“My dog?”
Sara felt the vibrations of a growl building in Betty’s chest.
Angie’s mouth twisted in distaste. “What happened to it?”
“She was …” Sara felt like a fool just standing there. She tucked Will’s jeans under her arm. “I’ll put her in the spare room and go.”
“Sure.” Angie was blocking the door. She took her time letting Sara pass, then followed Sara to the spare room, watched her put Betty on the dog bed and pull the door to.
Sara started to leave out the front door, but then she remembered she needed Will’s keys. She fought to keep her voice from shaking. “He told me to bring his car.”
Angie crossed her arms. Her ring finger was bare, but she had a silver band around her thumb. “Of course he did.”
Sara went back into the kitchen. Her face was so red she was sweating. There was a duffel bag by the table that hadn’t been there before. Will’s car keys were hanging on a hook by the back door, just as he’d said. She grabbed them and went back into the den, aware that Angie stood in the hallway watching her every move. Sara walked as quickly as she could toward the front door, her heart in her throat, but Angie Trent wasn’t going to make it that easy for her.
“How long have you been fucking him?”
Sara shook her head. This couldn’t be happening.
“I asked you how long you’ve been fucking my husband.”
Sara stared at the back of the door, too ashamed to look at her. “This is a misunderstanding. I promise you.”
“I found you in my house in my bedroom that I share with my husband. What’s your explanation? I’m dying to hear it.”
“I told you I—”
“You got a thing for cops? Is that it?”
Sara felt her heart stop mid-beat.
“Your dead husband was a cop, right? You get some kind of thrill out of that?” Angie gave a derisive laugh. “He’ll never leave me, honey. You’d better find yourself another dick to play with.”
Sara couldn’t answer. The situation was too awful for words. She fumbled for the doorknob.
“He cut himself for me. Did he tell you that?”
She willed her hand to steady so she could open the door. “I have to go now. I’m sorry.”
“I watched him slice the razor blade into his arm.”
Sara’s hand wouldn’t move. Her mind tried in vain to process what she was hearing.
“I’ve never seen so much blood in my life.” Angie paused. “You could at least look at me when I’m talking to you.”
She didn’t want to, but Sara made herself turn around.
Angie’s tone was passive, but the hatred in her eyes made her hard to look at. “I held him the whole time. Did he tell you about it? Did he tell you how I held him?”
Sara still could not find her voice.
Angie held up her left arm, showing the bare flesh. With excruciating slowness, she traced her right index finger from her wrist down to her elbow. “They said the razor cut so deep that he scraped the bone.” She smiled, as if this was a happy memory. “He did that for me, bitch. You think he’d do that for you?”
Now that Sara was looking at her, she couldn’t stop. Moments slipped by. She thought of the clock back at the restaurant, the seconds blurring. Finally, she cleared her throat, not sure she could speak. “It’s the other arm.”
“What?”
“The scar,” she said, relishing the surprised look on Angie Trent’s face. “It’s on his other arm.”
Sara’s hands were sweating so badly she could barely turn the doorknob. She cringed as she rushed outside, thinking Angie would come running after her or worse, call her out on the lie.
The truth was that Sara had never seen a scar on Will’s arm, because she’d never seen his bare arm. He always wore long-sleeved shirts. He never rolled up the sleeves or unbuttoned the cuffs. She had made an educated guess. Will was left-handed. If he’d tried to kill himself while his hateful wife was cheering him on, he’d sliced open his right arm, not his left.
CHAPTER THREE
WILL PICKED AT THE COLLAR OF HIS SHIRT. THE MOBILE command vehicle was scorching hot, filled with so many uniforms and suits that there was hardly room to breathe. The noise was equally unbearable. Phones were ringing. BlackBerries chirped. Computer monitors played live feeds from all three of the local news stations. Adding to the cacophony was Amanda Wagner, who had been yelling at the three zone commanders on scene for the last fifteen minutes. The Atlanta chief of police was on his way. So was the director of the GBI. The jurisdictional pissing contest was only going to intensify.
Meanwhile, no one was really working the case.
Will pushed open the door. Sunlight sliced through the dark interior. Amanda stopped yelling for a few seconds, then revved back up as Will closed the door. He took a deep breath of fresh air, scanning the scene from the top of the metal steps. Instead of the usual rapid activity that followed a shocking crime, everyone was milling around waiting for orders. Detectives sat in their unmarked cars checking their email. Six cruisers blocked each end of the street. Neighbors gawked from their front porches. The Atlanta PD crime scene unit van was here. The GBI crime scene unit van was here. The fire truck was still angled in front of the Mitchell house. The EMTs were smoking on the back bumper of their ambulance. Various uniformed officers leaned against emergency vehicles, shooting the breeze, pretending not to care about what was going on in the command center.
Still, they all managed to glare at Will as he stepped down onto the street. Scowls went around. Arms were crossed. A curse was muttered. Someone spat on the sidewalk.
Will didn’t have many friends in the Atlanta Police Department.
The sound of chopping blades filled the air. Will looked up. Two news copters hovered just above the crime scene. They wouldn’t be alone for long. Every ten minutes, a black SWAT MD 500 swept by. An infrared camera was mounted on the nose of the mosquito-like helicopter. The camera could see through dense forests and rooftops, picking out warm-blooded bodies, directing searchers to the bad guys. It was an amazing device, but completely useless in the residential area, where at any given moment there were thousands of people milling around not committing crimes. At best, they were probably picking up the glowing red forms of people sitting on their couches watching their televisions, which in turn showed the SWAT copter hovering overhead.
Will checked the crowd for Sara, wishing she would show up. If he’d been thinking at all when Amanda pulled up on the street, he would’ve told Sara to come with them. He should have anticipated Faith would need help. She was his partner. Will was supposed to take care of her, to have her back. Now, it might be too late.
He wasn’t sure how Amanda had heard about the shootings so quickly, but they were on scene within fifteen minutes of the last shot being fired. The locksmith was just opening the shed door when they rolled up. Faith had been pacing back and forth like a caged animal while she waited for her child to be freed, and she kept pacing long after Emma was in her arms. As soon as she saw Will, Faith started babbling, talking about her backyard neighbor, Mrs. Johnson, her brother Zeke, the shed her father had built when she was little, and a million other things that made absolutely no sense the way she was stringing them together.