'Where?' Will interrupted. 'Did Mary say where the house was?'
'I thought you checked his last residence?'
'I did.' Will felt the final piece click into place. 'Bernard's background check showed another house. He bought it fifteen years ago and sold it three years later. I didn't think anything about it, but-'
Faith took out her cell phone, dialed in a number. 'Mary knows where the house is.'
FAITH DROVE, FOLLOWING the Atlanta police cruiser down North Avenue. The lights were on, but the siren was silent. Will was silent, too. He kept thinking about Warren Grier, the soft give to his chest as Will tried to press the life back into his heart. What had compelled the man to wrap the sheet around his neck, to take his own life? Was he afraid that he would not be able to hold out much longer, that Will would push him so hard that he would end up betraying Evan Bernard? Or was it just a means to an end, Warren's desperate, grand plan to make sure that he spent the rest of his life with Emma Campano?
The cruiser bumped along construction sites in front of the Coca-Cola building, streetlights illuminating the road. Faith slowed so that the bottom of her car would not be ripped apart.
She said, 'I don't want to find the body.'
Will looked at her profile, the way the blue lights flashed against her pale skin. He understood what she meant: she wanted Emma Campano to be found, she just didn't want to be the one who discovered her. 'She's going to be alive,' Will insisted. He could not think otherwise-especially after Warren. 'Emma is going to be alive, and she's going to tell us that Evan Bernard did this, that he put Warren up to everything.'
Faith kept her own counsel, staring at the road ahead, probably thinking that Will was a fool.
Houses started to appear on the side of the road, dilapidated Victorians and cottages that had been boarded up long ago. Ahead, the cruisers' lights cut off as they approached Evan Bernard's old address. There were no streetlights here. The moon was covered in clouds. At almost midnight, the only source of light came from the automobile headlights.
'Look,' Faith said, pointing to the car Adam Humphrey had purchased from a departing grad student. The blue Chevy Impala was one car among many rusted-out heaps parked along a desolate stretch of North Avenue. There had been a priority alert out for two days to locate the vehicle. No one had reported seeing it. Had the car been sitting here the whole time, Emma Campano rotting in the trunk? Or had Warren left her alive to let nature run its course? Even at this time of night, the heat was unbearable. Inside the car would have been twenty to thirty degrees hotter. Her brain would have literally fried in the heat.
Will and Faith got out of the Mini. He shined his Maglite on the houses and vacant lots that lined the street as they walked toward the car. Most of the homes had been torn down, but three had survived. They were utilitarian, wood-frame structures that had probably been thrown up after the Second World War to accommodate Atlanta's population explosion.
Bernard's house was at the end, the street numbers still nailed to the front door. The windows and doors were boarded over. Hurricane fencing had been erected to keep out vagrants, but that hadn't stopped them from digging under in several places. Various drug paraphernalia on the sidewalk and littering the street indicated that some hadn't even bothered to do that.
One of the cops from the cruiser was checking the interior of the Impala. His partner stood beside the car, a crowbar in his hand. Will took the bar and wedged it into the trunk. Without pause, he popped the lock, the metal lid creaking open. They all gagged from the smell of feces and blood.
The trunk was empty.
'The house,' Faith said, shining her flashlight back at the looming structure. It was two stories tall, the roof sagging in the middle. 'There could be junkies in there. There are needles all over the place.'
Wordlessly, Will walked toward the house. He dropped down, wriggling under the fence, pulling himself up on the other side. He did not stop to help Faith as he headed up the broken concrete walk to the house. The front door was nailed shut. Will thought one of the boards over the window looked loose. He pulled it free with his hands. His flashlight showed the dust on the sill had been rubbed away. Someone had been here before him.
He hesitated. Faith was right. This could be a crack house. Dealers and junkies could be conducting business inside. They could be armed, high or both. Either way, they would not exactly welcome the police into their shooting den.
One of the porch boards squeaked. Faith stood behind him, her flashlight shining on the ground.
He kept his voice low. 'You don't have to do this.'
Faith ignored him as she slid in between the rotted boards.
Will checked on the other cops, making sure they were guarding the front and the rear of the house, before going in after her. Inside, Faith had her gun drawn, the flashlight tucked up beside the muzzle, the same way every cop had been trained to do. The house felt claustrophobic, with its low ceilings and trash piled into the corners. There were more needles than he could count, clumps of tin foil and a few spoons-all the signs that the space was an active shooting den.
Faith pointed down, meaning she would search this level. Will drew his gun and went toward the stairs.
He tested his foot on each tread, hoping he would not step on rotted wood and end up in the basement. There was a tingling at the base of his spine. He reached the top of the stairs, keeping his flashlight aimed low. There was a sliver of moonlight coming through the boarded windows, just enough to see by. Will turned off the light and gently placed it on the floor. He stood there, listening for sounds of life. All he heard was Faith walking downstairs, the house groaning as the heat soaked into the wood.
Will smelled pot, chemicals. They could be in a meth lab. There could be a junkie hiding behind one of the doors, waiting to stick Will with a needle. He stepped forward, his foot crunching broken glass. There were four bedrooms upstairs with one bathroom between them. The door at the end of the hall was closed. All the other doors had been taken off their hinges, probably stolen for scrap. In the bathroom, the fixtures were gone, the copper pipe pulled out of the wall. Holes had been punched into the ceiling. The plaster walls were broken along the light switches where someone had checked for copper wire in the wall. It was aluminum, Will saw, the kind that he had ripped out of his own house because building codes had outlawed its use many years ago.
Faith whispered, 'Will?' She was making her way up the stairs. He waited until she was with him, then indicated the closed door at the end of the hallway.
Will stopped in front of the only door. He tried the knob, but it was locked. He indicated that Faith should step back, then lifted his foot and kicked open the door. Will knelt, pointing his gun blindly into the room. Faith's flashlight cut through the dark like a knife, searching corners, the open closet.
The room was empty.
They both holstered their weapons.
'It's just like the other one.' Faith shone her flashlight over the faded pink walls, the dirty white trim. There was a bare double mattress on the floor, dark stains flowering at the center. A tripod with a camera was mounted in front of it.
Will took the flashlight and checked the slot for the memory stick. 'It's empty.'
'We should call Charlie,' Faith said, probably thinking about the evidence that needed to be collected, the DNA on the mattress.
'He knows better than to leave traces of himself,' Will said. He could not get Evan Bernard's smug face out of his mind. The man was so certain that he wouldn't get caught. He was right. At the moment, all they could charge Bernard with was having sex with Kayla Alexander. Will did not know what the statute of limitations were for Mary Clark, nor was he certain that the woman would testify against a man whom she still considered in many ways to have been her first lover.
There was a scraping noise. Will turned around to see what Faith was doing, but she was standing completely still in the middle of the room. He heard the scrape again, and, this time, he realized it was coming from the ceiling.
Faith mouthed,
Will skimmed the low ceiling with his flashlight, checking every corner of the room. Like the rest of the house, the plaster had been busted out around the light switch. Will saw a dark stain around the hole, what might be a footprint. There was a hole above his head, insulation and Sheetrock hanging down in pieces.
