Page 85 of This is Why We Lied

He said, “Look, sweetheart, I know you’re just following orders, but you need to understand something.”

Faith stopped, turning to face him. “What’s that?”

“You GBI agents, you go from the classroom to the conference room. You don’t know what it’s like to do street-level policing. This kind of murder, it’s a real cop’s bread and butter. I could’a told you twenty years ago one of ’em would’a ended up dead and the other would’a ended up in the back of a squad car.”

Faith pretended like she hadn’t spent ten years of her life on patrol before earning her slot on the Atlanta homicide squad. “Educate me.”

“The McAlpines, they’re a good family, but Mercy was always a handful. In and out of trouble. Drinking and drugging. Sleeping around. Girl was pregnant by the time she was fifteen.”

Faith had been pregnant at fifteen, but she said, “Wow.”

“Wow is right. Pretty much ruined Dave’s life,” Biscuits said. “Poor guy never managed to right himself after Jon was born. In and out of jail. Always getting into scrapes. Dave was battling his own demons even before Mercy got knocked up. Had a rough time of it in foster care. Got sexually assaulted by a teacher. It’s a goddam miracle he ain’t blown his brains out.”

“Sounds like it,” Faith said. “Should we go talk to him about the murder?”

She didn’t wait for his answer. Faith pushed open the door to a short vestibule. Bathroom on the right. Sink and cabinet on the left. The lights were dimmed. She could hear the soft murmur of a television. The air was filled with the stale scent of a habitual smoker. A set of clothes was piled into the sink bowl. She saw an empty paper bag marked EVIDENCE on the counter. The sheriff had gone so far as to take out a pair of gloves, but he hadn’t actually bagged and tagged the suspect’s personal items: a pack of cigarettes, a bulging Velcro wallet, a tube of Chapstick and an Android phone.

Dave McAlpine muted the television when Faith turned up the lights. He didn’t look worried about being under arrest or having two cops in his hospital room. He was reclining in bed with one arm over his head. His left wrist was handcuffed to the bed railing. His hospital gown had slipped off his shoulder. His lower half was covered by a sheet, but he must’ve been sitting on a pillow because his pelvis was rotated up like Magic Mike taking center stage.

If Biscuits looked exactly how she’d imagined from Will’s recording, Dave McAlpine was the exact opposite. Faith had somehow framed him in her head as somewhere between Moriarty from Sherlock Holmes and Wyle E. Coyote. In person, Dave was handsome, but in a bedraggled, high-school-prom-king-gone-to-seed kind of way. He’d probably slept with every other woman in town and had a $20,000 gaming set-up inside his rented trailer. Which was to say, exactly Faith’s type.

“Who’s this?” Dave asked Biscuits.

“Special Agent Faith Mitchell.” Faith flipped open her wallet to show him her credentials. “I’m with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. I’m here to—”

“You’re prettier in person.” He nodded toward Faith’s work photo. “I like your hair longer.”

“He’s right.” Biscuits had craned his neck to look at the picture.

Faith flipped the wallet closed as she resisted the urge to shave her head. “Mr. McAlpine, I know my partner has already read you your rights.”

“Shit, did Trashcan tell you we go way back?”

Faith chewed the tip of her tongue. She’d heard Will called this name before. The nastiness didn’t lessen with repetition.

She said, “Special Agent Trent told me you were both at the children’s home together.”

Dave stuck his tongue into his cheek as he studied her. “Why’s the GBI care about this anyway?”

Faith put the question back on him. “Tell me what this is.”

He gave a husky, smoker’s laugh. “Have you talked to Mercy yet? Cause there’s no way in hell she dimed me out.”

Faith let him lead the conversation. “You admitted to strangling her.”

“Prove it,” he said. “Trashcan’s a shit witness. He’s always had it out for me. Wait till my lawyer gets him on the stand.”

Faith leaned against the wall. “Tell me about Mercy.”

“What about her?”

“She was fifteen when she got pregnant. How old were you?”

Dave’s eyes cut to Biscuits, then back to Faith. “Eighteen. Check my birth certificate.”

“Which one?” Faith asked, because that math wasn’t mathing. Dave had been twenty when he impregnated a fifteen-year-old, which meant that he’d committed statutory rape. “You know that everything is digitized now, right? All the old records are in the cloud.”

Dave nervously scratched his chest. The gown slipped farther down his shoulder. Faith could see deep gouges where he’d been scratched.