“Okay.” Faith was standing, too. “If anyone gets to punch the pregnant woman in the face, it’s going to be me.”
“Both of you need to leave.” Jared appeared behind Lena. He must’ve been listening from the hallway. He was wearing his uniform. His hand rested on the butt of his gun. “Now.”
Will threw back his jacket. He had a gun, too.
“Jesus! Okay, we’re leaving.” Faith kept her hand wrapped around Will’s arm as she pushed him toward the door. “Let’s go.”
Will let her move him, but only because he knew the alternative would end in bloodshed.
Jared goaded, “Tell Aunt Sara I said congratulations.”
Will’s hands itched to pummel the sneer off Jared’s face. Faith had to push him again to get him out the door, then down the stairs. Will glared back at Jared. He could beat the kid into the ground with one hand.
“Mitchell.” Lena stood in the doorway behind her husband. “I’ll let you know if I remember anything important. Too bad I don’t have my notebooks to jog my memory.”
“Oh my God,” Faith groaned. “Shut up.”
Will felt her hand pressing into his back. He let Faith lead him down the driveway, back up the sidewalk. She opened the passenger-side door. She waited for him to get in. She got behind the wheel. She threw the gear into drive. The Mini’s tires dug up a good portion of Lena and Jared’s front yard as she made a wide U-turn.
“Fucking motherfucker!” Faith strangled the steering wheel with both hands. “I hate that bitch so much. I mean, seriously. The hate is physically sucking the oxygen out of my blood.”
Will looked down at his fists. He was so furious right now that he could barely see. That fucking kid. And Lena. Especially Lena. Will had never hit a woman before. Even when his ex-wife had hounded him, he had never fully lost control. Now, it was taking every ounce of self-discipline not to go back and punch Sara’s name out of Lena’s filthy mouth.
Faith said, “Okay, deep breath. Let’s get past this.”
Will wasn’t going to get past this. Not until he hurt somebody.
“Another deep breath,” Faith coaxed.
Will could feel his fingernails digging into his palms. He wasn’t one of her suspects who needed a fucking time out.
“Okay,” Faith’s tone said she was ready to move on. “Let’s focus on what we accomplished in there. We managed to Scooby-Doo two new details before shit got crazy.”
Will gritted his teeth. He didn’t give a shit about details.
Faith said, “One, who gave Nesbitt the money to hire a lawyer? No one sues a dead cop’s wife on a contingency.”
Will had been a fool for thinking Lena had any saving graces. There was nothing good about her. She had twisted him into a corkscrew and he hadn’t even seen it coming.
“Number two,” Faith said, oblivious to his rage. “Truong’s mother reported that her daughter thought her roommates were stealing from her. That could be the bad guy taking a trophy.”
Will squeezed his fist tighter. He wanted to break something. To hurt something. To kill something.
“We could find out if the women from Nesbitt’s articles were—”
“Jesus, Faith!” Will exploded. “What is the fucking point of this? Amanda told us before we went in. McAllister’s death was accidental. Thieving roommates and an ambulance chaser aren’t clues. And you’re right about the woods. The woods are every-fucking-where.”
Faith pursed her lips.
“What, Faith? What’s the fucking point of talking about this? Any of this?”
She said nothing.
Will realized the seatbelt chime had been going off since they’d left Lena’s. He yanked on the belt. The strap caught. He yanked it harder. “It’s bullshit, is what it is. All of this is fucking bullshit, because Sara called it. Amanda called it. You called it. Lena lies, and Nesbitt lies and—”
Will couldn’t get the belt to buckle. The chimes were like a railroad spike in his ears.
He said, “There’s nothing here, right? Lena gave us jack shit, just like you said she would. Are you going to answer me? Are you?”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah,” he repeated. “Which means we wasted the entire fucking day. Listening to a fucking pedophile. Listening to a hateful, lying bitch. And dying, because, yes, Faith, here’s the answer to your question: Hell-fucking-yes, the Jeffrey part of this is absolutely killing me. And it’s all my fault, because Amanda was right about waiting to tell Sara. But I didn’t listen to her, so Sara’s been worrying about Jeffrey all fucking day, not texting me a god damn thing, and now I’m going to have to go back and tell her to her face that Lena thinks she’s behind some scheme to lock her up for perjury, and don’t you spin me some bullshit about lying about what really happened with Lena because I’m not fucking lying. Fuck!”
He gave up on the seatbelt. The metal buckle hit the window as it reeled back. Will punched the dashboard. Then he punched it again and again.
“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!”
He pulled the last punch, stunned by his own violence. His fist hung in the air like a hammer. He was sweating, his breath huffing out like a steam engine. The car had shaken with every blow. What the hell was he doing? Will never went off like this. He was the guy who stopped the guy from going off.
Faith slowed the car. She pulled onto the shoulder. She put the gear in park. She gave Will a moment to come back to his senses.
It didn’t take long. Shame was his overriding emotion. He couldn’t even look at her.
Faith said, “I think that’s the longest sentence you’ve ever said to me the entire time I’ve known you.”
Will wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He tasted blood. His knuckle had busted open from the impact. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine. Really. This is just the last new car I’ll ever drive until my daughter graduates from college.”
Will ran his fingers along the dashboard to make sure he hadn’t cracked the surface.
She said, “I can’t believe the airbag didn’t go off.”
“Right?”
Faith found a Kleenex in her purse. “New rule: we don’t ever talk to Lena Adams ever again.”
Will dotted at the blood on his hand. How was he going to tell Sara about any of this? Will wasn’t even sure when the interrogation had taken such a seriously wrong turn. Had Lena been playing them from the beginning? She was like the scorpion riding their backs across the river.
Faith’s phone started to ring.
She told Will, “It’s Amanda.”
He rubbed his face with his hands. Amanda meant Sara. What should Will tell her, that he wanted Burger King instead of McDonald’s? That he was looking forward to a salad? That it would’ve taken her two seconds to text him that they were okay and maybe he wouldn’t have gone into a rage spiral and assaulted Faith’s car?
The phone kept ringing.
Will said, “Answer it.”
Faith clicked the button. “We’re both here. You’re on speaker.”
“Where have you been?” Amanda demanded. “I’ve been calling and texting for the last twenty-eight minutes.”
Faith mumbled a curse as she clocked the dozens of notifications on her phone. “Sorry, we were interviewing Lena and—”
“Sara found something during the examination. Alexandra McAllister was definitely raped and murdered. Sara confirmed there are links to the Grant County cases.”
Will stared at Faith.
She had slapped both hands over her mouth in disbelief.
Suddenly, everything Lena had said actually mattered. What had they missed? Someone paid the lawyer to sue Jeffrey’s estate. Leslie Truong’s stuff was missing, but then stuff always went missing. Maybe Caterino was missing something. Maybe not. They couldn’t go back and ask Lena to clarify. She had shredded her notebooks. Will had almost pulled a gun on her husband. Faith had called dibs on punching her in the face. There was no way either of them could ever be in the same room with Lena Adams again.
“There’s more,” Amanda said. “I heard back from the GDOC on who’s been sending those articles to Daryl Nesbitt. It’s the same benefactor who funded the civil suit against Tolliver’s estate.”
“Okay.” Faith had finally found her voice. “Who is it?”
“Gerald Caterino,” Amanda said. “Rebecca Caterino’s father.”
7
Gina Vogel looked up from her laptop and stared out the window. Her eyes struggled to focus on the new perspective. Trees, a birdfeeder, windchimes. She had reached that age where reading glasses stopped being a future indignity and started to become a full-on necessity.
She looked down at her computer. The letters were still blurry. She adjusted the font size to the equivalent of the E on an eye exam chart. Then she opened her browser and googled if I change font size in my email will other people know, because she was not going to let her twelve-year-old boss think he was opening an email from his grandmother.