Hey, Mama. Did Tessie ask you to find Tommi Humphrey’s phone number or location for me? Her mother’s information would work, too. It’s for a very important case. We really need to speak with her as soon as possible. I love you. S.
Sara slid her phone into her pocket. She did not expect a quick response from her mother. Cathy’s phone was probably sitting on the kitchen counter, hooked up to the charger, which is where she usually left it when she was inside the house.
Of its own accord, Sara’s hand reached back into her pocket. The phone came out. Her thumb swiped up. She was like an addict. Hours had passed since her last hit. She could no longer resist the temptation.
She opened the Find My app.
Instead of Lena’s address, the map showed an actual pin.
Will had made himself visible to her again. He was inside the building. Sara almost wept with relief. She held the phone to her chest even as she berated herself for being so desperate.
At that very moment, the stair door banged open. Will stepped aside, letting Faith stomp down the hall ahead of him. Sara’s first thought was that Faith looked worse than Sara felt. Her shoulders were bowed. She was gripping her purse to her chest like a football. Her usual air of cheerful disgruntlement had been replaced by a crushing anguish.
She took a left into the briefing room, telling Sara, “Fuck my job.”
Will looked as haunted as Faith. Instead of speaking to Sara, he shook his head.
She followed him inside.
Amanda asked, “Well?”
“Well, this.” Faith hurled her purse at one of the desks. The contents spilled onto the floor. She paced a few steps toward the window. Her hands went into her hair. Everyone but Will was stunned. Faith never acted out. Sara had always thought of her as unflappable.
She looked to Will, but he had knelt down to gather Faith’s things back into her purse.
Amanda told him, “Speak.”
Will set the purse upright on the desk. He said, “We called Callie Zanger from the car outside her office building.”
He carefully relayed Faith’s phone conversation with the lawyer. Will had always been uncomfortable leading briefings. Now, his voice had turned monotone, almost rote. Sara sat down in the front row. Will was directing his words toward Faith, though she clearly already knew the details. Sara realized that he was watching his partner, ready to step in if she needed him.
He continued, “Zanger sat at the bar with Faith. I was at a table about ten feet away.”
Sara heard a roughness enter his tone. He was just as bruised by Callie Zanger’s story. He laid it all out in painful detail. The abduction. The woman’s certainty that her ex-husband was the man who had harmed her, who had raped her, who had left her for dead.
As Will spoke, he worried his thumb over his wounded knuckle. Fresh blood slid down his fingers. By the time he had finished telling them what Callie Zanger thought was the truth of her abduction, the carpet beneath his hand was stained with dots of blood.
Will said, “Zanger is sure it was her husband. We didn’t tell her any different.”
He said we, but Sara knew from the story that Will had never spoken to the woman.
“The bartender told me he’d make sure she didn’t drive herself home,” Will said. “And then we left. That’s it.”
“I couldn’t tell her.” Faith had sagged into a chair. She looked haunted by the weight of the day. “Callie thinks she won. That’s what she said. ‘I won.’”
No one spoke in the immediate.
Nick pulled at a string on the corner of his briefcase.
Will leaned his back against the wall.
Amanda let out a long, slow breath. She was the most hardened officer of them all, but she was also closely tied to the Mitchell family. Early in her career, she had been partnered with Evelyn, Faith’s mother. She had dated Faith’s uncle. Jeremy and Emma called her Aunt Mandy.
“Nick,” Amanda said. “There’s a bottle of bourbon in the bottom drawer of my desk.”
Nick left at a sprint.
Faith said, “I don’t want a drink.”
“I do.” Amanda was always on her feet, but she sat at the desk beside Faith. She asked Will, “Rod Zanger?”
Will said, “We located him in Cheyenne. He’s been in the Laramie county lock-up for the last three months. He beats his new wife, too.”
Faith put her head in her hands. “I couldn’t tell her. She’s barely holding it together. I’m barely holding it together.”
Amanda asked Will. “The transceiver on her car?”
He said, “We couldn’t ask for it without telling her why.”
“I wasn’t going to do that to her,” Faith said. “I couldn’t take that away from her.”
Amanda nodded for Will to continue.
He said, “Rod’s got an extensive social media presence going back ten years. During the week of the Grant County attacks, he was in Antwerp with Callie Zanger for some kind of tax conference. There are photographs of them on an orange, wooden escalator that’s well-known in the city.”
Amanda said, “My recollection is that he had no alibi for his whereabouts when his wife was abducted?”
“Yes,” Will said. “He always denied it.”
“He didn’t do it.” Faith turned to Amanda, incredulous. “Jesus Christ, can you stop bullshitting around about this? It all lines up. The hair tie. The hammer. The month and time of day. The woods. The fucking blue Gatorade. Everything Callie said lines up, just like everything else lined up this morning when we were all sitting in this same damn room and you were telling us, berating us, warning us, that we couldn’t call this guy a serial killer when every single fucking clue was pointing to a serial killer.”
Amanda ignored the accusation, telling Will, “I want to talk to the detective who worked the Zanger disappearance. Call the super in her building. He might have the hard drives from two years ago lying around his office.
