‘I raided a pet store once. The guy was selling exotic animals out of the back, but the front was filled with rats. Amanda made me catalog all of them.’ He slid the phone back her way. ‘Dale could’ve gone after Angie to protect Delilah. Clean up the mess before he clocked out.’
She shrugged, but the theory made sense.
He said, ‘If there’s a drug angle, that opens this up.’
‘You mean we’ll have to tell Amanda.’
Will nodded.
‘God dammit,’ Faith muttered. ‘Collier wanted to track down those gang tags in the club. I’m going to kill myself if he was right.’
‘Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,’ Will said. ‘It’s a theory, right? We don’t know for sure what Angie was up to.’
‘Except getting paid ten grand a month by Kilpatrick.’
‘Maybe she was hooking him up with drugs.’
‘I’d buy that if they were growth hormones or steroids.’
‘He wouldn’t need Angie for that. He’d have doctors writing legal scripts.’ Will sat back in his chair. ‘Let’s say we find Delilah and she’s never heard of Angie. Then what?’
‘Then she tells us what the hell is going on.’ Faith didn’t give Will time to laugh in her face, because they both knew that was very unlikely. Girls like Delilah didn’t talk to cops. They waited out their time, then they disappeared.
Faith took out her notebook. He couldn’t read her scrawl, but she pointed to the headers. ‘Palmer was married to and possibly related to Harding. Harding lived in a house owned by a company that probably traces back to Kip Kilpatrick. Angie was working for Kip Kilpatrick. Harding hit the jackpot six months ago. Angie started getting her payday four months ago.’ She pointed to the last name. ‘They all tie to Rippy.’
Will took the notebook. He studied the names. Faith saw his eyes move, but she didn’t know how quickly he could take it in. She knew that he was better with words he had seen before, but there were new names on the paper.
Will put the notebook down. He asked, ‘What if we were building a case right now? Palmer is in the wind for whatever reason. Rippy is Teflon. The only two people we know for sure about are Harding and Angie. They were both at the same location, the club. One of them died there. The other died because of something that happened there. Probably died.’
Faith let the ‘probably’ slide by.
He said, ‘These arrows to Rippy look good on paper, but we don’t really have a direct connection, because all of them go through here—’ He tapped his finger on Kilpatrick’s name. ‘He’s the intermediary, the thing standing between Rippy and everybody else. Let’s say by some miracle we have a solid murder charge with evidence and all that other good stuff and the judge gives us an arrest warrant. It won’t be Rippy we charge. It’ll be Kilpatrick. That’s what Rippy pays him for. And if you’re thinking we can build a conspiracy charge, you’re dreaming. Harding’s dead. Angie’s probably dead. Rippy walks away just like he always does.’
She couldn’t accept that he was right, even though every single word made absolute sense. ‘Jane Doe could’ve seen something. She was in the office building across the street. She would’ve had a bird’s-eye view.’ Faith looked at the time on her phone. ‘She should be coming out of her morphine stupor soon. We can talk to her.’
Will didn’t look hopeful.
Faith closed her notebook. She couldn’t look at it anymore. ‘Why do you think she tried to kill herself?’
‘Maybe she was lonely?’ He laid his arm across the back of the empty chair beside him. ‘It’s hard being homeless. You don’t know who to trust. You never really sleep. There’s nobody to talk to.’
Faith realized that Will was the first person who had actually tried to answer the question. ‘How much coke did she have?’
‘I’d guess about two ounces.’
‘Jesus Christ. That’s almost three grand’s worth of coke. Where the hell did she get it?’
‘We can ask her when she wakes up.’ He put his hand to his chest. He winced in pain. ‘I feel like I’m having a heart attack.’
Panic shook her into action. She started to stand, but he stopped her.
‘Not for real. Just this tightness.’ He rubbed his chest with his fingers. ‘Like a shaking, almost. Do you ever get that, where your heart shakes in your chest?’
Faith got it all of the time. ‘That sounds like stress.’
Will kept rubbing his chest. ‘Sara sent me a picture of Betty. She was in her bed at Sara’s place. That’s good, right?’
Faith nodded, but she had no idea. Will had his own way of communicating with people.
He said, ‘I checked online. That lipstick costs sixty bucks.’
Faith nearly choked on a piece of lettuce. The most expensive thing she had ever put on her face was a New York strip after a perp had punched her in the eye.
Will said, ‘All the colors looked the same to me. Can you pull the product number from the evidence log?’
‘Will.’ Faith put down her fork. ‘Sara doesn’t care about the lipstick.’
He shook his head, like she had no idea. ‘She was really, really pissed off.’
‘Will, listen to me. It’s not about the money. It’s about Angie stealing it.’
‘That’s just how Angie is.’ The excuse seemed to make sense to him. ‘When we were growing up, none of us had anything. If you saw something you wanted, you took it. Otherwise you never had anything. Especially anything nice.’
Faith struggled for a way to explain it to him. ‘What if one of Sara’s ex-boyfriends broke into her apartment and stole the shirt that you sleep in?’
‘Wouldn’t it make more sense for him to steal Sara’s shirt?’
Faith groaned. Men had it so easy. When they got mad at each other, they fought it out. Women cut themselves and gave each other eating disorders.
She said, ‘Remember that suicide last year at the women’s detention center?’
‘Alexis Rodriguez. She cut her wrists.’
‘Right. And when we asked the other inmates why she did it, they said that girls had been stealing her stuff. Not just her commissary. She’d put down a pen and the next thing she knows, it’s missing. She’d take off her socks and they’d disappear. They even stole her trash. Why do you think they did that?’
He shrugged. ‘To be mean.’
‘To make her understand that nothing belonged to her. That no matter how important or inconsequential, they could take away anything at any time, and she couldn’t do anything about it.’
He looked dubious.
‘Why else would Angie leave those notes on Sara’s car?’
‘She was mad.’
‘Sure, she was mad, but she was fucking with Sara.’
Will shifted in his seat. He still wasn’t seeing it.
‘Angie was a bully, Will. And she wanted Sara to know that she could take you back anytime she wanted. That’s why she stole the lipstick. That’s why she left the notes. She was marking her territory.’ Faith had to say the next part. ‘And you let her get away with it.’