“Beats the alternative.”
She said, “Mandy told me about your part in all of this.” Will assumed that had been a very short conversation. “Thank you for looking out for my daughter.”
“I think you get more credit for that than I do.”
Her eyes watered. He wasn’t sure whether it was from pain or the thought of losing Faith.
And then he remembered that she had lost another child, too. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
She swallowed with obvious difficulty. The skin on her neck was nearly black with bruises. Evelyn Mitchell had been forced twice now to choose between her family with Bill Mitchell and the son she’d had with Hector Ortiz. Both times, she had made the same decision. Though Caleb had made it pretty easy for her the last time.
She said, “He was a very troubled young man. I didn’t know how to make it better. He was so angry.”
“You don’t have to talk about it.”
A gravelly chuckle came from her throat. “No one wants me to talk about him. I think they’d rather he just disappear.” She indicated the cup of water on the table. “Could you—”
Will picked up the cup and angled the straw so that she could drink. She couldn’t lift her head. Gently, Will reached around and supported her.
She drank for almost a full minute before releasing the straw. “Thank you.”
Will sat back down. He stared at the bouquet of flowers on the table across from him. There was a business card attached to the white bow. He recognized the logo from the Atlanta Police Department.
Evelyn said, “Hector was a CI.” Confidential informant. “He snitched on his cousin. They were in this gang, and it had started as something small, a reason to break into cars and snatch purses so they could play video games, and then it got really mean really fast.”
“Los Texicanos.”
She nodded slowly. “Hector wanted out. He kept talking and I kept listening because it was good for my career.” She waved her good hand in the air. “And then one thing led to another.” Her eyes closed. “I was married to an insurance salesman. He was a very kind man and a very good father, but …” Breath stuttered through her lips as she sighed. “You know how it is when you’re out there in the street chasing down bad guys and your heart is pounding and you feel like you’ve got the whole world bucking between your legs, and then you go home and—what?—cook dinner? Iron shirts and give the kids a bath?”
“Were you in love with Hector?”
“No.” She was firm in her answer. “Never. And the strange thing is, I didn’t realize how much I was in love with Bill until I had hurt him so badly that I was going to lose him.”
“But he stayed with you.”
“On his terms,” she told him. “I was out of the negotiations by then. He met with Hector. They came to a gentleman’s agreement.”
“The bank account.”
She turned her gaze toward the ceiling. Slowly, her eyes closed. He thought she had fallen asleep until she started talking again. “Sandra and Paul had a lot of debt from helping her family back home. They couldn’t afford a child, even if they could’ve had one of their own. Part of the money in the account was from Hector. Part of it was from me. Ten percent of every paycheck I got went to Caleb. It was like tithing, only not for the church—but still for penance.” The corner of her mouth went up slightly in something like a smile. “Though I suppose that Sandra gave a lot of that money to the church every week. They were very religious. Catholic, but that didn’t bother me like it bothered Bill. I thought they would give him a strong moral foundation.” The sound of laughter came from her mouth. “So much for that.”
“Caleb found out about you when Sandra got sick?”
She looked at Will. “I got a call from her. She sounded like she was warning me, which didn’t make sense at the time, so I ignored it. The first time I saw him as a grown man was at her funeral.” She shook her head at the memory. “God, he looked just like Zeke at that age. More handsome, if you want to know the truth. More angry, which was the problem.” Her head kept moving side to side. “I didn’t see how angry he was until it was too late. I had no idea.”
“Did you talk to Caleb at the funeral?”
“I tried to start a conversation, but he just walked away. A few weeks later I was cleaning the house and I noticed things were out of place. My office had been searched. He did a very good job. I wouldn’t have noticed if not for the fact that I was looking for a particular thing.” She explained, “I kept a lock of his baby hair hidden somewhere the children didn’t know about. I went to look for it, and it was gone. I should’ve known then. I should’ve realized how obsessed he was with me. How much he hated me.”
Evelyn stopped to catch her breath. Will could see that she was tired. But still, she continued. “I called Hector to meet. We’d been in touch since Sandra got sick. There wasn’t much time to catch up. We’d go to a Starbucks down by the airport so nobody would see us. It was the same as before—all that hiding. All that sneaking around so that my family wouldn’t find out.” She closed her eyes again. “Caleb was constantly in trouble. I tried everything with him—even offered to give him money so that he could go to college. Faith’s struggling to help Jeremy with his tuition, and here I was offering this boy a full ride. He just laughed in my face.” Her tone turned sharp, angry. “The next day, I got a call from an old friend in narcotics. They’d picked up Caleb with some serious weight on him. I had to get Mandy to pull some strings. She didn’t want to. She said he’d been given too many chances already. But I begged her.”
“Heroin?”
“Coke,” she corrected. “Heroin would’ve been beyond my reach, but the coke we could work with. They knocked it down because we agreed to send him to rehab.”
“You sent him to Healing Winds.”
“Hector lives a few miles from there. His cousin’s boy had been at the facility, Ricardo. And Chuck was there. Poor Chuck.” She stopped, swallowing to clear her throat. “He called me at the beginning of this year to make amends. He’s been sober for eight months now. I knew that he was doing some counseling work at Healing Winds, and I thought Caleb would be safe there.”
“Chuck shared his story with them.”
“Apparently, that’s one of the steps. He told them about the money. And of course, even though Chuck assured them that I had nothing to do with it, they didn’t believe him.”
“It was Chuck in the hospital that day. He was the cop who asked Sara whether or not the kid was going to make it.”
She nodded. “He saw what happened to me on the news and came down to see if he could help. He didn’t stop to realize that with his record, no one would want his help. I’ve asked Mandy to try to smooth things over with his parole officer. It was really me who got him into trouble. My guys have always stood up for me, even when it wasn’t in their best interest.”
“Do you think Caleb thought you were on the take like the rest of them?”
She was obviously surprised by the question. “No, Agent Trent. I really don’t think he did. He had this preconceived notion of me as cold and uncaring, the mother who never loved him. He said that the only thing he’d inherited from me was my black heart.”