"Do you have a crib for her, too?"

She gave a raspy chuckle. "I assume you've already looked in my bedroom."

He hadn't been that bold, but Will took this as an opening. "How often do you watch her?"

"Usually just a few times a week."

"But lately?"

She winked at him. "You're a smart one."

He was more lucky than smart. It had struck him as odd that Mrs. Levy just happened to have a baby bottle lying around when Emma needed it. He asked, "What's Evelyn been up to?"

"Do I look rude enough to pry into someone's business?"

"How can I answer that without insulting you?"

She laughed, but relented easily enough. "Evelyn never said, but I'm assuming she had a gentleman friend."

"For how long?"

"Three or four months?" She seemed to be asking herself a question. She nodded her answer. "It was just after Emma was born. They started out slowly, maybe once a week or every two, but I'd say in the last ten days it's been more frequent. I stopped keeping a calendar when I retired, but Ev asked me to watch Emma three mornings in a row last week."

"It was always in the morning?"

"Usually from around eleven to about two in the afternoon."

Three hours seemed like a long enough time for an assignation. "Did Faith know about him?"

Mrs. Levy shook her head. "I'm certain Ev didn't want the kids to find out. They loved their father so much. As did she, mind you, but it's been ten years, at least. That's a long time to go without companionship."

Will guessed she was speaking from experience. "You said your husband's been dead for twenty years."

"Yes, but I didn't like Mr. Levy very much and he didn't care for me at all." She used her thumb to stroke Emma's cheek. "Evelyn loved Bill. They had some bumps along the way, but it's different when you love them. They're gone and your life splinters in two. It takes an awful long time to put it back together."

Will let himself think about Sara for just a second. The truth was that he never stopped thinking about her. She was like the news crawl that ran at the bottom of the television while his life, the main story, played on the screen. "Do you know the gentleman's name?"

"Oh, no, dear. I never asked. But he drove a very nice Cadillac CTS-V. That's the sedan, not the coupe. Black on black and the stainless steel grill on the front. A very throaty V8. You could hear it blocks away."

Will was momentarily too surprised to respond. "Are you a car person?"

"Oh, not at all, but I looked it up on the Internet because I wanted to know how much he paid for it."

Will waited her out.

"I'm guessing around seventy-five thousand dollars," the old woman confided. "Mr. Levy and I bought this house for less than half that."

"Did Evelyn ever tell you his name?"

"She never acknowledged it. Despite what you men want to think, we ladies don't sit around talking about y'all all the time."

Will allowed a smile. "What did he look like?"

"Well, bald," she said, as if this was to be expected. "A bit paunchy around the middle. He wore jeans most of the time. His shirts were often wrinkled and he kept the sleeves rolled up, which I found rather perplexing because Evelyn always liked a sharply dressed man."

"What age do you think he is?"

"Without the hair, it's hard to tell. I'd put him around Evelyn's age."

"Early sixties."

"Oh." She seemed surprised. "I thought Evelyn was in her forties, but I suppose that doesn't make sense with Faith being in her thirties. And the baby's not a baby anymore, is he?" She lowered her voice as if she was afraid someone would hear. "I guess it's coming up on twenty years now, but that's not the kind of pregnancy you forget. There was that bit of a scandal when she started to show. Such a pity how folks behaved. We've all had our bit of fun now and then, but as I told Evelyn at the time, a woman can run faster with her skirt up than a man can with his pants down."

Will hadn't considered Faith's teenage predicament beyond thinking it unusual she had kept the child, but it had probably rocked the neighborhood to have a pregnant fourteen-year-old in their refined midst. It was almost commonplace now, but back then, a girl in Faith's predicament was generally suddenly called away to tend a never-before-mentioned frail aunt or given what was euphemistically called an appendectomy. A handful of less fortunate ones ended up in the children's home with kids like Will.

He asked, "So, the man in the expensive car is in his early sixties?" She nodded. "Did you ever see them being affectionate?"

"No, but Evelyn wasn't the showy type. She would get in the car with him and he would drive off."

"No kiss on the cheek?"

"Not that I ever saw. Mind you, I never even met him. Evelyn would drop Emma off here, then go back to her house and wait."

Will let that sink in. "Did he ever go into her house?"

"Not that I could tell. I guess people do things differently now. In my day, a man would knock on your door and escort you to his car. There was none of this pulling up and beeping the horn."

"Is that what he did-beep the horn?"

"No, son, that was just a figure of speech. I suppose Ev must've been looking out the window, because she always came out as soon as he pulled up."

"Do you know where they went?"

"No, but like I said, they were usually gone for a couple'athree hours, so I assumed they were seeing a movie or having lunch."

That was a lot of movies. "Did the man show up today?"

"No, and I didn't see anyone in the street, either. No cars, no nothing. The first I heard there was trouble was when the sirens came. Then I heard the gunshots, of course, one and then about a minute later one more. I know what gunfire sounds like. Mr. Levy was a hunter. Back then, all the policemen were. He used to make me go so I could cook for them." She rolled her eyes. "What a boring gasbag he was. Rest his soul."

"Lucky man to have you."

"Lucky for me he's not around anymore." She stood with difficulty from the rocker, keeping the baby steady in her arms. The bottle was empty. She put it on the table and offered Emma to Will. "Take her for a second, will you?"

He put Emma on his shoulder and patted her back. She gave an unusually rewarding burp.

Mrs. Levy narrowed her eyes. "You've been around babies before."

Will wasn't about to get into his life story. "They're easy to talk to."

She rested her hand on his arm before going to the closet. Will had been right. There was a darkroom set up in the small space. He stood in the doorway, careful not to block her light as she thumbed through a stack of five-by-seven photographs. Her hands had a slight tremor, but she seemed steady on her feet.

She explained, "Mr. Levy never set much store by my hobbies, but he was called onto a crime scene one day and they asked if anyone knew a photographer. Twenty-five dollars they paid-just for taking pictures! The old bastard wasn't going to say no to that. So he called me and told me to bring my camera. When I didn't faint over the mess-this was a shotgun incident-they said I could do it again." She nodded toward the bed. "That Brownie Six-16 helped keep this roof over our heads."

He knew she meant the box camera. It looked worn but well loved.

"I moved into surveillance work later on. Mr. Levy had drunk himself off the job by then, and of course I'm a woman, so it took some time for them to understand I wasn't there for flirting and screwing."

Will felt his face start to redden. "Was this with the Atlanta Police Department?"

"Fifty-eight years!" She seemed as surprised as Will that she'd lasted that long. "I may be a bag of bones now, but there was a time Geary and his ass-kissers would've snapped to instead of brushing me off like a speck of lint on their shiny trousers." She picked through another pile of five-by-sevens. Will saw black-and-white shots of birds and various household pets, all taken from a vantage point that implied they were being spied upon rather than admired. "This little so-and-so's been digging in my flower bed." She showed Will a picture of a gray and white cat with dirt on its nose. The lighting was harsh in the black-and-white print. The only thing missing was a board over his chest with his name and inmate number.

"Here." Finally, she found what she was looking for. "This is him. Evelyn's gentleman friend."

Will looked over her hunched shoulder. The photo was grainy, obviously taken from behind the blinds covering the front window. The lens pressed open thin, plastic slats. A tall, older man leaned against a black Cadillac. His palms rested on the hood, forearms twisted out. The car was parked in the street, its front tires turned against the curb. Will parked his car the same way. Atlanta was a city of hills, resting on the piedmont of the Appalachian Mountains. If you drove a car with a manual transmission, you always banked the wheels against the curb to keep the car from rolling.

"What is it?" Faith stood in the doorway. Will passed her the baby, but she seemed more concerned with the photograph. "Did you see something?"

"I was showing him Snippers." Mrs. Levy had somehow pulled a sleight of hand. The photo of the man was gone and in its place was the flower-garden-digging cat.

Emma shifted in Faith's arms, obviously picking up on her mother's troubled mood. Faith kissed her on the cheek with several quick smacks and made faces until the baby smiled. Will knew Faith was putting on a show. Tears filled her eyes. She hugged the infant tightly to her chest.

Mrs. Levy spoke. "Evelyn's a tough old bird. They won't break her."

Faith swayed back and forth with the baby the way mothers automatically do. "You didn't hear anything?"

"Oh, darlin', you know if I'd'a heard something, I would've been over there with my hogleg." Will recognized the slang for a large-caliber handgun. "Ev's going to come out of this just fine. She always lands on her feet. You can take that to the bank and cash it."

"I just-" Faith's voice caught. "If I'd gotten here sooner, or-" She shook her head. "Why did this happen? You know Mama's not mixed up in anything bad. Why would someone take her?"

"Sometimes there's no rhyme or reason to the stupid things people get up to." The old woman's shoulders twisted in a slight shrug. "All I know is that you're gonna eat yourself alive if you keep going down that road asking what if I did this or what if I did that." She pressed the back of her fingers to Faith's cheek. "Trust in the Lord to look over her. 'Lean not into thine own understanding.' "

Faith nodded, solemn, though Will had never known her to be religious. "Thank you."

Amanda's heels thudded down the carpeted hallway. "I can't stall them anymore," she told Faith. "There's a cruiser outside waiting to take you to the station. Try to shut up and do what your lawyer says."

"The least I can do is watch the baby," Mrs. Levy offered. "You don't need to take her down to that filthy station, and Jeremy wouldn't know which end the diaper goes on."

Faith obviously wanted to take her up on the offer, but she hedged, "I don't know how long I'll be."

"You know I'm a night owl. It's no bother."

"Thank you." Faith reluctantly handed the baby to the old woman. She smoothed down Emma's crop of fine brown hair and kissed the top of her head. Her lips stayed there for a few seconds more, then she left without another word.

As soon as the front door closed, Amanda cut to the chase. "What?"

Mrs. Levy pulled the photograph from under her apron.

"Evelyn had a frequent visitor," Will explained. Mrs. Levy had a good memory: The man was bald. His jeans were baggy. His shirt was wrinkled, the sleeves rolled up. She'd failed to mention a more important detail, which was that he was Hispanic. The tattoo on his arm was blurry, but Will easily recognized the symbol on his forearm that identified him as Los Texicanos.

Amanda folded the picture in half before sticking it into the pocket of her suit jacket. She asked Mrs. Levy, "Have the uniforms talked to you yet?"

"I'm sure they'll get around to the little old ladies eventually."

"I assume you'll be as cooperative as usual."

She smiled. "I'm not sure what I can tell them, but I'll go ahead and lay out some fresh cookies in case they come calling."

Amanda chuckled. "Careful, Roz." She motioned for Will to follow her as she left the room.

Will reached into his wallet and pulled out one of his cards for Mrs. Levy. "This has all my numbers. Call me if you remember anything or if you need help with the baby."

"Thank you, sonny." Her voice had lost some of its old lady kindness, but she tucked the card into her apron anyway.

Amanda was halfway up the hall by the time Will joined her. She didn't say anything about the photograph, or Faith's condition, or the pissing contest she'd had with Geary. Instead, she started giving him orders. "I need you to review all of your case files from the investigation." She didn't have to tell him which investigation she meant. "Comb through every witness statement, every CI report, every jail-house snitch's last hurrah. I don't care how small it is. I want to know about it." Amanda stopped. He knew she was thinking about his reading issues.

He kept his voice steady. "It's not a problem."

She wouldn't let him off that easy. "Pull up your panties, Will. If you need help, speak up now so I can deal with it."

"Do you want me to start now? The boxes are at my house."

"No. We've got an errand to run first." She stood in the foyer, her hands on her hips. She was a trim woman, and Will often forgot how short she was until he saw her straining her neck to look up at him. "I managed to pry some information loose while Geary was throwing his tantrum. The Texicano in the backyard has helpfully identified himself as Ricardo vis-a-vis the large tattoo on his back. We don't have a full ID on him yet. He's mid-twenties, approximately five-nine, and one hundred seventy pounds. The Asian in the bedroom is around forty years of age, slightly shorter and thinner than his Hispanic friend. I would guess he's not from this part of town. He might've been brought in just for this."

Will remembered, "Faith said he had a southern drawl."

"That should help narrow things down."

"He was also wearing a loud Hawaiian shirt. That's not very gangsterish."

"We'll add that to his list of crimes." She glanced down the hallway, then looked back at Will. "Now, the Asian in the laundry room is an odd story, too, which we know courtesy of the wallet he carried in his back pocket. Hironobu Kwon, age nineteen. He's a freshman at Georgia State. He's also the son of a local schoolteacher, Miriam Kwon."

"He's not affiliated?"

"Not that we can find. APD swooped up Mama Kwon before we could get to her. We'll have to find her tomorrow morning to see what she knows." She pointed her finger at Will. "Softly, softly. We're still not officially on the case. It's just you and me until I can find a way in."

He said, "Faith seems to think the Texicanos were looking for something." Will tried to gauge Amanda's expression. Usually it hovered somewhere between amused and annoyed, but now it was completely blank. "Ricardo was beaten to a pulp. He had a gun pointed at his head. He wasn't looking for anything except to save his life. It's the Asians we should be talking to first."

"That seems entirely logical."

"It points to a larger problem," he continued. "The Texicanos I can understand, but what would the Asians want with Evelyn? What's their play?"

"That's the million-dollar question."

He put a finer point on it. "Evelyn headed the drug squad. Los Texicanos control the drug trade in Atlanta. They have for the last twenty years."

"They certainly have."

Will felt the familiar sting of his head hitting a brick wall. This was the same run-around Amanda always gave him when she had information that she wasn't going to share. Somehow, this time was worse, because she wasn't just screwing with his head, she was covering for her old friend.