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"Four-oh-four—"
"Hold on," Will said, thinking it would be useful to have Judith's number. He drove with his fingertips as he took out the digital recorder he kept in his pocket and turned it on. "Go ahead."
Caroline gave him Judith Coldfield's cell number. Will clicked off the recorder and put the phone back to his ear to thank her. He used to have a system for keeping up with witnesses' and suspects' personal information, but Faith had gradually taken over everything to do with paperwork, so that Will was lost without her. With the next case, he would have to correct that. He didn't like the idea of being so dependent on her—especially since she was pregnant. She'd probably be out at least a week when the baby came.
He tried Judith's cell, which only got him as far as her voicemail. He left a message for her, then called Faith again and told her that he was on his way to the Coldfields'. Hopefully, she would call him back and give him their address on Clairmont Road. He didn't want to call Caroline again because she would wonder why an agent didn't have all this written down somewhere. Besides, his cell phone had started making a clicking noise in his ear. He would have to do something to fix it soon. Will gently placed it on the passenger's seat. There was only one string and a quickly degrading piece of duct tape holding it together now.
Will kept the radio low as he headed into the city. Instead of going through the downtown connector, he jumped on I-85. Traffic on the Clairmont exit was backed up more than usual, so he took the long way, skirting around Peachtree-Dekalb Airport, driving through neighborhoods that were so culturally diverse, even Faith wouldn't be able to read some of the signs out in front of the businesses.
After fighting more traffic, he finally found himself in the right area. He turned into the first gated community across from the VA hospital, knowing the best way to go about this would be the methodical one. The guard at the gate was polite, but the Coldfields weren't on his residents list. The next place yielded the same negative result, but when Will got to the third compound, the nicest one of them all, he hit pay dirt.
"Henry and Judith." The man at the gate smiled, as if they were old friends. "I think Hank's out on the links, but Judith should be home."
Will waited while the guard made a phone call to get him buzzed in. He looked around the well-kept grounds, feeling a pang of envy. Will didn't have children and he had no family to speak of. His retirement was something that worried him, and he had been saving a nest egg since his first paycheck. He wasn't a risk taker, so he hadn't lost much in the stock market. T-bills and municipal bonds were where most of his hard-earned cash went. He was terrified of ending up some lonely old guy in a sad, state-run nursing home. The Coldfields were living the sort of retirement Will was hoping for—a friendly security guard at the gate, nicely kept gardens, a senior center where you could play cards or shuffleboard.
Of course, knowing how things worked, Angie would get some terrible, wasting disease that lasted just long enough to suck away all his retirement money before she died.
"You're in, young man!" The guard was smiling, his straight white teeth showing beneath a bushy gray mustache. "Go left right out of the gate, then take another left, then right, and you'll be on Taylor Drive. They're 1693."
"Thanks," Will said, understanding only the street name and the numbers. The man had made a hand gesture indicating which way Will should go first, so he went through the gate and turned the car in that direction. After that, it was anyone's guess.
"Crap," Will mumbled, obeying the ten-mile-per-hour speed limit as he circled the large lake in the middle of the property. The houses were one-story cottages that all looked the same: weathered shingles, single-car garages and various assortments of concrete ducks and bunnies spotting the trimmed lawns.
There were old people out walking, and when they waved at him, he waved back, he supposed to convey the impression that he knew where he was going. Which was not the case. He stopped the car in front of an elderly woman who was dressed in a lilac wind suit. She had ski poles in her hands as if she were Nordic skiing.
"Good morning," Will said. "I'm looking for sixteen-ninety-three Taylor Drive."
"Oh, Henry and Judith!" the skier exclaimed. "Are you their son?"
He shook his head. "Noma'am." He didn't want to alarm anyone, so he said, "I'm just a friend of theirs."
"This is a very nice car, isn't it?"
"Thank you, ma'am."
"I bet I couldn't get myself into there," she said. "Maybe even if I got in, I couldn't get out!"
He laughed with her to be polite, scratching this particular community off the list of places to which he'd want to retire.
She said, "Do you work with Judith at the homeless shelter?"
Will hadn't been questioned so much since he had trained for interrogations at the GBI academy. "Yes, ma'am," he lied.
"Got this at their little thrift store," she said, indicating the wind suit. "Looks brand new, doesn't it?"
"It's lovely," Will assured her, though the color was nothing like what you would find in nature.
"Tell Judith I've got some more knickknacks I can give her if she wants to send the truck by." She gave a knowing look. "At my age, I find I don't need so many things."
"Yes, ma'am."
"Well," the woman nodded, pleased. "Just go up here to the right." He watched the way her hand curved. "Then Taylor Drive is on the left."
"Thank you." He put the car in gear, but she stopped him.
"You know, it would've been easier next time if, right when you left the gate, you took a left, then an immediate left, then—"
"Thank you," Will repeated, rolling the car along. His brain was going to explode if he talked to another person in this place. He kept the Porsche inching along, hoping he was going in the right direction. His phone rang, and he nearly wept with relief when he saw it was Faith.
Carefully, he opened the broken phone and held it to his ear. "How was your doctor's appointment?"
"Fine," she said. "Listen, I just talked to Tom Coldfield—"
"About meeting him? So did I."
"Jake Berman's going to have to wait."
Will felt his chest tighten. "I already talked to Jake Berman."
She was quiet—too quiet.
"Faith, I'm sorry. I just thought it would be better if I . . ." Will didn't know how to finish the sentence. His grip on his cell phone slipped, bringing a crackling static onto the line. He waited for it to die down, then repeated, "I'm sorry."
She took a painfully long time letting the ax fall. When she finally spoke, her tone was clipped, like her words were getting strangled in her throat. "I don't treat you differently because of your disability."
She was wrong, actually, but he knew this was not the time to point that out. "Berman told me that Tom Coldfield was at the crime scene." She wasn't yelling at him, so he continued, "I guess Judith called him because Henry was having a heart attack. Tom followed them to the hospital in his car. The cops didn't show up until everyone was already gone."
