The Kept Woman (Will Trent 8) (49 page)

‘Backpack, shoes, coloring books, crayons, Matchbox cars, dirt.’ Faith had forgotten how much dirt boys dragged in. They were like lint traps to every particle of dust in the atmosphere. ‘If a six-year-old boy lives in that house, then his mother spends all day cleaning up after him. And she does it on her own, by the way. Miss Lindsay confirmed that Jo doesn’t have help. She does the cooking, the cleaning, the laundry, just like a real housewife.’

‘Jo disappeared Sunday night. For all intents and purposes, it’s now Tuesday morning. We’ll assume the husband doesn’t scrub toilets. Did Miss Lindsay take over the cleaning?’

‘I don’t see how. She could barely lean down with her cane. But you’re right that something is going on with Anthony. I kept pressing her buttons on the kid, and she would’ve cracked if Laslo hadn’t been there.’ Faith said, ‘We can call the school. They’ll give out truancy information. I’m assuming he’s at E. Rivers. It’s basically a publicly funded private school for rich white kids.’

‘It’s too early. No one will be there until six.’

Faith yawned reflexively at the mention of the late hour.

Amanda said, ‘I want to talk to that Jane Doe that Will found in the building. She must have seen something. Where did she get all that coke?’

Faith was still yawning. Too much information was coming at her too fast. Her brain felt like a spinning top. ‘Figaroa seemed
unequivocal about the identification from the photo. How could he be sure? Her head is the size of a watermelon. Someone beat the shit out of her.’

‘Here’s another problem.’ Amanda pointed to the clock on the radio. ‘We got there at one in the morning. They were all awake, dressed. Kilpatrick was there in a suit. Reuben was in a suit. Laslo was there. The mother-in-law still had her pearls on. All the lights were on in the house. They were staying up for a reason.’

Faith said, ‘Kilpatrick didn’t know that Jo was dead.’

‘No,’ Amanda said. ‘He was shocked when I told him. You can’t fake that.’

‘Figaroa was in a knee brace. But he had that bump on his head. Someone took a heavy swing at him.’

‘Jo?’

Faith laughed, but only out of desperation. ‘Angie? Delilah? Virginia Souza?’

‘The AK by the front door looks retrofitted for automatic.’

‘The AR by the back door has a slide fire. That’s one hundred rounds in seven seconds.’ Faith shook her head, trying to clear it. ‘What the hell is going on in that house?’

‘Concentrate. Kilpatrick is a fixer. Laslo is a fixer. What problems were they there to fix?’

‘If we’re buying that Kilpatrick didn’t know Jo was dead, then that’s not the problem they were fixing.’ Faith reminded her, ‘Miss Lindsay was at Kilpatrick’s on Monday afternoon. That’s when she saw Will. She was upset about something.’

‘Her daughter was arrested for possession of drugs.’

‘Yeah, last Thursday. Jo was out of jail by Saturday. Her mother was at Kilpatrick’s with a new problem. A Monday problem.
An after-Harding-was-killed problem. An after-her-daughter-disappeared-but-we’re-saying-she’s-in-rehab problem.’ Faith thought of another red flag. ‘She went to Kilpatrick, not Reuben.’

‘That phone call Reuben got a few minutes ago. That was strange.’

‘It seemed like they were all waiting for a call, even Miss Lindsay. The minute the phone rang, she stuck her head out of the kitchen to find out what was happening.’ Faith turned to Amanda. ‘If the call wasn’t about Jo, then the only thing I can think of that would upset Miss Lindsay that much is Anthony.’

‘Put it together, Faith. Reuben Figaroa went to Kilpatrick’s office Monday morning. Next, they both met with his lawyer. Reuben spent the rest of the day visiting three different banks, and now they’re all at the house, early in the morning, fully dressed, waiting for a phone call. What does that tell you?’

‘Ransom,’ Faith said. ‘Angie kidnapped her grandson.’

Will paced outside Jane Doe’s hospital room while her doctors did their morning rounds. He stuck his hands in his pockets as he paced. He felt weirdly exhilarated, almost giddy, even though he hadn’t slept last night. He was thinking more clearly now than he had in the last thirty-six hours. Obviously Angie thought she could wind him up with her mind games, but all she had done was laser-focus his desire to bring her down.

And he was going to bring her down hard, because he knew exactly what she’d been doing.

‘Will?’ Faith said. ‘What are you doing here?’

He didn’t stop to explain himself. Everything that had been knocking around his head for the last seven hours exploded out of his mouth. ‘I looked back at my notes from the Rippy rape investigation. Reuben Figaroa was Rippy’s main alibi at the party, and Jo Figaroa was her husband’s main alibi. Angie knew this.
She also figured out that Jo was a junkie, and junkies are really easy to control. She manipulated Jo into blackmailing her husband. If Jo broke Reuben’s alibi, then that broke Rippy’s alibi, and the whole thing came crumbling down. But instead of caving in and paying them off, Reuben went to Kilpatrick. Kilpatrick put Harding on to solving the problem. Harding called the cops in to bust Jo, and when that didn’t shut her up, he solved it by killing her.’ He felt himself smiling, because all the clues had been there right from the beginning. ‘Angie called me to clean up the mess, because that’s what she does.’

Faith didn’t say anything for a few seconds. Finally she asked, ‘How would Angie know about the witness statements?’

‘They were in my files at home. She must’ve seen them. I know she saw them.’ He realized he was talking too fast and too loud. He slowed himself down. ‘She mixed up the witness statements. She knows my system, the color coding, and she mixed them up to let me know that she’d seen them.’

‘Where’s Sara?’

‘Downstairs, watching the autopsy.’ He gripped Faith’s arms. ‘Listen to me. Angie lost her leverage when Jo died. She’s trying to get us—’

‘We think Angie kidnapped her grandson.’

Will felt his grip loosen on her arms.

‘He wasn’t at school yesterday. He didn’t show up this morning.’

Will scanned her eyes, trying to understand where this was coming from. ‘He could have a cold, or—’

‘Come over here.’ She led him to the chairs across from the nurses’ station. She made him sit down, but she stood in front of
him, stood over him really, and told him what she and Amanda had found.

Will’s earlier elation over cracking the case started to dissipate the moment she mentioned Miss Lindsay poking her head out when the phone rang. By the time she had finished recapping the last few hours, Will was leaned over in the chair, his hands clasped between his knees, completely deflated.

Everything she said made perfect sense. The lawyers and bankers made sense. The expectation around the phone call made sense. Angie getting her daughter murdered and still trying to pull some cash out of it made sense.

What was wrong with him? How had he loved such a despicable person?

Faith said, ‘You could be right about the blackmail plan going sideways, only when Harding took out Jo—’

‘Angie saw Anthony as the perfect stand-in.’ Will rubbed his face with his hands. Survival of the fittest. Angie always kept moving forward. She didn’t worry about consequences because she never stuck around long enough to deal with them.

He said, ‘I hit Collier.’

‘I figured that out. I wish you’d hit him harder.’ She covered a large yawn with the back of her hand. ‘We’re going to have to rework Collier’s side of the case. He lied about Virginia Souza’s death by OD. She’s alive and kicking as of last week. We’ve got footage of her at the jail posting a cash bail on an eighteen-year-old picked up for solicitation. Delilah Palmer is still our only solid lead. She could be a victim. She could be a perpetrator. Either way, the first person she’d go to for help is her pimp. We need to find Souza. If she really is the mama in charge, then
she’ll know who Delilah’s pimp is. We get the pimp, we get Delilah.’

‘Agent Trent,’ the doctor said. ‘You can talk to the patient now, but keep it brief and try not to excite her any more than she already is.’

Faith asked, ‘What’s she excited about?’

The doctor shrugged. ‘Free food, clean sheets, nurses to wait on her, cable TV. We replaced all of her blood, so this is probably the first time in decades she’s been clean. She’s been on the streets for twenty years. We’re like the Ritz here.’

‘Thanks.’ Faith asked Will, ‘Ready?’

Will wanted to stand, but he felt like he was weighted down with lead. Yesterday’s numbness had returned. Every lost minute of sleep slammed into him like a pile driver. ‘We can’t do anything, can we? About Anthony. His father hasn’t reported him missing. We can’t demand to see him because we don’t really have any proof that something’s wrong. Reuben’s got a wall of lawyers telling him his rights, and if he’s as much of a control freak as you say, he’s going to insist on handling all of this on his own.’

Faith said, ‘Amanda’s working on a warrant to tap his phones. She’s got four cars outside his house. If anyone leaves, they’ll be followed. But you’re right, you and I can’t do anything right now except work our end of the case.’

Will felt the elephant from last night take a tentative step onto his chest. He shook it off. He wasn’t going to humiliate himself again the way he had at the funeral home. ‘Angie said that Jo was my daughter. Sara says my blood type doesn’t rule me out.’

‘Do you believe Angie?’

He told Faith the only truth he knew. ‘All I can think about is punching her in the throat until her windpipe collapses so that I can see the panic in her eyes while she suffocates to death.’

‘That’s disturbingly specific.’ Faith got that expression on her face that told him she was going to try to mother him. ‘Why don’t you go home and get some rest? It’s been a tough couple of days. I can interview Jane Doe. Amanda should be here any minute. You probably shouldn’t be talking to a potential witness anyway.’

‘It’s already tainted. I’m the one who found her.’ Will stood up. He straightened his tie. He had to take a cue from Angie and keep moving forward. If he let the stress get to him, if he had another stupid panic attack, he’d never be able to hold up his head again. ‘Let’s do this.’

He let Faith lead the way. Jane Doe 2 was one of three Jane Does on the ward. Jane Doe 1 was in a quiet room at the end of the hall. Jane Doe 3 had a cop outside her door. Grady was Atlanta’s only publicly funded hospital. There were a lot of Does here.

Their particular Jane Doe was in a tiny room sectioned off by a glass window and a heavy wooden door that wouldn’t close all the way. Machines pumped and hissed. A heart monitor tracked beats. The lights had been left on. Both of Jane Doe’s eyes were blackened, because that’s what happened when your nose collapsed into your face. Heavy bandages were wrapped around the top two-thirds of her head, leaving her mouth and chin exposed. Greasy brown hair puffed out between the gauze. Two surgical drains, basically clear bags that caught excess fluid and blood from the wound, were dangling down either side of her face. She reminded Will of the colo claw fish from the bad
Star Wars
.

Jane stopped eating her Jell-O mid-bite when Faith and Will walked in. ‘Leave that door open. I don’t wanna end up being another black woman who dies mysteriously in police custody.’

Faith said, ‘First, you’re not in police custody, and second, you’re not black.’

‘Shit.’ Jane rubbed at her white arms. ‘How’d I manage to fuck up my life so bad, then?’

‘I’m assuming personal choice had something to do with it.’

Jane put down the empty cup. She sat back in bed. Her voice was raspy. She was older than Will had first thought, closer to fifty. He had no idea why he’d ever thought she might be Angie.

Jane said, ‘Whaddaya want? I gotta sponge bath in a few minutes, then
Judge Mathis
is on.’

‘We want to talk to you about Sunday night.’

‘What’s today?’

‘Tuesday.’

‘Holy shit, that was some blow.’ The drain bags flopped against her cheeks as she laughed. ‘God damm, bitch. Sunday, I was on the moon.’

Faith gave Will the look that said she didn’t have the patience for this.

He told Jane, ‘I feel like we got off on the wrong foot. I’m Special Agent Trent with the GBI. This is my colleague, Faith Mitchell.’

‘Call me Dr Doe, on account’a I’m in a hospital.’

Will doubted the woman was carrying an ID and he couldn’t fingerprint her without arresting her, which brought its own problems. He said, ‘All right, Dr Doe. Someone was murdered Sunday
night in the building across the street from where we found you Monday morning.’

She asked, ‘Shot?’

‘We’re not sure. Did you hear a gunshot?’

Jane leveled him with a gaze. ‘Do you know that at least once a year, a dog shoots somebody?’ She seemed to think this was useful information. ‘You ask me, people should be real careful about keeping dogs in their homes. Aha.’ She looked past Will. Amanda was in the doorway. Jane said, ‘The captain always commands from the back of the ship.’

Amanda accepted the compliment with a nod of her head. ‘Agent Mitchell, why hasn’t this suspect been transferred to the prison ward downstairs?’

Faith said, ‘You mean the one with no TV or sponge baths?’

‘Damn, bitches, you don’t gotta go DEFCON so fast.’ Jane struggled to sit up in the bed. ‘All right, I got information. What’s in it for me?’

Amanda said, ‘You’ve got one more day in the ICU, then you’ll be transferred downstairs to the regular patient wards. I can get you a couple of extra days on the ward. After that, you’ll be enrolled in a treatment program.’

‘Nah, I don’t need no program. I’m back on the coke as soon as I get outta here. I’ll take the extra two days, though. And you’ll give it to me because I was in the building when it happened.’

‘The office building?’ Will asked.

‘No, the whatsit, the one with the balcony.’ Her brown teeth showed in a smile beneath the bandages. ‘Now I got your attention.’

Faith crossed her arms. ‘What time did you get there?’

‘Aw, shit. They stole my Rolex.’ She patted her wrist. ‘What time? How do I know what time it is, bitch? It was dark outside. There was a full moon. It was Sunday. That’s what I know.’