Faith was so tired that she was certain she had heard wrong. "Your partner?"
"I understand if you don't want to do it."
"It's not that," she said, still not sure she'd heard correctly. "Your partner?" she repeated. "Amanda's been keeping me off every important event in this case," Faith said, thinking the missed press conference was just the icing on the cake. "Why would she want me on her team?"
Will had the grace to look guilty. "That was actually me keeping you out of the loop," he admitted. "But not on purpose. Honest."
She was too tired to manage anything but an exasperated, "Will."
"I'm sorry," he said, holding out his hands in an open shrug. "But, listen, it's best you know what you'd be getting into."
"This is the last thing I expected," Faith admitted. She was still unable to wrap her head around the offer.
"I told you about the crappy dental." He held up his hand, showed her the scar from the nail gun. "And keep in mind that Amanda doesn't take prisoners."
Faith rubbed her face. She let the enormity of the situation sink in. "I keep hearing those clicks in my ear from Warren dry-firing on you." She paused, not trusting herself to speak. "He could have killed you." She added, "And I would have killed him."
Will tried for levity. "You seemed pretty cool to me." His voice went up in a falsetto as he mimicked, " ‘Drop it, motherfucker!' "
She felt her cheeks redden. "I guess my inner Police Woman came out."
"Pepper Anderson was a sergeant. You're a detective."
"And you are pathetic for knowing that."
He smiled, rubbing his jaw. "Yeah, you're probably right." He waited a few seconds before saying, "I mean it, Faith. I won't take it personally if you say no."
She cut to the heart of the matter. "I don't know if I can do this kind of job every day. At least with the murder squad, we know where to look."
"Boyfriend, husband, lover," Will said, a familiar refrain. "I'm not going to lie. It takes the life out of you."
She thought of Victor Martinez, his many phone calls. Jeremy was finally out of the house. She had met a man who might possibly be interested in her despite the fact that she was painfully ill-prepared for an adult relationship. She'd finally managed to get some grudging respect around the homicide squad, even if their highest compliment so far was, "You're not that stupid for a blonde."
Did Faith want to invite more complications into her life? Shouldn't she just coast through on her detective's shield, then work private security like every other retired cop she knew?
Will glanced up and down the hallway. "Did Paul just disappear?" he asked, and she realized it was a question meant to put them back on more comfortable footing.
Faith was glad for the familiar ground. "I haven't seen him."
"Typical," he remarked.
Faith turned in her chair to look at Will. His nose was still bruised, a sliver of blue tracing beneath his right eye. "Did you really grow up in foster care?"
He didn't register the question. His face stayed blank.
"I'm sorry," she apologized, just as he answered, "Yes."
Will leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. Faith waited for him to say something, but he seemed to be doing the same thing with her.
She blurted out, "Moms I'd like to fuck."
"What?"
"That first day with Jeremy. You asked me what a MILF is. It stands for ‘Moms I'd Like to Fuck.' "
He narrowed his eyes, probably trying to put it into context. He must have remembered, because he said, "Ouch."
"Yeah," Faith agreed.
Will clasped his hands together. He twisted around his watch and checked the time. Instead of making a comment, pulling some small talk out of the air, he simply stared at the floor. She saw that his shoes were scuffed, the hem of his pants caked with dirt from climbing under the fence to the North Avenue house.
"What did Warren say to you?" she asked. "I know that he said something. I saw the way your face changed."
Will kept staring at the floor. She thought he was not going to answer, but he did. "Colors."
Faith did not believe him any more now than she had before. "He told you the colors on the file folders?"
"It's a trick," he answered. "Remember what Bernard said, about how dyslexics are good at hiding their problem from other people?" He looked back at her. "The colors tell you what's inside the folders."
With all that had happened in the last few hours, Faith had almost forgotten her earlier revelation about Will's inability to read. She thought about the psych evaluation Will had shoved in Warren's face, the way he had pressed his finger to each differently colored dot as he called out the findings. Will had never looked at the words. He had let the colors guide him.
"What about the last sheet?" she asked. "Warren was functionally illiterate. He had some ability to read. Why couldn't he see that it was a dress-code memo?"
Will kept his eyes trained at the wall opposite. "When you get upset, it's harder to see the words. They move around. They blur."
So Faith wasn't crazy, after all. Will did have some sort of reading problem. She thought about the way he always patted his pockets, looking for his glasses, when there was something to read. He hadn't noticed the rural route address on Adam Humphrey's license or read the Web page on Bernard's computer that talked about teacher retirement. Still, she had to admit if you stacked him up against Leo Donnelly or any other man in the homicide division, he came out the better cop.
She asked, "What other tricks would Warren use?" "A digital recorder. Voice recognition software. Spell-check." Faith wondered if she could have been any more blind. She was supposed to be a detective and she had missed all of the obvious signs right under her nose. "Is that why Warren fixated on the colors?" she asked. "Did he see the different colors on your file folders and figure out you-"
"Colors," Will interrupted. "He said the colors." A big, sloppy grin spread across his face. "That's what Warren was trying to tell me." "What?"
He stood up, excitement replacing exhaustion. "We need to go to the copy center."
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
WILL WALKED DOWN through the cells, not looking at the crime-scene tape covering the open doorway where Warren Grier had hanged himself. He could feel the cold stares of the prisoners follow him to the end of the hall. There were the usual sounds of jaiclass="underline" men talking trash, other men weeping. Evan Bernard was in one of the larger holding cells. Men who raped young girls were always targeted by other prisoners. The ones who were attached to sensational cases could pretty much kiss their lives good-bye. The transgendered cell was the only safe place for a man like Bernard. The women were usually arrested for crimes of circumstance: stealing food, public vagrancy. Most of them were too feminine to get construction work and too masculine to turn tricks. Like Evan Bernard, they would have been torn apart in the general population.
The teacher had his hands hanging outside the bars, his elbows on the supports. The cell was a large one, at least fifteen feet wide. Beds were stacked three high across the space. As he walked up, Will noticed that the women were all huddled around a single bunk, as if they, too, could not stand the sight of Evan Bernard. Will had a sheet folded up under his arm. The material was thick prison issue, bleached and starched to within an inch of its life. When he propped it up between the bars, it stayed that way.
Bernard made a point of looking at the sheet. "Poor kid. The girls are crazy upset."
Will glanced into the cell. The girls looked ready to rip him apart.