‘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?’