Fallen

by Karin Slaughter

  Faith tightened her grip around the duffel as she walked into the carport. She was sweating, and the cool breeze in the covered area brought a chill. She looked around. The shed door was still open. It was hard to believe that only two days had passed since Faith had first seen Emma locked in the small building.

  She turned toward the house. The door to the kitchen had been kicked open. It hung at an angle from the hinges. She saw the bloody handprint her mother had left, the space where her ring finger should’ve pressed against the wood. Faith held her breath as she pushed open the door, expecting to be shot in the face. She even closed her eyes. Nothing came. Just the empty space of the kitchen, and blood everywhere.

  When she’d entered the house two days ago, Faith had been so focused on finding her mother that she hadn’t really processed what she was seeing. Now, she understood the violent battle that had taken place. She’d worked her share of crime scenes. She knew what a struggle looked like. Even with the body long removed from the laundry room, Faith could still recall the placement, what he’d been wearing, the way his hand fanned out against the floor.

  Will had told her the kid’s name, but she couldn’t remember it. She couldn’t remember any of them—not the man she had shot in the bedroom or the man she had killed in Mrs. Johnson’s backyard.

  After what they had done, they didn’t deserve for her to know their names.

  Faith turned her attention back to the kitchen. The pass-through was empty. She could see straight down the hallway. It was the middle of the afternoon, but the house appeared to be in dusk. The bedroom doors were closed. The blinds covering the large windows on either side of the front door were drawn. The only unfiltered light came from the bathroom window. The shade was pulled up. Faith walked past the dining room and into the front foyer. She stood with the hallway on her right and the kitchen on her left. The living room was in front of her. She should take out her gun, but she didn’t think they were going to shoot her. At least not yet.

  The room was dim. The curtains had been pulled closed, but they were more sheer than opaque. A gentle breeze stirred the material where the glass door had been broken. The room was still turned upside down. Faith couldn’t recall what it had looked like before, though she’d lived here eighteen years of her life. The packed bookshelves that lined the left-hand wall. The framed family photos. The console stereo with the scratchy speakers. The overstuffed couch. The wingback chair her father sat in while he read. Evelyn was sitting there now. Her left hand was wrapped in a blood-soaked towel. Her right was so swollen it could’ve belonged to a mannequin. Two broom handles were duct-taped around her leg, keeping it straight out in front of her. Her white blouse was stained with blood. Her hair was matted to the side of her head. A piece of duct tape covered her mouth. Her eyes widened when she saw Faith.

  “Mama,” Faith whispered. The word echoed in her brain, conjuring all the memories Faith had from the last thirty-four years. She had loved her mother. She had fought with her. Screamed at her. Lied to her. Cried in her arms. Run from her. Returned to her. And now, there was this.

  The young man from the grocery store was on the other side of the room, leaning against the bookcases. His vantage point was ideal, the top of a triangle. Evelyn was down and to his left. Faith was fifteen feet away from her mother, forming the second base angle. He was in shadow, but the gun in his hand was easy to see. The barrel of a Tec-9 was pointed in Evelyn’s direction. The fifty-round magazine jutted out at least twelve inches from the bottom. More clips hung out of his jacket pocket.

  Faith dropped the duffel bag onto the floor. Her hand wanted to go to the Walther. She wanted to shoot the entire clip into his chest. She wouldn’t aim for the head. She wanted to see his eyes, hear his screams, as the bullets ripped him apart.

  “I know what you’re thinking.” He smiled, his platinum tooth catching a bit of what light was in the room. “ ‘Can I pull my gun before he pulls the trigger?’ ”

  She told him, “No.” Faith was a quick draw, but the Tec-9 was already pointed at her mother’s head. The math was against her.

  “Get her gun.”

  She felt the cold metal of a muzzle pressed to her head. Someone was behind her. Another man. He wrenched the Walther from the waist of her jeans, then grabbed the duffel bag. The zip ripped open. His laughter was like a child’s on Christmas morning. “Shit, man, look at all this green!” He bounced on the balls of his feet as he walked toward his friend. “Goddamn, bro! We’re rich!” He threw the Walther into the bag. He had his Glock tucked in the back of his pants. “Goddamn!” he repeated, showing the bag to Evelyn. “See this, bitch? How you like that? We got it anyway.”

  Faith kept her eyes on the kid from the grocery store. He wasn’t happy like his partner, but that was to be expected. This was never about the money. Will had called it hours ago.

  The man asked Faith, “How much is in there?”

  She told him, “A little over half a million.”

  He gave a low whistle. “You hear that, Ev? That’s a lot of money you stole.”

  “Damn right.” The partner fanned out a stack of bills. “You coulda stopped all this two days ago, bitch. I guess they call you Almeja for a reason.”

  Faith couldn’t look at her mother. “Take it,” she told the man. “That was the deal. Take the money and leave.”

  His friend was ready to do just that. He dropped the bag beside Evelyn’s chair and picked up a roll of duct tape from the floor. “Yo, man, let’s go straight up to Buckhead. I’m’a get me a Jag and—”

  Two shots rang out in rapid succession. The duct tape dropped to the floor. It rolled under the chair where Evelyn sat, then the boy’s body collapsed in a heap beside her. The back of his head looked like someone had taken a hammer to it. Blood gushed onto the floor, pooling around the legs of the chair, her mother’s feet.

  The young man said, “He talked too much. Don’t you think?”

  Faith’s heart was pounding so loudly she could barely hear her own voice. The concealed revolver in her ankle holster felt hot, like it was burning her skin. “Do you really think you’re going to make it out of here alive?”

  He kept the Tec-9 aimed at her mother’s head. “What makes you think I want to get out of here?”

  Faith allowed herself to look at her mother. Sweat dripped from Evelyn’s face. The edge of the duct tape was pulling away from her cheek. They hadn’t bound her. The broken leg ensured she wasn’t going anywhere. Still, she was sitting up straight in the chair. Shoulders back. Hands clasped in her lap. Her mother never slumped. She never gave away anything—except for now. There was fear in her eyes. Not fear of the man with the gun, but fear of what her daughter would be told.

  “I know,” Faith told her mother. “It’s all right. I already know.”

  The man turned the gun to the side, squinting his eye as he aimed down on her mother. “What do you know, bitch?”

  “You,” Faith told him. “I know who you are.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  WILL HAD HIS EYE PRESSED TO THE RIFLE SCOPE WHEN the Tec-9 went off. He saw the flashes first, two bright strobes. A millisecond later, he registered the sound. He flinched away; he couldn’t help it. When he looked back in the scope, he saw Faith. She was still standing in the front entrance hall, facing the family room. Her body swayed. He waited, counting the seconds, making sure she didn’t fall. She didn’t.

  “What the hell happened?”

  Roz Levy was on the other side of the Corvair. He looked under the car and found himself staring at the business end of a bright nickel Colt Python. Will didn’t know how she managed to keep the thing steady. The gun’s barrel was at least six inches long. The .357 magnum load could produce hydrostatic shock, meaning the impact from a chest wound was great enough to cause brain hemorrhaging.

  He tried to keep his voice calm. “Could you please point that somewhere else?”

  She drew back the gun and uncocked the hammer. “Motherfuck,” she mumbled, pu
shing herself up. “Here comes Mandy.”

  Will saw Amanda running through the backyard. Her shoes were off. She had her walkie-talkie in one hand and her Glock in the other.

  “Faith’s okay,” he told her. “She’s still in the house. I don’t know who—”

  “Move,” Amanda ordered, darting past the Corvair and into Roz Levy’s house.

  Will didn’t follow orders. Instead, he used the scope to check Evelyn’s hallway again. Faith was still standing there. She had her hands out in front of her, palms down, as if she was trying to reason with somebody. Had the flashes been warning shots or kill shots? The drive-by shooter favored two hits, one right after the other. If they’d killed Evelyn, Faith wouldn’t be standing there with her hands out. Will knew in his gut that she’d either be on the floor or on top of the killers if anything happened to her mother.

  “Will!” Amanda snarled.

  He kept the rifle close to his body as he ran past the car and into the house. The two women were standing in what must’ve been a screened porch at one time but was now a laundry room. Before he could close the door, Roz Levy started yelling at Amanda.

  “Give me back that!” the old woman demanded.

  Amanda had the Python. “You could’ve killed all of us.” She opened the chamber and ejected the load of .38 Specials onto the dryer. “I should arrest you right now.”

  “I’d like to see you try.”

  Roz Levy wasn’t the only one who was pissed. Will felt his throat clench around the effort to keep from yelling. “You said this would be an easy exchange. You said they’d take the money and give Evelyn—”

  “Shut up, Will.” Amanda spun the empty cylinder back into the revolver and tossed it onto the washer.

  She must’ve taken Will’s silence as following orders, but the truth was that he was so furious that he didn’t trust himself to speak. Arguing wouldn’t change the fact that Faith was stuck in that house without a clear exit plan. There was nothing they could do now except wait for SWAT to show up and pretend this was a hostage negotiation instead of a suicide mission.

  Unless Will went in himself. He gripped his rifle. He should go in there. He should do exactly what Faith had done two days before and bust down the door and start shooting.

  Amanda’s hand clamped around his wrist. “Don’t you dare leave this room,” she warned him. “I’ll shoot you myself if I have to.”

  Will’s teeth started to ache from grinding together. He pulled away from her, banging into a metal lawn chair in the middle of the room. He couldn’t help but take in his surroundings. A high-speed camera was mounted on a tripod, pointing out the window in the door. Roz Levy had covered the glass with black construction paper, leaving a small hole for the lens to peer through. A shotgun was beside the door. No wonder she hadn’t allowed Will into the house. She didn’t want him obstructing her view.

  Will looked into the camera viewfinder. The lens was sharper than his scope. He could see sweat dripping down the side of Faith’s face. She was still talking. She was trying to reason with the shooter.

  One shooter. One man left standing.

  Two bad guys had gone into that house. Both were dressed in black jackets and hats. One had been shot. Will was certain of that, at least. He had watched both kids forcing Evelyn across the lawn and into the house. The one in back had done all of the heavy lifting. He was expendable, just like Ricardo, just like Hironobu Kwon, just like every other man who’d tried to get his hands on Evelyn Mitchell’s money.

  But it had never been about the money. Chuck Finn wasn’t pulling the strings. There was no wizard behind the curtain. Here was the head of Roger Ling’s snake: an angry kid with blue eyes and a Tec-9 and some kind of grudge he was intent on carrying out.

  Will spoke through clenched teeth. “It’s just him now. This is what he wanted all along.”

  “He’ll never spend a dime of that money.”

  He struggled to keep his voice down. “He doesn’t care about the money.”

  “Then what does he care about?” She grabbed his shoulder and jerked him away from the camera. “Come on, genius. Tell me what he wants.”

  Mrs. Levy mumbled, “You know what he wants.” She was loading the cartridges back into her revolver.

  “Zip it, Roz. I’ve had enough of you for one day.” Amanda glared at Will. “Enlighten me, Dr. Trent. I’m all ears.”

  “He wants to kill her. He wants to kill both of them.” Will finally dropped the biggest I-told-you-so of his life. “And if you had deigned for once to listen to me, none of this would be happening.”

  Anger flared in Amanda’s eyes, but she told him, “Go on. Get it all out.”

  In the end, it was her acquiescence that sent him over the edge. “I told you we should slow this down. I told you we should figure out what they really wanted before we sent Faith in there with a target on her back.” He closed the space between them, backing her against the washer. “You were so hell-bent on proving your dick is bigger than mine that you didn’t stop to think that I might be right about something.” Will leaned in close enough to feel her breath on his face. “Any blood spilled is on your hands, Amanda. You did this to Faith. You did this to all of us.”

  Amanda turned her head away from him. She didn’t answer Will, but he could see the truth in her eyes. She knew that he was right.

  Her silent acceptance was no consolation, but Will backed off anyway. He had been looming over her like a bully, clutching his rifle so hard that his hands were shaking. Shame crowded out his anger. He made his grip loosen, his jaw relax.

  “Ha,” Mrs. Levy laughed. “You gonna take that tone from him, Wag?” She had re-loaded the Python. She snapped the cylinder home, telling Will, “That’s what we used to call her—Wag, because she shut up and wagged her tail like a dog every time a man was around.”

  Will was shocked by her words, mostly because he couldn’t imagine anything that could be further from the truth.

  Mrs. Levy hefted the Python in her hands. She told Amanda, “Talk about swinging your dick around. You could’ve stopped this twenty years ago if you’d’a had the balls to force Ev to—”

  Amanda hissed, “Spare me your sanctimonious bullshit, Roz. If it wasn’t for me standing between you and your cookie recipe, you’d be on death row right now.”

  “I warned you when it happened. You don’t mix pigeons and bluebirds.”

  “You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. You never have.” Amanda barked more orders into the walkie-talkie. Her voice shook, which worried Will as much as anything that had happened in the last ten minutes. “Take out that black van. I want all four tires down. Clear out this block as quickly as you can. Call in APD to gumshoe it and give me an ETA on SWAT within the next five minutes or don’t bother showing up for work tomorrow.”

  Will put his eye back to the camera. Faith was still talking. At least, her mouth was moving. Her arms were crossed over her chest. Will found his mind working through Roz Levy’s mildly racist choice of words: pigeons and bluebirds. Mrs. Levy was full of old adages, like the one she’d told him two days ago: A woman can run faster with her skirt up than a man can with his pants down. It was a strange thing to say about a pregnant fourteen-year-old girl who’d had a baby by the age of fifteen.

  Will asked the old woman, “Why didn’t you take that Python over to Evelyn’s when you heard the shots the other day?”

  She looked down at the gun. There was a bit of petulance in her tone. “Ev told me not to come over no matter what.”

  Will hadn’t pegged her as an order-follower, but maybe her bark was worse than her bite. Poisoning was a coward’s choice, coldblooded murder without the inconvenience of getting your hands dirty. He tried to push her toward the truth. “But you heard gunshots.”

  “I assumed Evelyn was taking care of some old business.” She jabbed her thumb Amanda’s way. “Notice she didn’t call her for help.”

  Amanda rested her chin on the walkie-talkie. She was
watching Will like she was waiting for a pot to boil. She was always ten steps ahead of him. She knew where his brain was going even before he did.

  She told Mrs. Levy, “I knew Evelyn was seeing Hector again. She told me months ago.”

  “Like hell she did. You were as shocked to see that picture as I was when I took it.”

  “Does it matter, Roz? After all this time, does it really matter?”

  The old woman seemed to think that it did. “It’s not my fault she was willing to gamble away her life for ten seconds of pleasure.”

  Amanda laughed, incredulous. “Ten seconds? No wonder you murdered your husband. Is that all the old bastard could give you—ten seconds?” Her tone was cutting, rueful, the same one she’d used on the phone half an hour ago.

  There are other things a man can gamble with besides money.

  She was talking about Will and Sara. She was talking about the inherent risks that came with love.

  Will turned back to the camera. Faith was still talking. Had Roz Levy set up the camera today, or had it been there all along? The view into the house was clear. What would she have seen two days ago? Evelyn making sandwiches. Hector Ortiz carrying in groceries. They were comfortable around each other. They had a history. A history that Evelyn was trying to hide from her family.

  Pigeons and bluebirds.

  Will looked up from the camera. “He’s Evelyn’s son.” Both women stopped talking.

  Will said, “Hector’s the father, right? That’s the mistake Evelyn made twenty years ago. She had a son by Hector Ortiz. Was the bank account used to help support him?”

  Amanda sighed. “I told you, the account doesn’t matter.”