Mittal was shaking his head, too, but only because Amanda wasn’t making sense. “Dr. Wagner, we have searched every inch of this crime scene, and I am telling you we have not found any more items of substance than what I have already detailed.”

Will knew for a fact they hadn’t checked every inch. He asked, “Has anyone checked the Malibu?”

That took Charlie’s mind off his troubles. His brow furrowed. Will had made the same mistake with Faith’s Mini. All of the violence had taken place inside the house, but the cars were still part of the crime scene.

Amanda was the first to move. She had made her way out to the carport and opened the driver’s side door of the Malibu before anyone thought to ask her what she was doing.

Mittal said, “Please, we’ve not yet processed—”

She gave him a withering look. “Did you think to check the trunk?”

His stunned silence was enough of an answer. Amanda popped the trunk. Will was standing just inside the kitchen doorway, which gave him a raised view of the scene. There were several plastic grocery bags in the trunk, their contents flattened down by the dead body on top of them. As in the kitchen, blood coated everything—soaking into the cereal box, dripping down the plastic wrap around the hamburger buns. The dead man was a big guy. His body was folded almost in two where he’d been bent to fit into the space. A deep gash in his bald head showed splintered bone and bits of brain. His jeans were wrinkled. His shirtsleeves were rolled up. There was a Los Texicanos tattoo on his forearm.

Evelyn’s gentleman friend.

CHAPTER FOUR

THE GEORGIA DIAGNOSTIC AND CLASSIFICATION PRISON WAS located in Jackson, about an hour south of Atlanta. The drive was usually a quick shot down I-75, but the Atlanta Motor Speedway was having some kind of exhibition event that slowed traffic to a crawl. Undeterred, Amanda kept hopping on and off the shoulder, jerking the wheel quickly to pass groups of sluggish cars. The SUV’s tires made a strumming sound as they grazed the rumble strips meant to deter drivers from leaving the roadway. Between the noise and the vibration, Will found himself fighting an unexpected wave of motion sickness.

Finally, they made it through the worst of the traffic. At the speedway exit, Amanda took one last dash onto the shoulder, then popped the SUV back onto the road. The tires skipped. The chassis shook. Will rolled down the window for some fresh air to help settle his stomach. The wind slapped his face so hard that he felt his skin ripple.

Amanda pressed the button to roll the window back up, giving him the look she reserved for stupid people and children. They were going over a hundred miles an hour. Will was lucky he hadn’t been sucked out the window.

She let out a long sigh as she stared back at the road. One hand rested in her lap, while the other was firmly wrapped around the steering wheel. She was wearing her usual power suit: a bright blue skirt and matching jacket with a light-colored blouse underneath. Her high-heel shoes exactly matched the color of her suit. Her fingernails were trim but manicured. Her hair was its usual helmet of salt-and-pepper gray. Most days, Amanda seemed to have more energy than all the men on her team. Now, she looked tired, and Will could see the worry lines around her eyes were more pronounced.

She said, “Tell me about Spivey.”

Will tried to click his brain back over to his old case against Captain Evelyn Mitchell’s team. Boyd Spivey was the former lead detective on the narcotics squad who was currently biding his time on death row. Will had talked to the man only once before Spivey’s lawyers advised him to keep his mouth shut. “I don’t find it hard to believe he beat someone to death with his fists. He was a big guy, taller than me, carried about fifty more pounds, all of it muscle.”

“Gym rat?”

“I’d guess steroids gave him a boost.”

“How did that work for him?”

“They made him uncontrollably angry,” Will recalled. “He’s not as smart as he thinks, but I wasn’t able to get him to confess, so maybe I’m not either.”

“You still sent him to prison.”

“He sent himself to prison. His house in the city was paid for. His house at the lake was paid for. All three of his kids were in private school. His wife worked ten hours a week and drove a top-of-the-line Mercedes. His mistress drove a BMW. He kept his brand new Porsche 911 parked in her driveway.”

“Men and their cars,” she mumbled. “He doesn’t sound very smart to me.”

“He didn’t think anyone would ask questions.”

“Generally, they don’t.”

“Spivey was good at keeping his mouth shut.”

“As I recall, all of them were.”

She was right. In a corruption case, the usual strategy was to find the weakest member and persuade him or her to turn on his or her fellow conspirators in exchange for a lighter sentence. The six detectives belonging to Evelyn Mitchell’s narcotics squad had proven immune to this strategy. None of them would turn on the other, and all of them routinely insisted that Captain Mitchell had nothing to do with their alleged crimes. They went out of their way to protect their boss. It was both admirable and incredibly frustrating.

Will said, “Spivey worked on Evelyn’s squad for twelve years—longer than any of them.”

“She trusted him.”

“Yes,” Will agreed. “Two peas in a pod.”

Amanda cut him a sharp look. “Careful.”

Will felt his jaw tighten so hard that the bone ached. He didn’t see how ignoring the most important part of this case was going to get them anywhere. Amanda knew as well as Will that her friend was guilty as hell. Evelyn hadn’t lived large, but like Spivey, she’d been stupid in her own way.

Faith’s father had been an insurance broker, solidly middle class with the usual kinds of debts that people had: car payments, mortgage, credit cards. Yet, during Will’s investigation, he’d found an out-of-state bank account in Bill Mitchell’s name. At the time, the man had been dead for six years. Though the account balance always hovered around ten thousand dollars, the activity showed monthly deposits since his death that totaled up to almost sixty thousand dollars. It was clearly a shell account, the kind of thing prosecutors called a smoking gun. With Bill dead, Evelyn was the only signatory. Money was taken out and deposited with her ATM card at an Atlanta branch of the bank. Her dead husband wasn’t the one who was keeping the activities spread apart and the deposits shy of the limit that would throw up a red flag at Homeland Security.

As far as Will knew, Evelyn Mitchell had never been asked about the account. He’d figured it would come out during her trial, but her trial had never happened. There had been a press conference announcing her retirement, and that was the end of the story.

Until now.

Amanda flipped down the visor to block the sun. Clipped to the underside were a couple of yellow claim tickets that looked like they were from a dry cleaner. The sun wasn’t doing her any favors. She didn’t look tired anymore. She looked haggard.

She said, “Something’s bothering you.”

He resisted uttering the biggest “duh” ever vocalized in the history of the world.

“Not that,” she said, as if she could read his mind. “Faith didn’t call you for help because she knew that she was going to do the wrong thing.”