Fallen

by Karin Slaughter

  In the eyes of the Atlanta PD brass, Faith wasn’t a cop anymore. She was a witness. She was a suspect. She was a person of interest, and they wanted to talk to her about the men she had killed and why her mother had been kidnapped. The Atlanta police weren’t a bunch of yokels. They were one of the best forces in the country. But for Amanda yelling at them, they would’ve had Faith at the station by now, drilling her like they were working a terrorist at Gitmo.

  Will couldn’t blame them. Sherwood Forest was not the kind of neighborhood where you’d expect to find a shootout in the middle of a beautiful Saturday afternoon. Ansley Park was a stone’s throw away. Cast the net a bit farther and you’d encompass about eighty percent of the city’s real estate tax revenue—multimillion-dollar homes with tennis courts and au pair suites. Rich people weren’t the type of folks who let bad things happen without assigning blame. Someone would have to pay for this. If Amanda couldn’t find a way to prevent it, that person would probably end up being Faith. And Will was at a loss as to what to do.

  Detective Leo Donnelly walked up, his feet shuffling along the asphalt. He had a cigarette dangling out of his mouth. Smoke twined into his eye. He winked to keep it out. “I’d hate to hear that bitch in bed.”

  He meant Amanda. She was still screaming, though her words were hard to make out through the closed doors.

  Leo continued, “I dunno. Might be worth it. The old ones are tigers when you get ’em in the sack.”

  Will suppressed a shudder, not because Amanda was in her mid-sixties, but because Leo was clearly considering the possibilities.

  “She knows she’s not going to win this, right?”

  Will leaned against one of the police cruisers. Leo had been Faith’s partner for six years, but she had done most of the heavy lifting. At forty-eight, Leo wasn’t an old man by any stretch, but he had aged in cop years. His skin was yellow from an overburdened liver. He’d beaten prostate cancer but the treatment had taken its toll. He was an okay guy but he was lazy, which was perfectly fine if you were a used-car salesman but incredibly dangerous if you were a cop. Faith counted herself lucky that she’d gotten away from the man.

  Leo said, “Haven’t seen a clusterfuck like this since the last time I worked a case with you.”

  Will took in the scene: the hum of the command center’s generator mixing with the metallic whir coming from the television vans. The cops standing around with their hands resting on their belts. The firemen shooting the breeze with each other. The complete and total lack of activity. He decided he should talk to Leo. “That so?”

  “What’s your CSU guy’s name—Charlie?” Leo nodded to himself. “He managed to talk his way into the house.”

  Special Agent Charlie Reed was head of the GBI’s crime scene unit and would do anything to get onto a crime scene. “He’s good at his job.”

  “Lots of us are.” Leo leaned against the cruiser a couple of feet down from Will. He made a puffing noise with his mouth. “Never known Faith to be a drinker.”

  “She’s not.”

  “Pills?”

  Will gave him the nastiest look he could muster.

  “You know I gotta talk to her.”

  Will couldn’t keep the derision out of his tone. “You’re in charge of this case?”

  “Try not to sound so confident.”

  Will didn’t waste his breath. Leo’s time in the sun would be shortlived. As soon as the Atlanta chief of police came onto the scene, he’d kick Leo to the curb and put together his own team. Leo would be lucky if they let him fetch coffee.

  “Seriously,” Leo said. “Faith doin’ all right?”

  “She’s fine.”

  He took a last drag on his cigarette and dropped it to the ground. “Neighbor’s freaked out. Almost watched her granddaughters get shot down.”

  Will tried to keep his expression blank. He knew a little bit about what had happened here, but not much. The guys from the tactical team had gotten bored after standing around for five minutes with nothing to break. The details of the crime scene had leaked like a rusty pipe. Two bodies in the house. One in the neighbor’s backyard. Two guns on Faith—her Glock and a Smith and Wesson. Her shotgun on the floor of the bedroom. Will had stopped listening when he’d overheard a cop who’d just arrived on scene saying that he’d seen Faith with his own two eyes and she was as high as a kite.

  For his part, Will only knew two things to be true: he had no idea what had happened in that house, and Faith had done the right thing.

  Leo cleared his throat and spit a chunk of phlegm onto the asphalt. “So, Granny Johnson said she heard some screaming in the backyard. She looks out the kitchen window and sees the shooter—Mexican guy—aiming down on her grandkids. He squeezes off a shot, takes out some bricks on the house. Faith runs up to the fence and shoots him dead. Saves the little girls.”

  Will felt some of the weight lift off his chest. “Lucky for them Faith was there.”

  “Lucky for Faith the neighbor’s a good witness.”

  Will started to stick his hands in his pockets, too late remembering he was still in his running shorts.

  Leo chuckled. “I like these new uniforms. You supposed to be the cop in the Village People?”

  Will crossed his arms over his chest.

  “Los Texicanos,” Leo said. “The guy in the backyard. He’s affiliated, got tats all over his chest and arms.”

  “What about the other two?”

  “Asian. Both of ’em. No idea if they’re ganged up. Don’t look like it. Don’t dress like it. Bodies are clean—no tats.” Leo took his time lighting another cigarette. He blew out a steady stream of smoke before continuing. “Scott Shepherd over there—” He nodded toward a beefy-looking young man in tactical gear. “Says he had his team suited up outside the house waiting for backup. They heard a gun go off. It’s a possible hostage situation, right? One officer inside, two if you count Evelyn. Imminent danger. So, they breech the door.” Leo took another hit off his cigarette. “Scott sees Faith standing there in the hall, feet spread, Glock out in front of her. She sees Scott, doesn’t say a word, just takes off into the bedroom. They go in after her and find a dead guy laid out on the carpet.” Leo touched his finger to his forehead. “She nailed him right between the eyes.”

  “Must’ve had a good reason.”

  “Wish I knew that reason. He didn’t have a gun in his hand.”

  “The other guy did. The one who ran into the backyard and shot at the kids.”

  “You’re right. He did.”

  “Fingerprints?”

  “We’re working on it.”

  Will would’ve bet his house that they would find two sets of prints—one from the Asian and one from the Mexican. “Where’d you find the third guy?”

  “Laundry room. Bullet to the head. Nasty shot, took off half his skull. We dug a thirty-eight out of the wall.”

  Faith’s Glock was a .40-caliber. “Does the S&W take a thirty-eight?”

  “Yep.” Leo pushed away from the car. “Nothing on the mother yet. We got teams out looking for her. She ran the drug squad, but I think you already know that, Ratatouille.”

  Will forced his jaw not to clench. About the only thing Leo was really good at was pushing buttons. This was the reason for the nasty stares and hostile stances from Will’s brothers in blue. Every cop out here knew that Will Trent was the reason Evelyn Mitchell had been forced into retirement. One of the most loathsome jobs he had at the GBI was investigating corrupt cops. Four years ago, he’d made a solid case against Evelyn’s narcotics squad. Six detectives had gone to prison for skimming money off drug busts and taking cash to look the other way, but Captain Mitchell had walked away scot-free, her pension and most of her good reputation intact.

  Leo said, “Tell the kid I can give her ten more minutes, tops, but then she’s gotta get her shit together and start talking to me.” He leaned in closer. “I heard the dispatch call. She was told to stay outta the house. She needs to be real clear on why s
he went in anyway.”

  Leo started to leave, but Will asked him, “How did she sound?”

  He turned around.

  “The phone call to dispatch. How did she sound?”

  Unsurprisingly, Leo hadn’t considered the question. He did now, and quickly started nodding his head. “Maybe a little scared, but clearheaded. Calm. In control.”

  Will nodded, too. “That sounds exactly like Faith.”

  Leo flashed a grin, but Will couldn’t tell if he was relieved or just playing his usual role of smartass. “I meant that about the shorts, man.” Leo slapped him on the arm. “You should try to get those pretty legs of yours on TV.”

  Leo waved to the reporters standing at the yellow tape line. They pressed forward as one, thinking he was going to give them a statement. There was a collective groan as he walked away. The cops holding the line pushed them back just because they could. Will knew they couldn’t care less about crowd control. Their eyes kept going to the command center like they expected an announcement from on high. The cops were just as eager as the reporters to find out what had happened. Maybe more so.

  Captain Evelyn Mitchell had served with the Atlanta force for thirty-nine years. She had come up the hard way, clawing her way out of the secretarial pool, advancing to meter reader, then traffic cop, and finally being given a twenty-two and a badge that wasn’t made of plastic. She was part of a group known for being first: first women driving solo, first women detectives. Evelyn was the first female lieutenant on the Atlanta force, then the first female captain. No matter the reasons for her retirement, she had more medals and commendations than all of the cops on scene combined.

  Will had learned a long time ago that police officers were blindly loyal. He’d also learned that there was a distinct pecking order to that loyalty. It was like a pyramid, with every cop in the world at the bottom and your partner at the top. Faith had been with the Atlanta Police Department since she joined up, but she’d moved to the GBI two years ago, partnering with Will, who wasn’t exactly the most popular guy in class. Leo might still be halfway on Faith’s side, but as far as the general members of the APD were concerned, she had lost her spot on their pyramid. Especially since the first cop on scene, an eager young rookie, had been rushed into emergency surgery after Faith elbowed his testicles up into his brain stem.

  Will saw a flash of yellow as the tape line was lifted. Sara had put up her hair, pinning it tightly behind her head. The linen dress she was wearing looked worse for wear. She had a folded pair of jeans under her arm. At first Will thought she looked confused, but the closer she got, the more he thought she looked annoyed, maybe even angry. Her eyes were red rimmed. Her cheeks were flushed.

  She handed him the jeans. “Why do you need me here?”

  He put his hand at her elbow and led her away from the reporters. “It’s Faith.”

  She crossed her arms, keeping some distance between them. “If she needs medical attention, you should take her to the hospital.”

  “We can’t do that.” Will tried not to focus on the coldness in her voice. “She’s at the neighbor’s house. We don’t have much time.”

  “I heard what happened on the radio.”

  “We think there’s a drug connection. Keep that to yourself.” Will stopped walking. He waited for her to look at him. “Faith’s not acting right. She’s confused, not making sense. They want to talk to her, but—” He didn’t know what to say. Amanda had told Will to make the call to Sara. She knew the woman had been married to a cop, and assumed that her allegiance hadn’t died with the man. “This could be really bad for Faith. She killed two men. Her mother’s been kidnapped. They’re going to be eyeballing her for a lot of reasons.”

  “Did she overreact?”

  “There was a hostage situation. The kids next door were in the line of fire.” Will skated over the missing details. “She shot one guy in the head and one in the back.”

  “Are the children okay?”

  “Yes, but—”

  The back doors of the command center banged opened. Chief Mike Geary, the zone commander for Ansley and Sherwood Forest, jumped down from the steps. He was in full uniform, a scratchy, dark blue polyester that was too tight across the pouch of his stomach. He blinked up at the sun, a deep line creasing his well-tanned forehead. Like most of the old guard, he kept his gray hair clipped in a militarystyle crew cut. Geary put on his hat and turned back around to hold out his hand to Amanda. Something stopped him just shy of touching her, though, and he dropped his hand before she could take it.

  “Trent,” he barked. “I want to talk to your partner right now. Go get her. We’re taking her to the station.”

  Will shot Amanda a look as she navigated the rickety stairs in her high heels. She shook her head once. There was nothing more she could do.

  To his surprise, it was Sara who saved them. “I have to examine her first.”

  Geary wasn’t pleased to be met with resistance. “Who the hell are you?”

  “I’m a trauma doc from the Grady ER.” Sara deftly left out her name. “I’m here to evaluate Agent Mitchell so that any testimony she gives will be admissible.” She tilted her head to the side. “I’m sure it’s not your policy to take statements under duress.”

  Geary snorted. “She’s not under duress.”

  Sara raised an eyebrow. “Is that your official position? Because I would hate to have to testify that you conducted a coercive interrogation against medical advice.”

  Confusion clouded in on Geary’s anger. Doctors were usually more than willing to help the police, but they had the power to shut down any interview if they thought it would jeopardize their patient. Still, Geary tried. “What kind of medical treatment does she need?”

  Sara didn’t back down. “I can’t tell you that until I evaluate her. She could be in shock. She could be injured. She could need hospitalization. Maybe I should just transfer her to the hospital right now and start running tests.” Sara turned around to call to the EMTs.

  “Wait.” Geary hissed out a curse, telling Amanda, “Your bullshit stalling tactics are being noted, Deputy Director.”

  Her smile was fake sweetness and light. “It’s always nice to be recognized for something.”

  Geary announced, “I want her blood drawn and taken to an independent lab for a full tox screen. You think you can do that, Doctor?”

  Sara nodded. “Of course.”

  Will put his hand back under Sara’s arm and led her toward the neighbor’s house. As soon as they were out of earshot, he said, “Thank you.”

  Again, she pulled away from him as they walked up the driveway. By the time they reached the front porch, she was several feet ahead, though the distance between them felt more like a chasm. This wasn’t the Sara from half an hour ago. Maybe it was the crime scene, though Will had seen her on a crime scene before. Sara had been a coroner at one time. She was far from out of her element. Will didn’t know what to do about the change. He had spent a lifetime gauging the moods of other people, but getting a read on this particular woman was beyond his abilities.

  The door opened and Mrs. Levy peered at them from behind her thick glasses. She was wearing a yellow housedress that was frayed at the collar. A white apron with baby geese waddling around the hem was wrapped around her thin waist. Her heels hung out of the back of her matching yellow bedroom slippers. She was somewhere north of eighty, but her mind was sharp and she clearly cared for Faith. “Is this the doctor? I was told to only let a doctor in.”

  Sara answered, “Yes, ma’am. I’m the doctor.”

  “Well, aren’t you pretty? Come on in. What a crazy day this has been.” Mrs. Levy stepped aside, throwing wide the door so they could come into the foyer. Her breath whistled through her false teeth. “I’ve had more visitors this afternoon than I’ve had all year.”

  The living room was sunken a few steps and furnished much as it probably had been when Mrs. Levy first bought the house. Harvest gold wall-to-wall shag carpet was fla
ttened to the floor. The couch was a tightly cushioned, mustard-colored sectional. The only update to the décor was a recliner that looked like the kind that had a mechanical lift to make it easier to get in and out of. The only light in the room came from the flickering console television set. Faith was slumped on the couch with Emma held to her shoulder. All of the talk had drained out of her. Her spirit seemed to have gone with it. This was more what Will had been expecting when he’d heard that Faith was involved in a shooting. She tended to go quiet when she was really upset. But this wasn’t quite right, either.

  She was too quiet.

  “Faith?” he said. “Dr. Linton is here.”

  She stared at the muted television, not answering. In some ways, Faith looked worse than she had before. Her lips were as white as her skin. Sweat gave her face a luminescence. Her blonde hair was matted to her head. Her breathing was shallow. Emma made a cooing sound, but Faith didn’t seem to notice.

  Sara turned on the overhead light before kneeling in front of her. “Faith? Can you look at me?”

  Faith’s eyes were still on the set. Will took the moment to slip on his jeans over his shorts. He felt a lump in his back pocket and pulled out his watch and wallet.

  “Faith?” Sara’s voice became louder, firmer. “Look at me.”

  Slowly, she looked at Sara.

  “Why don’t you give me Emma?”