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He said, "I'm so sorry about your loss."
"Trent," she noted. "You're the one who found her."
Will tried to keep eye contact, to not convey the gut-level guilt he still felt for not reaching the woman's sister in time. All he could think to do was repeat himself. "I'm so sorry about your loss."
"Yeah," she snapped. "I got that."
Will sat down beside Faith, and Amanda clapped her hands together like a kindergarten teacher getting the class's attention. She rested her hand on top of a manila folder, which Will guessed contained the abridged autopsy summary. Pete had been instructed to leave off the information about the trash bags. Considering the Rockdale County force's cozy relationship with the press, they were running thin on guilty knowledge to pin down any future suspect.
Amanda began, "Ms. Zabel, I take it you've had time to go over the report?"
The lawyer spoke. "I'll need a copy of that for my files, Mandy."
Amanda smiled an even sharkier smile than the lawyer had. "Of course, Chuck."
"Great, so y'all know each other." Joelyn crossed her arms, her shoulders bunching around her neck. "You want to explain to me what the hell you're doing to find my sister's killer?"
Amanda's smile did not falter. "We're doing everything we can to—"
"You find a suspect yet? I mean, shit, this guy's a fucking animal."
Amanda didn't answer, which Faith took as her cue to begin. "We agree with you. Whoever did this is an animal. That's why we need to talk to you about your sister. We need to know about her life. Who her friends were. What her habits were."
Joelyn's eyes flashed down a minute, guilty. "I didn't have much contact with her. We were both pretty busy. She lived in Florida."
Faith tried to soften things up. "She lived on the Bay, right? Must've been nice down there. Good reason to sneak in a vacation with a family visit."
"Well, yeah, it would've been, but the bitch never invited me."
Her lawyer reached out, touching her arm as a gentle reminder. Will had watched Joelyn Zabel on every major channel, sobbing anew over the tragic death of her sister for each new reporter. He'd not seen one tear drop from her eyes, though she made all the motions of someone who was crying—sniffling, wiping her eyes, rocking back and forth. She wasn't even doing that now. Apparently, she needed a camera rolling to feel her pain. Even more apparent, the lawyer wasn't going to let her play anything other than the grieving family member.
Joelyn sniffed, still with no tears. "I loved my sister very much. My mother just moved into a nursing home. She's got maybe six months left, and this happens to her daughter. The loss of a child is devastating."
Faith tried to ease into more questions. "Do you have children?"
"Four." She seemed proud.
"Jacquelyn didn't have—"
"Fuck no. Three abortions before she was thirty. She was terrified of getting fat. Can you believe that? Her sole reason for flushing them down the toilet is her fucking weight. And then she gets in the shadow of forty, and suddenly she wants to be a mother."
Faith hid her surprise well. "Was she trying to conceive?"
"Did you not hear me about the abortions? You can look that up. I'm not lying about that."
Will always assumed that when people insisted they weren't lying about a particular thing, that meant they were lying about something else. Finding out the what else would be the key to Joelyn Zabel. She didn't strike him as a particularly caring person, and she would want to make sure her ten minutes of fame stretched out as long as possible.
Faith asked, "Was Jackie looking for a surrogate?"
Joelyn seemed to realize how important her words were. She suddenly had everyone's rapt attention. She took her time answering. "Adoption."
"Private? Public?"
"Who the fuck knows? She had a lot of money. She was used to buying what she wanted." She was gripping the arms of her chair, and Will could see this was a subject she liked talking about. "That's the real tragedy here—not being able to see her adopt some reject retard who ends up stealing from her or going schizophrenic on her ass."
Will could feel Faith stiffen beside him. He took over the questioning. "When was the last time you talked to your sister?"
"About a month ago. She was waxing on about motherhood, like she understands the first thing about it. Talking about adopting some kid from China or Russia or something. You know, some of those kids turn out to be killers. They're abused, just sick in the head. They're never right."
"We see that a lot." Will shook his head sadly, like this was a common tragedy. "Was she making any progress? Do you know what agency she was working with?"
She turned reticent when pressed for details. "Jackie wasn't into sharing. She was always phobic about her privacy." She jerked her head toward the state lawyers, who were doing their best to blend in with the upholstery. "I know those tools sitting on the couch aren't going to let you apologize, but you could at least acknowledge that you fucked up."
Amanda jumped back in. "Ms. Zabel, the autopsy shows—"
Joelyn gave a belligerent half-shrug. "All it shows is what I already know: You dumbasses were standing around doing nothing while my sister died."
"Perhaps you didn't read the report carefully enough, Ms. Zabel." Amanda's voice was gentle sounding, the soothing sort of tone she'd used earlier in the hall before humiliating Will. "Your sister took her own life."
"Only because y'all weren't doing a damn thing to help her."
"You realize that she was blind and deaf ?" Amanda asked.
Will could tell from the way that Zabel's eyes shifted to the lawyer that she had not, in fact, realized this.
Amanda removed another folder from the top drawer of her desk. She thumbed through it, and he could see color photos of Jacquelyn Zabel in the tree, in the morgue. Will found this particularly cruel, even for Amanda. No matter how horrible Joelyn Zabel was, she had still lost her sister in the worst way. He saw Faith shift in her seat and knew she was thinking the same thing.
Amanda took her time searching for the right page, which seemed to be buried among the worst of the photographs. Finally, she found the passage relating to the external examination of the body. "Second paragraph," she said.
Joelyn hesitated before sitting on the edge of her seat. She was trying to get a better look at the photos the way some people slow down to look at a particularly terrible car accident. Finally, she sat back with the report. Will watched her eyes move back and forth as she read, but then they suddenly stopped tracking, and he knew that she wasn't seeing anything at all.
Her throat worked as she swallowed. She stood up, mumbling "Excuse me" as she bolted from the room.
The air seemed to leave with her. Faith stared straight ahead. Amanda took her time stacking the photos into a neat pile.
The lawyer said, "Not nice, Mandy."
"Them's the breaks, Chuck."
Will stood. "I'm going to stretch my legs."
He left the room before anyone could respond. Caroline, Amanda's secretary, was at her desk. Will lifted his chin, and she whispered, "In the bathroom."
