Fallen (8 page)

Will took her words as hard as they were meant to be. No matter what Amanda said, he should’ve pulled an EMT in here half an hour ago. He had been worried about Faith’s career when he should’ve been worried about her life. “Is she going to be okay?”

Sara shook the vial, mixing the contents before drawing them back into the syringe. “We’ll know soon enough.” She lifted Faith’s shirt and swabbed a patch of skin on her belly. Will watched the needle go in, the rubber stopper sliding down the plastic cylinder as the liquid was injected.

Sara asked, “Are you worried they’ll think she was impaired when she shot those two men?”

He didn’t answer.

“Her comedown was probably hard and immediate. She would’ve been slurring her words. She probably appeared intoxicated.” Sara cleaned up the kit, putting everything back in its place. “Tell them to look at the facts. She shot one man in the head and one in the back, probably from a distance, with two innocent bystanders downrange. If she’d been impaired, there’s no way she would’ve been able to make those shots.”

Will glanced at Mrs. Levy, who probably didn’t need to be hearing this conversation. She waved off his concerns. “Oh, don’t worry about me, dear. I don’t remember much of nothin’ these days.” She held out her arms for Emma. “Why don’t you let me take care of the little lamb?” Carefully, he transferred the baby to Mrs. Levy. The old woman walked off toward the back of the house. Her bedroom slippers made a slapping sound on her dry heels.

Will asked Sara, “What about the diabetes? Can they say it was that?”

Her tone was businesslike. “How was she acting when you got here?”

“She looked …” He shook his head, thinking he never wanted to see Faith that bad off again. “She looked like she’d lost her mind.”

“Do you think a mentally or chemically altered person could’ve killed two men with a single shot to each?” Sara put her hand on
Faith’s shoulder. Her tone softened. “Faith, can you sit up for me, please?”

Slowly, Faith moved to right herself. She looked groggy, as if she had just woken from a long nap, but her color was coming back. She put her hands to her head, wincing.

Sara told her, “You’ll have a headache for a while. Drink as much water as you can tolerate. We need your tester to see where you are.”

“It’s in my purse.”

“I’ll try to get another one from one of the ambulances.” She took a bottle of water off the coffee table and twisted off the cap. “Switch to water. No more Coke.”

Sara left without looking at Will. Her back felt like a wall of ice. He didn’t know what to do with that, so he ignored it, sitting on the coffee table in front of Faith.

She took a long drink of water before she spoke to him. “My head is killing me.” The shock of what happened came back to her like a bolt of lightning. “Where’s my mother?” She tried to stand, but Will kept her down. “Where is she?”

“They’re looking for her.”

“The little girls—”

“They’re fine. Please, just stay here for a second, okay?”

She looked around, some of her wildness returning. “Where’s Emma?”

“She’s with Mrs. Levy. She’s asleep. I called Jeremy at the school—”

Her mouth opened. He could see her life coming back to her in spurts. “How did you tell him?”

“I talked to Victor. He’s still the dean of students. I knew you wouldn’t want me to send a cop to Jeremy’s classroom.”

“Victor.” Faith pressed her lips together. She had dated Victor Martinez for a while, but they had broken up almost a year ago. “Please tell me you didn’t mention Emma.”

Will couldn’t remember exactly what he’d told Victor, but he
guessed Faith hadn’t gotten around to telling the man that he had a daughter. “I’m sorry.”

“It doesn’t matter.” She put down the bottle of water, her shaking hands spilling some onto the carpet. “What else?”

“We’re trying to track down your brother.” Dr. Zeke Mitchell was a surgeon in the Air Force, stationed somewhere in Germany. “Amanda reached out to a friend at Dobbins Air Reserve. They’re cutting through some of the red tape.”

“My phone …” She seemed to realize where she’d left it. “Mama has his number by the phone in the kitchen.”

“I’ll get it as soon as we’re finished,” Will promised. “Tell me what happened.”

She took a stuttered breath. He could see her struggle with the knowledge of what she had done. “I killed two people.”

Will held both her hands. Her skin was still cold and clammy. She had a slight tremor, but he didn’t think it was from her blood sugar issues. “You saved two little girls, Faith.”

“The man in the bedroom—” She stopped. “I don’t understand what happened.”

“Are you confused again? Do you need me to get Dr. Linton?”

“No.” She shook her head for so long he thought maybe he should get Sara anyway. “She’s not bad, Will. My mom is not a dirty cop.”

“We don’t need to talk about—”

“Yes, we do,” Faith insisted. “Even if she was, which she’s not, she’s been retired for five years. She’s not on the job anymore. She doesn’t go to the fundraisers or the events. She doesn’t talk to anybody from that old life. She plays cards on Fridays with some of the ladies in the neighborhood. She goes to church every Wednesday and Sunday. She watches Emma while I’m at work. Her car is five years old. She just made the last mortgage payment on the house. She’s not mixed up in anything. There’s no reason for anybody to think …” Her lip started to tremble. Tears threatened to fall.

Will told her the concrete things he could point to. “There’s a mobile
command center outside. All the highways are being watched. Evelyn’s photo is on all the news stations. Every cruiser policing the metro area has her picture. We’re lighting up all the snitches to see if they’ve heard anything. They’ve trapped and traced all your phones in case any ransom demands are made. Amanda pitched a fit, but they put one of their detectives in your house to monitor all mail and calls. Jeremy’s at your house. They’ve got a plainclothes assigned to him. You’ll get somebody, too.”

Faith had worked kidnapping cases before. “Do you really think there’s going to be a ransom demand?”

“It could happen.”

“They were Texicanos. They were looking for something. That’s why they took her.”

Will asked, “What were they looking for?”

“I don’t know. The house was turned upside down. The Asian said he’d trade my mother for whatever they were looking for.”

“The Asian said he’d trade?”

“Yes, he had a gun on the Texicano—the one in the backyard.”

“Hold on.” They were doing this the wrong way. “Work with me, Faith. Treat your memory like a crime scene. Start from the beginning. You had that in-service this morning, right? Computer training?”

She started to nod. “I was late getting home by almost two hours.” She laid out every detail from her morning until now, how she had tried to call her mother, how she’d heard music playing in the house when she got out of her car. Faith hadn’t realized that something was wrong until well after the music stopped. Will let her run through the story—the torn-up house, the dead man she’d found and the two that she had killed herself.

When she was finished, he played it all back in his head, seeing Faith standing in the carport by the shed, going back to her car. Despite her recent medical issues, her memory seemed crystal clear now. She had called dispatch, and then she had gotten her gun. Will felt this detail picking at a spot in his brain. Faith knew that Will was
home today. They had talked about it yesterday afternoon. She was complaining about having to go do computer training, and he told her he was going to wash his car and take care of the yard. Will lived 2.3 miles away from where they were sitting. He could’ve gotten here in under five minutes.

But Faith hadn’t called him.

“What is it?” she asked. “Did I miss something?”

He cleared his throat. “What was the song that was playing when you pulled up?”

“AC/DC,” she said. “ ‘Back in Black.’ ”

The detail seemed strange. “Is that what your mom usually listens to?”

She shook her head. She was obviously still in shock, her mind reeling from what had happened.

He wrapped his hands around her arms, trying to get her to concentrate. “Think this through, all right?” He waited for her to look at him. “There are two dead men in the house. Both are Asian. The guy in the backyard is Mexican. Los Texicanos.”

She focused herself. “The Asian in the bedroom—he was wearing this loud Hawaiian shirt. He sounded southside.” She meant his accent. “He had a gun on the Texicano. He was threatening to kill him.”

“Did he say anything else?”

“I shot him.” Her lip started to tremble again.

Will had never seen Faith cry and he didn’t want to now. “The guy in the shirt had a gun pointed at someone’s head,” he reminded her. “The Texicano was already beaten up, possibly tortured. You feared for his life. That’s why you pulled the trigger.”

She nodded, though he could see self-doubt brimming in her eyes.

He said, “After Hawaiian Shirt went down, the Texicano ran out into the yard, right?”

“Right.”

“And you chased after him, and he raised his gun toward those little girls and fired, so you shot him, too, right?”

“Yes.”

“You were protecting the hostage in the bedroom and you were protecting those two girls in your neighbor’s backyard. Right?”

“Yes,” she said, her voice stronger. “I was.”

She was getting back to her old self. Will allowed himself to feel a little bit of relief. He dropped her hands. “You remember the directive, Faith. Deadly force is authorized when your life or the lives of others are at stake. You did your job today. You just have to articulate what you were thinking. People were in danger. You shoot to immediately stop the threat. You don’t shoot to wound.”

“I know.”

“Why didn’t you wait for backup?”

She didn’t answer.

“The dispatcher told you to wait outside. You didn’t wait outside.”

Faith still didn’t answer.

Will sat back on the table, hands between his knees. Maybe she didn’t trust him. They had never talked openly about the case he’d built against her mother, but he knew Faith assumed that it was the detectives on the squad, not the captain in charge, who had messed up. As smart as she was, she was still naïve about the politics of the job. Will had noticed in every corruption case he’d worked that the heads that tended to roll in this business were the ones that didn’t have gold stars on their collars. Faith was too low on the food chain to have that kind of protection.

He said, “You must’ve heard something inside. A yell? A gunshot?”

“No.”

“Did you see something?”

“I saw the curtain move, but that was after—”

“Good, that’s good.” He leaned forward again. “You saw someone inside. You thought your mother might be in there. You sensed an immediate danger to her life and went in to secure the scene.”

“Will—”

“Listen to me, Faith. I’ve asked a lot of cops these same questions, and I know what the answer is supposed to be. Are you listening to me?”

She nodded.

“You saw someone inside the house. You thought your mother might be in serious danger—”

“I saw blood on the carport. On the door. A bloody handprint on the door.”

“Exactly. That’s good. That gives you cause to go in. Someone was badly injured. Their life was at stake. The rest of it happened because you were provoked into a situation where deadly force was justified.”

She shook her head. “Why are you coaching me? You hate when cops lie for each other.”

“I’m not lying for you. I’m trying to make sure you keep your job.”

“I don’t give a shit about my job. I just want to get my mother back.”

“Then stick to what we just talked about. You won’t do anybody any good sitting in a jail cell.”

He could read the shock in her eyes. As bad as things were right now, it had never occurred to her that they could get worse.

There was a loud knock at the door. Will started to get up, but Mrs. Levy beat him to it. She sashayed down the hall with her arms swinging. He guessed she’d put Emma in one of the beds and hoped she’d thought to stack some pillows around her.

Geary was the first to come in, then Amanda, then a couple of older-looking men, one black, one white. Both had bushy eyebrows, clean-shaven faces, and the kind of brass and ribbons on their chests that came from a glorious career of riding a desk. They were window dressing, here to make Geary look important. If he were a rap star, they would’ve been called a posse. Because he was a zone commander, they were called support staff.

“Ma’am,” Geary mumbled to Mrs. Levy as he took off his hat. His
boys followed suit, tucking their hats under their arms, just like the boss. Geary walked toward Faith, but the old woman stopped him.

“Can I get y’all some tea or perhaps some cookies?”

Geary snapped, “We’re conducting an investigation, not a tea party.”

Mrs. Levy seemed unfazed. “Well, then. Please, make yourself at home.” She winked at Will before turning on her heel and heading back down the hallway.

Geary said, “Stand up, Agent Mitchell.”

Will felt his stomach tense as Faith stood. None of her earlier shakiness was on display, though her shirt was untucked and her hair was still a mess. She said, “I’m ready to make a statement if—”

Amanda interrupted, “Your lawyer and a union rep are waiting at the station.”

Geary scowled. He obviously didn’t care about Faith’s legal representation. “Agent Mitchell, you were told to wait for backup. I don’t know how they do it in the GBI, but the men on my force follow orders.”

Faith glanced at Amanda, but told Geary evenly, “There was blood on the kitchen door. I saw a person inside the house. My mother’s S&W was missing. I feared there was an immediate threat to her life, so I went into the house to secure her safety.” She couldn’t have said it better if Will had supplied a script.

Geary asked, “The man in the kitchen?”

“He was dead when I entered the house.”

“The one in the bedroom?”

“He had my mother’s revolver pointed at another man’s head. I was protecting the life of the hostage.”