apartments next door. 'I hope I did the right thing with Gabe.'
Will gave her one of Amanda's more solid pieces of advice. 'You can only make decisions with the information you have at the time.'
She was still looking out the window. 'I've never been up to this floor before.'
'We try to keep out the hoi polloi.'
She smiled weakly. 'How did it go with the Humphreys?'
'As bad as you would expect.'
Faith chewed her lip, still staring out the window. 'When I first saw Adam yesterday, all I could do was think about my son. Maybe that's why I missed so many things. We lost hours when we could have been looking for her.'
It was the most personal thing she had ever shared. Will had said so many wrong things to her lately that he knew better than to try to comfort her.
'I feel like we should be doing something,' she said, her frustration obvious.
He told her the same things he had been telling himself. 'It's a waiting game now. We're waiting on Charlie to process the evidence. We're waiting on the fingerprint guy. We're waiting on-'
'Everything,' she said. 'I'm half tempted to follow up nutjobs from the tip line.'
'That wouldn't be the most productive use of your time.'
Faith sighed in response. She looked bone-tired. Will imagined that getting some sleep was probably the only productive thing they could do tonight. Being fresh tomorrow morning when some of the evidence came in was key.
Will told her as much. 'We'll have more to go on tomorrow morning.' He checked the time. It was almost nine o'clock. 'They're going to turn off the air-conditioning to the top floors in ten minutes. You should go home and try to get some sleep.'
'Empty house,' she told him. 'Jeremy is enjoying his independence a little too much. I thought at least he'd miss me a little.'
'I guess children can be stubborn sometimes.'
'I bet you were a real handful for your mother.'
Will shrugged. He supposed that was true enough. You didn't stick a baby in a trashcan because he was easy. 'Maybe I could…' Will hesitated, but decided he might as well. 'Would you like to go get a drink or something?'
She startled. 'Oh, my God.'
He realized two seconds too late that he'd put his foot in his mouth again. 'I have a girlfriend. I mean, a fiancee. We're engaged.' The details rushed out. 'Angie Polaski. She used to work vice. I've known her since I was eight.'
She seemed even more startled. 'Eight?'
Will realized he should close his mouth and think about what he was saying before he let it out. 'It sounds more romantic than it actually is.' He paused. 'I just… you said you didn't want to go to an empty house. I was just trying to…I don't know.' He laughed nervously. 'I guess my feral monkey is acting up again.'
She was nice about it. 'We've both had a long day.'
'I don't even drink.' Will stood as Faith did. He put his hand in his pocket and felt something unfamiliar mixed in with the change. He pulled out the vial with the gray powder in it, surprised the plastic hadn't broken during his scuffle with Paul.
'Will?'
He realized that his initial impression of the vial was probably hers, that he was holding an ounce of cocaine. 'It's dirt,' he told her. 'Or some kind of powder. I found it at the Campano house.'
'You found it?' she asked, taking the vial from him. 'Since when do you work collection?'
'Since, uh…' Will held out his hand for the sample. 'You really shouldn't be touching that.'
'Why not?'
'It's not evidence.'
'It's sealed.' She showed him the unbroken strip of tape with Charlie's initials on it.
Will didn't have an answer for her.
Faith was instantly suspicious. 'What's going on here?'
'I stole it from the Campano crime scene. Charlie turned his back and I swiped it before he could catalogue it into the system.'
She narrowed her eyes. 'Is that recorder on?'
He took the player off his desk, opened the back and shook out the batteries. 'The powder was found in the foyer. It's ripe for a cross-contamination argument. We were all in and out of the area. It could have been brought in by one of us. Hell, for all I know, it was, but-'
'But?'
'But maybe not. It doesn't match any of the soil around the house. It wasn't on Adam's shoes or the girls' shoes. It could have been brought in by the killer.'
'That sounds like information you got from the person who collected the evidence.'
'Charlie has no idea that I'm doing this.'
She obviously did not believe him, but Faith did not press the point. 'Hypothetically, what would I do with it?'
'Maybe reach out to someone at Tech?'
She vehemently shook her head. 'I'm not getting my son involved in-'
'No, of course not,' he interrupted. 'I thought maybe you could talk to Victor Martinez?'
'Victor?' she echoed. 'I barely know the man.'
'You knew him well enough to call him about Gabe Cohen.'
'That's different,' she insisted. 'He's head of student services. Taking care of Gabe Cohen is his job.'
Will tried, 'He wouldn't think the request was odd coming from you. If I called him out of the blue, there would be all kinds of formalities, red tape. We need to keep this quiet, Faith. If that powder leads us to an area we can search, and we find the man who did this…'
'Then the chain of evidence would be compromised and the arrest might get thrown out.' She gave a heavy sigh. 'I need to think about this, Will.'
He had to make sure she understood the implications. 'I'm asking you to break the law. You realize that?'
'It runs in the family, right?'
He could see her words were angrier than she'd intended, but he also knew that she had been struggling over the last day and a half to make the best of their marriage of convenience.
Will told her, 'I don't want you to do something you can't live with, Faith. Just make sure you get the sample back to me if you decide against it.'
She wrapped her hand around the vial and held it to her chest. 'I'm going to go now.'
'Are you-'
She kept the vial in her hand. 'What are we doing tomorrow?'
'I've got a meeting first thing with Amanda. I'll meet you back here around eight o'clock. Gordon Chew, the fingerprint expert, is driving down from Chattanooga to see if he can find any latents on our notes.' He glanced around the office, his parklike view. 'If I'm not here by eight-fifteen, check the men's toilets at the airport.'
CHAPTER ELEVEN
FAITH SAT AT her kitchen table. Except for the nightlight on the stove, the room was bathed in darkness. She'd gotten out a bottle of wine, a glass, the orkscrew, but they all sat unused on the table in front of her. All those years, she had wanted nothing more than to have Jeremy old enough to move out of the house so she could have some semblance of a life. Now that he was gone, she felt like she had a gaping hole in her chest where her heart used to be.
