Faith opened her mouth to ask him what was wrong.
He motioned for her to be quiet, saying into the phone, ‘Angie, why did you do this to me?’
Faith’s jaw dropped. She froze in place.
‘Why?’ Will demanded. ‘You faked that scene at Rippy’s club. You made me think you were dead. You made me think it was your body in the basement. Why?’
Angie was silent, though she’d had an entire day to contemplate her answer.
‘Angie—’ Will’s voice cracked. He felt raw, desperate to hear an explanation. ‘Tell me, God dammit. Why did you put me through this? Why?’
Angie drew out a long, exasperated sigh. ‘Why do I do anything?’ She rattled off some familiar answers. ‘I’m a fucking bitch. I want to ruin your life. I make you miserable. I don’t know what you look like when you’re in love because you’ve never been in love with me.’
Will turned away from Faith, afraid to show her how much he could hate somebody. ‘That’s not good enough.’
‘It’ll have to do for now.’
He couldn’t handle this. He was going to crack, end up dead on the floor, if he let himself feel all the things that were boiling up inside of him. He tried to think like an agent, not a human being who had just been skull-fucked by a psychopath. ‘Whose body is in the basement?’
‘Not yet,’ Angie said. ‘First tell me what it felt like when you thought I was dead.’
Will forced his fingers not to crush the phone. ‘What do you think it felt like?’
‘I want you to tell me.’ She waited for him to speak. ‘Tell me how you felt, and I’ll tell you who’s in the basement.’
‘I can find out myself,’ he said. ‘We’re running her prints right now.’
‘Too bad her finger pads are cracked open.’
‘We can get DNA.’
‘She won’t be in the system.’ Angie said, ‘You’ve been working this case. Other cases, too. What if I told you I could break everything wide open right now, only all you have to do is tell me how you feel?’
‘I don’t want your help.’
‘Sure you do. Remember how I helped you the last time? I know you were grateful then.’
Will couldn’t have that conversation in front of Faith. ‘Did you kill Dale Harding?’
‘Why would I confess to murder now?’
Will felt exhaustion pulling at him like a sickness. ‘Now, as in not like the other times?’
‘Careful, baby.’
He covered his face with his hand. This wasn’t happening. She had hurt other people like this, but never him. He couldn’t stop asking, ‘Why? Why did you do this?’
‘I wanted you to know what it would feel like to really lose me.’ She was silent for a few beats. ‘I saw you today. Don’t ask me where. The look on your face when you thought I was really dead. I bet you wouldn’t miss Sara that way.’
‘Don’t say her name.’
‘Sara,’ Angie repeated, because she would not be told what to do. ‘I saw you, Will. I know that look. I saw it when you were a kid. I saw it last year. I know who you are. I know you better than anybody else on earth.’
The letter. She was quoting from her own letter. ‘Who’s in the basement?’
‘Does it matter?’
Will didn’t know what mattered. Nothing mattered. Why had she done this to him? He had only ever loved her. Taken care of her. Made sure she was safe. She had never done that for him. Not now. Not ever.
She asked, ‘Has Faith managed to get a ping on me yet?’
Will turned around. Faith was on her phone, probably requesting a trace.
‘Josephine Figaroa,’ Angie said.
‘What?’
‘The girl in the basement. Josephine Figaroa. My daughter. Your daughter. Our child, together.’ She paused. ‘Dead.’
Will felt his mouth open. His heart was shaking so hard that he had to sit down. A child. Their child. Their baby. ‘Angie,’ he said. ‘Angie.’
There was no response. She’d ended the call.
He put his hand to his mouth. His breath was cold against his palm. Angie had killed him from the inside, slicing into his heart with a surgeon’s precision. A child. A daughter. His fucked-up genes inside of her.
And now she was dead.
Faith knelt beside him. ‘Will?’
He couldn’t speak. He could only think about a little girl sitting at the back of a classroom struggling to follow what the teacher said because her stupid father couldn’t teach her how to read.
She would have ended up trapped in the system, the same as Will. Abandoned, the same as Will.
How could Angie be so cruel?
‘Will,’ Faith repeated. ‘What did she say?’
‘Josephine Figaroa.’ He had to force the name out. ‘In the basement. Angie’s daughter. Josephine Figaroa. That’s her name.’
‘The basketball player’s wife?’ Faith rubbed his back. ‘We’ll deal with that in a minute. Do you need me to get Sara?’
‘No,’ he said, but Sara was already coming through the door behind them. Amanda was with her. They both looked worried.
And then Faith told them about Angie’s phone call and they looked furious.
‘What?’ Sara demanded. ‘What?’ She couldn’t stop saying the word.
Amanda gripped the side of the podium. She spoke through gritted teeth. ‘Did you run a trace?’
Faith said, ‘We couldn’t lock in. She must’ve timed it.’
‘God dammit.’ Amanda looked down at the floor. She took a shallow breath. When she looked back up, her game face was on. ‘Did we get a phone number?’
‘It’s blocked, but we can pull it on—’
‘I’m on it.’ Amanda started working her BlackBerry. ‘Was Charlie able to match the fingerprints?’
‘No,’ Faith said. ‘Her finger pads were too—’
‘Cracked,’ Will said. ‘Angie knew that. She said the DNA won’t be in the system.’
Sara said, ‘Angie’s blood type was at the scene.’ She kept shaking her head, completely baffled. ‘Her purse. Her gun. I don’t understand. Why would she do this?’
Faith asked, ‘Would Angie’s daughter have the same blood type?’
Sara didn’t answer. She was shell-shocked, the same as she’d been this morning.
‘Daughter?’ Amanda asked.
Will couldn’t answer.
Amanda asked, ‘In the interest of futility, did Angie mention why she did all of this?’
‘She’s a monster,’ Will said, the same words that people had been saying about her for over thirty years. At the children’s home. At foster homes. At the police station. Will never argued them down, but he never believed them either. They didn’t know Angie. They didn’t know the hell she had been through. They didn’t know that sometimes the pain was so bad that the only thing that made you feel better was lashing out at other people.
She had never lashed out at Will before. Not like this.
‘If it really is Josephine Figaroa, we’ll have fresh prints in the system,’ Faith said. ‘She was arrested last Thursday. She had Oxy in her car. I saw it on the news.’
Amanda asked, ‘Angie said this woman is her daughter?’
‘Yes.’ Will couldn’t tell them that Josephine was his daughter too. He had to get some clarity. He needed time to think. Angie had lied about so many things. Why should he trust her now?
‘Figaroa,’ Amanda said. ‘Why does that name sound familiar?’
‘Her husband is Reuben Figaroa. He’s a basketball player.’
‘Marcus Rippy.’ Amanda spat out the name like a bad taste in her mouth. ‘This entire day has been a giant circle leading directly back to him.’
Will stood up. ‘The patrol car can access footage from the street cameras.’
He didn’t wait for a response. He jogged up the aisle. He was outside and in the parking lot by the time they exited the building. Will pulled open the cruiser’s passenger-side door and got into the car. The uni gave a startled bark.
Will pointed to the laptop mounted on the dash. ‘I need the footage from every camera in the area.’
‘I was just pulling that up for your boss.’ The uni punched some keys. ‘These are the ones you want to see. I got two different angles, one from the street that runs in front of the funeral home, one that runs along the back.’
Faith opened the back door and slid into the car.