Amanda finally picked up the envelope. She pulled out the five-thousand-dollar check written from Kip Kilpatrick’s personal account. Proof that Angie had been working for Kilpatrick. Amanda let her hand fall to her lap. ‘This is why she didn’t need to borrow money. If you can call it borrowing. I’m assuming she never paid you back.’
Again, he did not answer the question that was not asked. ‘For the last three months, Angie has shown a five-thousand-dollar deposit every two weeks, the same amount that’s on that check. She was working for Kip Kilpatrick.’
‘For what reason do you think Kilpatrick was paying her ten thousand dollars a month out of his private account?’
Will shrugged, but he could think of a lot of illicit things Angie would do. She’d had a pill problem on and off from childhood. She didn’t mind doing bad things or looking the other way when people did bad things for her. She had also dipped into legal enterprises, so Will went with the least of her sins. ‘She was registered with the state as a private investigator. Maybe Kilpatrick had her investigating people, doing background checks on potential clients. She worked security part-time when she was a cop. Maybe she did that for him too.’ He asked her again, ‘What did you find at the crime scene?’
Amanda ignored the question a second time. ‘Tell me the reason you didn’t call me half an hour ago when you found this check.’
Will looked down at his hands. He was twisting the wedding ring again. He didn’t know why he had developed an attachment to it. The ring meant about as much as the one that Angie had put on his finger at the court house.
Amanda said, ‘The blood in the room is type B-negative, which is a very rare blood type. Angie is type B-negative. That’s all I have for you.’
‘All the blood was B-negative?’
‘The majority of the blood, yes. The volume.’
Will heard Sara’s words echo in his head.
The volume of blood loss is the real danger.
Amanda said, ‘Jane Doe is still in surgery. We have a lead on a gal named Delilah Palmer. Ever heard of her?’
Will shook his head.
‘White female, twenty-two years old. Her sheet has prostitution and drugs times eight. Harding was her guardian angel. She’s been on the game for a while.’
‘Angie worked vice when she was a cop.’
‘Did she really?’ Amanda put on a bad show of sounding surprised. ‘We’ve put out a high alert. This Delilah Palmer likely knows why Dale and Angie were killed, which either makes her our top suspect or our next victim.’
Will twisted the ring on his finger. He forced himself not to look at his watch, to do the math for how much time had passed since Sara had said that Angie didn’t have much time.
She would come back. Angie always came back. That’s how he would get through this. He would treat this time like every other time she disappeared, and a year would go by, two years, and Will would find a way to accept that he had watched Amanda pretend to read a magazine while Angie had died alone. Just like she always said she would do. Just like Will had wished she would do because he wanted things to be easier with Sara.
He looked out the window. He tried to swallow. He felt that familiar tightness in his chest. The last thing he had said to Angie was that he didn’t love her anymore.
Then he had gone back to Sara.
Amanda put down her magazine. She stood up. She walked around the coffee table and sat on the edge of the couch. She smoothed out her skirt. She stared at the wall in front of her. Her shoulder touched his, and it took everything Will had inside of him not to lean against her.
She said, ‘You know my mother hanged herself in our backyard when I was a child.’
Will looked up. She had spoken matter-of-factly, but the truth was that he hadn’t known.
She said, ‘Every time I washed dishes, I would look out the window at that tree and think, “You are the last person who is ever going to make me feel this way ever again.” ’
Will didn’t ask which way she meant.
‘And then Kenny came along. I’m sure Faith has told you about her uncle.’
Will nodded. Kenny Mitchell was a retired pilot who’d flown test engines for NASA.
‘Kenny was a stone-cold fox, as we used to say.’ She smiled her secret smile. ‘I couldn’t understand why he chose me. I was such a plain, silly girl. Very naive. Desperate to please my father. Wouldn’t say boo to a ghost.’
Will couldn’t picture Amanda being any of those things.
‘Kenny was like a drug. At first in the exciting way, then in the bad way. The way that led your Jane Doe to vacuuming up two ounces of coke.’ Amanda’s tone said she wasn’t exaggerating. ‘I lowered myself for him. I did things that I never thought I would ever, ever do.’
Will glanced back toward the closed office door. How long did water take to boil for tea?
Amanda said, ‘The hardest part was that deep down inside, I knew it. I knew he would never marry me. I knew he would never give me children.’ She paused. ‘I could spot a lying perp from fifty yards, but I chose to believe everything that came out of Kenny’s mouth. I’d invested so many years of my life in him that I couldn’t admit that I was wrong. I was terrified of looking like a fool.’
Will sat back on the couch. If she thought that was how he was with Angie, then she was wrong. Will knew from the beginning that Angie was the wrong person for him. As for looking like a fool, everybody knew that she cheated on him.
Used to cheat on him.
Amanda continued, ‘Kenny and I had been together for nearly eight years when I met Roger.’ Her voice softened when she said the name. ‘I’ll spare you the details, but let’s just say he caught my eye. He wanted to give me everything I didn’t have with Kenny, but I said no, because I didn’t know how to be with a man who wanted to be with me.’ The softness had drained away. ‘I was addicted to Kenny’s uncertainty, that niggling little doubt in my gut that made me wonder if I could survive without him. I thought I could fix the pain inside of him. It took me a long time to realize that the pain was inside of me.’
Will rubbed his jaw. That hit a little closer to home.
Amanda turned toward him, her hand resting on the back of the couch. ‘We had this kitten when I was a little girl. Buttons. She kept clawing the couch, so my father bought me a water pistol and told me to shoot her every time she got near it. And I remember that first time I squirted her, she panicked and ran to me for comfort. She clung to me, and I petted her until she calmed down. That’s how I was with Kenny. That’s how you were with Angie.’ Amanda said this with conviction. ‘It’s the curse of the motherless child. We seek comfort from the very people who do us harm.’
Her words splayed him open like a razor.
She said, ‘I think you never checked Angie’s bank statement because you were afraid that she’d closed the account. That she’d cut off that final tie with you.’
Will looked down at his hands, the broken skin from punching Collier, the fake ring that signified his fake marriage.
‘Am I right?’
He shrugged, but he knew that she was right.
Angie had left him a letter. That was what was inside the second envelope inside her post office box. This one had Will’s name written on the outside in capital letters, clear so that he could easily read it. The letter inside was a different matter. Angie had deliberately written him a note in her cursive chicken scratch because she knew that Will would not be able to read it. He would have to find someone else to read it for him.
Sara?
He cleared his throat. ‘What made you finally leave Kenny?’
‘You think I’d ever give up?’ She laughed deep from her belly. ‘Oh no. Kenny left me. For a man.’
Will felt himself startle.
‘I knew he was gay. I wasn’t that naive.’ She shrugged. ‘It was the seventies. Everybody thought gay people could change.’
Will tried to get over his shock. ‘Was it too late with Roger?’
‘About half a century too late. He wanted a stay-at-home wife and I wanted a career.’ She looked at her watch, then at the closed door. ‘At least he showed me what an orgasm was.’