The Kept Woman (Will Trent 8) Read online

  He said, ‘These arrows to Rippy look good on paper, but we don’t really have a direct connection, because all of them go through here—’ He tapped his finger on Kilpatrick’s name. ‘He’s the intermediary, the thing standing between Rippy and everybody else. Let’s say by some miracle we have a solid murder charge with evidence and all that other good stuff and the judge gives us an arrest warrant. It won’t be Rippy we charge. It’ll be Kilpatrick. That’s what Rippy pays him for. And if you’re thinking we can build a conspiracy charge, you’re dreaming. Harding’s dead. Angie’s probably dead. Rippy walks away just like he always does.’

  She couldn’t accept that he was right, even though every single word made absolute sense. ‘Jane Doe could’ve seen something. She was in the office building across the street. She would’ve had a bird’s-eye view.’ Faith looked at the time on her phone. ‘She should be coming out of her morphine stupor soon. We can talk to her.’

  Will didn’t look hopeful.

  Faith closed her notebook. She couldn’t look at it anymore. ‘Why do you think she tried to kill herself?’

  ‘Maybe she was lonely?’ He laid his arm across the back of the empty chair beside him. ‘It’s hard being homeless. You don’t know who to trust. You never really sleep. There’s nobody to talk to.’

  Faith realized that Will was the first person who had actually tried to answer the question. ‘How much coke did she have?’

  ‘I’d guess about two ounces.’

  ‘Jesus Christ. That’s almost three grand’s worth of coke. Where the hell did she get it?’

  ‘We can ask her when she wakes up.’ He put his hand to his chest. He winced in pain. ‘I feel like I’m having a heart attack.’

  Panic shook her into action. She started to stand, but he stopped her.

  ‘Not for real. Just this tightness.’ He rubbed his chest with his fingers. ‘Like a shaking, almost. Do you ever get that, where your heart shakes in your chest?’

  Faith got it all of the time. ‘That sounds like stress.’

  Will kept rubbing his chest. ‘Sara sent me a picture of Betty. She was in her bed at Sara’s place. That’s good, right?’

  Faith nodded, but she had no idea. Will had his own way of communicating with people.

  He said, ‘I checked online. That lipstick costs sixty bucks.’

  Faith nearly choked on a piece of lettuce. The most expensive thing she had ever put on her face was a New York strip after a perp had punched her in the eye.

  Will said, ‘All the colors looked the same to me. Can you pull the product number from the evidence log?’

  ‘Will.’ Faith put down her fork. ‘Sara doesn’t care about the lipstick.’

  He shook his head, like she had no idea. ‘She was really, really pissed off.’

  ‘Will, listen to me. It’s not about the money. It’s about Angie stealing it.’

  ‘That’s just how Angie is.’ The excuse seemed to make sense to him. ‘When we were growing up, none of us had anything. If you saw something you wanted, you took it. Otherwise you never had anything. Especially anything nice.’

  Faith struggled for a way to explain it to him. ‘What if one of Sara’s ex-boyfriends broke into her apartment and stole the shirt that you sleep in?’

  ‘Wouldn’t it make more sense for him to steal Sara’s shirt?’

  Faith groaned. Men had it so easy. When they got mad at each other, they fought it out. Women cut themselves and gave each other eating disorders.

  She said, ‘Remember that suicide last year at the women’s detention center?’

  ‘Alexis Rodriguez. She cut her wrists.’

  ‘Right. And when we asked the other inmates why she did it, they said that girls had been stealing her stuff. Not just her commissary. She’d put down a pen and the next thing she knows, it’s missing. She’d take off her socks and they’d disappear. They even stole her trash. Why do you think they did that?’

  He shrugged. ‘To be mean.’

  ‘To make her understand that nothing belonged to her. That no matter how important or inconsequential, they could take away anything at any time, and she couldn’t do anything about it.’

  He looked dubious.

  ‘Why else would Angie leave those notes on Sara’s car?’

  ‘She was mad.’

  ‘Sure, she was mad, but she was fucking with Sara.’

  Will shifted in his seat. He still wasn’t seeing it.

  ‘Angie was a bully, Will. And she wanted Sara to know that she could take you back anytime she wanted. That’s why she stole the lipstick. That’s why she left the notes. She was marking her territory.’ Faith had to say the next part. ‘And you let her get away with it.’

  Will sat back in his chair. He did not stand up and leave. He did not tell her to mind her own business. He rubbed the side of his jaw. He stared at the trashcan by the door.

  Faith waited. And waited. She tried to finish her salad. She checked to make sure that there were no new messages on her phone.

  ‘She left me a note,’ Will said. ‘Angie.’

  Faith kept waiting.

  ‘Amanda doesn’t know. At least I don’t think she does. It was in the post office box.’ He stared at his hands. ‘She printed my name on the outside, but the letter is in cursive.’

  Faith knew that Will had trouble reading cursive. Angie would know this too, which to Faith’s thinking made her an even bigger bitch than before.

  He said, ‘I can’t let Sara read it. The letter.’

  ‘No, you can’t.’

  ‘It’s what she wanted. For Sara to have to read it. Out loud. To me.’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘So . . . ?’

  Faith felt her throat work. He had never asked her to read anything for him. It had always been a point of pride. He took his turn writing up their reports. He was the only man she had ever worked with who didn’t try to turn her into his private secretary.

  Faith said, ‘All right.’

  He reached into his front pocket and pulled out a piece of folded notebook paper. The edge was tattered from being ripped away from the spiral. He unfolded the letter and smoothed it out on the table. Angry words filled the page, crossing the margins, spilling onto the back. Things were underlined. The pen had actually torn through the paper.

  Faith’s eyes picked up the word Sara, and she cringed inside. ‘Are you sure?’

  Will didn’t say anything. He just waited.

  Faith didn’t know what to do but turn the letter around and start to read. ‘ “Hey, baby. If someone is reading this to you, then I am dead.” ’

  Will put his head in his hands.

  ‘ “I hope it’s Sara, because I want that cu—” ’ Faith cursed Angie under her breath. ‘ “I want that cunt to know that you will never, ever love her the way that you love me.” ’ She glanced up at Will. He still had his head in his hands.

  Faith returned to the letter.

  ‘ “Remember the basement? I want you to tell your precious Sara about the basement because that will explain everything. She will understand that you have only been fucking her because she is a poor substitute for me. You have been lying to her about everything.” ’ Faith squinted at the scrawl, trying to decipher the next few words. ‘ “You like her because she’s safe, and because she’ll—” ’ Faith stopped. Her eyes had skipped ahead. She told Will, ‘I don’t think—’

  ‘Please.’ His voice was muffled by his hands. ‘If you don’t read it, I’ll never know.’

  Faith cleared her throat. Her face burned with embarrassment. For herself. For Sara. ‘ “You like her because she’s safe and because she’ll go down on you and you never see her spit because that is part of her scam. She is your lapdog for a reason.” ’ Faith silently scanned ahead, praying it wouldn’t get worse.

  It did.

  ‘ “Needy bitches like Sara want the white picket fence and the kids in the yard. How would that be, having a bunch of little monsters with your fucked-up genes insid
e of them? Loser retards like you who can’t read their own fucking names.” ’

  Faith had to stop again, this time to tamp down her own fury.

  She continued. ‘ “Ask yourself this: would you ever risk your life for her? Sara Linton is a boring bitch. That’s why you can’t let me go. That’s why you found this fucking letter. She will never excite you like I do. You will never want her like you want me. She will never understand who you really are. The only person on earth who ever got you was me, and now I am dead, and you didn’t do a God damm thing to stop that from happening.” ’ Faith felt a palpable relief as she read the last line. ‘ “Love, Angie.” ’

  Will kept his head in his hands.

  Faith folded the note back into a square. This was evidence. Angie had suspected that she was going to die, which meant her murder was premeditated. Faith let that play out in her head. If and when they caught the killer, there would be a court case. The letter to Will would become part of the public record. This was Angie’s final swipe at Sara. The blow would be a knockout.

  Faith said, ‘You need to destroy this.’

  Will looked up. His eyes glistened in the overhead lights.

  Faith tore the letter in two. Then she tore it again, then another time, until Angie’s hateful words were ripped into a million pieces.

  Will said, ‘Do you think she’s dead?’

  ‘Yes. You saw the blood. You heard what Angie wrote, that she knew she would be dead soon.’ Faith culled the tiny shreds of paper into a pile. ‘Don’t tell Sara about the letter. It will destroy everything. Exactly what Angie wanted.’

  He started rubbing his chest again. His face was pale.

  She tried to remember the signs of a heart attack. ‘Does your arm hurt?’

  ‘I feel numb,’ he said, and he seemed as surprised as Faith that he had admitted as much. ‘How do people get through this?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Faith dragged her finger through the torn pieces of paper, then piled them back up again. ‘When my dad died, my world turned upside down.’ She felt tears well into her eyes, because fifteen years was still not enough time to get over the loss. ‘The day of the funeral, I didn’t think I could do it. Jeremy was a wreck. My dad worked at home. They were extremely close.’ Faith took a breath. ‘So, we get to the funeral and Jeremy just loses it. Sobbing like I hadn’t seen since he was a baby. He wouldn’t let go of me. I had to hold him the entire time.’

  She looked up at Will. ‘I remember standing on the stairs to the chapel, and I felt this click, like, “Okay, you’re the mom. Be strong for your kid and deal with this when you’re alone and you can handle it.” ’ Faith smiled, but the truth was that she was never alone. If she was lucky, she had thirty minutes in the morning before Emma woke up, and then the phone started ringing and she had to get ready for work and the world started crashing in. ‘How people do it is they don’t have a choice. You get out of bed. You dress yourself. You go to work, and you just do it.’

  ‘Denial,’ Will said. ‘I’ve heard of that.’

  ‘It has made me the woman I am today.’

  He drummed his fingers on the table. He studied her the way he did when he was trying to figure out what was wrong. ‘Delilah Palmer. You’re worried because you gave Collier the good lead.’

  Hearing him guess what was wrong made her realize what was wrong. ‘It’s not because I want the collar. I mean, hell, yeah, of course I want the collar, but there’s something about Collier that—’

  ‘I don’t trust him either.’

  Her phone chirped. The nurse had finally texted her. ‘Oh for fucksakes.’ Faith had to read the message twice before she believed it. ‘Jane Doe was taken back into surgery. If she makes it, we won’t be able to talk to her until tomorrow morning.’

  Will laughed, but not because it was funny. ‘Now what?’

  ‘I’m going home.’ Faith swept Angie’s shredded note into her open palm. She handed the pieces to Will. ‘Flush this down the toilet, then go talk to Sara.’

  SEVEN

  Sara lay on the couch with Betty on the pillow beside her. The little dog had managed to wrap her entire body around Sara’s head. Her two greyhounds, Bob and Billy, were draped across her legs.

  She had started out the evening at her dining-room table researching uremic frost while she drank a cup of herbal tea. Then she’d moved onto a glass of wine at the kitchen counter while she edited a paper for a journal. Then she had looked around the apartment and decided that it needed to be cleaned. Sara always cleaned when she was upset, but this was one of those rare occasions when she was actually too upset to clean. Which is how she’d ended up lying on the couch, drinking a Scotch and covered in dogs.

  She sipped her drink as she watched the laptop propped up on a pillow on her stomach. As with the rest of the evening, her lesser demons had won out. She’d started out with a documentary about Peggy Guggenheim and ended up watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Or trying to. The plot wasn’t that complicated—obviously, Buffy was going to slay a vampire—but between the alcohol and her other problems, Sara couldn’t focus.

  Will hadn’t called. He hadn’t texted, even when she’d sent him a picture of Betty. He had spent all day looking for Angie, and even now, when Angie was almost certainly dead, Will still hadn’t made the effort to get in touch with her.

  If Sara had been the type to force a choice, she would’ve taken Will’s lack of communication as an answer.

  She paused the computer. She took off her glasses. She closed her eyes.

  Sara let her mind drift back to Saturday morning, ignoring the part where Will had seen Angie. Friday night, they had decided to stay at Will’s house because he had a fenced-in backyard and a dog door in the kitchen, which meant that the animals would be able to take care of themselves while the humans slept in.

  Sara had awakened at 4:30. The curse of the on-call doctor. Her brain wouldn’t shut down long enough for her to go back to sleep. She thought about doing some work, or calling her sister, but she had found herself watching Will sleep, which was the silly kind of thing you only saw in movies.

  He was on his back, head turned. A sliver of light from underneath the window shade played across his face. She had stroked his cheek. The roughness of his skin had kindled an interest in further exploration. She let her fingers travel along his chest. Instead of continuing down, she placed her palm over his heart and felt the steady beats.

  This is what she remembered from that morning: the overwhelming joy of ownership. His heart belonged to her. His mind. His body. His soul. They had been together for only a year, but every day that passed, she loved him more. Her relationship with Will was one of the most meaningful connections she’d had in her life.

  Not that Sara had been in that many relationships. Her first boyfriend, Steve Mann, had elicited all of the excitement possible for a third trombone in the high school band. Mason James, whom she’d met during medical school, had been more in love with himself than any woman could ever hope to be. The first time Sara had introduced him to her family, her mother had quipped, ‘That man needs to build a bridge to get over himself.’

  Then there was Jeffrey Tolliver, her husband.

  Sara opened her eyes.

  She took another sip of her drink, which was more water than Scotch at this point. She checked the time. Too late to call her sister. Sara wanted to talk to someone, to work through the grand explosion that had shattered her life, and Tessa was the only safe haven. Faith had to be on Will’s side because she was his partner and their unquestioned loyalty was what kept them both safe. Calling her mother was not an option. The first thing out of Cathy Linton’s mouth would be a giant ‘I told you so.’

  And God knows her mother had told her so. Many times. Countless times. Don’t date a married man. Don’t fall in love with a married man. Don’t ever think that you can trust a married man. Sara had thought there was more nuance to their story than her mother was picking up on, but now she was having second thoughts.
The only words worse than ‘I told you so’ were ‘Yes, Mother, you were right.’

  Sara looked at the time again. Not even a minute had ticked by. She weighed the consequences of waking up her sister. Tessa was in South Africa. It was two in the morning on her side of the world. She would panic if the phone rang so early. Besides, Sara knew exactly how the conversation would go. The first thing out of Tessa’s mouth would be ‘Show him how you feel.’

  What she meant was that Sara should break down in front of Will, let him see that she was a basket case and couldn’t live without him. Which was a lie, because Sara could live without Will. She would be miserable, she would be devastated, but she could manage it. Losing her husband had taught her at least that.

  But Tessa wouldn’t let Sara hide behind Jeffrey’s death. She would likely say something about riding a high horse into the lonely sunset. Sara would remind her that one of the things Will liked about her was her strength. Tessa would say that she was confusing strength with stubbornness, and then she would do what she always did: allude to what her family called the Bambi incident. The first time they had watched the film, Tessa had wept uncontrollably. Sara had mumbled an excuse about needing to study for a spelling test because she hadn’t wanted anyone to see her crying.

  Tessa’s final point would be delivered in a tone reminiscent of their mother: ‘Only a fool thinks she can fool other people.’

  On the contrary, Sara had made a career out of fooling people. If you were a parent with a sick kid, the last thing you needed was a doctor who couldn’t stop bawling. If you were a terrified patient, you didn’t want to see your doctor break down at your bedside. The skills transferred. There was nothing to be gained by turning into a mess in front of Will. It was a cheap way to win an argument. He would comfort her, and she would feel horrible for manipulating him, and in the morning nothing would’ve changed.

  He would still be in love with his wife.

  Sara took a mouthful of Scotch and held it before she swallowed.

  Was that the truth? Did Will really love Angie the way a husband loved his wife? He had lied to Sara about seeing her on Saturday. He was probably lying about other things. Death had a way of focusing your emotions. Maybe losing Angie had made Will realize that he didn’t want Sara after all.