Fallen (Will Trent 5)

“It depends. Hours, maybe days. Triage can buy some time, but anything close to a week would be a miracle.”

“You mind if I eat my dinner while you do that?” He opened the Styrofoam box. She saw two foot-long hot dogs soaked in chili. He sniffed, then frowned. “I guess the guy at the gas station was going to throw them out for a reason.” Still, he picked up one of the hot dogs.

“Don’t you dare.”

“It’s probably fine.”

“Sit down.” She took out a frying pan from the cabinet and found a carton of eggs in the refrigerator. Will sat at the bar across from the stainless steel cooktop. The Styrofoam box was on the counter beside him. Bob poked it with his nose, then backed away.

She asked, “Was that really your dinner—two hot dogs and a Krispy Kreme doughnut?”

“Four doughnuts.”

“What does your cholesterol look like?”

“I guess it’s white like what they show in the commercials.”

“Very funny.” She wrapped the Styrofoam container in aluminum foil and threw it into the trash. “Why do you think Faith’s mother wasn’t kidnapped?”

“I didn’t actually say that. I just think a lot of things aren’t adding up.” He watched Sara break eggs into a bowl. “I don’t think she left willingly. She wouldn’t do that to her family. But I think she might know her kidnappers. Like, they had a previous working relationship.”

“How?”

He stood and walked to the dining room table, where he took out a handful of yellow folders from one of the boxes. He grabbed the bag of doughnuts before sitting back down at the kitchen bar. “Boyd Spivey,” he said, opening the top file and showing her a mugshot.

Sara recognized the face and name from the news. “That’s the man who was killed at the prison today.”

Will nodded, opening the next file. “Ben Humphrey.”

“Another cop?”

“Yep.” He opened another file. There was a yellow star stickered on the inside. “This is Adam Hopkins. He was Humphrey’s partner.” Another file, this one with a purple star. “This is Chuck Finn, Spivey’s partner, and this guy—” He fumbled open the last file. Green star. “Is Demarcus Alexander.” He’d forgotten one. Will went back to the table and found another yellow folder. This one had a black star, which seemed prophetic when he said, “Lloyd Crittenden. Died from a drug overdose three years ago.”

“All cops?”

Will nodded as he shoved half a doughnut into his mouth.

Sara poured the eggs into the pan. “What am I missing?”

“Their boss was Evelyn Mitchell.”

Sara almost spilled the eggs. “Faith’s mother?” She went back to the photographs, studying the men’s faces. They all had that same arrogant tilt to their chins, as if their present trouble was just a blip on the radar. She skimmed Spivey’s arrest report, trying to decipher the typos. “Theft during the commission of a felony.” She flipped back the page and read the details. “Spivey issued a standing order to his team that they should remove ten percent off the top of every drug bust involving cash money exceeding two thousand dollars.”

“It added up.”

“To how much?”

“From what accounting could estimate, over the course of twelve years, they stole around six million dollars.”

She gave a low whistle.

“That’s a little less than a million each, tax free. Or at least it was. I’m sure Uncle Sam caught up with them their first day in prison.”

Even stolen money was taxable income. Most inmates got their notice from the IRS within the first week of their prison sentence.

Sara checked the front page of the arrest report, stopping on a familiar name. “You were the investigating officer.”

“It’s not my favorite part of the job.” He shoved the rest of the doughnut into his mouth.

Sara looked down at the file, pretending to read on. The typos hadn’t been much of a red flag. Every police report she’d ever read was riddled with grammar and spelling mistakes. Like most dyslexics, Will treated spell check as sacrosanct. He’d substituted words that made no contextual sense, then signed his name at the bottom. Sara studied his signature. It was little more than a squiggle running at an angle from the black line.

Will was watching her closely. She realized she needed to ask a question. “Who instigated the investigation?”

“An anonymous tip came into the GBI.”

“Why wasn’t Evelyn charged?”

“The prosecutor refused to bring a case. She was allowed to retire with her full pension. They called it early retirement, but she was way past her thirty years. She wasn’t working for the money. At least not the money she was getting from the city.”

Sara used a spatula to stir the eggs. Will ate another doughnut in two bites. The powdered sugar sprinkled onto the black granite countertop.

She said, “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“How does Faith work with you after you investigated her mother?”

“She thinks I’m wrong.” Bob was back. He propped his nose on the counter and Will started petting his head. “I know that she cleared it with her mother, but we’ve never really talked about it beyond that.”

Sara would not have believed anyone else telling her the same thing, but she could easily imagine how this worked. Faith wasn’t one to sit around talking about her feelings, and Will was just so damn decent that it was hard to assign him vengeful ulterior motives. “What’s Evelyn like?”

“She’s old school.”

“Like Amanda?”

“Not exactly.” He took another doughnut out of the bag. “I mean, she’s tough, but she’s not as intense.”

Sara understood what he meant. That generation didn’t have a lot of avenues for proving themselves to their male counterparts. Amanda had taken the ball-breaking route with obvious relish.

“They came up together,” Will told her. “They went to the academy together, then worked joint task forces through APD and the GBI. They’re still good friends. I think Amanda dated Evelyn’s brother, or her brother-in-law.”

Sara couldn’t think of a more obvious conflict of interest. “And Amanda was your senior officer when you were investigating Evelyn?”

“Yep.” He inhaled another doughnut.

“Did you know this at the time?”

He shook his head, keeping the doughnut in his cheek like a squirrel with a nut so that he could ask, “You know the stove isn’t on, right?”

“Crap.” That explained why the eggs were still liquid. She clicked the dial until the flame whooshed up.

He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “I like to let them sit for a while, too. Gives them a woodsy character.”

“That’s E. coli.” She checked the toaster, wondering why it hadn’t popped up. Probably because there was nothing in there. Will smiled as she got a loaf of bread out of the cabinet. She said, “I’m not much of a cook.”

“Do you want me to take over?”

“I want you to tell me about Evelyn.”