Criminal (14 page)

Evelyn put the cup to her lips. “Why do you think that?”

“You can’t wear Tampax if you’re a virgin. So—”

Evelyn choked on the seltzer. The water spurted from her mouth and nose. She grabbed at the napkins on the dashboard, coughing so hard it sounded as if her lungs were trying to come out of her mouth.

Amanda patted her back. “Are you all right?”

She put her hand to her mouth and coughed again. “Sorry. Went down the wrong way.” She coughed a third and fourth time. “What’s that?”

Amanda looked out into the street. An Atlanta Police cruiser zoomed by, lights rolling, no siren. The next cruiser was the opposite: siren blaring, lights off.

“What on earth …,” Amanda began.

Evelyn turned up the police radio. All they could hear was the usual chatter, followed by mics being clicked so that the speakers could not be heard. “Idiots,” Evelyn mumbled, turning the volume back down. Another cruiser screeched by. “What could it be?”

Amanda was sitting up in her seat, straining to see what was happening. Then she realized there was an easier way. She tossed her paper cup out the window and pushed open the door. By the time she reached the sidewalk, another car zoomed past, this one a Plymouth Fury like her own.

Evelyn joined her on the sidewalk. “That was Rick and Butch.” Homicide. “They’re going to Techwood. All of them are going to Techwood.”

Neither woman said what they were thinking. They headed toward the station wagon. Amanda edged Evelyn toward the passenger’s side, saying, “I’ll drive.”

Evelyn didn’t offer protest. She rode shotgun as Amanda backed up the car, then headed up North Avenue. They turned on Techwood Drive. A police cruiser blew past on Amanda’s left as she turned onto Pine.

Evelyn grabbed the dashboard. “My Lord. Why are they in such a hurry?”

“We’ll find out soon enough.” Amanda pulled up onto the familiar berm. There were already five cruisers and two unmarked Plymouths. Today, no children were playing in the courtyard of Techwood Homes, though their parents had finally made an appearance. Shirtless men in tight jeans stood with cans of beer in their hands. Most of the women were just as scantily clad, but a few looked as if they’d just returned home from office work. Amanda checked her watch. It was past one o’clock. Maybe they’d come home for lunch.

“Amanda.” Evelyn’s tone held a low tremor. She followed the other woman’s gaze to the second apartment block on the left. A group of patrolmen were clustered outside the door. Butch Bonnie pushed past them as he ran out into the courtyard. He fell to his knees and spewed vomit onto the ground.

“Oh, no.” Amanda searched in her bag for a tissue. “We can get some water from—”

Evelyn stopped her with a firm hand. “Stay exactly where you are.”

“But he—”

“I mean it,” she said, her voice taking on a tenor Amanda had not heard before.

Rick Landry exited the building next. He used his handkerchief to wipe his mouth, then tucked it into his back pocket. Had his partner still not been vocally ill, Landry probably would’ve never noticed Amanda and Evelyn. As it was, he walked right over to them.

“What the hell are you broads doing here?”

Amanda opened her mouth, but Evelyn beat her to a response. “We had a case here earlier this week. Top floor. Apartment C. Prostitute named Jane Delray.”

Landry stuck his tongue into his cheek as he stared first at Evelyn, then Amanda. “And?”

“And, obviously something happened here.”

“It’s Techwood, darlin’. Something happens here all the time.”

“Top floor?” Evelyn asked. “Apartment C?”

“Wrong and wrong,” Landry said. “Behind the building. Suicide. Jumped off the roof and went splat.”

“Fuck!” Butch Bonnie gave a heave that rivaled the sound of a pig rutting in the wild. Landry’s gaze faltered. He didn’t quite look back at his partner, but he wouldn’t look at Evelyn or Amanda, either.

“You.” Landry motioned over one of the uniformed patrolmen. “Get all these people outta here. Looks like we’re filming a damn Tarzan movie.” The cop rushed to disperse the group of onlookers. There were yells and protests.

Evelyn said, “Maybe someone saw—”

“Saw what?” Landry interrupted. “They probably didn’t even know her. But, give ’em another minute, they’ll all be wailin’ and howlin’ and flappin’ their gums about what a tragedy it is.” He shot Evelyn a look. “You should know better than that, Mitchell. Never let ’em crowd up. They get too emotional and pretty soon you’re callin’ in SWAT to thin ’em out.”

Evelyn spoke so quietly that Amanda could barely hear her. “We’d like to see the body.”

“We what?” Amanda’s voice trilled around the words.

Landry grinned. “Looks like Ethel ain’t up for this, Lucy.”

Evelyn didn’t back down. She cleared her throat. “We’re working a case, Landry. Same as you.”

“Same as me?” he echoed, incredulous. He glanced back at Butch, who was sitting back on his heels, chest heaving. Amanda could see the glint of the revolver he kept on his ankle. “You girls need to toddle on back and—”

“She’s right.” Amanda heard the words clear as a bell. They were spoken in her own voice. They had come out of her own mouth.

Evelyn seemed just as surprised as Amanda.

“We’re working a case,” Amanda told him. That was
exactly
what they were doing. They’d just spent the last half hour in the car talking it through. Something was going on with these women—Kitty, Lucy, Mary, and now possibly Jane Delray. Right now, Amanda and Evelyn were the only two officers on the entire force who even knew—or apparently cared—that they were missing.

Landry lit a cigarette. He let out a stream of smoke. “Same as me, huh?” he repeated, but this time he was laughing. “You skirts working homicide now?”

Evelyn shot back, “You just said it was a suicide. What are you doing here?”

He didn’t like that. “You want some balls, Mitchell, you can always suck on mine.”

Amanda looked down at the ground so her expression wouldn’t give her away.

“I’m fine with my husband’s, thank you.” Evelyn reached into her purse and pulled out her Kel-Lite. “We’re ready when you are.”

Landry ignored her, telling Amanda, “Come on, gal. This ain’t no place for you. That body’s a mess. Guts all over the place. Nasty stuff. Too nasty for a lady to handle.” He tilted his chin toward Butch, not stating the obvious. “Go on, get back in your car and scoot off. Nobody’ll think nothin’ about it.”

Amanda felt her stomach start to unclench. He was giving them an out. A graceful exit. No one would know they had asked to see the body. They could leave with their heads held high. Amanda was about to take him up on the offer, but then Landry added, “God knows, I don’t want your old man coming after me with his shotgun for scaring his baby girl.”

There was an odd tingling in Amanda’s spine. She felt as if every vertebra was locking into place. She spoke in a shockingly certain tone. “You said the victim is behind the building?”

Evelyn appeared just as surprised as Landry when Amanda started walking toward the apartment building. She kept pace with Amanda, whispering, “What are you doing?”

“Keep walking,” Amanda begged her. “Please keep walking.”

“Have you ever seen a dead body?”

“Never close up,” Amanda admitted. “Unless you count my grandfather.”

Evelyn muttered a curse. She spoke in a hoarse whisper. “Whatever you do, don’t get sick. Don’t scream. For God’s sake, don’t cry.”

Amanda was ready to do all three and she hadn’t even seen the body yet. What in the name of God was she thinking? Landry was right. If Butch Bonnie hadn’t been able to handle it, there was no way in hell either of them would be able to.

“Listen to me,” Evelyn ordered. “If you break, they’ll never trust you again. You might as well join the typing pool. You might as well slit your wrists.”

“I’m okay,” she said, then because she knew Evelyn needed to hear it, she told her, “You’re okay, too. You’re absolutely okay.”

Evelyn’s heels kicked up dust as she walked beside Amanda. “I’m okay,” she repeated. “You’re right. I’m okay.”

“We’re both okay.” So much sweat was dripping down Amanda’s back that it was pooling into her underwear. She was glad she was wearing a black skirt. She was glad she had taken that Alka-Seltzer. She was very glad that she wasn’t alone as she walked into the dark building.

The vestibule was cast in more shadow than Amanda remembered. She glanced up the stairwell. One of the panes in the skylight had been broken. A piece of wood was nailed in its place. They both stopped at the metal exit door at the end of the hall, waiting for Landry.

He put his hand on the door but didn’t open it. “Lookit, girls, playtime is over. Go back to taking reports on poor little sluts got mixed up with the wrong fella and cried wolf.”

“We’re working a case,” Evelyn told him. “It might have something to do with—”

“Whore took a long walk off a short plank. You seen this dump. I’m surprised everybody here don’t jump off the roof.”

“We still—”

He said, “Just turn around and walk back. This has gone far enough.”

“I was—”

“Stop!” Landry banged his fist against the door. “Just shut your fucking mouth!” he shouted. “I told you to leave and you’d better goddamn leave.”

Evelyn was visibly startled, but she tried, “We just—”

“You want me to make you?” He snatched the Kel-Lite out of Evelyn’s hand and jabbed it into her chest. “You like that?” He jabbed her again, then again, until her back was to the wall. “Not so mouthy now, are you?”

Amanda tried, “Rick—”

“Shut up!” There was a flash of white skin as he jammed the flashlight up Evelyn’s skirt and pressed it between her legs. He warned, “Unless you want that for real, you better do as I damn well say. You hear me?”

Evelyn didn’t speak. She could only nod. Her hands shook as they went up in surrender.

“Don’t fuck around with me,” Landry warned. “You got that?”

“She’s sorry,” Amanda said. “We’re both sorry. Rick, please. We’re sorry.”

Slowly, he pulled the flashlight out from under Evelyn’s skirt. With one hand, he flipped it around and held out the handle to Amanda. He told her, “Get her the hell out of here.”

Which is exactly what Amanda did.

eight

Present Day

MONDAY

The cabdriver gave Will a dubious look as he stopped in front of 316 Carver Street. “You sure this is the place, man?”

“I’m sure.” Will checked the meter and handed him a ten. “Keep the change.”

The guy seemed reluctant to take the money. “I know you’re a cop and all, but that don’t make much matter after dark. You feel me?”

Will opened the door. “I appreciate the warning.”

“You sure you don’t want me to wait?”

“No, but thank you.” Will got out of the car. Still, the man dawdled. It wasn’t until Will walked toward the side of the building that the cab slowly pulled away.

Will watched the taillights disappear down the street. Then he turned and picked his way past the tall weeds and brambles as he headed to the rear of the children’s home. Between the moon and the streetlights, he had a pretty clear path to the back of the house. He stepped around syringes and condoms, broken glass and piles of trash.

He remembered Sara’s earlier warning about all the dangers inside the house. She’d been full of observations tonight. And pretty pissed off. Will couldn’t blame her. He was pretty pissed off himself. He was actually furious.

Hell, he was still furious.

Will’s fists clenched as he rounded the house. He knew he was in an almost delirious state of denial about what was really bothering him. His father out of prison. That monster breathing free air. Will pushed this back down, just as he’d been pushing it down since he first found out.

The entire time Sara was stitching up his ankle, the only thing Will could think about was going into Amanda’s hospital room and beating the truth out of her. Why did the parole board let his father out of prison? Why did Amanda find out before Will? What else was she hiding from him?

She had to be hiding something. She always hid something.

And she would die before she let Will in on it. She was tougher than any man Will had ever known. She wasn’t exactly a liar, but she did things with the truth that made you think you were losing your mind. Will had given up on trying to be direct with Amanda a long time ago. Fifteen years of studying her personality had revealed nothing but the fact that she lived for subtleties and riddles. She delighted in tricking him. For every question Will had, she’d have another question, and pretty soon they’d be talking about things that would probably make him wish he hadn’t gotten out of bed this morning. Or this year. Or ever in his life.

Why was she at the children’s home tonight? What was she looking for? How much did she know about his father?

Will could already guess Amanda’s answers. She was out for an evening drive. Who didn’t enjoy a leisurely romp through the ghetto when they were supposed to be working a kidnapping case? She saw Will and Sara inside the house and wondered why they were there. Is it wrong to be curious? Of course she knew about his father. She was his boss. It was her job to know everything about Will.

Except for one thing. The old broad had knocked her head hard enough to lose her legendary control.

“I told Edna to shore up these steps a million times.”

Edna, as in Mrs. Edna Flannigan.

Amanda was in the middle of a high-profile case. The press was all over her. The director of the GBI was probably breathing down her neck. Yet, she’d stopped everything, grabbed a hammer, and headed here. There was only one way to get an honest answer about what she’d been up to, and Will was going to tear apart the children’s home with his bare hands if that’s what it took to find it. And then he was going to throw it right back into Amanda’s face.

He stared at the back of the house. There had been a deck here at one time, but now there was only a gaping hole where a basement window used to be. The paramedics hadn’t been able to take Amanda out through the interior doorway. Instead, they’d kicked out the plywood covering the basement windows and chipped away the brick to enlarge one of the openings.

Will looked up at the streetlight. Moths fluttered around, creating a strobe. He looked back at the window opening.

In retrospect, there were better ways to do this. Will could’ve asked the cabdriver to drop him at home, which was less than a mile away. There were lots of tools in Will’s garage. Two sledgehammers, several pry bars, even a jackhammer he’d picked up secondhand at the Habitat Store. They were all well worn and well used. Will had bought his house for back taxes on the courthouse steps. It had taken him three years and every spare dime to turn it back into a home.

The hardest part was convincing the drug addicts that the house was under new ownership. The first six months, Will had to sleep with his shotgun beside his sleeping bag. When he wasn’t tearing down walls and soldering copper pipe, he was going to the door and telling whoever had knocked that they would have to find somewhere else to smoke crack.

Which was actually good preparation for what Will was about to do.

He climbed in through the opening. The strobing streetlight illuminated most of the basement. Will used his cell phone to supplement its reach, picking his way past the broken stairs. Amanda Wagner was the very definition of preparedness. Will couldn’t imagine her going into the dark basement without her Maglite. He spotted the familiar metallic blue casing over by a set of empty shelves. He pressed the button. The flashlight was small enough to fit in his pocket, but the LCDs glowed like a headlamp on an old Chevy.

Will hadn’t exactly been honest with Sara. He’d spent his fair share of time down in the basement with Angie. Of course, he hadn’t been on his elbows and toes taking measurements, but his memory of the place had somehow reduced it to a shoebox when in fact it was as large as the upper floors.

Will ran his hand along the exterior walls. Smooth plaster was interrupted every sixteen inches by bumps from the studs underneath. A dividing wall split the center of the room. This construction was newer. The Sheetrock was edged with black mold. Chunks were missing at the bottom. Pairs of oddly spaced, yellow pine two-by-fours showed at the base like legs below a petticoat.

There was a small room in the back with a sink and toilet, probably for the help. The walls were exposed lumber with knotty pine paneling on the outside. Will checked behind the fixtures. With his foot, he kicked apart the P-trap under the sink. Nothing was in the drain.

He took off the lid on the toilet tank and found it empty. The bowl was filled with black water. He glanced around for something to search with other than his hand. The old knob-and-tube wiring hung limply from the joists. He pulled out a long section, folded it in lengths until it was stiff enough, and checked the bowl. Other than a noxious odor, there was nothing.

Overhead, the flashlight picked up spiderwebs and termite damage in the floor joists as he walked around the room. The wooden storage shelves were empty. The coal chute was filled with black dust along with a couple of syringes and a used condom. He used the Maglite to examine the flue. Bird droppings. Scratches. An animal had been trapped inside at some point. Will closed the metal door and twisted the handle to lock it into place.

He took off his suit jacket and hung it from a nail in one of the joists. His Glock stayed on his belt where it was handy. He found Amanda’s hammer by the stairs. It had never been used. The price tag was still on. Midtown Hardware. Forty bucks.

Will slipped the Maglite into his back pocket. The streetlight was enough for now. He studied the hammer. Forged blue steel with a smooth face and nylon end cap. Shock-reduction grip. It was a bricklayer’s tool, not something a framer would use. Will assumed Amanda had bought it for form, not function. Or maybe she’d picked it off the shelf because the blue matched her flashlight. Either way, there was a well-balanced heft to the tool. The claw was sharp and busted cleanly through the plaster when Will slammed it into the exterior wall.

He pulled back the hammer and pounded it into the wall again, enlarging the hole. He punched out a chunk of plaster. It crumbled between his fingers. There was horsehair in the mix, tiny, silk strands that had held together the clay and limestone for almost a century.

Will chipped away a large enough section to reach his hand behind the lath. The wood was rotted, still wet from rain that had poured through the foundation. He should probably be wearing gloves and goggles, or at least a mask. There was undoubtedly mold behind the plaster, maybe fungus from dry rot. The odor inside the wall was dank, the way houses smelled when they were dying. Will used the claw hammer to pry away another chunk of plaster. Then another.

Slowly, he made his way around the perimeter of the basement, pulling down the plaster chunk by chunk, row by row. Then removing the lath, then brushing out the shredded newspapers that had been used for insulation, then moving on to the next section.

He gripped Amanda’s Maglite between his teeth when the streetlight couldn’t reach the darkest corners. A white powder permeated the air. His eyes watered from the grit. His nose started to run from the dust and mold. The work wasn’t difficult, but it was tedious and repetitive, and the temperature of the basement seemed to rise with every step as Will worked his way around the room. He was sweating profusely by the time he pounded off the last chunk of plaster. Again, the lath came apart in his hand, like wet paper. He used the claw hammer to pull out the rotted wood. As he had done with every section thus far, Will shone the flashlight onto the bare opening.

Nothing.

He pressed his palm to the cold wall. There was only a thin layer of brick holding back the dirt around the foundation. Will had broken through some sections to check anyway, then stopped for fear he might cause a cave-in. He took his phone out of his pocket and looked at the time. Two minutes past midnight. He’d been doing this for three hours.

All for nothing.

Will pushed away from the wall. He coughed and spit out a wad of plaster.

Three hours.

No scribbled notes, no hidden passages. No severed hands or bags of magic beans. As far as he could tell, nothing had been disturbed inside the walls since the house had been built. The wood was so old he could see the hatch marks where the axes had hewn down the studs from larger trees.

Will coughed again. The dust would not clear in the airless room. He used the back of his hand to wipe sweat off his forehead. His muscles were aching from the constant hacking of the hammer. Still, he started on the dividing wall down the center of the room. In many ways, the Sheetrock was harder to take down than the plaster. The paper was damp, but the gypsum was soaked through. The wall came down in tiny pieces. The pink insulation was filled with crawling bugs Will tried not to get in his mouth and nose. The studs were rotting from the floor up.

Another forty minutes went by.

Again, there was nothing.

Which meant that the niggling question that had been bouncing around Will’s brain for the last two hours probably had to be asked: Why hadn’t he started out on the floor?

Amanda had bought a bricklayer’s hammer. The basement floor was comprised entirely of paved brick. Will recognized the Chattahoochee Brick Company logo on some of the pieces. It was similar to the brick in his own home—fired from red Georgia clay in an Atlanta manufacturing plant that had been turned into loft apartments during the financial boom times.

Will gripped the hammer in his hand. He’d thought Amanda had bought it because it was blue. He could hear her grating voice in his head:
I thought you were a detective
.

Will hadn’t exactly been tidy as he’d destroyed the basement. There wasn’t an inch of floor that was clean. He put his back to the corner and looked out into the room. Without the wall down the center, it was easy to plan the grid pattern. Each brick was approximately eight by four inches. He could clear out five-by-nine rows, which would roughly be three-by-three-feet sections. In a fifteen-hundred-square-foot room, that would take approximately eleventy billion years.

He kicked away debris with his foot, then got down on his knees to start on the first section. There was no pleasure in knowing that he’d devised a logical plan for tearing up the basement floor. Will swung the hammer in tight arcs, using the claw to pry up pieces of brick, squinting his eyes to keep out flying shards. Of course the brick didn’t come up easily. It was too late for easy. The clay was old. The firing technique back in the thirties wasn’t exactly scientific. Immigrants had probably worked sunup to sundown, backs and knees bent as they filled wooden forms with clay that would be air-dried, then fired in a kiln.

The first row of bricks crumbled under the hammer’s claw. The edges were weak. They would not hold the center. Will had to use his bare hands to scoop out the pieces. Finally, by the third row, he had found a more successful system. He had to use precision with every swing of the hammer in order to wedge the claw into the cracks. Sand was packed into the joints. It got into Will’s eyes, flew up into his mouth. He clenched his teeth. He thought of himself as a machine as he worked back and forth across the room, clearing each section brick by brick, digging a few inches into the dirt to see what was underneath.

He was a third of the way through when the futility overwhelmed him. He kicked away the debris covering the next section, then the next. He used Amanda’s Maglite to study each crack and crevice. The bricks were tight. Nothing had disturbed them—not in Will’s lifetime, or the building’s lifetime, or at any time at all.

Nothing. Just like the walls. There was nothing.

“Dammit!” Will flung the hammer across the room. He felt a tearing in his bicep. The muscle spasmed. Will clutched his arm. He stared into the loam, the useless fruits of his labor.

Will thought about his revenge fantasies from the Grady ER. His mind flashed up an image of Amanda—terrified, willing to answer any question he asked. He’d been in plenty of fights during his lifetime, but he’d never used his fists on a woman. Amanda was probably sleeping like a baby back in her hospital bed while Will was chasing ghosts that he wasn’t even sure he wanted to find.