pulled the string on the trash, tying it tight.
“Bag’s gonna tear.”
The plastic ripped just as he said the words.
“Shit,” she muttered.
“You want me to—”
“I’ve got it.”
Sam leaned against the counter. “I love watching a woman do manual labor.”
She shot him a withering look.
He flashed another smile. “I heard you cracked some heads at Rockdale today.”
Faith said a silent curse in her head, remembering that Max Galloway had yet to give them the initial crime-scene reports. She had been so furious that she hadn’t thought to follow up on it, and she would be damned if she’d take the man’s word for it that everything had been fairly routine.
“Faith?”
She fed him the standard line. “The Rockdale police are cooperating fully with our investigation.”
“It’s the sister you need to worry about. You seen the news? Joelyn Zabel’s all over the place saying your partner’s the reason her sister died.”
That rankled more than she wanted to let on. “Check the autopsy summary.”
“I saw it already,” he said. Faith guessed Amanda had shared the report with a few key people in order to spread the news as quickly as possible. “Jacquelyn Zabel killed herself.”
“Did you tell that to the sister?” Faith asked.
“She’s not interested in the truth.”
Faith gave him a pointed look. “Not many people are.”
He shrugged. “She got what she wanted from me. She’s moved on to network television.”
“The Atlanta Beacon’s not big enough for her, huh?”
“Why are you being so hard on me?”
“I don’t like your job.”
“I’m not crazy about yours, either.” He went to the sink cabinet and took out the box of trash bags. “Slide a new one over the old one.”
Faith took a bag, holding the white plastic in her hands, trying not to think about what Pete had found during the autopsy.
Sam was oblivious as he put back the box. “What’s that guy’s story, anyway? Trent?”
“All inquiries should go through the public relations office.”
Sam had never been one to take no for an answer. “Francis tried to feed me something about Trent getting circle-jerked by Galloway today. Made it out like he was some kinda Keystone Kop.”
Faith stopped worrying about the trash. “Who’s Francis?”
“Fierro.”
Faith took childish pleasure in the girlish name. “And you printed every word the asshole said without bothering to run it by someone who could tell you the truth.”
Sam leaned against the counter. “Cut me some slack, babe. I’m just doing my job.”
“They let you make excuses in AA?”
“I didn’t run the Kidney Killer stuff.”
“That’s only because it was proved wrong before you went to press.”
He laughed. “You never let me bullshit you.” He watched her wrestle the old bag into a new one. “Jesus, I’ve missed you.”
Faith gave him another sharp glance, but she felt herself react to his words despite her best intentions. Sam had been her life raft a few years ago—just available enough to be there when she really needed him, but not so much that she felt smothered.
He said, “I didn’t print anything about your partner.”
“Thank you.”
“What’s going on with Rockdale anyway? They’re really out to get you.”
“They care more about screwing us over than finding out who abducted those women.” Faith didn’t give herself time to consider that she was echoing Will’s sentiments. “Sam, it’s bad. I saw one of them. This killer—whoever he is …” She realized almost too late to whom she was talking.
“Off the record,” he said.
“Nothing’s ever off the record.”
“Of course it is.”
Faith knew he was right. She had told Sam secrets in the past that had never been repeated. Secrets about cases. Secrets about her mother, a good cop who had been forced off the job because some of her detectives had been caught skimming off drug busts. Sam had never printed anything Faith had told him, and she should trust him now. Only she couldn’t. It wasn’t just her anymore. Will was involved. She might hate her partner right now for being a pussy, but she would kill herself before she exposed him to any more scrutiny.
Sam asked, “What’s going on with you, babe?”
Faith looked down at the torn trash bag, knowing he’d read everything in her face if she looked up. She remembered the day she’d found out her mother was being forced off the job. Evelyn hadn’t wanted comfort. She had wanted to be alone. Faith had felt the same way until Sam showed up. He had talked his way into her house the same way he had tonight. Feeling his arms around her had sent Faith over the edge, and she had sobbed like a child as he held her.
“Babe?”
She snapped open another new trash bag. “I’m tired, I’m cranky and you don’t seem to understand that I’m not going to give you a story.”
“I don’t want a story.” His tone had changed. She looked up at him, surprised to see the smile playing on his lips. “You look …”
Faith’s mind filled with suggestions: puffy, sweaty, morbidly obese.
“Beautiful,” he said, which surprised them both. Sam had never been one for compliments, and Faith certainly wasn’t used to getting them.
He pushed away from the counter, moving closer. “There’s something about you that’s different.” He touched her arm, and the rough texture of his palm sent heat rushing through her body. “You just look so …” He was close now, staring at her lips like he wanted to kiss them.
“Oh,” Faith said, then, “No, Sam.” She backed away from him. She’d experienced this the first time she was pregnant—men hitting on her, telling her she was beautiful even when her stomach was so huge she couldn’t bend over to tie her own shoes. It must be hormones or pheromones or something. At fourteen, it had been skeevy, at thirty-three it was just annoying. “I’m pregnant.”
The words hung between them like a lead balloon. Faith realized this was the first time she had said them aloud.
Sam tried to make a joke out of it. “Wow, I didn’t even have to take off my pants.”
“I’m serious.” She said it again. “I’m pregnant.”
“Is it …” He seemed at a loss for words. “The father?”
She thought about Victor, his dirty socks in her laundry basket. “He doesn’t know.”
“You should tell him. He has a right.”
“Since when are you the arbiter of relationship morality?”
“Since I found out my wife had an abortion without telling me.” He leaned closer, put his hands on her arms again. “Gretchen didn’t think I could handle it.” He shrugged, keeping his hands on Faith’s arms. “She was probably right, but still.”
Faith bit her tongue. Of course Gretchen was right. She would’ve been better off asking a dingo to help raise her baby. She asked, “Did this happen when you were seeing me?”
“After.” He looked down, watching his hand stroke her arm, his fingers tracing the neck of her blouse. “I hadn’t hit bottom yet.”
“You weren’t exactly in a position to make an informed decision.”
“We’re still trying to work things out.”
“Is that why you’re here?”
He pressed his mouth to hers. She could feel the rough prickle of his beard, taste the cinnamon gum he’d been chewing. He lifted her onto the counter, his tongue finding hers. It wasn’t unpleasant, and when his hands slid up her thighs, lifting her skirt, Faith didn’t stop him. She helped him, actually, and in retrospect, she probably shouldn’t have, because it ended things a lot sooner than they needed to.
“I’m sorry.” Sam shook his head, slightly out of breath. “I didn’t mean to—I just—”
Faith didn’t care. Even if her mind had blocked out Sam from her conscious thoughts over the years, her body seemed to remember every part of him. It felt so damn good to have his arms around her again, to feel the closeness of somebody who knew about her family and her job and her past—even if that particular body wasn’t of much use to her at the moment. She kissed his mouth very gently and with no other meaning than to feel connected again. “It’s okay.”
Sam pulled back. He was too embarrassed to see that it didn’t matter.
“Sammy—”
“I haven’t gotten the hang of things being sober.”
“It’s okay,” she repeated, trying to kiss him again.
He stepped back even farther, looking somewhere over her shoulder instead of in her eyes. “You want me to …” He made a halfhearted gesture toward her lap.
Faith let out a heavy sigh. Why were the men in her life such a constant disappointment? God knew she didn’t have high standards.
He looked at his watch. “Gretchen’s probably waiting up for me. Been working late a lot.”
Faith gave up, leaning her head against the cabinet behind her. She might as well try to salvage something out of this. “Do you mind taking out the trash on your way out?”