The rat must have been thrilled.
Barb said, ‘I had to wash the sole with the hose. It was disgusting. And his mother was furious at me. Now, she’s my daughter-in-law, and I know that I have to play by her rules, but honestly—’
‘Did you ask Dale about the excrement?’
‘Oh no. I couldn’t talk to Dale about anything. That would be pointless. He would just curse at me and walk away.’
Faith understood why. ‘Did you ever see a different car at Dale’s house other than his white Kia?’
‘Not that I recall.’ She showed an unusual certainty. ‘No, I’m sure I never did.’
‘Are you home much?’ Faith tried to tread carefully, because a lot of times even well-meaning people stretched the truth. ‘I’m asking because you weren’t home this afternoon.’
‘I’ve been volunteering more at the YMCA. I fold towels, help keep things straightened up. I’m very clean, you see, which is why I had some issues with Dale. I don’t like things messed up. There’s no reason not to pick something up and put it right back where you found it, yes?’
‘Yes.’ Faith covered her eyes with her hand again. The woman never met a tangent she didn’t travel. ‘So you stepped up your volunteering to get away from Dale?’
‘Correct. At first volunteering was just a way to get out of the house for a few hours. And to help people. Of course to help people. But then it became my only respite away from the noise. And the odor. You smelled the odor, yes? I couldn’t live with it all day, you see. It was unbearable.’
Faith wondered if Barb’s absence had been the very thing Harding was pushing for all along. If he was keeping Delilah locked in the closet to dry her out, he would want to make sure no one would hear her screaming and call the police.
Faith asked, ‘When did you start spending more time away?’
‘Last week.’
‘So, seven days ago?’
‘Yes.’
Which meant that Dale had managed to drive her out after three days of relentless torture.
Barb said, ‘I just gave up. It was getting worse and worse. The smell. The noises. I couldn’t take it anymore, and I’m not the type to complain. Violet can verify that.’
Faith had the feeling Violet would do no such thing. ‘Well, I’m very sorry that you had to go through that, Ms Wantanabe. I appreciate your talking to me. If you think of anything else—’
‘It’s sad,’ she interrupted. ‘When he first moved in, I thought he was just a lonely old bachelor. He was obviously having health issues. He didn’t seem very happy. And I thought to myself, This is a good place for him. We’re a community here. We all have our differences. As Violet would say, some of us are to the right of Genghis Khan and the rest are to the left of Pluto, but we look out for each other, you know?’
Faith felt her phone vibrate. ‘Yes, ma’am. It seemed like a nice place. I need to—’
‘You get to a certain age, you learn to look past people’s quirks and idiosyncrasies.’ She gave a long sigh. ‘But I’ll tell you what, honey. There’s no looking past human poop in your backyard.’
‘Well, okay.’ Faith’s phone vibrated again. There was a text from Will. ‘Thank you, ma’am. Call me if you think of anything else.’
Faith ended the call before Barb could toss out another bon mot. She opened Will’s text. He’d sent her a photo of the front of Grady, which was Will’s way of saying he was at the hospital looking for her. Faith texted back an emoji of a dinner plate and a smiling pile of shit, meaning she would meet him in the food court.
She checked the patient board as she walked past the nurses’ station. Jane Doe 2 was still critical. Faith didn’t bother to ask the nurses for an update. They had her card. They had promised to text the minute the patient was coherent enough to talk.
Faith started down the stairs. She tapped the pockets of her cargo pants, making sure her blood testing kit was still there. She had two insulin pens left. She had used a third half an hour ago, so she needed to eat. The problem was that Grady only offered fast-food restaurants. This was great for their new cardiac wing, but it was awful if you were trying to control your diabetes. Not that she felt like controlling anything right now. Faith longed for the days when she could eat herself into a stupor that drowned out her stress.
Will had beaten her to the food court. He was sitting at a quiet table in the back. She didn’t recognize him at first because he was in jeans and a beautiful long-sleeved polo that Sara had obviously sneaked into his wardrobe. He was a nice-looking guy, but he had a habit of blending in, which made him unlike every other cop she had ever met.
Will asked, ‘Is this okay?’
He meant the salad he’d ordered for her. Faith stared at the wilted lettuce and white chicken strips that looked like fingers on a dead man. Will’s tray had two cheeseburgers, large fries, a large Frosty and a Coke.
‘Looks good.’ Faith sat down, fighting the urge to unhinge her jaw and swallow everything on his tray. ‘Thanks.’
He said, ‘Amanda scheduled an on-the-record interview with Rippy tomorrow.’
‘I know. She caught me up on everything.’
‘Everything?’
‘I know about the bank account you shared with Angie. And I agree that you shouldn’t tell Sara about it.’
Will didn’t answer. He had never been one for unsolicited advice. ‘I got Laslo Zivcovik’s sheet out of Boston. He’s got some misdemeanors—open bottle, speeding, an assault against a woman and a felony manslaughter for a bar fight. He stabbed a guy twenty-eight times and left him to bleed to death. Laslo pulled a dime in big-boy prison.’
‘Felony manslaughter?’ Faith said. ‘He must’ve had a good lawyer.’
‘I’m assuming he was mobbed up, or was working for the Boston version of Kip Kilpatrick.’
‘Does it bother you what he said about Angie?’
‘I’m more worried that he knows what a snake’s vagina feels like.’
Faith stared at him.
He shrugged. ‘It’s like living with an alcoholic. You’re not surprised when somebody tells you they’re at a bar.’
Faith had dated an alcoholic for years. Worrying about your partner choking on his own vomit or killing someone in a DUI was not the same as knowing he was out there fucking everything that moved.
Which, in retrospect, should have also been one of the things she worried about.
Will said, ‘I met this woman outside Kilpatrick’s office. Mrs Lindsay. African American, really put together. She had pearls around her neck. Probably in her seventies. She gave me a lot of information about herself. I got the feeling she was in a bad place.’
‘Could be she’s the mother of one of the players, worried her son’s going off the deep end.’
‘She talked about a daughter, but tangentially. Not the way you’d talk about your kid if she was good enough to play at that level.’
Will’s gut instinct put Faith’s to shame. She asked, ‘What’s bothering you about her?’
‘Her lip quivered.’ He touched his own lip. ‘She seemed nervous. Upset.’
‘She knew you were a cop?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you get a first name?’
‘No, but she told me that she lives in that apartment complex at Jesus Junction.’
‘That’s pretty detailed.’
‘Not detailed enough. I called the building. There’s no Mrs Lindsay there.’
Faith found it interesting that he’d bothered to call. ‘A woman that age will have a church. You should try the AME on Arden.’
He nodded.
‘Who was she there to see?’
‘Kilpatrick, I’m assuming. Laslo fetched her. Called her Miss Lindsay.’
That threw up a flag. Calling a woman of that age Miss was just plain disrespectful. Unless it wasn’t. ‘Lindsay could be her first name. An older Southern woman like that might go by Miss as a form of respect, like Driving Miss Daisy.’
‘I hadn�
�t thought of that.’ Will shrugged. ‘It’s probably nothing.’
‘It’s more than I’ve got to go on. You should make some calls in the morning.’ She was aware that the errand sounded like busywork to keep him off Angie’s case, so she tried to put a better spin on the task. ‘Harding shows up dead at Rippy’s club. Angie is working for Kilpatrick. Laslo is Kilpatrick’s bulldog. Miss Lindsay shows up a few hours after the murder. Laslo takes her back into the offices, probably to Kilpatrick. You know where I’m going with this. There’s no such thing as a coincidence.’
‘She wasn’t in his office,’ Will said. ‘Miss Lindsay. I didn’t see her anywhere, actually. She might have been downstairs. She could’ve been seeing somebody else.’
‘Or they could’ve been hiding her from you.’
‘Yeah, maybe.’ He started back in on the Frosty. ‘Catch me up on your day.’
‘It was like Whac-a-Mole without the hammer.’ Faith picked at her salad as she ran down what she’d found out about Harding’s life—the battles with Barb Wantanabe, the rat, the smell, the excrement, the naked photos of Delilah Palmer and the marriage certificate.
The last part caught Will’s attention. ‘He lists her as his daughter, but two years later she’s his wife?’
‘Yep.’
‘And it’s the same young woman from the nudie pic in his wallet?’
‘He’s got nudie pics going back to her elementary school days.’
He put down the Frosty. ‘Harding was a pedophile.’
‘Yes. Maybe.’ She sounded like Barb Wantanabe. ‘Here’s what’s bothering me: for the most part, pedophiles have age groups. If you like preteens, that’s your thing. If you like them in between or after puberty, that’s your thing. I know it happens, but it’s very rare for them to stick with one victim as she ages.’
‘It’s rare to stick with just one victim, period. A guy Harding’s age would have hundreds of victims. You didn’t find any other photos?’
Faith shook her head as she forced down a piece of rubbery chicken. ‘There was a second girl Harding called in favors for. Virginia Souza. Harding didn’t have any pictures of her, nothing was in his files. She’s dead. OD’d six months ago.’
‘The magic six months,’ Will said. ‘You’re thinking Harding was keeping Delilah at his house to dry her out?’
‘Locked in his closet with nothing but a pot to piss in, as it were.’ She thought of something. ‘Maybe he had Angie locked in there?’
‘No way. She would’ve clawed through the Sheetrock and killed him.’
Faith knew that he was not speaking metaphorically. ‘Collier thinks Harding was running drug mules.’
Will gave her a skeptical look. ‘Mexican cartels don’t use doorknobs to send a message.’
She laughed, mostly because he’d made Collier look like an idiot. ‘Okay, so we’ll assume Delilah was the only woman Harding kept in his closet. Why did he lock her up?’
‘Because he cared about her.’ Will held up his hands to stop her protests. ‘Harding chose to go off dialysis. He knew he was going to die, and soon. This is literally how he planned to spend the rest of his life—drying her out.’
‘Maybe he felt responsible for fucking her up.’ She remembered the dental device by the bed in the guest room. ‘Somebody also sprang for an orthodontist. She was sleeping with a retainer.’
‘We could get Collier’s partner on that. Call all of the orthodontists in the area to see if she’s a patient.’
Faith picked up her phone and started typing. ‘I’ll pass that through Amanda,’ she said, but she suggested that Collier and Ng did the shitwork together.
Will waited until she had sent the text. ‘You said Palmer’s first big arrest was for slinging Oxy. Where was she getting the pills, do you think?’
Faith considered the question. ‘She was living in the ’hood, attending elementary school. Adderall, Concerta, Ritalin—that’s what you’d expect to find floating around. ADD/ADHD drugs. Valium and Percocet come along in middle school. Oxy is more high school, more of a suburban white people problem.’
‘So who was supplying Delilah with Oxy to sell when she was ten years old?’
‘Harding was white collar. He wouldn’t have access.’ Faith thought it through. Her mother had run the drug squad out of zone six. The evidence lockup would’ve looked like a pharmacy. ‘Harding might know somebody who had access. Maybe he located a cop with a pill problem and Harding pressured him into sharing the take.’
‘Zone six?’
She nodded.
Will’s demeanor changed.
‘Do you know somebody who worked zone six and had a pill problem who might’ve been connected to Harding?’
‘Yeah,’ he said, and he didn’t have to tell her that it was Angie. ‘She takes care of kids like that. At least she used to.’
‘Kids like Delilah?’ Faith felt her stomach turn. It was one thing for Angie to pimp out other women for high-end parties, but exploiting orphaned little girls was beyond the pale.
Will said, ‘Angie worked vice. The young ones—she kind of took them under her wing.’
‘And gave them pills to sell?’
Will rubbed his jaw. ‘Angie knows what it’s like to be stuck in that kind of situation with no one looking out for you.’
‘You’ve lost me,’ Faith said. ‘I don’t see the compassionate side of turning a ten-year-old into a drug mule.’
‘Which is worse: selling Oxy or selling sex?’
‘Those are the only two choices?’
‘For kids like that, stuck in the system, changing schools and foster homes five times a year, never knowing where they’re gonna sleep from one night to the next?’ He sounded emphatic. ‘Yeah, those are the choices.’
The mother side of Faith wanted to argue him down. The cynical side, the one who’d been a cop for fifteen years, could see the logic. Kids like that didn’t live the lives they wanted. They survived the lives they had.
Will asked, ‘How many strings did Harding have to pull to keep Delilah out of trouble?’
‘More than a harp player.’
‘Who did the favors?’
‘That’s not how favors work. You don’t talk about them. That’s kind of the point.’ Faith heard her voice echo in the food court. She sounded pissed off, and maybe she was. Sure, kids like Delilah Palmer had it bad, but teaching them how to successfully enter the criminal underworld was not the solution. ‘Jesus, Will. Do you really think Angie was giving little girls pills to sell?’
Will drummed his fingers on the table. He stared over her shoulder, which was probably one of his most annoying recurrent tactics.
Faith speared a piece of chicken. The tension over Angie’s possible bad good deeds sat on the table between them. Faith forgot sometimes how rough Will’s life had been. This was entirely his own fault. From the outside, he seemed like a normal guy. And then you noticed the scars on his face. Or the fact that he never rolled up his sleeves, even in ten-thousand-degree heat. He never talked about any of it. Actually, he never talked about anything. Like that the open cuts on his fist meant that he’d recently punched somebody. Like that his wife was probably dead. Or that his girlfriend’s heart was broken.
‘Faith?’ Will waited for her to look up. He tried to smile. ‘I feel like I need to see the rat.’
She let out a long breath that she didn’t realize she’d been holding. She pulled the video up on her phone and slid it across the table. ‘Collier threw up. Epically. The godfather of vomiting.’
Will laughed appreciatively. He played the video. Twice. Faith could hear Collier’s panicked breathing through the speaker. It got better each time. Will finally put down the phone. ‘That’s a Russian Blue.’
‘The rat?’
‘I raided a pet store once. The guy was selling exotic animals out of the back, but the front was filled with rats. Amanda made me catalog all of them.’ He slid the phone back her way. ‘Dale could’ve gone after Angie to protect De
lilah. Clean up the mess before he clocked out.’
She shrugged, but the theory made sense.
He said, ‘If there’s a drug angle, that opens this up.’
‘You mean we’ll have to tell Amanda.’
Will nodded.
‘God dammit,’ Faith muttered. ‘Collier wanted to track down those gang tags in the club. I’m going to kill myself if he was right.’
‘Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,’ Will said. ‘It’s a theory, right? We don’t know for sure what Angie was up to.’
‘Except getting paid ten grand a month by Kilpatrick.’
‘Maybe she was hooking him up with drugs.’
‘I’d buy that if they were growth hormones or steroids.’
‘He wouldn’t need Angie for that. He’d have doctors writing legal scripts.’ Will sat back in his chair. ‘Let’s say we find Delilah and she’s never heard of Angie. Then what?’
‘Then she tells us what the hell is going on.’ Faith didn’t give Will time to laugh in her face, because they both knew that was very unlikely. Girls like Delilah didn’t talk to cops. They waited out their time, then they disappeared.
Faith took out her notebook. He couldn’t read her scrawl, but she pointed to the headers. ‘Palmer was married to and possibly related to Harding. Harding lived in a house owned by a company that probably traces back to Kip Kilpatrick. Angie was working for Kip Kilpatrick. Harding hit the jackpot six months ago. Angie started getting her payday four months ago.’ She pointed to the last name. ‘They all tie to Rippy.’
Will took the notebook. He studied the names. Faith saw his eyes move, but she didn’t know how quickly he could take it in. She knew that he was better with words he had seen before, but there were new names on the paper.
Will put the notebook down. He asked, ‘What if we were building a case right now? Palmer is in the wind for whatever reason. Rippy is Teflon. The only two people we know for sure about are Harding and Angie. They were both at the same location, the club. One of them died there. The other died because of something that happened there. Probably died.’
Faith let the ‘probably’ slide by.
The Kept Woman (Will Trent 8) Page 18