Will had said the same thing to Sara, but it sounded shitty coming out of Collier’s mouth.
‘You really think she’d run across the street to this dump?’ Collier slid down the wall so he could sit. He was still out of breath. ‘Lookit, I never met the broad, but I’ve known plenty of broads like her.’ He glanced up at Will, probably to make sure he wasn’t coming down the stairs. ‘No offense, bro, but they’ve always gotta backup plan. You know what I mean?’
Will knew what he meant. Angie always had a guy she could run to. That guy hadn’t always been Will. She had different men she used at different times in her life. When it wasn’t Will’s turn, he went to work, he retiled his bathroom, he restored his car, and he convinced himself the whole time that he wasn’t waiting for her to come back into his life. Dreading. Anticipating. Aching.
Collier said, ‘My take is, the shit went down last night, she’s injured, so she pulled out her phone—which we can’t find—and she called up a guy and he came rushing over to help.’
‘What if Harding was the guy?’
‘You think she only had one guy?’
Will took a deep breath. He held on to it for as long as he could.
Collier asked, ‘We leaving now?’
Will pushed himself up. Heat exhaustion put stars in his eyes. He steadied himself for a moment. He blinked away sweat. He turned around and resumed his climb up the stairs.
‘Jesus Christ,’ Collier muttered. The soles of his shoes hit the treads like sandpaper. ‘You ask me, you oughta be running back down these stairs and telling ol’ Red you’re fucking sorry.’
Collier was right. Will owed Sara an apology. He owed her more than that. But he had to keep moving forward, because taking a step back, letting himself think about what he was doing and why, was a thread he couldn’t let unravel.
Collier said, ‘That’s a good-lookin’ woman you got there.’
‘Shut up.’
‘I’m just sayin’, dude. Simple observation.’
Up ahead, Will saw a painted 9 marking the next landing. He kept climbing. The heat intensified with every step. He braced his hand against the wall. He went through the list again: he didn’t know where Angie lived. He didn’t know where she worked. He didn’t know who her friends were. If she had friends. If she wanted friends. She had been the center of his existence for well over half of his life and he didn’t know a damn thing about her.
‘You got prime rib at home,’ Collier said. ‘You don’t run out to McDonald’s for a Happy Meal.’ He laughed. ‘I mean, not so prime rib ever finds out. ’Cause, shit, man, we all like a greasy cheeseburger every now and then, am I right?’
Will turned the corner at the 9. He looked up to the next landing.
His heart stopped.
A woman’s foot.
Bare. Dirty.
Bloody cuts criss-crossed the soles.
‘Angie?’ He whispered the word, afraid to say it louder because she might disappear.
Collier asked, ‘What’d you say?’
Will stumbled up the stairs. He could barely carry his own weight. He was on his knees by the time he reached the landing.
Angie was lying face down on the floor. Long brown hair wild. Legs splayed. One arm underneath her, the other over her head. She was wearing a white dress he’d seen before. Cotton, see-through, which is why she wore the black bra underneath. The dress rode up her legs, showing matching black bikini underwear.
Blood radiated from beneath her still body, cresting in a halo over her head.
Will put his hand on her ankle. The skin was cold. He felt no pulse.
His head dropped down. He squeezed his eyes shut against the tears that came.
Collier was behind him. ‘I’ll call it in.’
‘Don’t.’ Will needed a minute. He couldn’t hear the call on the radio. He couldn’t take his hand from Angie’s leg. She was thinner than the last time he’d seen her—not Saturday, that was just a glimpse, but about sixteen months ago. It was the last time they were together. Deidre had finally died, all alone in the nursing home because Angie didn’t see her anymore. Will was on a case when it happened. He had driven back to Atlanta to be with Angie. Sara was in the picture by then, like a blur at the edge of the frame that might be something or nothing at all, depending on how things developed.
Will had told himself that he owed Angie one last chance, but she had known the minute she looked into his eyes that all that weight between them—that Pandora’s box of shared horrors that they both carried on their backs—had finally been lifted.
Will cleared his throat. ‘I want to see her face.’
Collier’s mouth opened, but he didn’t say what he was supposed to say—that they should leave the body in situ, that they needed to call in forensics and Amanda and everybody else who would pick over Angie Polaski’s lifeless body like carrion.
Instead, Collier climbed the stairs and went to the head of Angie’s body. He didn’t bother to glove up before he slipped his hands under her thin shoulders. He said, ‘On three?’
Will forced himself to move. To get up on his knees. To wrap his hands around Angie’s ankles. Her skin was smooth. She shaved her legs every day. She hated having her feet touched. She liked fresh milk in her coffee. She loved the perfume samples that came in magazines. She loved dancing. She loved conflict and chaos and all the things he could not stand. But she looked out for Will. She loved him like a brother. A lover. A sworn enemy. She hated him for leaving her. She didn’t want him anymore. She couldn’t let him go.
She would never, ever hold him like she held him in that basement ever again.
Collier counted down. ‘Three.’
Wordlessly they lifted the body and turned her onto her back. She wasn’t stiff. The arm over her head flailed, crossing itself over her eyes as if she couldn’t face the fact that she was gone.
Her swollen lips were chapped. Dark blood smeared down her chin. White powder speckled her hair and face.
Will’s hand shook as he reached out to move the arm. There was blood—not just from her mouth and nose, but from needle tracks. On her neck. Between her grimy fingers. On her arms.
Will felt his heart start to jackhammer. He was light-headed. His fingers touched her cool skin. Her face. He had to see her face.
The arm moved.
Collier asked, ‘Did you do that?’
Unaided, the woman’s arm slid off her face, flopped onto the ground.
Her mouth slit open, then her rheumy eyes.
She looked at Will.
He looked back.
It wasn’t Angie.
FOUR
Faith sat in her car outside Dale Harding’s duplex, taking a break from the unrelenting heat. She was sweating her balls off, to quote a post from her son’s Facebook page that future potential employers would eventually find.
Maybe he could live with his grandmother. Faith had gotten a sunglassed smiley face back when she texted Evelyn the photo of Jeremy with the bong. This was certainly a radical departure from her mother’s previous parenting techniques, which had come straight from the pages of Fascist Monthly. Then again, Jeremy wouldn’t be here if fashioning yourself into your child’s own private Mussolini was a strategy for success.
She took a long drink of water and stared at Dale Harding’s duplex side of a well-maintained single-story bungalow nestled inside a sprawling gated complex.
Something wasn’t adding up.
Faith hated when things didn’t add up.