[Georgia 03] Fallen

assumed this was because Sara hadn’t offered it. Obviously, someone else had filled him in. “I knew your husband. He was a good cop. A good man.”
    Sara kept her hands behind her back, twisting the plastic monitor. Will recognized the look she gave the men—she didn’t want to talk. For Geary, she managed a dry “Thank you.”
    “Please let me know if I can ever be of assistance.”
    She nodded. Geary put on his hat, and the gesture was mimicked like a wave at a football game.
    Faith spoke as soon as the door was closed. “The Texicano in the yard said something to me before he died.” Her mouth moved as she tried to remember what she’d heard. “ ‘Alma’ or ‘al-may.’ ”
    “Almeja?” Amanda asked, giving the word an exotic sound.
    Faith nodded. “That’s right. Do you know what it means?”
    Sara opened her mouth to speak, but before she could get a word out, Amanda provided, “It’s Spanish slang for ‘money.’ It means ‘clams.’ Do you think they were looking for cash?”
    Faith shook her head and shrugged at the same time. “I don’t know. They never really said. I mean, it makes sense. Los Texicanos means drugs. Drugs mean money. Mom worked in narcotics. Maybe they think she …” Faith glanced at Will. He could practically read her mind. After his investigation, a lot of people thought that Evelyn Mitchell was just the kind of cop who had stacks of cash lying around her house.
    Sara took advantage of their silence. “I should go.” She handed Faith the blood sugar monitor. “You need to follow your schedule religiously. Stress is going to make it harder. Call your doctor and talk about your dosage, whatever adjustments you need to make, what signs you need to look for. Are you still seeing Dr. Wallace?” Faith nodded. “I’ll call her service on my way home and tell her what happened, but you need to be on the phone with her as soon as possible. This is a stressful time, but you have to stay on your routine. Understood?”
    “Thank you.” Faith had never been easy with gratitude, but her words were more heartfelt than anything Will had ever heard come from her mouth.
    Will asked Sara, “Are you going to do a tox screen for Geary?”
    She directed her words to Amanda. “Faith works for you, not APD. They need a warrant to draw her blood and I’m guessing you don’t want to go to the trouble.”
    Amanda asked, “Hypothetically, what would a tox screen find?”
    “That she wasn’t intoxicated or impaired by any of the substances they test for. Do you want me to do a blood draw?”
    “No, Dr. Linton. But I appreciate your help.”
    She left without another word, or even a glance Will’s way.
    Amanda suggested, “Why don’t you go check on the merry widow?”
    Will thought she meant Sara, then logic intervened. He walked to the back of the house to find Mrs. Levy, but not before seeing Amanda pull Faith into a tight hug. The gesture was shocking coming from a woman whose maternal instincts were more closely related to those of a dingo.
    Will knew that Faith and Amanda shared a past that neither woman ever talked about or even acknowledged. While Evelyn Mitchell was blazing a trail for women in the Atlanta Police Department, Amanda Wagner was doing the same in the GBI. They were contemporaries, about the same age, with the same ball-breaking attitudes. They had also been lifelong friends—Amanda had even dated Evelyn’s brother-in-law, Faith’s uncle—a detail Amanda had failed to mention to Will when she assigned him to investigate the narcotics squad that was headed by her old friend.
    He found Mrs. Levy in the back bedroom, which seemed to have been turned into a catchall for whatever struck the old woman’s fancy. There was a scrapbooking station, something Will only recognized because he had worked a shooting in the suburbs where a young mother had been murdered while she was pasting crinkle-cut photographs of a beach vacation onto colored construction paper. There was a pair of roller skates with four wheels. A tennis racket leaned against the corner. Various types of cameras were laid out on the daybed. Some were digital, but most were the old-fashioned kind that used film. He guessed from the red light over the closet door that she developed her own photographs.
    Mrs. Levy was sitting in a wooden rocking chair by the window. She had Emma in her lap. Her apron was wrapped around the baby like a blanket. The little geese were reversed across the hem.