"What is it?" he asked.
She pointed toward a dense pack of low-hanging trees. He saw that the leaves underneath were disturbed, bare spots of earth showing in places. "Something caught my light," she said, turning on her Maglite and shining it into the shadowy area under the trees. Will didn't see anything. By the time Amanda had joined them, he was wondering if the patrolwoman had been a little too tired, a little too anxious to find something.
"What is it?" Amanda asked, just as the light reflected back from the darkness. It was a small flash that lasted no more than a second. Will blinked, thinking maybe his tired brain had conjured it, too, but the patrolwoman found it again—a quick flash like a tiny burst of powder, approximately twenty feet away.
Will slipped on a pair of latex gloves from his jacket. He took the flashlight, carefully pushing back branches as he made his way into the area. The prickly bushes and limbs made it hard going, and he stooped down low to make forward progress. He shone the light on the ground, scanning for the object. Maybe it was a broken mirror or a chewing gum wrapper. All the possibilities ran through his mind as he tried to locate it: a piece of jewelry, a shard of glass, minerals in a rock.
A Florida state driver's license.
The license was about two feet from the base of the tree. Beside it was a small pocketknife, the thin blade so coated in blood that it blended in with the dark leaves around it. Close to the trunk, the branches thinned out. Will knelt down, picking up the leaves one at a time as he moved them off the license. The thick plastic had been folded in two. The colors and the distinctive outline of the state of Florida in the corner told him where the license had been issued. There was a hologram in the background to prevent forgeries. That must have been what the light had picked up on.
He leaned down, craning his neck so he could get a better look, not wanting to disturb the scene. One of the clearest fingerprints Will had ever seen was right in the middle of the license. Imprinted in blood, the ridges were practically jumping off the smooth plastic. The photograph showed a woman: dark hair, dark eyes.
"There's a pocketknife and a license," he told Amanda, his voice raised so that she could hear him. "There's a bloody fingerprint on the license."
"Can you read the name?" She put her hands on her hips, sounding furious.
Will felt his throat close up. He concentrated on the small print, making out a J, or maybe an I, before everything began to jumble around.
Her fury shot up exponentially. "Just bring the damn thing out."
There was a cluster of cops around her now, all looking confused. Even twenty feet away, Will could hear them mumbling about procedure. The purity of the crime scene was sacrosanct. Defense lawyers chewed apart irregularities. Photographs and measurements had to be taken, sketches made. The chain of custody could not be broken, or the evidence would be thrown out.
"Will?"
He felt a drop of rain hit the back of his neck. It was hot, almost like a burn. More cops were coming up, trying to see what had been found. They would wonder why Will didn't shout out the name from the license, why he didn't immediately send off someone to do a computer check. Was this how it was going to end? Was Will going to have to pick his way out of this dense covering and announce to a group of strangers that, at his best, he could only read at a second-grade level? If that information got out, he might as well go home and stick his head in the oven, because there wouldn't be a cop in the city who would work with him.
Amanda started making her way toward him, her skirt snagging on a prickly vine, various curses coming from her lips.
Will felt another drop of rain on his neck and wiped it away with his hand. He looked down at his glove. There was a fine smear of blood on his fingers. He thought maybe he had cut his neck on one of the limbs, but he felt another drop on the back of his neck. Hot, wet, viscous. He put his hand to the place. More blood.
Will looked up, into the eyes of a woman with dark brown hair and dark eyes. She was hanging face-down about fifteen feet above him. Her ankle was snagged in a patchwork of branches, the only thing keeping her from hitting the ground. She had fallen at an angle, face first, snapping her neck. Her shoulders were twisted, her eyes open, staring at the ground. One arm hung straight down, reaching toward Will. There was an angry red circle around her wrist, the skin burned through. A piece of rope was knotted tightly around the other wrist. Her mouth was open. Her front tooth was broken, a third of it missing.
Another drop of blood dripped from her fingertips, this time hitting him on the cheek just below his eye. Will took off his latex glove and touched the blood. It was still warm.
She had died within the last hour.
DAY TWO
CHAPTER FIVE
PAULINE MCGHEE STEERED HER LEXUS LX RIGHT INTO THE handicapped parking space in front of the City Foods Supermarket. It was five in the morning. All the handicapped people were probably still asleep. More importantly, it was too damn early to walk more than she had to.
"Come on, sleepy cat," she told her son, gently pressing his shoulder. Felix stirred, not wanting to wake up. She caressed his cheek in her hand, thinking not for the first time that it was a miracle that something so perfect had come out of her imperfect body. "Come on, sweet pea," she said, tickling his ribs until he curved up like a roly-poly worm.
She got out of the car, helping Felix climb out of the SUV behind her. His feet hadn't hit the ground before she went over the routine. "See where we're parked?" He nodded. "What do we do if we get lost?"
"Meet at the car." He struggled not to a yawn.
"Good boy." She pulled him close as they walked toward the store. Growing up, Pauline had been told that she should find an adult if she ever got lost, but these days, you never knew who that adult might be. A security guard might be a pedophile. A little old lady might be a batty witch who spent her spare time hiding razor blades in apples. It was a sad state of affairs when the safest help for a lost six-year-old boy was an inanimate object.
The artificial lights of the store were a bit much for this time of morning, but it was Pauline's own fault for not already buying the cupcakes for Felix's class. She'd gotten the notice a week ago, but she hadn't anticipated all hell breaking loose at work in between. One of the interior design agency's biggest clients had ordered a custom-made sixty-thousand-dollar Italian brown leather couch that wouldn't fit in the damn elevator, and the only way to get it up to his penthouse was with a ten-thousand-dollar-an-hour crane.
The client was blaming Pauline's agency for not catching the error, the agency was blaming Pauline for designing the couch too big, and Pauline was blaming the dipshit upholsterer whom she had specifically told to go to the building on Peachtree Street to measure the elevator before making the damn couch. Faced with a ten-thousand-dollar-an-hour crane bill or rebuilding a sixty-thousand-dollar couch, the upholsterer was, of course, conveniently forgetting this conversation, but Pauline was damned if she was going to let him get away with it.
There was a meeting of all concerned at seven o'clock sharp, and she was going to be the first one there to get in her side of the story. As her father always said, shit rolls downhill. Pauline McGhee wasn't going to be the one smelling like a sewer when the day was over. She had evidence on her side—a copy of an email exchange with her boss asking him to remind the upholsterer about taking measurements. The critical part was Morgan's response: I'll take care of it. Her boss was pretending like the emails hadn't happened, but Pauline wasn't going to take the fall. Someone was going to lose their job today, and it sure as hell wasn't going to be her.