Fallen

by Karin Slaughter

  Faith.

  Mothers were not supposed to pick favorites, but Zeke was the obvious choice. Driven. Smart. Capable. Loyal. He was her firstborn, a shy little boy who had clung to Evelyn’s skirt when strangers visited the house. A toddler who sat with her while she cooked dinner and loved going to the store so he could help carry the bags. His little chest out. His arms overloaded. His teeth showing in a prideful, happy grin.

  But it was Faith whom Evelyn felt closest to. Faith who had made so many mistakes. Faith whom Evelyn could always forgive because every time she looked at her daughter, she caught a glimpse of herself.

  Their time together. Housebound. Those months of forced confinement. Forced exile. Forced misery.

  Bill had never understood it, but then, it wasn’t his nature to understand mistakes. He’d been the first to notice the swell of her stomach. He’d been the first to confront her about it. For nine long months, he was stoic and self-righteous, suddenly making Evelyn understand where Zeke had gotten these tendencies. During the hardest time, he had all but disappeared from their lives. Even after it was all over, and Jeremy had brightened up their lives like the sun finally shining down after a summer storm, Bill had never been the same.

  But then, Evelyn had never been the same, either. Nor had anyone. Faith was caught up in figuring out how to raise a child. Zeke, who had wanted nothing more than Evelyn’s attention since he was a baby, had gone as far away as he could get from her without leaving the planet. Her little boy lost. Her heart split in two.

  She couldn’t bear to think about it anymore.

  Evelyn straightened her spine, trying to take pressure off her diaphragm. She couldn’t keep this up. She was breaking. These young men with their video games and film fantasies had an unlimited pool of ideas at their disposal. God only knew what they would resort to next. They had no problem laying their hands on drugs. Barbiturates. Ethanol. Scopolamine. Sodium Pentothal. Any one of them could act as a truth serum. Any one of them could pry the information out of her mouth.

  Just the excruciatingly slow passage of time could make her talk. The unceasing agony. The relentless barrage of accusations. They were so angry, so hostile.

  So barbaric.

  She was going to die. Evelyn had known the minute she woke in the van that death was the only end to this. In the beginning, she thought it would be their death at her hands. She had quickly realized it was going to be the other way around. The only control she had over anything was her mouth. Through all of this, she had not once begged them to stop. She had not asked for mercy. She had not given them the power of knowing that they were so far into her head that every thought had a shadow lurking behind it.

  But what if she told them the truth?

  Evelyn had spent so many years hiding the secret that even thinking about unburdening herself brought her something akin to peace. These men were her torturers, not her confessors, but she was in no position to quibble. Perhaps her death would absolve her of her sins. Perhaps there would be a moment of relief when for the first time in a long while, Evelyn felt the weight of deceit finally lifting from her shoulders.

  No. They would never believe her. She would have to tell them a lie. The truth was too disappointing. Too common.

  It would have to be a believable lie, something so compelling that they would kill her without first waiting for verification. These men were hardened, but not experienced, criminals. They didn’t have the patience to keep around an old woman who had defied them for so long. They would see killing her as the ultimate proof of their manhood.

  Her only regret was that she wouldn’t be there when they realized she’d tricked them. She hoped they heard her laughing at them from hell for the rest of their miserable, pathetic lives.

  She laughed now, just to hear the sound, the desperation.

  The door opened. A slash of light came under the blindfold. She heard men mumbling. They were talking about another TV show, another movie, that had a new technique they wanted to try out.

  Evelyn inhaled deeply, even though her broken ribs stabbed into her lungs with every breath. She willed her heart to still. She prayed for strength to a God she’d stopped talking to the day her husband died.

  The one with the putrid breath said, “You ready to talk, bitch?”

  Evelyn braced herself. She couldn’t appear to give in too easily. She would have to let them beat her, make them think that they had finally won. It wasn’t the first time that she’d let a man think he had complete control over her, but it sure as hell would be the last.

  He pressed his hand into her broken leg. “You ready to bring on the pain?”

  This would work. This had to work. Evelyn would do her part, and her death would finish it, wash away her sins. Faith would never find out. Zeke would never know. Her children and grandchildren would be safe.

  Safe but for one thing.

  Evelyn closed her eyes and sent out a silent message to Roz Levy, praying that the old woman would keep her mouth shut.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  FAITH’S EYES WERE CLOSED, BUT SHE COULDN’T SLEEP. WOULDN’T sleep. The night had passed in inches, dragging along like Death’s sickle being scraped across the floor. For hours, she had listened to every creak and groan of the house, straining to hear any movement downstairs that indicated Zeke was finally awake.

  Her mother’s finger was hidden in a half-empty box of Band-Aids in Faith’s medicine cabinet. It was wrapped in a Ziploc bag she’d found in an old suitcase. Faith had debated about whether or not to put it on ice, but the thought of preserving her mother’s finger had made bile come to the back of her throat. Besides, she hadn’t wanted to go downstairs last night and face Zeke, or the detectives who were sitting at her kitchen table, or her son who would surely join them all if he heard his mother was up. Faith knew if she saw them, she would start crying, and if she started crying they would quickly figure out why.

  Keep your mouth shut and your eyes open.

  She was doing exactly that, though the cop inside of her was screaming that following the kidnapper’s orders was an incredibly big mistake. You never gave them the upper hand. You never ceded to a request without getting something in return. Faith had coached families on these basic strategies dozens of times. She saw now that it was a different thing altogether when the threatened loved one was your own. If Evelyn’s abductors had told Faith to douse herself in gasoline and light a match, she would’ve done it. Logic went out the window when there existed the very real possibility that she might never see her mother again.

  Still, the cop in her wanted details. There were tests that could be done to determine whether or not Evelyn was alive when the finger was removed. There were other tests that would prove definitively whether or not the digit belonged to Evelyn in the first place. It looked like a woman’s finger, but Faith had never spent much time studying her mother’s hands. There was no wedding ring; Evelyn had stopped wearing that a few years ago. It was one of those things Faith didn’t notice at first. Or maybe her mother was just a good liar. She’d laughed when Faith asked about her naked hand, saying, “Oh, I took that off ages ago.”

  Was her mother a liar? That was the central question. Faith lied to Jeremy all the time, but it was about things all mothers should lie to their children about: her dating life, what was happening at work, how she was managing her health. Evelyn had lied about Zeke being transferred back to the U.S. But, that was to keep the peace, and probably to prevent Zeke’s disapproval from shadowing the happy occasion of Emma’s birth.

  Those sorts of lies didn’t count. They were protective lies, not malignant lies that festered like a splinter under your skin. Had Evelyn lied to Faith in a way that counted? There was something bigger that Evelyn was hiding, something more than the obvious. Evelyn’s house told that story. The circumstances of her kidnapping delivered chapter and verse. She had something in her possession that some very bad men wanted. There was a drug connection. There was at least one gang involved. Her moth
er had worked narcotics. Had she been sitting on a pile of cash all this time? Was there a secret vault hidden somewhere? Would Faith and Zeke find out when Evelyn’s will was read that their mother was actually wealthy?

  No, that wasn’t possible. Evelyn would know that her children would turn over any illicit cash, no matter how much easier it would make their lives. Mortgages. Car payments. Student loans. None of that would go away. Neither Zeke nor Faith would ever take dirty money. Evelyn had raised them better than that.

  And she had raised Faith to be a better cop than to just sit around on her hands all night waiting for the sun to come up.

  If Evelyn were here right now, what would she want Faith to do? The obvious answer was to call Amanda. The two women had always been close. “Thick as thieves,” Bill Mitchell had often said, and not with flattery. Even after Faith’s uncle Kenny had decided to make an ass of himself pursuing younger women on the beaches of South Florida, Evelyn had made it clear that she preferred to have Amanda at the family Christmas table rather than Kenny Mitchell. The two women shared a shorthand the way soldiers did when they came back from war.

  But calling Amanda now was out of the question. She would come rushing in like a bull in a china shop. Faith’s house would be turned upside down. A SWAT team would be in place. The kidnappers would take one look at the show of force and decide it was easier to put a bullet in their victim’s head rather than negotiate with a woman who was hell-bent on revenge. Because that was exactly how Amanda would play it. She never went at anything quietly. It was always a hundred percent or nothing at all.

  Will was good at going in soft. He’d perfected the technique. And he was her partner. She should call him, or at least get word to him. But what would she say? “I need your help but you can’t tell Amanda and we may end up breaking the law, but please don’t ask any questions.” It was an untenable position. He’d bent the rules for her yesterday, but she couldn’t ask him to break them. There was no one else she would trust more to have her back, but Will had a sometimes vexing sense of right and wrong. Part of her was afraid that he would tell her no. And a larger part of her was afraid that she would end up getting him into the kind of trouble that he could never get out of. It was one thing for Faith to throw her career out the window. She couldn’t ask Will to do the same.

  She dropped her head into her hands. Even if she wanted to reach out, the phones were tapped in case a ransom demand was made. Her email was through her GBI account, which was more than likely being monitored. They were probably listening in on her cell phone calls, too.

  And that was just the good guys. Who knew what Evelyn’s kidnappers had managed to do? They knew Jeremy’s nickname, his birth year, his school. They had sent a warning through his Facebook account. Maybe they had bugged the house, too. You could get spy-quality devices off the Internet. Unless Faith went around removing switch plates and taking apart the phones, there was no telling whether or not someone was listening. And the minute she started acting paranoid around her family, they would know that something was wrong. Not to mention the Atlanta detectives, who were watching her every move.

  Finally, she heard the downstairs toilet flush. A few seconds later, the front door opened and closed. Zeke was probably going for a run, or maybe the detectives had decided to get their fresh air in the front yard instead of the back.

  Faith’s hamstrings vibrated with pain as she put her feet on the floor. She’d been curled up for so long that her body was stiff. Other than checking on Emma, she hadn’t dared walk around last night for fear of Zeke coming upstairs to ask her what the hell she was doing. The house was old, the floorboards were squeaky, and her brother was a light sleeper.

  She started with her chest of drawers, carefully opening each one, checking through her underwear and T-shirts and nightgowns to see if anything had been disturbed. Nothing looked out of place. Next, she went to the closet. Her work wardrobe consisted mostly of black suits with stretch in the pants so that she didn’t have to worry about whether or not they would button in the morning. Her maternity clothes were in a box on the lower shelf. Faith dragged over a chair and checked that the tape was still sealed. The stack of blue jeans beside it looked undisturbed. Still, she checked all the pockets, then went back to her suits and did the same.

  Nothing.

  Faith climbed back onto the chair and stretched on tiptoe to reach the top shelf, where she’d stored the box of Jeremy’s childhood memorabilia. It nearly fell on her head. She caught it at the last minute, holding her breath for fear of making too much noise. She sat on the floor with the box between her legs. The cardboard was unsealed. The tape had been peeled off months ago. While she was pregnant with Emma, Faith had been obsessed with going through Jeremy’s childhood keepsakes. It was a good thing she lived alone or someone would’ve seriously questioned her emotional stability. Just the sight of his bronzed shoes and little knitted booties had turned her into a weeping mess. His report cards. His school papers. Mother’s Day cards he’d drawn in crayon. Valentines he’d cut with his tiny blunted scissors.

  Her eyes stung as she opened the box.

  A lock of Jeremy’s hair rested on top of his twelfth-grade report card. The blue ribbon looked different. She held it up to the light. Time had faded the pastel-colored silk, giving the creases a dingy cast. The hair had darkened to a golden brown. Something felt different. She couldn’t tell whether or not the bow had been retied or if it had come loose in the box. She also couldn’t remember whether she’d stacked his report cards first grade to twelfth or the other way around. It seemed counterintuitive that the last was first, especially since the lock of hair was on top. Or maybe she was just talking herself into a frenzy when nothing was wrong.

  Faith lifted up the stack of report cards and looked underneath. His papers were still there. She saw the bronze shoes, the booties, the construction paper greeting cards he’d made in school.

  Everything seemed accounted for, yet she couldn’t shake the feeling that the box had been tampered with. Had someone else gone through Jeremy’s things? Had they seen the hearts he’d drawn on a picture of Mr. Billingham, his first dog? Had they rifled through his report cards and laughed because Mrs. Thompson, his fourth-grade teacher, had called him a little angel?

  Faith closed the box. She hefted it up over her head and slid it onto the shelf. By the time she shoved the chair back in place, she was shaking with fury at the thought of some stranger’s grimy hands on her boy’s things.

  She went to Emma’s room next. The baby didn’t normally sleep through the night, but yesterday had been unusually long and tumultuous. She was still asleep when Faith checked the crib. Her throat made a clicking noise as she breathed. Faith laid a hand on her chest. Emma’s heart felt like a bird trapped under Faith’s hand. Quietly, she searched the closet, the small box of toys, the diapers and supplies.

  Nothing.

  Jeremy was still asleep, but Faith went into his room anyway. She picked up his clothes from the floor to give some pretense of belonging. Part of her just wanted to stand there and stare at him. He was in what she thought of as his John Travolta pose, sprawled on his stomach, right foot hanging off the bed, left arm sticking straight out above his head. His thin shoulder blades stuck out like chicken wings. His hair covered most of his face. There was a spot of saliva on his pillow. He still slept with his mouth open.

  His room had been spotless yesterday, but his mere presence had altered everything. Papers covered the desk. His backpack spilled onto the floor. Wires from various pieces of computer equipment were draped across the carpet. His laptop, which she had saved for six months to buy, was open on its side like a discarded book. Faith used her foot to tip it right side up before leaving the room. Then, she went back in one more time, but only to pull the sheet up over his shoulders so that he wouldn’t get cold.

  Faith threw Jeremy’s clothes on top of the washer and made her way downstairs. Detective Connor was sitting in his usual chair at the kitchen table
. His shirt was different from yesterday, and his shoulder holster wasn’t as tight around his chest. His red hair was tousled, probably from sleeping with his head on the table. She had started thinking of him as “Ginger” and was afraid to open her mouth for fear of the name slipping out.

  He said, “Good morning, Agent Mitchell.”

  “My brother’s out running?”

  He nodded. “Detective Taylor went to get breakfast. I hope you like McDonald’s.”

  The thought of food was enough to make Faith feel sick again, but she said, “Thank you.”

  Half the refrigerator’s contents were gone, though that was probably down to Jeremy and Zeke, both of whom ate like eighteen-year-old boys. She took out the orange juice. The carton was empty. Neither her son nor her brother liked orange juice.

  She asked Ginger, “Did you guys have some juice?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  Faith shook the carton. It was still empty. She didn’t think Ginger would lie about something like that. She had offered both detectives anything in the kitchen. Judging by her depleted stash of Diet Rite sodas, they had taken her up on the offer.

  The phone rang. Faith checked the clock on the stove. It was exactly seven in the morning. “This will probably be my boss,” she told Ginger. Still, he waited until she had answered the phone.

  Amanda said, “No news.”

  Faith waved away the detective. “Where are you?”

  She didn’t answer the question. “How’s Jeremy holding up?”

  “As well as can be expected.” Faith didn’t offer more. She checked to make sure Ginger was in the living room, then opened the silverware drawer. The spoons were turned in the wrong direction, the flat handles to the right rather than the left. The forks were upside down. The tines pointed toward the front of the drawer instead of the back. Faith blinked, not sure about what she was seeing.

  Amanda said, “You know about Boyd?”