Fallen Read online

  “That’s quite a cast of characters.”

  “Trust me, it’s not easy keeping up with them, and I’m not even sure any of them are the real reason all of this is happening.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “This feels personal, like there’s something else at play. You don’t wait around four years to rob somebody. It’s got to be about something more than money.”

  “They say it’s the root of all evil for a reason.” Sara’s husband had always loved money motivations. In her experience, he tended to be right. “This injured guy—the one with the gut wound—is he in a gang?” Will nodded.

  “They generally have their own doctors. They’re not bad—I’ve seen some of their handiwork at the ER. But a belly wound is pretty sophisticated to treat. They might need blood, and B-negative is hard to come by. They’d also need a sterile operating environment, medicines that you can’t just grab at your local drugstore. They’d only be at a hospital pharmacy.”

  “Can you give me a list? I can have it added to the alert.”

  “Of course.” She went to the kitchen to find a pad and paper.

  He stayed by the dining room table. “How long could someone live with a stab wound in their belly? It bled a lot at the scene.”

  “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.”

  He leaned back in the chair. “I liked her when I met her. I know that seems strange under the circumstances. I guess I was supposed to hate her, but you can’t look at it that way. This is government work. Sometimes investigations get started for the wrong reason, and you find yourself sitting opposite somebody who’s been jammed up for saying the wrong thing or ticking off the wrong politician.” He brushed the powdered sugar into a pile as he talked. “Evelyn was very polite. Respectful. Her record was spotless until then. She treated me like I was just doing my job, not like I was a pedophile, which is what you normally get.”

  “Maybe she knew she’d never be prosecuted.”

  “I think she was worried about it, but her primary concern was her daughter. She worked really hard to keep Faith out of it. I never even met her until Amanda paired us up.”

  “She’s a good mother at least.”

  “She’s a classy lady. But she’s also smart, strong, tough. I wouldn’t bet against her on this.”

  Sara had forgotten the eggs. She used the spatula to scrape them off the bottom of the pan.

  Will told her, “Evelyn was duct-taped to a chair while they searched her house. I found an arrowhead drawn underneath the seat. She used her own blood to do it.”

  “Where was it pointing?”

  “Into the room. At the couch. Into the backyard.” He shrugged. “Who knows? We didn’t find anything.”

  Sara thought about it. “Just the head of an arrow? That’s all?”

  He fanned out the powdered sugar again and drew the shape.

  Sara studied the symbol, silently debating how to proceed. She finally decided the truth was her only option. “It looks like a V to me. The letter V.”

  He was quiet in a way that changed the air in the room. She thought he was going to change the subject, or make a joke, but he told her, “It wasn’t perfect. It was smudged at the top.”

  “Like this?” She drew another line. “Like the letter A?”

  He stared at the figure. “I guess Amanda wasn’t pretending when she said she didn’t know what I was talking about.”

  “She saw it, too?”

  He brushed the powdered sugar into his hand and dropped it into the bag with the last doughnut. “Yep.”

  She put the plate of eggs in front of him. The toaster popped up. The bread was almost black. “Oh, no,” she mumbled. “I’m so sorry. You don’t have to eat this. Do you want me to get the hot dogs out of the trash?”

  He took the burned toast from her and dropped it on the plate. It made a sound like a brick scraping concrete. “Some butter would be nice.”

  She had fake butter. Will dipped a knifeful out of the tub and coated the bread until it was soggy enough to fold in his hand. The eggs were closer to taupe than yellow, but he started in on them anyway.

  Sara told him, “The name ‘Amanda’ starts with an A. Almeja starts with an A. And now Evelyn might’ve drawn an A on the bottom of her chair.”

  He put down the fork. His plate was clean.

  She continued, “Almeja sort of sounds like ‘Amanda.’ The same number of syllables. The same first and last letter.” He would’ve missed the alliterative. Most dyslexics couldn’t rhyme two words if you put a gun to their heads.

  He edged his plate away. “Amanda isn’t telling me everything. She’s not even admitting that the corruption case has anything to do with Evelyn’s situation.”

  “But she told you to go over all your case files.”

  “Either she needs the information or she’s trying to keep me busy. She knows this will take me all night.”

  “Not if I help you.”

  He picked up his plate and walked over to the sink. “Do you want me to wash this before I go?”

  “I want you to tell me about the crime scene.”

  He rinsed his plate, then started to wash his hands.

  “That’s the cold,” Sara said, and then because it was pointless to tell him that because she was left-handed, she’d switched the hot water valve to the right-hand side, she leaned in and adjusted the temperature for him.

  Will opened his hand so that she could squirt some soap onto his palm. “Why do you smell like lemon furniture polish?”

  “Why did you let me believe Betty belongs to your wife?”

  He lathered the soap in his hands. “There are some mysteries that will never be solved.”

  She smiled. “Tell me about the crime scene.”

  Will told her what they had found: the upturned chairs and broken baby toys. He segued into Mrs. Levy and Evelyn’s gentleman caller, Mittal’s theory about the blood trail, and Will’s own divergent theory about the same. By the time he got to the part where they had found the gentleman in the trunk, Sara had managed to get him to sit down at the dining room table.

  She asked, “Do you think Boyd Spivey was killed because he talked to Amanda?”

  “It’s possible, but not likely.” He explained, “Think about the timing. Amanda called the warden two hours before we got to the prison. The prison doc said a serrated knife was used. That’s not something you can make out of your toothbrush. The camera was disabled the day before, which indicates this was planned at least twenty-four hours in advance.”

  “So, it was coordinated. Evelyn is taken. Boyd is killed a few hours later. Are the other men from her team safe?”

  “That’s a very good question.” He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket. “Do you mind if I make some calls?”

  “Of course not.” She got up from the table to give him some privacy. The frying pan was still warm, so she ran cold water over it. The eggs were seared to the metal. She picked at the slime with her thumbnail before giving up and sticking it on the top rack of the dishwasher.

  Sara opened Boyd Spivey’s file again. Will had used a pink star to identify him, perhaps as a joke. The man looked the part of a corrupt cop. His moon-shaped face indicated steroid use. His pupils were barely discernible in his beady eyes. His height and weight were closer to a linebacker’s.

  She skimmed the details of Spivey’s arrest while listening with half an ear as Will talked with someone at Valdosta State Prison. They discussed whether or not to move Ben Humphrey and Adam Hopkins into solitary confinement, and agreed that it would be best just to step up their monitoring.

  Will’s next call was more complicated. Sara assumed he was talking to someone at GBI headquarters about locating the remaining two men through their parole officers.

  She opened Spivey’s file and found his personnel record behind the arrest report. Sara read through the details of the man’s professional life. Spivey had joined the academy fresh out of high school. He’d gone to night school at Georgia State in order to earn a BA in criminal science. He had three children and a wife who worked as a secretary at the Dutch consulate on the outskirts of the city.

  Spivey’s promotion onto Evelyn’s team was a coup. The drug squad was one of the most elite in the country. They had all the best weapons and facilities, and enough high-profile bad guys in the Atlanta area to win them plenty of commendations and press time, which Spivey in particular seemed to enjoy. Will had collected newspaper clippings on the team’s most noteworthy busts. Spivey was front and center of every news story, even though Evelyn was the leader of the team. One photo showed a clean-shaven Spivey with enough ribbons on his chest to decorate a girl’s bicycle.

  And it still had not been enough.

  “Hey.”

  Sara looked up from her reading. Will had finished his phone calls.

  “Sorry about that. I wanted to make sure they were safe.”

  “It’s fine.” Sara wasn’t g
oing to pretend she hadn’t been listening. “You didn’t call Amanda.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Give me some more files to read.”

  “You really don’t have to do this.”

  “I want to.” Sara was no longer being kind or trying to spend more time in his company. She wanted to know what had made a man like Boyd Spivey turn into such a lowlife.

  Will stared at her long enough to make her think he was going to say no. Then he opened one of the boxes. There was an ancient Walkman nestled in a pile of audio cassette tapes. None of them had labels, unless you counted the colored, star-shaped stickers. Will explained, “These are recordings of all the interviews I had with each suspect. None of them said much in the beginning, but they all ended up making deals to cut time off their sentences.”

  “They ratted each other out?”

  “Not a chance. They had some information on a couple of local councilmen to trade. It gave them some leverage with the prosecutor.”

  Sara couldn’t pretend to be shocked over politicians with drug problems. “How much leverage?”

  “Enough to get them talking, not enough to make them give up the big fish.” He opened the next box and started pulling out files. As with everything else, they were color-coded. He handed her the green ones first. “Witness testimony for the prosecution.” He stacked the red ones, which were fewer in number. “Witnesses for the defense.” He took out the blue ones. “High-dollar busts—anything where more than two thousand dollars was seized.”

  Sara went right to work, carefully reading the next personnel file. Ben Humphrey had been the same kind of cop as Boyd Spivey: solidly built, good at his job, driven to get press, and, in the end, absolutely corrupt. The same proved to be true of Adam Hopkins and Demarcus Alexander, both of whom were praised for their bravery under fire during a bank robbery, both of whom paid cash for their vacation homes in Florida. Lloyd Crittenden had earned his shield after flipping his cruiser six times during the pursuit of a man who’d shot up a seedy bar with a sawed-off shotgun. He also had a mouth on him. There were two write-ups for insubordination, but Evelyn’s yearly reviews had been nothing if not glowing.