Undone (16 page)

Faith knew this was not uncommon. Her own poor house had been subject to many such offers over the years — none of them worth taking because then she wouldn’t be able to afford a new house in her own neighborhood. “What about movers?”

“Look at all this shit.” Candy slapped her hand against a crumbling pile of papers. “The last thing Jackie told me was that she was going to have one of those construction Dumpsters delivered.”

Will cleared his throat. He wasn’t looking at the wall anymore, but he wasn’t exactly looking at the witness, either. “Why not just leave everything here?” he asked. “It’s mostly trash. The builder is going to bulldoze it anyway.”

Candy seemed appalled by the prospect. “This was her mother’s house. She grew up here. Her childhood is buried under all this shit. You can’t just throw that all away.”

He took out his phone as if it had rung. Faith knew the vibration feature was broken. Amanda had nearly gutted him in a meeting last week when it had started ringing. Still, Will looked at the display, then said, “Excuse me.” He left by the back door, using his foot to move a pile of magazines out of the way.

Candy asked, “What’s his problem?”

“He’s allergic to bitches,” Faith quipped, though if that were true, Will would be covered in a head-to-toe rash after this morning. “How often did Jackie visit her mother?”

“I’m not her social secretary.”

“Maybe if I take you downtown, it’ll jog your memory.”

“Jesus,” she muttered. “Okay. Maybe a couple of times a year — if that.”

“And you’ve never seen Joelyn, her sister, visit?”

“Nope.”

“Did you spend much time with Jackie?”

“Not much. I wouldn’t call us friends or anything.”

“What about when you smoked together last week? Did she say anything about her life?”

“She told me the nursing home she sent her mom off to cost fifty grand a year.”

Faith suppressed the urge to whistle. “There goes any profit from the house.”

Candy didn’t seem to think so. “Gwen’s been failing for a while now. She won’t last the year. Jackie said might as well get her something nice on her way out.”

“Where’s the home?”

“Sarasota.”

Jackie Zabel lived on the Florida Panhandle, about five hours’ drive away from Sarasota. Not too close and not too far. Faith said, “The doors weren’t locked when we got here.”

Candy shook her head. “Jackie lived in a gated community. She never locked her doors. One night, she left her keys in her car. I couldn’t believe it when I saw them in the ignition. It was dumb luck that it wasn’t stolen.” She added ruefully, “But Jackie was always pretty lucky.”

“Was she seeing anyone?”

Candy turned reticent again.

Faith waited her out.

Finally, the woman said, “She wasn’t that nice, okay? I mean, she was fine to get stoned with, but she was kind of a bitch about things, and men wanted to fuck her, but they didn’t want to talk to her afterward. You know what I mean?”

Faith wasn’t in a position to judge. “What things was she a bitch about?”

“The best way to drive up from Florida. The right kind of gas to put in your car. The proper way to throw out the freaking trash.” She indicated the cluttered kitchen. “That’s why she was doing this all by herself. Jackie’s loaded. She could afford to pay a crew to clean out this place in two days. She didn’t trust anyone else to do it the right way. That’s the only reason she’s been staying here. She’s a control freak.”

Faith thought about the neatly tied bundles out by the street. “You said she wasn’t seeing anyone. Were there any men in her life — ex-husbands? Ex-boyfriends?”

“Who knows? She didn’t confide in me much and Gwen hasn’t known the day of the week for the last ten years. Honestly, I think Jackie just needed a couple of tokes to take off the edge, and she knew I was holding.”

“Why’d you let her?”

“She was okay when she unclenched.”

“You asked if she’d been in a drunk-driving accident.”

“I know she got stopped in Florida. She was really pissed about that.” Candy was sure to add, “Those stops are completely bogus. One measly glass of wine and they’re cuffing you like you’re some kind of criminal. They just want to make their quota.”

Faith had done many of those stops herself. She knew she had saved lives just as sure as she knew Candy had probably had her own run-ins with the cops. “So, you didn’t like Jackie, but you spent time with her. You didn’t know her well but you knew she was fighting a DUI rap. What’s going on here?”

“It’s easier to go with the flow, you know? I don’t like causing trouble.”

She certainly seemed fine with causing it for other people. Faith took out her notebook. “What’s your last name?”

“Smith.”

Faith gave her a sharp look.

“I’m serious. It’s Candace Courtney Smith. I live in the only other shitty house on the street.” Candy glanced out the window at Will. Faith saw that he was talking to one of the uniformed patrolmen. She could tell from the way the other man was shaking his head that they hadn’t found anything useful.

Candy said, “I’m sorry I snapped. I just don’t like the police around.”

“Why is that?”

She shrugged. “I had some problems a while back.”

Faith had already guessed as much. Candy certainly had the angry disposition of a person who had sat in the back of a squad car on more than one occasion. “What kind of problems?”

She shrugged again. “I’m only saying this because you’re going to find out about it and come running back here like I’m an ax murderer.”

“Go on.”

“I got picked up on a solicitation when I was in my twenties.”

Faith was unsurprised. She guessed, “You met a guy who got you hooked on drugs?”

“Romeo and Juliet,” Candy confirmed. “Asshole left me holding his stash. He said I wouldn’t go down for it.”

There had to be a mathematical formula out there that calculated to the second how long it took a woman whose boyfriend got her hooked on drugs to get turned out on the street in order to support both their habits. Faith imagined the equation involved a lot of zeroes behind the decimal point.

Faith asked, “How long were you in for?”

“Shit,” she laughed. “I flipped on the asshole
and
his dealer. I didn’t spend day one in prison.”

Still not surprised.

The woman said, “I stopped the hard stuff a long time ago. The weed just keeps me mellow.” She glanced at Will again. Obviously, there was something about him that was making her nervous.

Faith called her on it. “What are you so worried about?”

“He doesn’t look like a cop.”

“What does he look like?”

She shook her head. “He reminds me of my first boyfriend, all quiet and nice, but his temper—” She smacked her hand into her palm. “He beat me pretty bad. Broke my nose. Broke my leg once when I didn’t earn out for him.” She rubbed her knee. “Still hurts me when it’s cold.”

Faith saw where this was going. It wasn’t Candy’s fault that she’d tricked herself out to get high and more than likely failed her share of Breathalyzers. The evil boyfriend was to blame, or the stupid cop meeting his quota, and now Will was getting his turn as the bad guy, too.

Candy was a skilled enough manipulator to know when she was losing her audience. “I’m not lying to you.”

“I don’t care about the sordid details of your tragic past,” Faith stated. “Tell me what you’re really worried about.”

She debated for a few seconds. “I take care of my daughter now. I’m straight.”

“Ah,” Faith said. The woman was worried her child would be taken away.

Candy nodded toward Will. “He reminds me of those bastards from the state.”

Will as a social worker certainly was a better fit than Will as an abusive boyfriend. “How old is your daughter?”

“She’s almost four. I didn’t think I’d be able to — All the shit I’ve been through.” Candy smiled, her face changing from an angry fist into something that might be called a moderately attractive plum. “Hannah’s a little sweetheart. She loved Jackie a lot, wanted to be like her with her nice car and her fancy clothes.”

Faith didn’t think Jackie sounded like the kind of woman who wanted a three-year-old pawing her Jimmy Choos, not least of all because kids tended to be sticky at that age. “Did Jackie like her?”

Candy shrugged. “Who doesn’t like kids?” She finally asked the question that a less self-absorbed person would’ve asked ten minutes ago. “So, what happened? Was she drunk?”

“She was murdered.”

Candy opened her mouth, then closed it. “Killed?”

Faith nodded.

“Who would do that? Who would want to hurt her?”

Faith had seen this enough times to know where it was heading. It was the reason she had held back the true cause of Jacquelyn Zabel’s death. No one wanted to speak ill of the dead, even a fried-out hippie wannabe with an anger problem.

“She wasn’t bad,” Candy insisted. “I mean, she was good deep down.”

“I’m sure she was,” Faith agreed, though the opposite was more likely true.

Candy’s lip quivered. “How am I gonna tell Hannah that she’s dead?”

Faith’s phone rang, which was just as well because she did not know how to answer the question. Worse, part of her didn’t care, now that she’d wrung out all the information she needed. Candy Smith was hardly number one on the list of horrible parents, but she wasn’t a stellar human being, either, and there was a three-year-old child out there who was probably paying for it.

Faith answered the phone. “Mitchell.”

Detective Leo Donnelly asked, “Did you just call me?”

“I hit the wrong button,” she lied.

“I was about to call you anyway. You put out that BOLO, right?”

He meant the Be On the Look Out Faith had sent around to all the zones this morning. Faith held up her finger to Candy, asking for a minute, then walked back into the family room. “What’ve you got?”

“Not exactly a miss-per,” he said, meaning a missing person. “Uniform patrol found a kid asleep in an SUV this morning, mom nowhere to be found.”

“And?” Faith asked, knowing there had to be more. Leo was a homicide detective. He didn’t get called out to coordinate social services.

“Your BOLO,” he said. “It kind of matches the mom’s description. Brown hair, brown eyes.”

“What’s the kid saying?”

“Fuck-all,” he admitted. “I’m at the hospital with him now. You’ve got a kid. You wanna come see if you can get anything out of him?”

MEMBERS OF THE PRESS WERE CLUSTERED AROUND the entrance of Grady Hospital, momentarily displacing the pigeons but not the homeless people, who appeared determined to be included in every background shot. Will pulled into one of the reserved parking spots out front, hoping they could sneak in unnoticed. The prospect did not seem likely. News vans had their satellite dishes pointed skyward, and perfectly pressed reporters stood with mikes in their hands, breathlessly reporting the tragic story of the child who was abandoned at City Foods this morning.

Will got out of the car, telling Faith, “Amanda thought the kid would take the heat off us for a while. She’s going to go ballistic when she finds out they might be connected.”

Faith offered, “I’ll tell her if you want me to.”

He tucked his hands into his pockets as he walked beside her. “If I get a vote here, I’d rather you snap at me than feel sorry for me.”

“I can do both.”

He chuckled, although the fact that he’d missed the list of emergency numbers taped to the refrigerator was about as funny as his inability to read Jackie Zabel’s name off her driver’s license while the woman hung lifeless over his head. “Candy’s right, Faith. She called it in one.”

“You would have shown the list to me,” Faith defended. “Jackie Zabel’s sister wasn’t even home. I doubt a five-minute delay in leaving a message on her answering machine will make a huge difference.”

Will kept his mouth shut. They both knew she was stretching things. In some cases, five minutes made all the difference in the world.

Faith continued, “And if you hadn’t stayed under that tree with the license last night, you might not have found the body until daylight. If ever.”

Will saw the reporters were studying each person who walked to the front entrance of the hospital, trying to ascertain whether or not they were important to their story.

He told Faith, “One day, you’re going to have to stop making excuses for me.”

“One day, you’re going to have to get your head out of your ass.”

Will kept walking. Faith was right about one thing — she could snap at him and feel sorry for him at the same time. The revelation brought him no comfort. Faith’s blood ran blue — not the old-money kind, but the cop kind — and she had the same knee-jerk response that had been drilled into Angie every single day at the police academy, every single second on the street. When your partner or your squad was attacked, you defended him no matter what. Us against them, damn the truth, damn what was right.

“Will—” Faith was cut off as the reporters swarmed around her. They had pegged Faith for a cop as she walked across the parking lot while Will, as usual, had gotten a free pass.

Will held out his hand, blocking a camera, using his elbow to push away a photographer with an
Atlanta Journal
logo on the back of his jacket.

“Faith? Faith?” a man called.

She turned around, spotting a reporter, and shook her head as she kept walking.

“Come on, babe!” the man called. Will thought that with his scruffy beard and rumpled clothes, he looked just like the kind of guy who could get away with calling a woman “babe.”

Faith turned away, but she kept shaking her head as she walked toward the entrance.

Will waited until they were inside the building, past the metal detectors, to ask, “How do you know that guy?”

“Sam works for the
Atlanta Beacon
. He did a ride-along with me when I was working patrol.”

Will seldom thought about Faith’s life before him, the fact that she had worn a uniform and driven a squad car before she became a detective.

Faith gave a laugh Will didn’t quite understand. “We were hot and heavy for a few years.”