time.
Faith blinked to clear her eyes. She ignored the low rumble of one of Amanda’s pointed questions. She looked around the room, which was set up for all denominations, with every shade of Jesus as well as a metal colander she assumed was for Pastafarians, a religion that, after several lawsuits, was legally recognized by the state. Graffiti was scratched into the pulpit. Colored stickers lent a stained-glass effect to the one sliver of a window. The damp little room was depressing enough to turn the Pope into an atheist.
“Ma’am.” Nick was clearly trying to hold it together. “Tolliver was as solid as they come. You know that. He was one of the best cops—the best men—in the damn state. I put my life in his hands more than once. I’d gladly do it again if he was still with us. Hell, I’d trade places with him right now.”
Faith checked on Will again. It was hard enough to compete with a ghost. Hearing Jeffrey put up there with the saints must’ve been excruciating.
Amanda asked, “There’s no way to extricate one from the other? Throw Adams under the bus, keep Tolliver out of it?”
Nick shook his head.
So did Faith. Daryl Nesbitt seemed determined to drag Jeffrey’s name through the mud right alongside Lena’s. Which was a particular talent of the heinous bitch. She always managed to taint everyone around her.
“All right.” Amanda gave a curt nod. “Nesbitt is offering two things. One, the names of Vasquez’s killers. Two, information on the influx of cell phones into this facility. In exchange, Nesbitt has put a one-week clock on us opening the cases of the dead women from the articles and investigating Grant County. Yes?”
“Yes,” Nick said.
Faith nodded.
Will kept holding up the wall.
Amanda said, “Let’s start with the Vasquez murder. Two suspects. Maduro and who else?”
“My money is on Michael Padilla,” Nick said. “He’s a bone breaker with a side of psychosis. Got transferred here from Gwinnett DOC after biting off another inmate’s finger.”
Faith recognized the name from the stack of jackets she’d read through. “It’s not a stretch to think a finger-biter would be a hand-chopper.”
Amanda said. “Nick, see if you can get Maduro to turn on Padilla. If we can unwind the Vasquez murder, we can cut Nesbitt off at the knees.”
Faith felt a jolt of shock. Amanda didn’t know about Nesbitt’s prosthesis, and Faith could not think of a natural way to bring it up.
Amanda called to Nick, “None of this gets back to Sara. Understood?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Nick had a grim set to his mouth. On his way out of the chapel, he patted Will on the shoulder. Faith didn’t know if Nick was offering Will support, thanking him for intervening with Nesbitt, or tapping him in. The least she could do was make sure she said Jeffrey Tolliver’s name as little as possible.
Amanda said, “Faith, nutshell it for me.”
“Okay, this is where it gets tricky. Grant County never charged Nesbitt with murder.”
Amanda raised an eyebrow. “No?”
“The investigation is still technically open and considered unsolved. There was a ton of circumstantial evidence that led them to presume that Nesbitt was the killer. The biggest mark against him was that the bad things stopped happening when Nesbitt was locked up.”
“The Wayne Williams Paradigm.”
“Correct. Nesbitt was arrested and convicted for other, unrelated crimes that were uncovered during the murder investigation, but it’s presumed he committed the underlying crimes.” Faith added, “If I had to use a bad cliché, I’d say Nesbitt is playing chess instead of checkers. He thinks if we can clear him of the murder, that opens up the possibility of his next move, which would be knocking down the other charges.”
“The other charges being?”
“Initially, Grant County caught him with a shit-ton of kiddie porn on his laptop computer. We’re talking tweens, eight to eleven years old.” Faith pushed away thoughts of her own children. “Nesbitt was sentenced to five years with possible probation after three, but it never came to that. The idiot is king of the self-inflicted wound. He started making trouble the minute he walked through the gates. Lots of fighting, holding on to contraband, stealing shit from the wrong people. Finally, he ended up punching out a CO who woke up out of a coma two weeks later. Nesbitt got two dimes tacked onto his initial sentence for attempted murder of a corrections officer.”
“He’s looking at Buck Rogers Time,” Amanda said, using old-timey slang for a release date so far into the future that it felt