Fallen (17 page)

“Amanda’s not going to take this lying down.”

Zeke snorted in disbelief. He had never liked Amanda. It was one thing for his baby sister to try to boss him around, but he wasn’t going to take it from someone who wasn’t blood. It was a strange reaction considering Zeke, Faith, and Jeremy had all grown up calling her Aunt Mandy, an endearment that Faith was fairly certain would get her fired if she used it today. Still, they had always thought that Amanda was part of their family. She was so close to Evelyn that at times she’d passed for a surrogate.

But she was still Faith’s boss, and she still kept her foot firmly planted on the back of Faith’s neck, just like she did with everyone else who worked for her. Or came into contact with her. Or smiled at her in the street.

Faith opened the nutrition bar and took a large bite. The only sound in the kitchen was her chewing. She wanted to close her eyes, but was afraid of the images she would see. Her mother tied up, mouth gagged. Jeremy’s red-rimmed eyes. The way those cops had looked at her today, like the stink of her involvement was too much to stomach.

Zeke cleared his throat. She thought that the hostilities had passed, but his posture indicated otherwise. If there was one constant in her life, it was Zeke’s enduring sense of moral superiority.

She tried to get it over with. “What?”

“That Victor guy seemed surprised to hear about Emma. Wanted to know how old she was, when she was born.”

She choked, trying to swallow. “Victor was here? In the house?”

“You weren’t around, Faith. Someone had to stay with your son until I got here.”

The string of curses that came to Faith’s mind was probably worse than anything Zeke had heard while stitching up soldiers in Ramstein.

He said, “Jeremy showed him her picture.”

Faith tried to swallow again. She felt like rusty nails were catching in her throat.

“Emma’s got his coloring.”

“Jeremy’s?”

“This some kind of pattern with you? You like being an unwed mother?”

“Hey, didn’t they tell you when you got back that Ronald Reagan isn’t president anymore?”

“Jesus, Faith. Be serious for once. The guy has a right to know he’s a father.”

“Trust me, Victor’s not interested in being a father.” The man couldn’t even pick up his dirty socks off the floor or remember to leave the toilet seat down. God only knew what he’d forget with a baby.

Zeke repeated, “He has a right to know.”

“So, now he knows.”

“Whatever, Faith. As long as
you’re
happy.”

Any normal human being would’ve trounced off after dropping that bon mot, but Zeke Mitchell never walked away from a fight. He just sat there, staring at her, willing her to crank it back up. Faith reverted to old ways. If he was going to act like he was ten, then so was she. She ignored his presence, flipping through the Lands’ End catalogue, ripping out the page that showed the underwear Jeremy liked so she could order it for him later.

She flipped to the thermal shirts, and Zeke tilted back in his chair, staring out the window.

This tension was nothing new between the two of them. Faith’s selfishness was Zeke’s favorite one-note song. As usual, she accepted his disapproval as part of her penance. He had good reason to hate her. There was no moving past an eighteen-year-old boy finding out his fourteen-year-old sister was pregnant. Especially when Jeremy got older and Faith saw what it was like for teenage boys—not the walk in the park it had seemed when she was a teenage girl—Faith had felt guilty for what she’d done to her brother.

As hard as it was for her father, who was asked not to attend his men’s Bible study, and her mother, who was ostracized by most
every woman in the neighborhood, Zeke had endured a special hell because of Faith’s unexpected pregnancy. He’d come home from school at least once a week with a bloody nose or black eye. When they asked him about it, he refused to talk. He sneered at Faith over the dinner table. He shot her looks of disgust if she walked by his room. He hated her for what she’d done to the family, but he would rain down hell on anyone who said a word against her.

Not that she could remember much from that time. Even now, it was one long, miserable blur of slobbering self-pity. It was hard to believe that so much had changed in twenty years, but Atlanta, or at least Faith’s part of it, had been more like a small town back then. People were still riding high on the Reagan/Bush wave of conservative values. Faith was a spoiled, selfish teenager when it happened. All she could focus on was how miserable her own life was. Her pregnancy had been a result of her first—and, at the time, she vowed last—sexual encounter. The father’s parents had immediately moved him out of state. There was no birthday party when she turned fifteen. Her friends abandoned her. Jeremy’s father never wrote or called. She had to go to doctors who probed and prodded her. She was tired all the time, and cranky, and she had hemorrhoids and back pain and everything ached every time she moved.

Faith’s father was away a lot, suddenly required to take business trips that had never before been part of his job description. The church had been the center of his life, but that center was abruptly ripped away when he was informed by the pastor that he no longer had the moral authority to be a deacon. Her mother had taken off work to be with her—whether forced or voluntary, Evelyn still would not say.

What Faith did remember was that she and her mother were both trapped at home every day, eating junk food that made them fat and watching soap operas that made them cry. For her part, Evelyn bore Faith’s shame like a hermit. She wouldn’t leave the house unless she had to. She woke every Monday morning at the crack of dawn to go to the grocery store across town so that she wouldn’t run into anyone
she knew. She refused to sit in the backyard with Faith even when the air conditioning broke and the living room turned into a kiln. The only exercise she took was a walk around the neighborhood, but that only happened late at night or early morning before the sun came up.

Mrs. Levy from next door left them cookies on the doorstep, but she never came in. Occasionally, someone would leave religious tracts in the mailbox that Evelyn burned in the fireplace. Their only visitor the entire time was Amanda, who didn’t have the option of dropping off her de facto sister-in-law’s social calendar. She would sit in the kitchen with Evelyn and talk in a low voice that Faith couldn’t hear. After Amanda left, Evelyn would go into the bathroom and cry.

It was no wonder that one day Zeke came home from school not with a busted lip but with a copy of his enlistment papers. He had five more months to go until graduation. His ROTC service and SAT scores had already lined up a full ride to Rutgers. But he took his GED and entered the pre-med program almost a full year ahead of schedule.

Jeremy was eight years old the first time he met his uncle Zeke. They had circled each other like cats until a game of basketball had smoothed things over. Still, Faith knew her son and she recognized his reticence toward a man he felt wasn’t treating his mother right. Unfortunately, he’d had a lot of opportunity over the years to hone this particular emotion.

Zeke dropped his chair back onto the floor, but still did not look at her.

Faith chewed the nutrition bar slowly, forcing herself to eat despite the nausea that gripped her stomach. She looked out the sliding door and saw the kitchen table, Zeke’s posture, straight as a board, reflected back. There was a glow of red beyond the glass. One of the detectives was smoking.

The phone rang, and they both jumped. Faith scrambled to answer the cordless just as the detectives came in from the backyard.

“No news,” Will told her. “I was just checking in.”

Faith waved away the cops. She took the phone with her into the living room, asking Will, “Where are you?”

“I just got home. There was a jackknifed trailer on 675. It took three hours to clear.”

“Why were you down there?”

“The D&C.”

Faith felt her stomach lurch.

Will didn’t bother with small talk. He told her about his prison visit, Boyd Spivey’s murder. Faith put her hand to her chest. When she was younger, Boyd had been a frequent guest at family dinners and backyard barbecues. He’d taught Jeremy how to ride a bike. And then he’d flirted so openly with Faith that Bill Mitchell suggested the man find an alternative way to spend his weekends. “Do they know who did it?”

“The security camera happened to be out in that one section. They’ve got the place in lockdown. All the cells are being tossed. The warden’s not hopeful they’ll find much of anything.”

“There was outside help.” A guard must have been bribed. No inmate would have the time it took to disable a camera mounted inside a prison corridor.

“They’re talking to the staff, but the lawyers are already on scene. These guys aren’t your everyday suspects.”

“Is Amanda all right?” Faith shook her head at her stupidity. “Of course she’s all right.”

“She got what she wanted. We get a back door into your mom’s case because of this.”

The GBI had jurisdiction over all death investigations inside state prisons. “I guess that’s some kind of positive news.”

Will was quiet. He didn’t ask her if she was doing okay, because he obviously knew the answer. Faith thought of the way he had held her hands that afternoon, making her pay attention as he coached her on what to say. His tenderness had been unexpected, and she’d had to bite the inside of her cheek hard enough to draw blood so that she wouldn’t break down and cry.

Will said, “Do you know that I’ve never seen Amanda go to the bathroom?” He stopped himself. “Not in person, I mean, but when we left the prison, she pulled over at the gas station and went inside. I’ve never seen her take a break like that. Have you?”

Faith was used to Will’s odd tangents. “I can’t say that I have.” Amanda had been at those family dinners and barbecues with Boyd Spivey. She had joked with him the way cops do—questioning his manhood, praising his progress on the force despite his lack of mental prowess. She wasn’t completely made of stone. Watching Boyd die would’ve taken something out of her.

Will said, “It was very disconcerting.”

“I can imagine.” Faith pictured Amanda at the gas station, going into the stall, shutting the door, and allowing herself two minutes to mourn a man who had once meant something to her. Then she’d probably checked her makeup, fixed her hair, and dropped the key back with the gas station attendant, asking him if they locked the bathroom door to keep someone from cleaning it.

Will said, “She probably sees urinating as a weakness.”

“Most people do.” Faith sat back on the couch. He had given her the best gift she could possibly receive right now: a moment of distraction. “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For being there today. For getting Sara to come. For telling me what to—” She remembered that the phone was tapped. “For telling me that everything was going to be okay.”

He cleared his throat. There was a short silence. He was awful at this sort of thing, almost as bad as she was. “Have you thought about what they were looking for?”

“That’s all I can think about.” She heard the refrigerator door open and close. Zeke was probably making a list of foods she shouldn’t stock in the house. “What’s next?”

He hesitated.

“Tell me.”

“Amanda and I are going down to Valdosta first thing.”

Valdosta State Prison. Ben Humphrey and Adam Hopkins. They were talking to everyone from her mother’s old team. Faith should’ve expected this, but the news of Boyd’s death had thrown her off. She should’ve known that Will was going to reopen the case.

Faith said, “I should keep this line open in case someone calls.”

“All right.”

She hung up the phone because there was nothing more to say. He still thought her mother was guilty. Even after working with Faith for almost two years, seeing that she did things the right way because that was the kind of cop her mother had raised her to be, Will still thought Evelyn Mitchell was dirty.

Zeke loomed in the doorway. “Who was that?”

“Work.” She stood up from the couch. “My partner.”

“The asshole who tried to put Mom in prison?”

“The very same.”

“I still don’t know how you can work with that douche.”

“I cleared it with Mom.”

“You didn’t clear it with me.”

“Should I have sent the request to Germany or Florida?” He stared at her.

Faith wasn’t going to explain herself to her brother. It was Amanda who had asked her to partner with Will, and Evelyn had told Faith to do what was best for her career. She didn’t have to point out that it was not a bad idea to get out of the Atlanta Police Department, where Evelyn’s forced retirement was considered either a coast or a crime depending on whom you asked. “Did Mom ever talk to you about the investigation?”

“Shouldn’t you ask your partner about that?”

“I’m asking you,” Faith snapped. Evelyn had refused to discuss the case against her, and not just because Faith could’ve been called as a potential witness. “If she said something, even something that was a little off but you didn’t think about it at the time …”

“Mom doesn’t shop talk with me. That’s your job.”

There was the same tinge of accusation in his voice, as if Faith had
the power to find their mother and was simply choosing not to exercise it. She looked at the clock on the wall. It was almost nine, too late to be doing this. “I’m going to bed. I’ll send down Jeremy with some sheets. The couch is pretty comfortable.”

He nodded, and Faith saluted his dismissal. She was halfway up the stairs when he spoke. “He’s a good kid.” Faith turned around. “Jeremy. He’s a good kid.”

She smiled. “Yeah, he is.” She was almost to the top of the stairs when the other shoe dropped.

“Mom did a good job.”

Faith continued up the stairs, refusing to take the bait. She checked on the baby. Emma smacked her lips when Faith leaned down to kiss her forehead. She was in that deep, blissful sleep that only babies know. Faith checked the monitor to make sure it was on. She stroked her hand down Emma’s arm, letting the baby’s tiny fingers wrap around her one, before leaving.