There was a groan of appreciation as the white-suited techs made their way toward the exits. They would probably start gossiping as soon as they were outside.
Sara wiped her eyes before her tears could fall. She was at work. She had to focus on what was in front of her, what she could control. She told Amanda, ‘We can do blood typing in the mobile lab. Results are almost instantaneous.’ She tried in vain to swallow the lump in her throat. ‘It’s not DNA, but we can use ABO typing as a rule-out against Angie. Or as a rule-in, depending what her blood type is.’ She had to stop to swallow again. She couldn’t tell if she was making any sense. ‘We can establish a loose narrative. Does the blood type from the spatter on the stairs match the type of the bloody footprints that go toward the room? Do those samples match the blood type inside the room? Is it the same type as the arterial spray? The hand swipe?’ Sara pressed together her lips. How many times was she going to say the word type? Someone could turn it into a drinking game. ‘I’ll need Angie’s blood type. And we’ll need to backstop all of this with DNA. But the blood typing could at least tell us something.’
Amanda gave a curt nod. ‘Do it. Angie was a cop for ten years. I’ll pull the blood info from her file.’ She sounded uncharacteristically flustered. ‘Faith, hit the phones. We need a current address, phone, employer, anything you can find. Collier, yours and Ng’s orders haven’t changed. I want you to get teams to search the ware—’
‘I’ll do it.’ Will started toward the lift, but Amanda clamped her hand down on his arm, stopping him cold.
‘Stay here.’ He tried to pull away, but her fingernails dug into his shirtsleeve. ‘That’s an order.’
‘She could be—’
‘I know what she could be, but you’re going to stay here and answer my questions. Is that understood?’
Collier coughed into his hand, like the teacher was scolding a student. Faith slapped his arm to shut him up.
Amanda said, ‘Charlie, take Collier and Faith downstairs, then come back up for me.’
Faith squeezed Sara’s hand as she walked by. They had a rule that they never discussed Will except in general terms. Sara had never wanted to break that rule more badly than she did right now.
‘Amanda.’ Will didn’t wait for the audience to leave. ‘I can’t just—’
Amanda held up a finger to silence him. At least someone was worried about Sara being humiliated. Again.
Saturday.
Two days ago.
She’d had no idea Will was keeping something from her. What else had she missed? Sara tried to scan back over the last few weeks. Will hadn’t been acting strange. If anything, he had been more attentive, even romantic, which could’ve been the biggest sign of all.
‘Amanda,’ Will tried again, his voice lowered as he struggled to sound reasonable. ‘You heard what Sara said. Angie could be bleeding to death. She might have a few hours before . . .’ His words trailed off. They all knew what would happen if Angie didn’t get help. ‘I have to look for her. I’m the only one who knows the kinds of places she’d hide.’
Amanda gave Will one of her steely glares. ‘I swear on my life, Wilbur, if you take one step off this balcony, I’ll have you in handcuffs before you see sunshine.’
His eyes burned with hatred. ‘I’ll never forgive you for this.’
Amanda made a show of pulling out her phone. ‘Add it to the list.’
Will turned his back to her. His gaze skipped over Sara. Instead of speaking to her, or even acknowledging what was happening, he walked back toward the stairs. Sara expected him to go down anyway, but he turned back around, pacing the length of the balcony like a caged leopard. His teeth were so tightly gritted that Sara could see his jawbone working. His fists were clenched. He stopped again at the top of the stairs, shook his head, mumbled something under his breath.
Sara could read the word on his lips. Not an apology. Not an explanation.
Angie.
He didn’t love Angie. At least not as a husband. At least not according to what he had told Sara. For almost a full year, Will had been searching for his wife in order to file divorce papers. Their marriage was a scam anyway, something they had literally done on a dare. Will had promised Sara that he was doing everything possible to end it. She had never once questioned how a special agent with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation was unable to find a woman who was apparently right in front of his face as recently as two days ago.
Had he met her at a restaurant? A hotel? Sara felt her tears threatening to return. Had he been with Angie this entire time? Had he played Sara for a fool?
‘All right.’ Amanda had waited until the lift settled on the ground floor. ‘Saturday. Where did you see Angie?’
Slowly Will turned around. He crossed his arms. He looked somewhere over Amanda’s head. ‘Outside my house. Parked on the street.’ He paused, and Sara hoped he was remembering what she had done to him before he left, because it was never going to happen again. ‘I was heading out for a run, and I saw her car. It’s a Chevy Monte Carlo SS, eighty-eight, black with—’
‘Red stripes. I’ve already put out a five-state APB.’ Amanda asked Will the question that was burning in Sara’s mind. ‘Why was she at your house?’
He shook his head. ‘I don’t know. She saw me and she got back into her car and—’
‘She didn’t speak to you?’
‘No.’
‘She didn’t go inside?’
‘No.’ He caught himself. ‘Not that I know of. But she lets herself in sometimes.’
Sara looked down at the evidence bags Faith had left on the ground.
The lipstick.
Sisley rose cashmere with a scratch down the side of the case. There was no manufacturing defect. This was Sara’s lipstick. She had left it at Will’s last month. In his bathroom. On the sink basin. They had gone out to dinner, and when she had looked for it later, it was nowhere to be found.
In Angie’s purse. In her hand. Between her fingers. On her mouth.
Sara felt nauseated.
Amanda asked Will, ‘Do you know why she was parked outside your house?’
He shook his head. ‘No.’
Sara struggled to find her voice. ‘Did she leave a note on my car?’
‘No,’ Will said, but how could Sara trust him? They had gone to breakfast after his run. They had spent the day on the couch together and ordered pizza and fooled around and he’d had a million opportunities to tell her that the woman he had spent a year trying to locate had been parked outside his house that very morning. It’s not like Sara would have been angry. Irritated, maybe, but not at Will. She never blamed him for Angie’s bullshit. He knew that because Angie had caused problems for both of them countless times before.
Which meant that the only reason for Will to hide the visit was because there was more to the story. Like that Angie had been inside his house. Like that she had stolen Sara’s lipstick. What else was Sara missing? Some hair combs. A bottle of perfume. Sara had blamed herself for misplacing things between her apartment and Will’s house, never once considering that Angie was stealing from her.
And that Will knew.
Amanda said, ‘Walk me through it. You come out your front door. You see Angie inside her parked car.’
‘Standing beside it.’ Will spoke carefully, as if he needed to think before he answered. ‘She saw me, knew that I’d seen her, but she got into her car and—’ He glanced down at the evidence bags. The Chevy ignition key. The old kind that might fit an ’88 Monte Carlo.
He said, ‘I ran after the car, but she drove off.’
Sara tried to block out the image of Will chasing Angie down the street.
Amanda turned to Sara. ‘What note were you asking about?’
She shrugged, like it was nothing, but it was everything. ‘Sometimes she leaves notes on my car. They say what you’d expect.’