She said, ‘You too.’
Faith used her shoe to kick open the swinging door, knowing it would leave a mark. Amanda was already off the couch, her purse in her hands. She said, ‘Thank you, Mr Figaroa. We’ll be in touch. Again, I’m so sorry for your loss.’
Kilpatrick showed them out. He let them take the lead down the hallway like he was afraid they would dart off and find something he couldn’t explain away.
At the back door, he told Amanda, ‘If you have any more questions for Fig, call my cell. Number’s on my card.’
‘We’ll need him to positively ID the body. A DNA sample would be helpful, too.’
Kilpatrick smirked at the suggestion. No lawyer willingly gave up a client’s DNA. ‘Take another picture once you have her cleaned up. We’ll go from there.’
‘Wonderful,’ Amanda said. ‘I look forward to seeing you in a few hours.’
Kilpatrick wouldn’t stop smirking. ‘Yeah, that on-the-record interview with Marcus that you talked Ditmar into agreeing to yesterday—that ain’t gonna happen. Call Ditmar if you don’t believe me.’
He didn’t slam the door, because he didn’t have to.
Amanda gripped her purse like she wanted to strangle it as she walked to the car.
Faith walked backward, looking up at the second-floor windows. There were no lights on. No Miss Lindsay peering out from behind the curtains. Faith had the same feeling that Will had described before: something wasn’t right.
They both got into the car. They were both silent until the car was turning onto Cherokee.
Amanda asked, ‘Nothing from the mother?’
‘Laslo was there.’ Faith asked, ‘What about that phone call? Kilpatrick almost jumped out of his skin.’
‘Curiouser and curiouser.’ Amanda said, ‘Reuben Figaroa is an angry man.’
Faith would’ve said ‘duh’ to anyone else. The guns lying around the house. The operating room aesthetic. Reuben Figaroa was a human checklist for a controlling husband. Whether or not that crossed into violence was an open-ended question. At the very least, it made sense that his wife would be popping pills on her way to the grocery store.
What didn’t make sense was why she had been murdered.
Amanda said, ‘His alibi will hold. You know that. And I find it very convenient that his entire day was filled with people who are professionally bound by one legal standard or another to keep their mouths shut.’
‘Angie got her killed,’ Faith guessed. ‘That’s what this is about. Not Marcus Rippy or Kilpatrick or Reuben or any of that. Angie did one of those Jerry Springer “Surprise, I’m your mother!” things and trapped Jo into doing something that ended up getting her murdered.’
‘Don’t let the tail wag the dog,’ Amanda warned. ‘I’m worried about the son—Anthony. Even I know there should be some toys, or at least a few smudges on the glass coffee table.’
‘Backpack, shoes, coloring books, crayons, Matchbox cars, dirt.’ Faith had forgotten how much dirt boys dragged in. They were like lint traps to every particle of dust in the atmosphere. ‘If a six-year-old boy lives in that house, then his mother spends all day cleaning up after him. And she does it on her own, by the way. Miss Lindsay confirmed that Jo doesn’t have help. She does the cooking, the cleaning, the laundry, just like a real housewife.’
‘Jo disappeared Sunday night. For all intents and purposes, it’s now Tuesday morning. We’ll assume the husband doesn’t scrub toilets. Did Miss Lindsay take over the cleaning?’
‘I don’t see how. She could barely lean down with her cane. But you’re right that something is going on with Anthony. I kept pressing her buttons on the kid, and she would’ve cracked if Laslo hadn’t been there.’ Faith said, ‘We can call the school. They’ll give out truancy information. I’m assuming he’s at E. Rivers. It’s basically a publicly funded private school for rich white kids.’
‘It’s too early. No one will be there until six.’
Faith yawned reflexively at the mention of the late hour.
Amanda said, ‘I want to talk to that Jane Doe that Will found in the building. She must have seen something. Where did she get all that coke?’
Faith was still yawning. Too much information was coming at her too fast. Her brain felt like a spinning top. ‘Figaroa seemed unequivocal about the identification from the photo. How could he be sure? Her head is the size of a watermelon. Someone beat the shit out of her.’
‘Here’s another problem.’ Amanda pointed to the clock on the radio. ‘We got there at one in the morning. They were all awake, dressed. Kilpatrick was there in a suit. Reuben was in a suit. Laslo was there. The mother-in-law still had her pearls on. All the lights were on in the house. They were staying up for a reason.’
Faith said, ‘Kilpatrick didn’t know that Jo was dead.’
‘No,’ Amanda said. ‘He was shocked when I told him. You can’t fake that.’
‘Figaroa was in a knee brace. But he had that bump on his head. Someone took a heavy swing at him.’
‘Jo?’
Faith laughed, but only out of desperation. ‘Angie? Delilah? Virginia Souza?’
‘The AK by the front door looks retrofitted for automatic.’
‘The AR by the back door has a slide fire. That’s one hundred rounds in seven seconds.’ Faith shook her head, trying to clear it. ‘What the hell is going on in that house?’
‘Concentrate. Kilpatrick is a fixer. Laslo is a fixer. What problems were they there to fix?’
‘If we’re buying that Kilpatrick didn’t know Jo was dead, then that’s not the problem they were fixing.’ Faith reminded her, ‘Miss Lindsay was at Kilpatrick’s on Monday afternoon. That’s when she saw Will. She was upset about something.’
‘Her daughter was arrested for possession of drugs.’
‘Yeah, last Thursday. Jo was out of jail by Saturday. Her mother was at Kilpatrick’s with a new problem. A Monday problem. An after-Harding-was-killed problem. An after-her-daughter-disappeared-but-we’re-saying-she’s-in-rehab problem.’ Faith thought of another red flag. ‘She went to Kilpatrick, not Reuben.’
‘That phone call Reuben got a few minutes ago. That was strange.’
‘It seemed like they were all waiting for a call, even Miss Lindsay. The minute the phone rang, she stuck her head out of the kitchen to find out what was happening.’ Faith turned to Amanda. ‘If the call wasn’t about Jo, then the only thing I can think of that would upset Miss Lindsay that much is Anthony.’
‘Put it together, Faith. Reuben Figaroa went to Kilpatrick’s office Monday morning. Next, they both met with his lawyer. Reuben spent the rest of the day visiting three different banks, and now they’re all at the house, early in the morning, fully dressed, waiting for a phone call. What does that tell you?’
‘Ransom,’ Faith said. ‘Angie kidnapped her grandson.’
ELEVEN
Will paced outside Jane Doe’s hospital room while her doctors did their morning rounds. He stuck his hands in his pockets as he paced. He felt weirdly exhilarated, almost giddy, even though he hadn’t slept last night. He was thinking more clearly now than he had in the last thirty-six hours. Obviously Angie thought she could wind him up with her mind games, but all she had done was laser-focus his desire to bring her down.
And he was going to bring her down hard, because he knew exactly what she’d been doing.