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And she had never known Will to even give a passing glance to another woman until now.
"This is it," he said, taking a right down a narrow, tree-lined street. She saw the white crime-scene van parked in front of a very small house. Charlie Reed and two of his assistants were already going through the trash on the side of the road. Whoever had taken out the trash was the neatest person in the world. There were boxes stacked up on the curb, three rows of two, each labeled with the contents. Beside these were a bunch of large black garbage bags lined up like a row of sentries. On the other side of the mailbox were a precisely aligned mattress and box spring, and a couple of pieces of furniture that the local trash trollers hadn't spotted yet. Behind Charlie's van were two empty Atlanta Police cruisers, and Faith assumed the patrolmen Will had requested were already canvassing the neighborhood.
Faith said, "Her husband was a cop. Sounds like he was killed in the line of duty. I hope they fried the bastard."
"Whose husband?"
He knew damn well who she was talking about "Sara Linton's. The dancing doctor."
Will put the car in park and cut the engine. "I asked Charlie to hold off on processing the house." He took two pairs of latex gloves out of his jacket pocket and handed one to Faith. "My guess is that it's packed up for the move, but you never know."
Faith got out of the car. Charlie would have to close off the house as a crime scene as soon as he started collecting evidence. Letting Will and Faith check it out first meant that they wouldn't have to wait for everything to be processed before they started following up on clues.
"Hey there," Charlie called, tossing them an almost cheery wave. "Got here just in time." He indicated the bags. "Goodwill was about to cart it off when we pulled up."
"What've you got?"
He showed them the tags on the bags where the contents had been neatly labeled. "Clothes, mostly. Kitchen items, old blenders, that sort of thing." He flashed a smile. "Beats the hell out of that hole in the ground."
Will asked, "When do you think we'll have the analysis back from the cave?"
"Amanda put a rush on it. There was a lot of shit down there, literally and figuratively. We prioritized the pieces we thought might be more important. You know that DNA from the fluids will take forty-eight hours. Fingerprints are run through the computer as they're developed. If there's something earth-shattering down there, we'll know by tomorrow morning at the latest." He mimed holding a telephone receiver to his ear. "You'll be the first call."
Will indicated the garbage bags. "Find anything useful?"
Charlie handed him a packet of mail. Will snapped off the rubber band and looked at each envelope before handing it to Faith. "Postmark's recent," he noticed. He could easily read numbers, if not words, which was one of the many useful tools he used to conceal his problem. He was also good at recognizing company logos. "Gas bill, electric, cable . . ."
Faith read the name of the addressee, "Gwendolyn Zabel. That's a lovely old name."
"Like Faith," Charlie said, and she was a little surprised to hear him utter something so personal. He hastily covered for it, saying, "And she lived in a lovely old house."
Faith wouldn't call the small bungalow lovely, but it was certainly quaint with its gray shingles and red trim. Nothing had been done to update the place, or even simply keep it up. The gutters sagged from years of leaves and the roofline resembled a camel's back. The grass was neatly trimmed, but there were no flower beds or carefully sculpted shrubs typical to Atlanta homes. All the other houses on the street but one had a second story added on or had simply been torn down to make way for a mansion. Gwendolyn Zabel must have been one of the last holdouts, the only two-bedroom, one-bath in the area. Faith wondered if the neighbors were glad to see the old woman go. Her daughter must have been happy to have the check from the sale. A house like this had probably cost around thirty thousand dollars when it was first built. Now, the land alone would be worth around half a million.
Will asked Charlie, "Did you get the door unlocked?"
"It was unlocked when I got here," he told them. "Me and the guys took a look around. Nothing jumped out, but you've got first dibs." He indicated the trash pile in front of him. "This is just the tip of the iceberg. The place is a freakin' mess."
Will and Faith exchanged a look as they walked toward the house. Inman Park was far from Mayberry. You didn't leave your door unlocked unless you were hoping for an insurance claim.
Faith pushed open the front door, walking back into the 1970s as she crossed the threshold. The green shag carpet on the floor was deep enough to cup her tennis shoes, and the mirrored wallpaper was kind enough to remind her that she'd put on fifteen pounds in the last month.
"Wow," Will said, glancing around the front room. It was packed with untold amounts of crap: stacks of newspapers, paperback books, magazines.
"This can't be safe to live in."
"Imagine how it looked with all the stuff on the street back inside." Faith picked up a rusted hand blender sitting on the top of a stack of Life magazines. "Sometimes old people start collecting things and they can't stop."
"This is crazy," he said, wiping his hand along a stack of old forty-fives. Dust flew into the stale air.
"My grandmother's house was worse than this," Faith told him. "It took us a whole week just to be able to walk through to the kitchen."
"Why would someone do this?"
"I don't know," she admitted. Her grandfather had died when Faith was a child, and her granny Mitchell had lived on her own for most of her life. She had started collecting things in her fifties, and by the time she was moved into a nursing home, the house had been filled to the rafters with useless things. Looking around another lonely old woman's house, seeing a similar accumulation, made Faith wonder if someday Jeremy would be saying the same thing about Faith's housekeeping.
At least he would have a little brother or sister to help him. Faith put her hand to her stomach, wondering for the first time about the child growing inside of her. Was it a girl or a boy? Would it have her blonde hair or its father's dark Latino looks? Jeremy looked nothing like his father, thank God. Faith's first love had been a gangly hillbilly with a build that was reminiscent of Spike from the Peanuts cartoon. As a baby, Jeremy had been almost delicate, like a thin piece of porcelain. He'd had the sweetest little feet. Those first few days, Faith had spent hours staring at his tiny toes, kissing the bottom of his heels. She had thought that he was the most remarkable thing on the face of the earth. He had been her little doll.
"Faith?"
She dropped her hand, wondering what had come over her. She'd taken enough insulin this morning. Maybe she was just feeling the typical hormonal swings of pregnancy that had made being fourteen such a pleasure for Faith as well as everyone around her. How on the earth was she going to go through this again? And how was she going to do it alone?
"Faith?"
"You don't have to keep saying my name, Will." She indicated the back of the house. "Go check the kitchen. I'll take the bedrooms."
He gave her a careful look before heading into the kitchen.
