He asked Amanda, ‘Did you find anything?’ She stared at him blankly. ‘At the crime scene?’
Amanda turned to the receptionist. ‘Excuse me?’ She waited for the girl to look up. ‘The last time I was here, I was served a lovely mint tea. Do you mind making some for me again? With honey?’
The receptionist forced a smile. She slammed her hands on the desk and rolled back her chair so she could stand. She opened the door to the offices and closed it hard behind her.
Amanda told Will, ‘Sit down.’
He sat on the couch.
She said, ‘You’ve got until the girl comes back to explain to me why I shouldn’t fire you on the spot.’
Will couldn’t think of a good reason, so he settled on coming clean. He pulled the 110 envelope out of his back pocket. He tossed it onto the glass coffee table.
Amanda didn’t touch it. She read the return address, which was for the office they were sitting in. Like the wallpaper in the lobby, the 110% was repeated in clear ink across the front and back. Instead of asking what was inside the envelope, she said, ‘How did you get Angie’s PO box number?’
‘I went to the bank. I’m on her checking account. The PO box is inside a UPS store off—’
‘Spring Street.’ She gave him a withering look. ‘Your phone belongs to the GBI, Will. I could track you to the bathroom if I wanted to.’ She motioned for him to continue. ‘So, you went to the store and?’
Will let the information about the tracking sink in. ‘I showed the manager the bank statement with our names on it and my driver’s license and he gave me access to the post office box.’ He left out the hundred dollars cash that had exchanged hands, and the veiled threats he had made to the store owner about the GBI’s fraud investigation division, but something about the look Amanda gave him said that she knew.
She studied the envelope again, still not touching it. ‘Who did you hit?’
He looked at the broken skin on the back of his hand. ‘Somebody who probably didn’t deserve it.’
‘Are they going to be a problem?’
Will didn’t think Collier was the type. ‘No.’
‘You need to take off that wedding ring before you see Sara. And I wouldn’t tell her you’re still listed on Angie’s bank account, because she might wonder how you can find that post office box in two hours when you haven’t been able to find one single viable lead off Angie in the last year and a half.’
Will didn’t hear a question, so he didn’t give an answer.
‘Why are you still on her account?’
‘Because she needs money sometimes.’ He looked out the window. The truth was, he didn’t know why he hadn’t tried to track down Angie through the bank statement before. ‘She’ll text me sometimes that she needs help.’
‘Which means you have her phone number?’
‘The last time she texted me was thirteen months ago for a couple hundred dollars.’ It was actually five hundred, but Will didn’t want to overshare. ‘The phone number that Charlie found is the same number she texted from. It’s been disconnected.’ He added, ‘And it’s the same number on her bank account.’
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.’