Still, Will said, “Roger Ling asked for me specifically?”
“Yes, Will. The request came through his lawyer. He asked for you specifically.” She allowed, “Of course, they called me first. No one knows who the hell you are. Except for Roger, apparently.”
Will sat back down in the chair. He felt his jaw ratcheting tight. The silence wanted to come back. He could feel it like a shadow looming behind him.
She asked, “Who do you think the cop is who confronted Dr. Linton in the hospital?”
He shook his head. He didn’t want to think about Sara anymore. He felt sick every time he thought about what she’d been through today. Alone.
Amanda repeated herself. “Who do you think the cop is?” Again, she snapped her fingers to get his attention.
He looked up. He wanted to break her hand.
“This isn’t about me. This is about Faith and getting back her mother. Now, who do you think the cop is?”
He cleared the glass out of his throat. “How do you know all of these people?”
“What people?”
“Hector Ortiz. Roger Ling. Julia Ling. Perry the bodyguard who drives a Mercedes. Why are you on a first-name basis with all these people?”
She was silent, obviously debating about whether or not to answer. Finally, she relented. “You know I came up in the job with Evelyn. We were cadets together. We were partners before they got tired of us busting all their cases.” She shook her head at the memory. “These are the bad guys who were on the other side. Drugs. Rape. Murder. Assault. Hostage negotiation. RICO cases. Money laundering. They’ve been around as long as we have.” She added ruefully, “Which is a very, very long time.”
“You’ve worked cases against them?”
There were fifty chairs in the room, but she sat down right beside him. “Ignatio Ortiz and Roger Ling didn’t just vault to the top. There are bodies they climbed over. Lots and lots of dead bodies. And the sad part is that they were human beings once. They were nice, normal people who went to church every Sunday and clocked into their jobs during the week.” Amanda shook her head again, and Will could tell that her words invoked memories she’d rather forget.
Still, she told him, “You know the word underbelly refers to the part of society that’s never seen, but it also means the vulnerable part. The weak part. That’s what monsters like Roger Ling and Ignatio Ortiz prey on. Addiction. Greed. Poverty. Desperation. Once these guys figured out how to exploit these people, they never looked back. They cut their teeth doing carhops for dealers when they were twelve. They murdered before they were old enough to legally buy a drink in a bar. They’ve slit throats and beaten old women to death and done whatever it takes to get to the top and hold on to that power. So, when you ask me why I’m on a first-name basis with them, it’s because I know them. I know who they are. I have stared into the darkness of their souls. But I guarantee you it doesn’t go the other way. They don’t have a damn idea who I am, and I’ve spent my career keeping it that way.”
Will was finished treading carefully. “They know Evelyn.”
“Yes,” Amanda allowed. “I think they do.”
He sat back in his chair. It was a stunning admission. He didn’t know how to respond. Unfortunately—or maybe fortunately—she didn’t give him the chance.
She clasped her hands together. Sharing time was over. “Let’s talk about this cop who confronted Sara in the hospital.”
Will was still trying to wrap his brain around what had just happened. For just a moment, he’d forgotten all about Sara.
“Chuck Finn,” she prompted.
Will leaned his head against the wall. The concrete block felt cold against his scalp. “He used to be a cop. You don’t lose that no matter how much heroin you shoot up. He’s tall. He’s probably lost a lot of weight from his habit. Sara wouldn’t have recognized him from his mugshot. I’m assuming he’s a smoker. Most junkies are.”
“So, at the hospital: you think Chuck Finn discerned from Sara that Marcellus Estevez might live, so he sent Franklin Heeney in to kill him.”
“Don’t you?”
Amanda wasn’t quick with her response. He could tell what she’d said about Evelyn Mitchell still weighed heavily on her. “I don’t know what I think anymore, Will. And that’s the God’s honest truth.”
She sounded tired. Her shoulders were slumped. There was a sort of detachment about her. He went back over their conversation, wondering what had finally made her admit that Evelyn Mitchell wasn’t squeaky clean. He had never in his life seen Amanda give up on anything. Part of him felt sorry for her, and another part of him realized that he might not ever have this chance again.
He struck while her defenses were down. “Why didn’t they shoot you outside the warehouse?”
“I’m a deputy director with the GBI. That’s a lot of heat.”
“They’ve already kidnapped a decorated police officer. They shot at you inside the warehouse. They killed Castillo. Why didn’t they kill you?”
“I don’t know, Will.” She rubbed her eyes with her fingers. “I think we must be caught in the middle of some kind of war.”
Will stared at the Meth Project poster on the wall. A toothless woman with scabby skin stared back. He wondered if that was what the junkie had looked like, the woman who had told Sara that there was a guy laid out by the Dumpster. How long had it taken before Marcellus Estevez was dead and Franklin Heeney was struggling with Sara on the floor, threatening to cut open her face with a scalpel?
Minutes. Maybe ten at the most.
Will couldn’t help it. He put his elbows on his knees and dropped his head in his hands. “You should’ve told me.” He could hear a distant voice in his head screaming at him to shut up. But he couldn’t. “You had no right to keep that from me.”
Amanda gave a heavy sigh. “Maybe I should have. Or maybe I was right to hold it back. If it’s the first one, I’m sorry. If it’s the second, then you can be mad at me later. I need you to talk this through with me. I need to figure out what is going on. If not for my sake, then for Faith’s.”
Her voice sounded as desperate as he felt. The day had utterly defeated her. Will couldn’t help it. As much as he hated her right now, he couldn’t be cruel.
And somewhere in all of this, the click happened. He hadn’t noticed it, but sometime during the last ten minutes, his anger had started to seep out, so that now when he thought about it, when he considered what Amanda had done about Sara, Will felt a festering anger rather than a burning hate.
He took a deep breath and slowly let it go as he sat back up. “Okay. We have to assume that all the dead guys worked in Julia Ling’s shop—some of them on the books, some of them off, all of them doing both sides of her business.”
“You think Ling-Ling sent Ricardo Ortiz to Sweden to pick up some heroin?”
“No, I think Ricardo got ahead of himself. I think he got all the young guys worked up, thinking they could take over Ling-Ling’s business. He took it on himself to go to Sweden.” Will looked at his watch. It was almost seven o’clock. “He was tortured, probably by Benny Choo.”