The Unremarkable Heart (7 page)

Faith couldn’t recall if she had felt this same anxiety with Jeremy, her son, who was now a freshman in college. Faith had been eighteen when she entered the police academy. Jeremy was three years old by then. She had grabbed onto the idea of joining the force as if it was the only life preserver left on the
Titanic
. Thanks to two minutes of poor judgment in the back of a movie theater and what foreshadowed a lifetime of breathtakingly bad taste in men, Faith had gone straight from puberty to motherhood without any of the usual stops in between. At eighteen, she had relished the idea of earning a steady paycheck so that she could move out of her parents’ house and raise Jeremy the way that she wanted. Going to work every day had been a step toward independence. Leaving him in day care had seemed like a small price to pay.

Now that Faith was thirty-four, with a mortgage, a car payment, and another baby to raise on her own, she wanted nothing more than to move back into her mother’s house so that Evelyn could take care of everything. She wanted to open the refrigerator and see food that she didn’t have to buy. She wanted to turn on the air conditioner in the summer without worrying about having to pay the bill. She wanted to sleep until noon, then watch TV all day. Hell, while she was at it, she might as well resurrect her father, who’d died eleven years ago, so that he could make her pancakes at breakfast and tell her how pretty she was.

No chance of that now. Evelyn seemed happy to play the role of nanny in her retirement, but Faith was under no illusion that her life was going to get any easier. Her own retirement was almost twenty years away. The Mini had another three years of payments and would be out of warranty well before that. Emma would expect food and clothing for at least the next eighteen years, if not more. And it wasn’t like when Jeremy was a baby and Faith could dress him in mismatched socks and yard sale hand-me-downs. Babies today had to coordinate. They needed BPA-free bottles and certified organic applesauce from kindly Amish farmers. If Jeremy got into the architectural program at Georgia Tech, Faith was looking at six more years of buying books and doing his laundry. Most worryingly, her son had found a serious girlfriend. An older girlfriend with curvy hips and a ticking biological clock. Faith could be a grandmother before she turned thirty-five.

An unwelcome heat rushed through her body as she tried to push this last thought from her mind. She checked the contents of her purse again as she drove. The gum hadn’t made a dent. Her stomach was still growling. She reached over and felt around inside the glovebox. Nothing. She should stop at a fast-food place and at least get a Coke, but she was wearing her regs – tan khakis and a blue shirt with the letters
GBI
emblazoned in bright yellow on the back. This wasn’t the best part of town to be in if you were law enforcement. People tended to run, and then you had to chase them, which wasn’t conducive to getting home at a reasonable hour. Besides, something was telling her – urging her – to see her mother.

Faith picked up her phone and dialed Evelyn’s numbers again. Home, cell, even her BlackBerry, which she only used for email. All three brought the same negative response. Faith could feel her stomach flip as the worst scenarios ran through her mind. As a beat cop, she’d been called out onto a lot of scenes where a crying child had alerted the neighbors to a serious problem. Mothers had slipped in the tub. Fathers had accidentally injured themselves or gone into coronary arrest. The babies had lain there, wailing helplessly, until someone had figured out that something was wrong. There was nothing more heart wrenching than a crying baby who could not be soothed.

Faith chided herself for bringing these horrible images to mind. She had always been good at assuming the worst, even before she became a cop. Evelyn was probably fine. Emma’s naptime was at one-thirty. Her mother had probably turned off the phone so the ringing wouldn’t wake the baby. Maybe she’d run into a neighbor while checking the mailbox, or gone next door to help old Mrs Levy take out the trash. Still, Faith’s hands slipped on the wheel as she exited onto Boulevard. She was sweating despite the mild March weather. This couldn’t just be about the baby or her mother or even Jeremy’s unconscionably fertile girlfriend. Faith had been diagnosed with diabetes less than a year ago. She was religious about measuring her blood sugar, eating the right things, making sure she had snacks on hand. Except for today. That probably explained why her thinking had gone sideways. She just needed to eat something. Preferably in view of her mother and child.

Faith checked the glovebox again to make sure it was really empty. She had a distant memory of giving Will her last nutrition bar yesterday while they were waiting outside the courthouse. It was that or watch him inhale a sticky bun from the vending machine. He had complained about the taste but eaten the whole bar anyway. And now she was paying for it.

She blew through a yellow light, speeding as much as she dared down a semi-residential street. The road narrowed at Ponce de Leon. Faith passed a row of fast-food restaurants and an organic grocery store. She edged up the speedometer, accelerating into the twists and turns bordering Piedmont Park. The flash of a traffic camera bounced off her rear-view mirror as she sailed through another yellow light. She tapped on the brakes for a straggling jaywalker. Two more grocery stores blurred by, then came the final red light, which was mercifully green.

Evelyn still lived in the same house Faith and her older brother had grown up in. The single-story ranch was located in an area of Atlanta called Sherwood Forest, which was nestled between Ansley Park, one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the city, and Interstate 85, which offered the constant roar of traffic, depending on which way the wind was blowing. The wind was blowing just fine today, and when Faith rolled down her window to let in more fresh air, she heard the familiar drone that had marked most every day of her childhood.

As a lifelong resident of Sherwood Forest, Faith had a deep-seated hatred for the men who had planned the neighborhood. The subdivision had been developed after World War II, the brick ranch houses filled by returning soldiers who took advantage of low VA loans. The street planners had unabashedly embraced the Sherwood concept. After taking a hard left onto Lionel, Faith crossed Friar Tuck, took a right on Robin Hood Road, coasted through the fork at Lady Marian Lane, and checked the driveway of her own house on the corner of Doncaster and Barnesdale before finally pulling into her mother’s driveway off Little John Trail.

Evelyn’s beige Chevy Malibu was backed into the carport. That, at least, was normal. Faith had never seen her mother pull nose-first into a parking space. It came from her days in uniform. You always made sure your car was ready to leave as soon as a call came in.

Faith didn’t have time to reflect on her mother’s routines. She rolled into the driveway and parked the Mini nose-to-nose with the Malibu. Her legs ached as she stood; every muscle in her body had been tensed for the last twenty minutes. She could hear loud music blaring from the house. Heavy metal, not her mother’s usual Beatles. Faith put her hand on the hood of the Malibu as she walked toward the kitchen door. The engine was cold. Maybe Evelyn had been in the shower when Faith called. Maybe she hadn’t checked her email or cell phone. Maybe she had cut herself. There was a bloody handprint on the door.

Faith felt herself do a double take.

The bloody print showed a left hand. It was about eighteen inches above the knob. The door had been pulled closed but hadn’t latched. A streak of sunlight cut through the jamb, probably from the window over the kitchen sink.

Faith still couldn’t process what she was seeing. She held up her own hand to the print, a child pressing her fingers to her mother’s. Evelyn’s hand was smaller. Slender fingers. The tip of her ring finger hadn’t touched the door. There was a clot of blood where it should have been.

Suddenly, the music stopped mid-thump. In the silence, Faith heard a familiar gurgling noise, a revving up that announced the coming of a full-on wail. The sound echoed in the carport, so that for a moment, Faith thought it was coming from her own mouth. Then it came again, and she turned around, knowing that it was Emma.

Almost every other house in Sherwood Forest had been razed or remodeled, but the Mitchell home was much the same as when it had first been built. The layout was simple: three bedrooms, a family room, a dining room, and a kitchen with a door leading to the open carport. Bill Mitchell, Faith’s father, had built a toolshed on the opposite side of the carport. It was a sturdy building – her father had never done anything halfway – with a metal door that bolted shut and safety glass in its one window. Faith was ten before she realized that the building was too fortified for something as simple as tool storage. With the tenderness that only an older brother can muster, Zeke had filled her in on the shed’s true purpose. ‘It’s where Mom keeps her gun, you dumbass.’

Faith ran past the car and tried to open the shed door. It was locked. She looked through the window. The metal wires in the safety glass formed a spider web in front of her eyes. She could see the potting table and bags of soil stacked neatly underneath. Tools hung on their proper hooks. Lawn equipment was stowed neatly in place. A black metal safe with a combination lock was bolted to the floor under the table. The door was open. Evelyn’s cherry-handled Smith and Wesson revolver was missing. So was the carton of ammunition that was usually beside it.

The gurgling noise came again, louder this time. A pile of blankets on the floor pulsed up and down like a heartbeat. Evelyn used them to cover her plants during unexpected freezes. They were usually folded on the top shelf but now were wadded up in the corner beside the safe. Faith saw a tuft of pink sticking up behind the gray blankets, then the bend of a plastic headrest that could only be Emma’s car seat. The blanket moved again. A tiny foot kicked out; a soft yellow cotton sock with white lace trim around the ankle. Then a little pink fist punched through. Then she saw Emma’s face.

Emma smiled at Faith, her top lip forming a soft triangle. She gurgled again, this time with delight.

‘Oh, God.’ Faith uselessly pulled at the locked door. Her hands shook as she felt around the top edge of the jamb, trying to find the key. Dust rained down. The sharp point of a splinter dug into her finger. Faith looked in the window again. Emma clapped her hands together, soothed by the sight of her mother, despite the fact that Faith was as close to a full-on panic as she had ever been in her life. The shed was hot. It was too warm outside. Emma could overheat. She could become dehydrated. She could die.

Terrified, Faith got down on her hands and knees, thinking the key had fallen, possibly slid back under the door. She saw that the bottom of Emma’s car seat was bent where it had been wedged between the safe and the wall. Hidden behind the blankets. Blocked by the safe.

Protected by the safe.

Faith stopped. Her lungs tightened mid-breath. Her jaw tensed as if it had been wired shut. Slowly, she sat up. There were drops of blood on the concrete in front of her. Her eyes followed the trail going to the kitchen door. To the bloody handprint.

Emma was locked in the shed. Evelyn’s gun was missing. There was a blood trail to the house.

Faith stood, facing the unlatched kitchen door. There was no sound but her own labored breath.

Who had turned off the music?

Faith jogged back to her car. She took her Glock from under the driver’s seat. She checked the magazine and clipped the holster to her side. Her phone was still on the front seat. Faith grabbed it before popping open the trunk. She had been a detective with the Atlanta homicide squad before becoming a special agent with the state. Her fingers dialed the unlisted emergency line from memory. She didn’t give the dispatcher time to speak. She rattled off her old badge number, her unit, and her mother’s street address.

Faith paused before saying, ‘Code thirty.’ The words nearly choked her. Code 30. She had never used the phrase in her life. It meant that an officer needed emergency assistance. It meant that a fellow cop was in serious danger, possibly dead. ‘My child is locked in the shed outside. There’s blood on the concrete and a bloody hand print on the kitchen door. I think my mother is inside the house. I heard music, but it was turned off. She’s retired Blue. I think she’s—’ Faith’s throat tightened like a fist. ‘Help. Please. Send help.’

‘Acknowledge code thirty,’ the dispatcher answered, her tone sharp and tense. ‘Stay outside and wait for backup. Do not – repeat – do not go into the house.’

‘Acknowledged.’ Faith ended the call and tossed the phone into the back seat. She twisted her key into the lock that kept her shotgun bolted to the trunk of her car.

The GBI issued every agent at least two weapons. The Glock model 23 was a .40-caliber semiautomatic that held thirteen rounds in the magazine and one in the chamber. The Remington 870 held four rounds of double-ought buckshot in the tube. Faith’s shotgun carried six extra rounds in the side-saddle attached in front of the stock. Each round contained eight pellets. Each pellet was about the size of a .38-caliber bullet.

Every pull of the trigger on the Glock shot one bullet. Every pull on the Remington shot eight.

Agency policy dictated that all agents keep a round chambered in their Glocks, giving them fourteen rounds total. There was no conventional external safety on the weapon. Agents were authorized by law to use deadly force if they felt their lives or the lives of others were in danger. You only pulled back on the trigger when you meant to shoot, and you only shot when you meant to kill.