Blood radiated from beneath her still body, cresting in a halo over her head.
Will put his hand on her ankle. The skin was cold. He felt no pulse.
His head dropped down. He squeezed his eyes shut against the tears that came.
Collier was behind him. ‘I’ll call it in.’
‘Don’t.’ Will needed a minute. He couldn’t hear the call on the radio. He couldn’t take his hand from Angie’s leg. She was thinner than the last time he’d seen her—not Saturday, that was just a glimpse, but about sixteen months ago. It was the last time they were together. Deidre had finally died, all alone in the nursing home because Angie didn’t see her anymore. Will was on a case when it happened. He had driven back to Atlanta to be with Angie. Sara was in the picture by then, like a blur at the edge of the frame that might be something or nothing at all, depending on how things developed.
Will had told himself that he owed Angie one last chance, but she had known the minute she looked into his eyes that all that weight between them—that Pandora’s box of shared horrors that they both carried on their backs—had finally been lifted.
Will cleared his throat. ‘I want to see her face.’
Collier’s mouth opened, but he didn’t say what he was supposed to say—that they should leave the body in situ, that they needed to call in forensics and Amanda and everybody else who would pick over Angie Polaski’s lifeless body like carrion.
Instead, Collier climbed the stairs and went to the head of Angie’s body. He didn’t bother to glove up before he slipped his hands under her thin shoulders. He said, ‘On three?’
Will forced himself to move. To get up on his knees. To wrap his hands around Angie’s ankles. Her skin was smooth. She shaved her legs every day. She hated having her feet touched. She liked fresh milk in her coffee. She loved the perfume samples that came in magazines. She loved dancing. She loved conflict and chaos and all the things he could not stand. But she looked out for Will. She loved him like a brother. A lover. A sworn enemy. She hated him for leaving her. She didn’t want him anymore. She couldn’t let him go.
She would never, ever hold him like she held him in that basement ever again.
Collier counted down. ‘Three.’
Wordlessly they lifted the body and turned her onto her back. She wasn’t stiff. The arm over her head flailed, crossing itself over her eyes as if she couldn’t face the fact that she was gone.
Her swollen lips were chapped. Dark blood smeared down her chin. White powder speckled her hair and face.
Will’s hand shook as he reached out to move the arm. There was blood—not just from her mouth and nose, but from needle tracks. On her neck. Between her grimy fingers. On her arms.
Will felt his heart start to jackhammer. He was light-headed. His fingers touched her cool skin. Her face. He had to see her face.
The arm moved.
Collier asked, ‘Did you do that?’
Unaided, the woman’s arm slid off her face, flopped onto the ground.
Her mouth slit open, then her rheumy eyes.
She looked at Will.
He looked back.
It wasn’t Angie.
FOUR
Faith sat in her car outside Dale Harding’s duplex, taking a break from the unrelenting heat. She was sweating her balls off, to quote a post from her son’s Facebook page that future potential employers would eventually find.
Maybe he could live with his grandmother. Faith had gotten a sunglassed smiley face back when she texted Evelyn the photo of Jeremy with the bong. This was certainly a radical departure from her mother’s previous parenting techniques, which had come straight from the pages of Fascist Monthly. Then again, Jeremy wouldn’t be here if fashioning yourself into your child’s own private Mussolini was a strategy for success.
She took a long drink of water and stared at Dale Harding’s duplex side of a well-maintained single-story bungalow nestled inside a sprawling gated complex.
Something wasn’t adding up.
Faith hated when things didn’t add up.
After hitting a series of brick walls trying to locate any contact information for Angie Polaski, Faith had burned through the remainder of the morning and part of the afternoon trying to track down Dale Harding’s place of residence. Two dead ends had sent her to east Atlanta’s shadier neighborhoods, where she was told by various neighbors and slumlords that Dale Harding was an asshole who owed them money. No one seemed surprised or sad to learn of his untimely death. Several expressed regret that they hadn’t been there to witness it.
As Amanda had predicted, there were liquor stores, strip clubs, payday loan stores and all sorts of seedy dives where you’d expect to run into a slimeball like Dale Harding, and in fact many of the workers at these businesses recognized the dead man’s photograph, though none could recall seeing Dale in the last six months. That was the story everywhere Faith went: Dale was bellied up to the bar every day until six months ago. He was shoving ones into G-strings every day until six months ago. He was buying loose cigarettes and three-dollar liters of whiskey every day until six months ago.
No one could tell her what had happened six months ago.
She was about to give up when she ran into a stripper who said Harding had promised her kid a hundred bucks if he helped move some boxes. Faith would’ve never found the quiet little duplex in north Atlanta if Harding hadn’t stiffed the kid.
All of that made sense, from the slumlords to the strippers to cheating a fifteen-year-old boy out of a promised payday. What didn’t make sense was the place that Harding had finally called home.
He hadn’t lived in elegance so much as limbo. According to its website, the Mesa Arms was an active retirement community for the fifty-five-and-older set. Faith had drooled over the modern floorplans posted on the site. Everything was in italics with an exclamation point, like it wasn’t exciting enough to live in a community that did not allow children under the age of eighteen to visit more than three days in a row.
Spa-style bathrooms!
Main floor masters!
Hardwoods throughout!
Central vacuum!
The place was a baby boomer’s dream, if you could dream in half-a-million-dollar increments. Green lawns. Gently sloping sidewalks. Cute craftsman-style bungalows spread out like fans on tree-lined cul-de-sacs. There was a club lounge, gym, pool, and a tennis court that was currently occupied by two sporty seniors, even though the temperature had passed the one hundred mark.
Faith used the sleeve of Will’s suit jacket to wipe the back of her neck. At this point, the thermometer might as well read HELL.
She finished the water and tossed the empty into the back seat. She wondered if Harding had found a sugar mama, then figured that was unlikely unless she had very, very low standards. It was possible. Cotton-candy-pink drapes were hanging in the front windows. There were three gnomes and a ceramic bunny in the front yard, all dressed in ill-sized pink jackets, which seemed incongruous with Harding’s betting sheet and nudie pics from Backdoorman.com.
Considering Harding had cashed in his chips both literally and figuratively, Faith found it odd that he’d chosen the Mesa to live out his dying days. Further, it was odd that the Mesa was allowing him to do so. The posted $1,200-a-month homeowners’ association fee seemed well out of reach for a man who had bought out his pension for pennies on the dollar.