‘You’re asking why Harding was looking at naked pictures of his daughter instead of naked videos?’
‘Basically. Shit.’ He clapped his hand to his throat. He coughed. ‘I think I swallowed a fly.’
‘Try keeping your mouth shut.’
‘Ha-ha.’ He sat down on the mattress again. It made the sound again. He gave her the look. Again. ‘I asked my girl in records to run a priority background on little Delilah. We’ll see what she’s been up to lately. With Harding dead, she’ll wind up in jail soon, and there won’t be anybody to get her out.’
‘She could know something,’ Faith said. ‘We have to figure out what Harding was up to over the last week or so of his life. That’s going to tell us why he ended up in Rippy’s nightclub.’ She tried to talk through what was bothering her. ‘Was he a pedophile or a bad father?’
‘My vote goes for both.’
‘He must’a broken his piggy bank over this chick.’ A cop’s currency was knowing who to call, and also knowing that when that person called you back, you did what they wanted, no questions asked. ‘This isn’t asking a uni to lose a speeding ticket. These are high-level favors, lieutenants and parole officers and judges, even. No way he could pay all of that back. He worked white collar. He didn’t have the juice. There was probably nobody left on the force who would answer his calls.’
‘You know the story about the dad who stopped going to work. He couldn’t leave his little girl’s behind.’
Faith shook her head, wishing Collier would shut the hell up. Will’s sense of humor could be irreverent, but he would never, ever joke about a man molesting his own child.
Miraculously, Collier finally picked up on her mood. ‘Harding doesn’t have a computer or a printer.’
Faith checked the paper stock on the photos. ‘These weren’t printed at a lab. Somebody did them privately.’
‘You think someone printed them out for him?’
‘For what? Blackmail?’ She thought about Harding’s windfall six months ago. He moved into the Mesa Arms. He bought a new car. ‘It would be the other way around. Harding’s the one who came into some scratch. I have a good mind to call the lottery board and run his name.’
Collier’s phone buzzed. His finger slid across the screen. ‘Attachment.’ He waited for the download. ‘Oh man. This keeps getting better and better.’ He held up the phone. The screen showed a scan of an official marriage license.
Faith squinted at the words. She had to read them twice before their meaning came through.
Five and a half months ago, Vernon Dale Harding had married Delilah Jean Palmer. It was his fifth marriage and her first.
Faith put her hand to her mouth, then thought better of it.
‘Damn,’ Collier said. ‘Dude married his own daughter.’
‘That can’t be right.’
‘You can see it right here. Processed and everything.’
‘He listed her as his daughter two years ago. You saw it on the forms.’
Collier didn’t seem as confused as she felt. ‘The DNR forms aren’t official, at least not unless somebody finds them and takes them to the hospital.’
Faith felt her head shaking in confusion. She wanted to go back and look at the papers again, but she knew she hadn’t read them wrong. ‘How did that even happen? You can’t marry somebody you’re related to. You have to fill out a license. They run the—’
‘She was always an orphan in the system. Harding probably never had parental rights. They could do all the background checks they wanted and the relationship wouldn’t show up.’
Faith had let the pornographic photos fall out of her hands. She looked down at the scattered images and tried not to think about why Dale Harding had kept them over the years. ‘Good God, this poor girl never had a chance.’
‘He wasn’t sleeping with her.’ Collier stopped Faith’s protest. ‘Not recently, at least. There’s no Viagra in the bathroom, and considering what that guy had going on, there was no farmer left in the dale.’ He laughed. ‘Like, the tractor wasn’t up to plowing the fields.’
‘We need to find this girl.’ Faith started typing a text to Amanda to put out an APB. ‘She’s Harding’s legal wife. Harding was found dead or murdered in a room full of blood. If I’m his killer, then I’m looking for anyone Harding might have confided in. Whether she’s his wife or daughter, she has to know something. Just by virtue of the fact that she was living with him.’
‘Did you notice she’s not here?’ Collier’s mood had shifted. He was getting it now. ‘The TV’s gone. There’s no computer. Maybe she heard that he was dead, knew that there was a target on her back, so she sold his shit and got out of Dodge.’
‘Violet, the property manager, never met Delilah. There’s the weird closet thing. Why would you keep a girl hidden away from everybody in the neighborhood unless there was a reason to keep her hidden?’
Collier said, ‘She’s a whore, so she knows the streets. She was probably working Harding the same as he was working her. Maybe she’s the one who got him killed. I can see that happening—girl crosses the wrong guy, Harding swoops in to protect her and gets a doorknob for his troubles.’
‘Either way, she’s in danger.’ Faith asked, ‘Did records give you her last known address?’
Collier went back to his phone. ‘Renaissance Suites off I-20. My girl already called the manager, texted him a photo from Delilah’s last booking. He says he don’t know nothin’ about nothin’.’
Faith heard her phone chirp. She read the text. ‘Amanda’s put out the APB on Delilah. You need to work your back channels in the APD for information on the girl. Knock on every door to every building or house she’s ever lived in. Check into her juvie record, go by her school, whatever it takes to find out who her friends were.’
Collier had a weird look on his face. ‘Anything else, boss lady?’
‘Yeah, she was busted for soliciting, so she’ll have a pimp. Find him. Talk to him. Run him in if you have to.’ The alarm went off on Faith’s phone. She started shoving the files and photographs back into the boxes. ‘We need to find Delilah before someone else does.’
Collier asked, ‘What are you going to be doing while I pound out this awesome amount of shoe leather?’
‘I’ve got to go to the hospital and talk to the Jane Doe that Will found. She might have seen something last night.’
‘Uh, technically we found her, as in Will and me.’
‘Will and I.’ She muscled up the boxes. They were heavier than she’d anticipated. ‘I should have Harding’s banking and phone information by the time I get to Grady. I’ll go through these files and cross-check them against—’
‘Wait.’ Collier was trailing her down the hall. Again. ‘Your Jane Doe—she knows me. She’d be more likely to talk to a friendly face.’
Faith stopped. Collier bumped into her from behind. She told him, ‘Charlie Reed, our crime scene guy, will be here any minute. Wait for him, then go look for Delilah. If she’s out there, we need to talk to her. If Angie and Harding were killed for a reason, she might know the reason, and that reason could get her killed too.’
‘You really think she’s in danger?’
‘Don’t you?’
‘You’re not much of a feminist, are you?’ Collier grinned at what must have been the shocked look on her face. ‘Could be Delilah’s the one that went after both of them. Angie and Harding. Ever think of that? Women are capable of murder too, partner.’
‘If you call me partner again, you’ll find out exactly what women are capable of.’
For once, Collier took her seriously. ‘I’ll get Ng started, join him as soon as your guy gets here. Should I call you later?’
‘If you find Delilah or have valuable information, yes.’
‘What if I want to look at some more porn with you?’
Faith shouldered open the front door. She kept her head down so her retinas wouldn’t ignite. At her car, she balanced the boxes on one knee and fumbled with
the door handle until she nearly dropped everything. She finally managed to yank back the handle with the tip of her pinky finger. She used the toe of her shoe to pry open the door. She threw the boxes into the passenger seat. She got behind the wheel. All the while, Collier stood in the open front doorway, not bothering to offer any help whatsoever. He was up her ass when she didn’t need him and she couldn’t get him to move a muscle when she did.
‘God dammit,’ Faith muttered.
Amanda was right.
He was exactly her type.
FIVE
Will stood in the lobby of the gleaming Tower Place 100 office building. The twenty-nine-story skyscraper was part of the Tower Place complex, which anchored the corner of Piedmont and Peachtree Road and was only partially responsible for the dense line of Jaguars and Maseratis that clogged Buckhead morning, noon and night.
He hadn’t planned on being here so much as followed the breadcrumbs Angie had left. First he’d gone home to change and get some documents from his safe, then he’d gone to Angie’s bank, which led to the store where she kept her post office box, which led him to this office building, where he stuck out like a country rube because he’d forgone his usual suit and tie for something more comfortable. He couldn’t even pass for a tech billionaire. His jeans were Lucky, not Armani. Sara had bought his long-sleeved polo from a store he had never heard of. His old running sneakers were splotched with the French-blue paint from his bathroom.
He had painted the walls a lighter color because he had realized one morning that the chocolates and dark browns he had chosen for his house were too masculine for Sara.
Sara.
Will felt his chest rise and fall with a deep, calming breath. Just the thought of her name had drained away some of his anxiety. He allowed himself a moment to remember how good it felt to wake up in the middle of the night and find Sara’s body draped across his. She fit him like the last piece of a complicated puzzle. He had never met anyone like her before. She woke him up sometimes just to be with him. Her hands on him. Wanting him. Angie had never wanted him like that.
So why was he here?
Will looked down at the thick gray envelope in his hands. The multi-colored logo for Kip Kilpatrick’s management company was in the corner. Angie’s name was typed above a PO box number. The box was located in a midtown UPS store. There were actually two envelopes inside the box, but the one with the colored logo was the one Will saw first, and his heart had stopped like a train smashing into a brick wall.
He had stood motionless in the UPS store, staring at the envelope, not touching it, trying to get over his shock. Here was a concrete link between Angie and Kip Kilpatrick and, by extension, Marcus Rippy. He should’ve called Amanda immediately, got in a forensic team for fingerprints and to run the security footage. But Will hadn’t done any of this, because among other things, Amanda would want to know how he had tracked down the post office box number in the first place.
Angie’s bank had given Will copies of her statements showing her mailing address. He’d offered the manager his marriage certificate to prove that he was still legally married to Angie. The woman hadn’t needed to see it. All she’d needed was his driver’s license. Will’s name was still on Angie’s checking account, the same as it had been for the last twenty years.
He had not told Sara about the account.
Angie’s recent bank statement had shown an unusually large balance. She had always lived paycheck to paycheck. Will was the saver, the one who was terrified of running out of money and living on the streets again. Angie spent money as soon as it was in her pocket. She had told Will that she was going to die young so she might as well have fun.
Had she died young? Was forty-three middle-aged anymore?
The two-to-three-hour window to find Angie alive had closed hours ago. Sara was a good doctor. She knew how to read a crime scene and she knew how much blood was supposed to be inside of a body. Still, Will could not accept that Angie was dead. He wasn’t one for cosmic signs, but he knew that if something really bad happened to her, he would feel it in his gut.
Will folded the envelope in half, then shoved it into his back pocket as he headed toward the bank of elevators. He passed on two cars before realizing there was no way he would find one that wasn’t already packed with people from the parking deck. He looked at his watch. At 3:30 in the afternoon, the office workers should be pushing the clock to go home, not returning from late lunches. The elevator he finally jammed himself into was filled with the lingering odor of alcohol and cigarettes. Buttons were pressed. Will looked at the panel. They were going to stop on almost every floor.
He had been to Kip Kilpatrick’s office only once, during the brief and uneventful interview with Marcus Rippy. Will could still recall the opulent details inside the offices, because it was the sort of place specifically designed to stick in your head.
110 Sports Management took up the top two floors of the building, seemingly so that they could build a fancy floating glass staircase connecting the two levels. There were life-sized Fathead stickers all over the walls showing players dunking basketballs, rushing the net and throwing game-winning touchdowns. Framed jerseys with familiar numbers were in a straight line outside the conference room like photos of past CEOs, which was appropriate because sport was a billion-dollar business. God-like athleticism wasn’t enough to pay the bills. You had to have lifestyle brands and sneaker endorsements and your own clothing line to prove that you’d really made it.
Behind all of those billion-dollar deals, you also had to have a team of lawyers and managers and agents and brokers who all got their cut. Which was great, but it also created problems. Coca-Cola was a billion-dollar industry too, but there were lots of cans of Coke and bottlers who could make more of it. If a can of Coke exploded, you could get another one out of the fridge. If an athlete got pulled over going 100 miles an hour down I-75 while snorting cocaine with a hooker in his lap, then your entire business was dead the second TMZ posted the mugshot.
There was only one Serena Williams. There was only one Peyton Manning. There was only one Marcus Rippy.
Will forced out the image that came to mind when he thought of Marcus Rippy. Not the many photos of the athlete standing by his three-hundred-thousand-dollar car or on board his private Gulfstream or with his hand resting on the massive head of his pure-bred Alaskan Husky. The one of him at home with his family, acting like a happy father and caring husband while Keisha Miscavage, the woman Rippy had brutally raped, had around-the-clock protection because of the death threats from his fans.
One word from the ballplayer could stop those guys. One line in an interview or post to his Twitter account would make it possible for Keisha Miscavage to go home and start putting her life back together.
Then again, Rippy probably got a kick out of knowing she was still imprisoned.
A bell dinged. Fifth floor. The elevator doors opened. A handful of people got off. Will stood with his back pressed against the wall. He put his hand to his neck, remembering a second too late that he wasn’t wearing a tie.
After Collier had dropped him at the house, Will had assumed he was on some sort of leave, if not outright fired. He remembered thinking that men who were unemployed did not have to wear a suit and tie. It was kind of the point of being unemployed. Now, he regretted his clothing choices, but when he set off from his house a few hours ago, he’d assumed he was going to be chasing down leads on Angie, not confronting Kip Kilpatrick.
The elevator stopped at the twelfth floor. Half of the people got off. No one else got on. Will kept his back to the wall. The car stopped two more floors up. One person got on and took the ride to the next floor. By the time the car left the fifteenth floor, Will was finally alone. He watched the display flash as the elevator took an ear-popping ascent toward the top floor.
Each time the number changed, he thought, Angie. Angie. Angie.
Was he deluding himself? Was she really dead?
Will had made his sh
are of death notifications, steeling himself before knocking on a door, offering a shoulder to lean on or a face to scream at when he told a mother, father, husband, wife, child that their loved one would never come home again.
What was it like to be on the other side? Would Will get a call in an hour or a day or a week? Would he be told that a patrol car had rolled up on Angie’s Monte Carlo and found her lifeless body slumped over the wheel?
Will would have to identify her. He would need to see her face before he believed that she was gone. In the unrelenting summer heat, what would she look like after all that time? Bloated, unrecognizable. He had seen bodies like that before. They would have to run DNA, but even then, Will’s brain would always battle over whether or not that swollen, discolored face belonged to his wife or if Angie had managed to cheat death the way she always cheated everything else.
She was a survivor. She could still be out there. Collier was right. Angie always had a guy. Maybe one of those guys was a doctor. Maybe she was recovering right now, too frail to pick up the phone and let Will know that she was alive.
Not that she would ever call him so long as Sara was around.
Will pressed his fingers into his eyes.
The elevator stopped on the twenty-ninth floor. The doors slid open. White marble gleamed from every surface. A gorgeous, model-thin blonde looked up from her computer at the reception counter. Will recognized her from before, but he was certain she would not remember him.
He was wrong.
‘Agent Trent.’ Her smile dropped into a straight line. ‘Take a seat. Mr Kilpatrick is still in his meeting. He’ll be five or ten minutes.’
Kip Kilpatrick was smart, but he wasn’t clairvoyant. Last Will had heard, Amanda was meeting with Marcus Rippy’s agent/lawyer first thing tomorrow morning. Up until half an hour ago, even Will didn’t know he was going to be here. Or maybe Kilpatrick wasn’t expecting Will to show up so much as waiting for him to. It made sense. Marcus Rippy was Kilpatrick’s biggest client, his only can of Coke. The slimy agent had already scuttled a rape charge. Explaining away a dead body was a comparative cakewalk.
The Kept Woman (Will Trent 8) Page 13