They’d barely left Taylor Drive when the sky opened up. Visibility was short. Lena kept the speedometer just below thirty as she navigated the flooded streets. The cold was making her injured hand ache. She flexed her fingers, trying to get some blood circulating. There was definitely an infection. She felt hot and cold at the same time. A slow ache was building in the back of her head.
Still, she felt better than she’d felt in a long time. Not just because she’d taken responsibility for Tommy, but because she had found a way to get herself free one last time. And it would be the last time. Lena was going to do things the right way from now on. She wasn’t going to take shortcuts. She wasn’t going to take risks.
Frank couldn’t fault her for falling on her own sword, and if he did, then he could go screw himself. Will Trent had figured out everything that happened in the garage, but he couldn’t prove it without Lena and Lena wasn’t going to talk. That was her leverage over Frank. That was her ticket to freedom. If Frank wanted to drink himself to death, if he wanted to risk his life out on the street, then that was on him. She washed her hands of it.
The death of Tommy Braham was the only thing that still weighed on her. She needed to talk to a lawyer about how to handle things with the county, but she wasn’t going to fight them. She deserved to be punished. Tommy was her prisoner. Lena had just as good as handed him the means to take his life. Working the system, finding a loophole, was out of the question. Maybe Gordon Braham would sue her or maybe not. All Lena knew was that she was finished with this town. As much as she loved being a cop, as much as she craved the adrenaline rush, the feeling that she was doing a job that hardly anybody else in the world wanted to do—or could do—she had to move on.
Will shifted in the seat beside her. He’d been standing in the rain half the day. His sweater was wet. His jeans had never really dried. You could say a lot of things about the man, but you couldn’t claim he wasn’t determined.
She asked, “When are we going to do this? My confession, I mean.”
“Why the rush?”
She shrugged. He wouldn’t understand. Lena was thirty-five years old and she was looking at having to start her life back over again from scratch in the worst job market since the Great Depression. She just wanted to get it over with. The not knowing was the hard part. She was getting out, but how much blood was she going to have to leave on the table?
He told her, “You can still work a deal.”
“You have to have something valuable to get a deal.”
“I think you do.”
She didn’t acknowledge the fact. They both knew taking down Frank would make her landing a lot softer. But Frank had leverage Will didn’t know about. For this to work, Lena had to keep her mouth closed. It was too late to back out now.
He said, “Tell me about the drug situation in town.”
The question surprised her. “There’s not much to say. Campus security handles most of the small infractions at the school—pot, a little coke, a tiny bit of meth.”
“What about in town?”
“Heartsdale is pretty upscale. Rich people are much better at hiding their addictions.” She slowed down as she came to the red light on Main Street. “Avondale is all right, about what you’d expect—mostly middle-class people, working moms smoking meth after they put the kids to bed. Madison is the sore spot. Very poor. High unemployment, one hundred percent federal lunch assistance for all the kids. We’ve got a couple of small gangs running meth. They tend to kill each other, not civilians. There’s not much money in the police budget for setting up sting operations. We catch them when we can, but they’re like cockroaches. You take out one and there are ten more waiting to take their place.”
“Do you think Tommy might have been dealing drugs?”
Her laugh was genuine. “Are you kidding me?”
“No.”
“Absolutely not.” She shook her head, vehement. “If he was, Mrs. Barnes would’ve beat Nurse Darla to the phone. There were too many people in his life who were watching him too closely.”
“What about Allison? Could she have been using?”
Lena considered the question more seriously. “We haven’t uncovered anything that says drugs with her. She was barely getting by, living in a dump of a house. Her grades were good. She hadn’t missed a day of school. If she was selling drugs, she was doing a bad job, and if she was using drugs, she was holding on pretty well.”
“All good points.” He changed the subject. “It’s really convenient that Jason Howell died before we could question him.”
She stared up at the light, wondering if she should just run it. “I guess the killer was afraid he would talk.”
“Maybe.”
“Did Sara find anything?”
“Nothing remarkable.”
Lena glanced at Will. He was good at leaving things out.
He shrugged. “We’ll see what she finds in the autopsies.”
The light finally turned. Lena wrenched the wheel to the side. The back tires slipped as she pressed on the gas. “Listen, I know you’re sleeping with her.”
Will gave a surprised laugh. “All right.”
“It’s not a bad thing,” she allowed, even though it hurt her to admit it. “I knew Jeffrey. I worked with him most of my career. He wasn’t the kind of guy who went around sharing his feelings, but with Sara, everyone knew the score. He’d want her to find somebody. She’s not the type of person who’s good at being alone.”
He didn’t speak for a few seconds. “I guess that’s a nice thing for you to say.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not holding my breath for her to say anything nice about me.” Lena turned the windshield wipers on high as rain slammed into the car. “I’m sure she’s told you a lot of stories.”
“What would she tell me?”
“Nothing good.”
“Is she right?”
It was Lena’s turn to laugh. “You’re always asking questions that you already know the answer to.” Her cell phone started ringing, filling the car with the opening lines of Heart’s “Barracuda.” She checked the caller ID. Frank. Lena sent the call to voice mail.
Will asked, “Why does the school have your direct number to call when there’s a problem?”
“I know a lot of the guys on the security staff.”
“From when you worked there before?”
She was about to ask him how he’d found out about that, but Lena didn’t think she’d get much of an answer. “No, I know them from working as the liaison. The guys who were there when I was are all gone.”
“Frank sure does let a lot of the job fall to you.”
“I can handle it,” she said, but then realized that didn’t matter anymore. From now on, the only early morning phone calls that came to her house were going to be wrong numbers.
“What’s the security setup on campus? The same as when you were there?”
“It changed a lot after Virginia Tech.”
Will was familiar with the college massacre, the deadliest in American history.
She explained, “You know how institutions are—they’re reactive, not preventative. The bulk of the murders at Virginia Tech took place in the engineering building, so all the other schools tightened down security around their classrooms and labs.”
“The first victims were killed in their dorm.”
“It’s hard to police that. Students have to have key cards to get in and out, but it’s not a foolproof system. Look at what they did at Jason’s dorm. How stupid is that to cut a fire alarm?” Her phone started ringing again. Frank. Lena sent it to voice mail.
“Someone’s trying to get in touch with you.”
“You’re right.” Lena realized she was starting to talk like Will Trent. Maybe that wasn’t a bad thing considering he was running circles around her. She slowed the car to fifteen miles per hour as the rain rocked the car. Water flooded across the road, making the asphalt look rippled. The windshield wipers couldn’t keep up. She slowed the car to a stop, saying, “I can’t see in front of me. Do you want to drive?”
“I can’t do any better than you. Let’s wait it out and talk about our murderer.”
Lena put the car in park. She stared at the whiteness ahead. “Do you think we’re looking at a serial killer?”
“You have to have at least three victims on three different occasions for it to qualify as a serial.”
Lena turned in her seat to face him. “So, we’ve got to wait for a third body?”
“I hope it doesn’t come to that.”
“What about your profile?”
“What about it?”
She tried to remember his earlier questions. “What took place? Two kids murdered, both with knives, both while they were alone. Why did it happen? The killer planned it out. He brought the knife. He knew the victims, probably knew Jason better than Allison because he was obviously furious when he killed him.”
Will continued, “He has a car. He knows the town, the topography of the lake and the placement of the cameras in the dorm. So, he’s someone who went to the school or goes to the school now.”
She shook her head, laughing at herself. “This is the problem with profiles. You could be talking about me.”
“It’s possible a woman committed these crimes.”
Lena gave him a tight smile. “I was with my boyfriend Jared last night and with you all day.”
“Thanks for the alibi,” Will told her. “But I’m being serious. Allison was small. A woman could have overpowered her. A woman could have floated her out into the lake, then chained her down with the cinder blocks.”
“You’re right,” she admitted. “Women like knives. It’s more personal.” Lena had carried a knife herself a few years ago.
Will asked, “Who are the women we’ve come up against on this case?”
She listed them out. “Julie Smith, whoever she is. Vanessa Livingston, the woman whose basement was flooded. Alexandra Coulter, one of Allison’s professors. Allison’s aunt Sheila, who hasn’t returned my calls yet. Mrs. Barnes from across the street. Darla the nurse with the long red nails.”
“Mrs. Barnes gives Darla a pretty tight alibi. She says she was up with her all night both nights.”
“Yeah, well, my uncle Hank says he never sleeps, but every time I stay over I hear him snoring like a freakin’ chainsaw.” Lena took out her notebook. Heat rushed through her body, but not from the infection in her hand. She kept her notebook angled away from Will as she thumbed past the 911 transcript, then quickly went to the page where she’d recorded Darla’s details. “The cell number of the 911 caller is a 912 area code. Darla’s is a 706.”
“Did her accent sound unusual to you?”
“Kind of trashy, but she’s obviously pulled herself up.”
“She didn’t sound Appalachian to you, did she?”
Lena stared at him openly. “She sounded like everyone I grew up with in south Georgia. Where are you getting Appalachia?”
“Do you know any women in town who moved down from the mountains in the last few years?”
She guessed this was another bit of information he was going to keep to himself. Two could play at that game. “Now that you mention it, we had some hillbillies a while back but they loaded up their truck and moved to Los Angeles.”
“Beverly Hills?” He chuckled appreciatively before throwing out one of his sudden subject changes. “You should have your hand looked at.”
Lena looked down at her injured palm. Her skin was sweating so badly that the Band-Aids were peeling off. “I’ll be all right.”
He told her, “I talked to Dr. Linton about gunshot wounds today.”
“You two kids know how to have fun.”
“She says the probability of an untreated gunshot wound getting infected is very high.”
No shit, she wanted to say. Instead, she told him, “Let’s go back to the profile.”
He hesitated long enough to let her know he wasn’t happy about letting someone else change the subject. “What’s the sequence of events?”
Lena tried to wrap her brain around the question. “We already went through what happened to Allison. With Jason, I guess the killer came into the dorm, moved the cameras, stabbed him, then left.”
“He covered Jason’s body with a blanket. He knew there would be a lot of blood.”
That was new. “Where was the blanket?”
“I found it in the bathroom at the end of the hallway.”
“You should check the drains, the—” She stopped herself. Will would know to do all of these things. He didn’t need her help. “There were four questions for the profile, right?”
“The last one is, you have to ask yourself who would have done these things in this order for these reasons.”
“Allison was killed before Jason. She could’ve been a warning that Jason didn’t heed.”
“Jason was holed up in his dorm room. We don’t even know if he heard about the murder.”
“So, the killer is antsy, worried that the message hasn’t gotten through.” A thought occurred to her. “The suicide note. The killer left it as a warning. ‘I want it over.’ ”
“Right,” he agreed, and she assumed he’d figured this out a while ago without telling her.
Still, she said, “It would make sense that the killer would be angry with Jason for not taking Allison’s death as a warning. He was stabbed at least eight or nine times. That speaks to a lot of anger.”
Will looked up at the sky. “Rain’s let up.”
Lena sat up in the seat, sliding the gear into drive. She rolled the car slowly forward. The road was still flooding. Streams of water gushed back toward Main Street. “Both Allison and Jason were students. They could be mixed up in something to do with the school.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. A grant. There’s all kinds of government money going in and out of there. Defense spending. The engineering school works on medical devices, nanotechnology. The polymer labs are testing all kinds of adhesives. We’re talking hundreds of millions of dollars.”
“Would a grad student have access to the money?”
She thought about it. “No. The doctoral candidates might, but the grad students basically do shitwork around the labs and the undergrads can’t wipe their own asses without getting permission. I used to date a guy who was in one of the master’s programs. They’re not involved in anything remotely interesting.”
They had reached Jason Howell’s dorm. There were two black vans parked outside. They each had the GBI logo on their doors and CRIME SCENE UNIT emblazoned in white on the sides. Despite herself, Lena felt excited, like a bloodhound who’d caught a scent. The sensation quickly faded. She had spent countless hours at this school studying for a degree that she would probably never get to use. At best, her education would go toward being one of those annoying people who point out everything they get wrong on CSI.
Will looked at his cell phone. “I need to make a quick call to my partner, if you don’t mind.”
“Sure.” Lena parked the car. The rain was still pounding down, and she bolted from the car and ran up the steps, holding down the hood of her jacket with both hands.
Marty was sitting inside reading a magazine. She knocked on the door. He jerked up his head, his glasses tilting on his nose. He buzzed her in with his card.
He said, “You look bad.”
Lena was taken aback by the comment. She ran her fingers through her hair, feeling a damp that hadn’t come from the rain. “It’s been a long day.”
“For you and me both.” Marty sat back on the bench. “I’ll be glad when it’s over.”
“Anything happening?”
“They got three men upstairs. Two more went over to the parking decks. The guy in charge, he’s got a handlebar mustache like he’s outta the circus. He found some car keys up in the room and drove around clicking the alarm until it went off.”
Lena nodded her approval, thinking the guy was pretty smart for a circus freak.
Marty admitted, “I never checked the parking decks. He was parked on the third level by the ramp.”
Lena gave him a pass. “I never checked the decks when all the kids were gone, either.”
“Uh-oh. Here he comes.” Marty reached over and pressed his key card against the pad.
Will pushed open the door, stamping his feet on the floor. “Sorry,” he apologized. “Mr. Harris, thank you for giving us your time today. I’m sorry we’re taking you away from your family.”
“Demetrius told me to stay here as long as you need me.”
“Can you tell me who was on shift last night?”
“Demetrius. He’s my boss. We’ve been switching back and forth so we each get some time off for the holiday.” He put down the magazine. “He doesn’t remember anything, but he’ll be happy to talk to you whenever you want.”
Lena thought there were more important things for Will to work on right now. “Marty told me that one of your people found Jason’s car over in the deck. They’re looking at it now.”
Will smiled. She could almost feel his relief. “That’s good. Thank you, Mr. Harris.”
He offered, “Demetrius is at the office pulling all the security tapes for you. I can drive you over if you want.”
Will glanced at Lena. Staring at videotaped footage for hours on end hoping to find two seconds of a clue was the kind of mind-numbing work that could make you want to put a bullet in your head. Lena wanted to be at that car combing through the carpet fibers, looking for traces of blood or fingerprints, but there was no point.
She volunteered, “I’ll go look at the tapes if you want.”
“It’s not going to be fun.”
“I think I’ve had enough fun lately.”
Lena sat in the interrogation room at the police station where she had talked to Tommy Braham two days before. She had rolled in the television cart with the old VCR and newer digital equipment that they sometimes used to record interviews. The film from the campus security cameras was a combination of both—digital for the outside cameras and regular VCR tape for inside. Demetrius, the chief of security, had given her everything he had.
As far as Lena knew, she was the only person in the station right now except for Marla Simms, who never left her desk, and Carl Phillips, who was back in the cells working as booking officer for the night. Carl was a big guy who didn’t take a lot of crap off anybody, which was why Frank had stuck him with booking duty. Carl was incredibly honest. Frank was doing everything he could to keep the man away from Will Trent.
Lena had already gotten the story from Larry Knox, who gossiped like a woman. She knew Carl had protested kicking out some of the more talkative prisoners in the cells after Tommy’s body was found. Frank had told Carl to leave if he didn’t approve, and Carl had taken him up on the offer. The only prisoners Frank hadn’t let go were either comatose or stupid. Top among this last designation was Ronald Porter, a twat of a man who’d beaten his wife so many times that her face had caved in. Frank had found a way to bully Ronny into keeping quiet. He was trying to push Carl around. He was lying to Will Trent. He was hiding evidence, probably postponing the delivery of the audio from the 911 tape. He thought he was blackmailing Lena.
The old man had a lot on his plate.
Lena rubbed her eyes, trying to clear her vision. The room was stuffy and hot, but that wasn’t the problem. She was pretty sure she had a fever. Her hand was already sweating through the fresh Band-Aids she’d found in the first aid kit. The flesh underneath was raw and hot. She had heard from Delia Stephens that they were going to wake Brad in the morning. Lena would go over first thing and find a nurse to take a look at her injury. She’d probably need a shot and have to answer a lot of questions.
There would be worse questions tonight. She would have to tell Jared what was going on. At least part of what was going on. Lena didn’t want to burden him with the whole truth. And she hadn’t laid herself in front of an oncoming train for nothing. Losing Jared on top of giving up her badge was the kind of sacrifice she was not willing to make.
Lena turned back to work. The videotapes she’d been watching for the last two hours ranged from tedious to boring. She should’ve just gone home but Lena felt a weird sense of duty toward Will Trent. He’d made her into a reluctant Cinderella. Lena figured it would take until midnight to watch all these tapes, around the same time her badge turned into a pumpkin.
She had found the good stuff early on. According to the time code, last night at eleven-sixteen and twenty-two seconds, the fire door at the back of Jason’s building was opened. Lena was familiar with the layout from her own days with campus security. The dorm, the cafeteria, and the back of the library formed an open U with loading docks in the middle. The school didn’t let students use the area as a shortcut because a kid had fallen off one of the docks several years ago and broken his leg in three places. The resulting lawsuit had been a hard blow, and they’d blown even more money putting in xenon lights that lit up the place like a Broadway stage.
The camera over the exit door recorded in color. The light coming through the door when it was opened showed xenon blue. Then the camera jerked and showed the ceiling with a pie-shaped wedge of blue light cutting the darkness. The door was closed, and the ceiling went dark.
At eleven-sixteen and twenty-eight seconds, a figure came into the second-floor hallway. The camera wasn’t night-vision equipped, but the light from the open dorm room picked out the form. Jason Howell’s clothes were bulky, the same as Lena had seen when the kid was lying dead in his bunk. Jason looked around nervously. His movements were panicked. He had obviously heard a noise, but he dismissed it easily enough. At eleven-sixteen and thirty-seven seconds, he went back into his room. From the sliver of light in the hall, she could tell he’d left his door slightly ajar.
The killer took his time climbing the stairs. Maybe he wanted to make sure Jason was caught truly unaware. It wasn’t until eleven-eighteen on the dot that the second-floor camera tilted up. The killer wasn’t as adept this time. Lena imagined he’d slipped on the stairs. The camera had only tilted slightly, at an angle rather than straight up, and she worked the pause until she caught sight of the tip of a wooden baseball bat. The rounded end was easily distinguishable, but the Rawlings logo gave it away. She recognized the lettering style from her softball days.
At eleven-twenty-six and two seconds, the xenon light once again flashed against the first-floor ceiling as the exit door opened. The killer had taken roughly eight minutes to end Jason’s life.
Marla knocked on the door as she walked into the room. Lena paused the tape she was staring at—the digital film of the empty parking lot in front of the library. “What is it?”
“You’ve got a visitor.” Marla turned on her heel and left.
Lena tossed down the remote, thinking Marla Simms was one person she would not miss when she left this place. Actually, now that she gave it some consideration, Lena could not name one person in town she couldn’t live without. It seemed odd to feel so detached from a group of people who had comprised her world for the last several years. Lena had always thought of Grant County as her home, the police force as her family. Now, she could only think about how good it would feel to finally be rid of them.
She pushed open the metal fire door and walked into the squad room. Lena stopped when she saw the woman waiting in the lobby, instantly recognizing Sheila McGhee from the picture Frank had taken out of Allison’s wallet. They had all been sitting on a bench in front of the student center. The boy Lena now knew was Jason Howell had his arm around Allison’s waist. Sheila sat beside her niece, close but not too close. The sky was deep blue behind them. The leaves had started to fall.
In person, Sheila McGhee looked thinner, harder. Lena had thought from the photo that she was local town trash, and now she guessed Sheila was the Elba, Alabama, version of the same. She was the sort of stick thin you got from eating too little and smoking too much. Her skin hung limply from the bones of her face. Her eyes were sunken. The woman in the photo had been smiling. Sheila McGhee looked like she would never smile again.
She nervously clutched her purse in front of her stomach as Lena approached. “Is it true?”
Marla was at her desk. Lena reached across and pressed the buzzer to open the gate. “Why don’t you come back?”
“Just tell me.” She grabbed Lena’s arm. She was strong. The veins along the back of her hand looked like braided pieces of twine.
“Yes,” Lena confirmed. “Allison is dead.”
Sheila wasn’t convinced. “She looked like a lot of girls.”
Lena covered the woman’s hand with her own. “She worked at the diner down the street, Mrs. McGhee. Most of the cops who work here knew her. She was known to be a very sweet girl.”
Sheila blinked several times, but her eyes were dry.
“Come back with me,” Lena offered. Instead of leading her to the interrogation room, she went into Jeffrey’s office. Oddly, Lena felt a sudden pang of loss. She understood that somewhere in the back of her mind, she’d thought that in ten, maybe fifteen years, she’d rightfully have this office. Lena hadn’t realized the dream was even there until she’d lost it.
Now wasn’t the time to dwell on her own broken dreams. She indicated the two chairs on the other side of the desk. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”
Sheila sat on the edge of the seat, her purse in her lap. “Was she raped? Just tell me right out. She was raped, wasn’t she?”
“No, she wasn’t raped.”
The woman seemed confused. “Did that boyfriend of hers kill her?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Lena sat down beside her. She kept her hand in her lap. The skin was hotter than before. Every heartbeat shot a throb through her fingers.
Sheila said, “His name’s Jason Howell. She’s been seeing him a couple of years. They weren’t getting along lately. I don’t know what was going on. Some kind of disagreement or something. Allison was torn up about it but I told her to just let him go. Ain’t no man worth that kind of misery.”
Lena flexed her hand. “I’ve just come from the college, Mrs. McGhee. Jason Howell is dead. He was murdered last night.”
She looked as shocked as Lena had felt when she’d heard the news from Marty. “Murdered? How?”
“We think he was killed by the same man who murdered your niece.”
“Well …” She shook her head, confused. “Who would kill two college students? They didn’t have a dime between them.”
“That’s what we’re trying to figure out.” Lena paused, giving the woman time to recover. “If you could think of anybody in Allison’s life, a person she mentioned, maybe something she’d gotten mixed up in that she couldn’t—”
“That don’t even make sense. What could Allison do to anybody? She never hurt nobody.”
“Did she ever tell you about her friends? Talk about anybody in her life?”
“There was that Tommy. He’s retarded, got a thing for her.” Realization dawned. “Have you talked to him?”
“Yes, ma’am. We cleared him of the crime.”
She kept clutching the purse in her lap. “What about that landlord? Seemed like he had a jealous girlfriend.”
“They were both in Florida when the crime was committed.”
Tears moistened her eyes but didn’t fall. She was obviously trying to think of someone else who could have done this. Finally, she gave up, taking a short breath and letting it out between her lips. Her shoulders slumped. “None of this makes sense. None of it.”
Lena kept her own counsel. She had been a cop for fifteen years and she had yet to work a murder case that made much sense. People always killed for the stupidest reasons. It was depressing to think that life held such little value.
Sheila opened her purse. “Can I smoke in here?”
“No, ma’am. Would you like to go outside?”
“Too damn cold.” She chewed at her thumbnail as she stared at the wall. The rest of her nails were chewed to the quick. Lena wondered if Allison had picked up the habit from her aunt. The girl’s nails had been painfully short.
Sheila said, “Allison had a professor she was mad at because he gave her a bad grade.”
“Do you remember his name?”
“Williams. She’s never made a C on a paper in her life. She was pretty upset about it.”
“We’ll look into that,” Lena told her, but she’d already talked to Rex Williams. He’d been in New York with his family since Saturday afternoon. A call to Delta confirmed his alibi. “Did Allison have a car?”
Her eyes shifted to the floor. “It was her mama’s. She kept it in Judy’s name because the insurance was cheaper that way.”
“Do you remember the make and model?”
“I don’t know. It was old, held together by spit and rust. I can look it up when I get home.” She clutched her purse as if she was ready to leave. “Do you need me to do that now?”
“No,” Lena told her. She was fairly certain Allison drove a red Dodge Daytona. “Did you talk to your niece much on the phone?”
“Once a month. We got closer after her mama passed.” A look crossed her face. “I guess it really is just me now.” She swallowed hard. “I got a son in Holman stamping out license plates. About the only thing he’s ever done right in his life.”
She meant Holman State Prison in Alabama. “What’s he in for?”
“Being stupid.” Her anger was so palpable that Lena resisted the urge to lean back in her chair. “He tried to rob a liquor store with a water pistol. That boy’s been in prison more days than he’s been out.”
“Is he affiliated with a gang?”
“Well, who the hell knows?” she demanded. “Not me, that’s for sure. I ain’t talked to him since they sent him up. Washed my hands of it all.”
“Was he close to Allison?”
“Last time they were together was when she was thirteen, fourteen. They were out swimming and he held her head under the water until she threw up. Little shit ain’t no better than his daddy.” She started rummaging around in her purse, but then seemed to remember she couldn’t smoke. She pulled out a pack of gum and shoved two pieces into her mouth.
“What about Allison’s father?”
“He’s living in California somewhere. He wouldn’t know her if she passed him on the street.”
“Was she seeing a counselor here at school?”
Sheila gave her a sharp look. “How did you know about that? Was it the counselor did it?”
“We don’t know who did it,” Lena reminded her. “We’re looking into all angles. Do you know her counselor’s name?”
“Some Jew. A woman.”
“Jill Rosenburg?” Lena knew the psychiatrist from another case.
“That sounds like it. Do you think she could’a done it?”
“It’s not likely, but we’ll talk to her. Why was Allison seeing Dr. Rosenburg?”
“She said the school made her.”
Lena knew freshmen were required to see a counselor once a semester, but after that, attendance was left to them. Most students found better ways to spend their time. “Was Allison depressed? Was she ever suicidal?”
Sheila looked down at her torn fingernails. Lena recognized the shame in her face.
“Mrs. McGhee, it’s all right to talk about it in here. All of us want to find out who did this to Allison. Even the smallest bit of information might help.”
She took a deep breath before confirming, “She cut her wrists eight years ago when her mama died.”
“Was she hospitalized?”
“They kept her for a few days, gave her some outpatient therapy. We were supposed to keep it up, but there ain’t no money for doctors when you can barely put food on the table.”
“Did Allison seem better?”
“She was good off and on. Like me. Probably like you. There are good days and bad days, and as long as there aren’t too many of either, you get along with your life fine.”
Lena thought that was one of the most depressing ways to live your life that she had ever heard. “Was she taking medication?”
“She said the doctor gave her something new to try. Far as I could see, it wasn’t helping much.”
“Did she complain about school? Work?”
“Never. Like I said, she put on a good face. Life is hard, but you can’t get down about every shitty thing that happens to you.”
“I found a picture of you in Allison’s wallet. She was with you and Jason. It looked like you were all sitting on a bench in front of the student center.”
“She kept that in her wallet?” For the first time, Sheila’s features relaxed into something close to a smile. She searched her purse again and found a photograph that was a match for the one in her niece’s wallet. She stared at the image a long while before showing it to Lena. “I didn’t know she kept a copy for herself.”
“When was it taken?”
“Two months ago.”
“September?”
She nodded, smacking her gum. “The twenty-third. I had a couple of days off and thought I’d drive over and surprise her.”
“What was Jason like?”
“Quiet. Arrogant. Too touchy. He kept holding her hand. Stroking her hair. Would’ve drove me up the wall having some boy pawing me like that, but Allison didn’t care. She was in love.” She put enough sarcasm in her voice to make the word sound obscene.
Lena asked, “How much time did you spend around Jason?”
“Ten, fifteen minutes? He said he had a class, but I think he was nervous around me.”
Lena could understand why. Sheila didn’t seem to have a high opinion of men. “What made you think Jason was arrogant?”
“He just had this look on his face like his shit don’t stink. You know what I’m saying?”
Lena had a hard time reconciling the chubby grad student she had seen on Jason’s student ID with the arrogant prick Sheila was painting. “Did he say anything specifically?”
“He’d just bought her this ring. It was cheaper than dirt, and not good for her color, but he was all puffed out like a peacock about it. Said it was a promise ring to buy her a nicer one by Thanksgiving.”
“Not by Christmas?”
She shook her head.
Lena sat back in the chair, thinking about what the woman had said. You didn’t give people Thanksgiving Day gifts. “Did either of them say anything about expecting some money to come in?”
“Ain’t no money coming in for either one of ’em. They were poor as church mice.” Sheila snapped her fingers. “What about that old colored man at the diner?”
Lena had thought Frank Wallace was the only person who still used that word. “We’ve talked to Mr. Harris. He’s not involved in this.”
“He was hard on her, but I told her it was good she was learning how to work with the colored. You look around big corporations now and they’re filled with black people.”
“That’s true,” Lena said, wondering if the woman thought her brown skin was the product of a bad home-tanning experiment. “Did Allison have other friends that she talked about?”
“No. There was just Jason all the time. Her whole world was wrapped up in him, even though I kept telling her not to put all her eggs in one basket.”
“Did Allison date anyone in high school?”
“Nobody. She was always about her grades. All she cared about was getting into college. She thought it would save her from …” She shook her head.
“Save her from what?”
A tear finally fell from her eye. “From ending up exactly the way she did.” Her lip started to tremble. “I knew I shouldn’t let myself hope for her. I knew something bad would happen.”
Lena reached over and took the woman’s bony hand. “I’m so sorry about this.”
Sheila straightened her spine, making it clear she didn’t need comforting. “Can I see her?”
“It’d be better if you waited until tomorrow. The people who are with her now are taking care of her for you.”
She nodded, her chin dipping down once, then jerking back up again. Her eyes were focused somewhere on the wall. Her chest rose and fell, a slight wheeze to her breath from years of smoking.
Lena looked around the room, giving the woman some time to pull herself together. Until yesterday, she hadn’t been in Jeffrey’s office since his death. All his stuff had been sent to the Linton house after he died, but Lena could still remember what the room had looked like—the shooting trophies and photographs on the walls, the neatly stacked papers on the desk. Jeffrey had always kept a small framed picture of Sara by the phone. It wasn’t the sort of glamour shot you’d expect a husband to have of his wife. Sara was sitting on the bleachers at the high school. Her hands were tucked into a bulky sweatshirt. Her hair was blowing in the wind. Lena supposed the scene had a deeper meaning, just like her picture of Jared at the football stadium. Jeffrey tended to stare at the picture a lot when he was in the middle of a difficult case. You could almost feel his desire to be home with Sara.
The door cracked open. Frank looked in. He was visibly angry, fists clenched, jaw so tight with fury it looked like his teeth might break. “I need to see you.”
Lena felt a chill from his tone, like the temperature in the room had dropped twenty degrees. “I’ll be there in a minute.”
“Now.”
Sheila scrambled to stand, taking her purse with her. “I’ll be going.”
“You don’t have to rush.”
“No.” She glanced nervously at Frank. There was fear in her voice, and Lena suddenly understood that Sheila McGhee was a woman who had been on the receiving end of a lot of anger from the men in her life. “I’ve taken up your time when I know you’ve got better things to do.” She took out a piece of paper and handed it to Lena as she rushed toward the door. “This is my cell phone number. I’m staying in the hotel over in Cooperstown.” She turned away from Frank as she left the room.
Lena asked, “Why did you do that? She was obviously scared.”
“Sit down.”
“I don’t—”
“I said sit!” Frank slammed her into the chair. Lena nearly fell back onto the floor. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
He kicked the door closed. “What the fuck are you doing?”
Lena glanced out the window into the empty squad room. Her heart was in her throat, the pounding making it hard for her to talk. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You told Gordon Braham that Tommy didn’t mean to stab Brad.”
She rubbed her elbow. It was bleeding. “So?”
“Goddamn it!” He pounded his fist on the desk. “We had a deal.”
“He’s dead, Frank. I was trying to give his father some peace.”
“What about my peace?” He raised his fists in the air. “We had a fucking deal!”
Lena held up her hands, afraid he would hit her again. She’d known Frank would be mad, but she had never seen him this furious in her life.
“Stupid.” He paced in front of her, fists still clenched. “You’re so fucking stupid.”
She told him, “Lookit, calm down. I took the blame for everything. I told Trent that it was all my fault.”
He stared, slack-jawed. “You did what?”
“It’s done, Frank. It’s over. Trent’s on to the homicides. That’s where you want him. We both know Tommy didn’t kill that girl.”
“No.” He shook his head. “That’s not true.”
“Have you been to the college? Jason Howell was murdered last night. There’s no way—”
He gripped his fist in his hand like he had to stop himself from punching her. “You said Tommy’s confession was solid.”
Lena’s voice took on a pleading tone. “Listen to what I’m saying.” She could barely catch her breath to speak. “I’ll take the fall for everything. Dereliction of duty. Negligence. Obstruction. Whatever they come up with, I’ll take it. I already told Trent you didn’t have anything to do with it.” He started shaking his head again, but Lena didn’t stop talking. “It’s just me and you, Frank. We’re the only witnesses and our stories will be exactly the same, because I’ll say whatever you want me to say. Brad didn’t see what happened in the garage. For better or worse, Tommy’s not going to come back from the grave and tell anybody different. It’s all gonna be whatever we tell them.”
“Tommy—” He put his hand to his chest. “Tommy killed—”
“Allison was killed by someone else.” Lena didn’t know why he couldn’t accept this. “Trent doesn’t care about Tommy anymore. He’s all excited about a serial killer.”
Frank’s hand dropped. All the color left his face. “He thinks—”
“You don’t get it, do you? Listen to what I’m saying. This case just went into the stratosphere. Trent’s got his lab guys down here processing Jason Howell’s dorm top to bottom. He’s going to have them in Allison’s room, the garage, out at the lake. Do you think he’s going to care about some stupid spic cop who let a kid kill himself in her custody?”
Frank sat heavy in Jeffrey’s chair. The springs squeaked. How many times had she sat in this office with Jeffrey and heard that chair groan as he sat back? Frank didn’t deserve to be here. Then again, neither did Lena.
She said, “It’s over, Frank. This is the end of the line.”
“There’s more to it, Lee. You don’t understand.”
Lena knelt down in front of him. “Trent knows the 911 transcript was changed. He knows Tommy had a phone that’s missing. He probably knows you took that picture from Allison’s wallet. He sure as hell knows Tommy went back into those cells with my pen and used it to cut his wrists.” She put her hand on his knee. “I already told him he can tape my confession. You were at the hospital. No one will blame you.”
His eyes worked back and forth as he tried to read her face.
“I’m not working a scam here. I’m telling you the truth.”
“The truth doesn’t matter.”
Lena stood up, frustrated. She was handing him everything on a platter and he was shoving it back in her face. “Tell me why not. Tell me where this blows back on anybody but me.”
“Why couldn’t you just follow my orders for once in your miserable fucking life?”
“I’m taking the fall!” she yelled. “Why can’t you get that through your head? It’s me, all right? It’s my fault. I didn’t stop Tommy from running out into the street. I didn’t stop him from stabbing Brad. I screwed up the interrogation. I badgered him into writing a false confession. I let him go back into the cells. I knew he was upset. I didn’t frisk him. I didn’t put him on suicide watch. You can fire me or I can resign or whatever you want. Take me in front of the state board. I’ll swear on a stack of Bibles that it was all my fault.”
He stared at her as if she was the stupidest human being walking the face of the earth. “That easy, huh? You do all that and then you just walk away.”
“Tell me where I’m wrong.”
“I told you to stick to the story!” He banged his hand so hard against the wall that the glass rattled in the window. “Goddamn it, Lena.” He stood up. “Where’s that boyfriend of yours, huh? You think you’re gonna squirm out of this so easy? Where’s Jared?”
“No.” She pointed her finger in his chest. “You don’t talk to him. You don’t ever say anything to him ever. You hear me? That’s the deal. That’s the only thing that keeps my mouth shut.”
He slapped away her hand. “I’ll tell him whatever I damn well please.” He started to leave. Lena grabbed him by his arm, too late remembering his injury from the garage.
“Shit!” he screamed, his knees buckling. He swung his fist around, slamming it into her ear. The inside of Lena’s head clanged like a bell. She saw stars. Her stomach clenched. She tightened her grip on his arm.
Frank was on all fours, panting. His fingers dug into the skin on the back of her hand. Lena tightened her grip so hard that the muscles screamed in her arm. She leaned down to look at his gnarled old face. “You know what I figured out this morning?” He was breathing too hard to answer. “You have something on me, but I’ve got even more on you.”
His mouth opened. Saliva sprayed the floor.
“You know what I’ve got?” He still didn’t answer. His face was so red that she could feel the heat. “I’ve got proof about what happened in that garage.”
His head jerked around.
“I got the bullet you shot me with, Frank. I found it in the mud behind the garage. It’s going to match your gun.”
He cursed again. Sweat poured down his face.
“Those classes I’ve been taking? The ones you’ve been making fun of?” She took pleasure in telling him, “There’s enough of your blood at the scene for them to get an alcohol level. What do you think they’re going to find? How many swigs did you take from that flask yesterday?”
“That don’t mean anything.”
“It means your pension, Frank. Your health insurance. Your good fucking name. You stuck around all these extra years, and it won’t mean a damn thing when they fire you for drinking on the job. You won’t even be able to get hired on at the college.”
He shook his head. “It’s not gonna work.”
Lena took some liberties with the truth. “Greta Barnes saw you give Tommy that beat-down. I bet that nurse of hers can tell some stories, too.”
He gave a strained laugh. “Call them in. Go ahead.”
“If I were you, I’d be careful.”
Lena stood up and wiped the grit off her pants. “All I see is a tired old drunk.”
He struggled to sit up. His breathing was labored. “You were always so sure you were right that you couldn’t see the truth if it was standing there in front of you.”
She took the badge off her belt and threw it on the floor beside him. The Glock she carried was her own, but the bullets belonged to the county. Lena ejected the magazine and thumbed out each round. The bullets gave off satisfying pings as they hit the tile floor.
He said, “It’s not over.”
She pulled back the slide and ejected the last round in the chamber. “It is for me.”
The door was stuck. She had to yank it open. Carl Phillips stood at the back of the squad room. He tipped his hat at Lena as she walked out of the office.
Marla swiveled in the chair, her arms crossed over her large chest as she tracked Lena’s progress through the room. She leaned down and pressed the buzzer for the gate. “Good riddance.”
There should have been some kind of pull, some kind of loyalty, that made Lena look back, but she walked out into the parking lot, inhaling the wet November air, feeling like she had finally freed herself from the worst kind of prison.
She took a deep breath. Her lungs shook. The weather had cleared up a little, but a strong, cold wind dried the sweat on her face. Her vision was sharp. There was a buzzing in her ears. She could feel her heart rattling in her chest, but she forced herself to keep moving.
Her Celica was parked at the far end of the lot. She looked up Main Street. The waning sun was making a brief appearance, giving everything a surreal blue cast. Lena wondered how many days of her life had been spent going up and down this same miserable strip. The college. The hardware store. The dry cleaners. The dress shop. It all seemed so small, so meaningless. This town had taken so much from her—her sister, her mentor, and now her badge. There was nothing else that she could give. Nothing left to do but start over.
Across the street, she saw the Heartsdale Children’s Clinic. Hareton Earnshaw’s billion-dollar Beemer was parked in the lot, taking up two spaces.
Lena passed her Celica and kept walking across the street. Old man Burgess waved at her from the front window of the dry cleaners. Lena waved back as she climbed the hill to the clinic. Her hand was killing her. She didn’t think she could wait to go to the hospital tomorrow morning.
During Sara’s tenure, the clinic had always been well maintained. Now, the place was starting to go downhill. The driveway hadn’t been pressure-washed in years. The paint on the trim was chipped and faded. Leaves and debris clogged the gutters so bad that water flowed down the side of the building.
Lena followed the signs to the rear entrance. There were cheap stepping-stones laid in the dead grass. At one time, there had been wildflowers back here. Now there was just a mud track leading to the creek that ran through the back of the property. The torrential rains had turned it into a fast-flowing river that looked ready to flood the clinic. Erosion had taken hold. The channel was wider now, at least fifteen feet across and half as deep.
She pressed the buzzer by the back door and waited. Hare had been renting space in the building since Sara left town. Lena had to think that Sara would’ve never let her cousin work alongside her when she owned the clinic. They were close, but everybody knew Hare was a different kind of doctor from Sara. He saw it as a job, whereas Sara saw it as a calling. Lena was hoping this was still the case, that a doctor like Hare would view her as a billable office visit instead of a blood enemy.
Lena pressed the buzzer again. She could hear the bell ringing inside along with the quiet murmur of a radio. She tried to flex her hand. There was less movement now. Her fingers were fat and swollen. She pulled back her sleeve and groaned. Red streaks traced up her forearm.
“Shit,” Lena groaned. She put her hand to her cheek. She was burning up. Her stomach was sour. She hadn’t felt right for the last two hours, but it all seemed to be catching up with her at once.
Her phone started to ring. Lena saw Jared’s number. She gave the buzzer by the door one last push before answering. “Hey.”
“Is this a bad time?”
She paced in front of the door. “I just quit my job.”
He laughed like she had told an unbelievable joke. “Really?”
She leaned her back against the wall. “I wouldn’t lie to you about that.”
“Does that mean you’d lie about other things?”
He was kidding, but Lena felt her heart drop when she thought about how all of this could’ve blown up in her face. “I want to get out of town as soon as possible.”
“All right. We’ll start packing tonight. You can move in with me and we’ll figure out later what you’re going to do.”
Lena stared at the river. She could hear the rush of the current. The sound was like boiling water in her ears. Even though the rain had stopped, the river was still rising. She conjured the image of a huge wave crashing down the hill, flooding out the street and taking away the police station.
“Lee?” Jared asked.
“I’m all right—” Her voice caught. She couldn’t start crying now or she’d never stop. “I should be home in an hour or two.” Her throat started to tighten. “I love you.”
She ended the call before he could answer. Lena looked at her watch. There was a doc-in-the-box in the drugstore over in Cooperstown. Maybe she could find a physician’s assistant who needed some cash and wouldn’t ask questions. She pushed away from the wall just as the back door opened.
Lena said, “Oh.”
“I didn’t see your car out front.”
“I’m parked across the street.” Lena held up her hand, showing the dangling Band-Aids. “I … uh … kind of have a problem I can’t take to the hospital.”
There was none of the expected reluctance. “Come on in.”
The smell of bleach hit Lena as she walked into the building. The cleaning staff had been thorough, but the stench made her stomach turn.
“Go into exam one. I’ll be right there.”
“All right,” Lena agreed.
Being in the doctor’s office seemed to give her body permission to hurt. Her hand was throbbing with every heartbeat. She couldn’t pull her fingers into a fist. There was a high-pitched noise in her ears. Then another one. She realized she was hearing sirens.
Lena bypassed the exam room and went to the front of the building to see what was going on. The pocket door to the front office took some coaxing to open. The blinds were drawn, the room dark. She turned on the lights and saw the source of the odor.
Two gallon jugs of bleach were on the desk. Leather gloves soaked in a stainless steel bowl. Cotton swabs and paper towels littered the floor. A wooden baseball bat was laid out on a sheet of brown craft paper. Blood was embedded in the letters around the Rawlings logo.
Lena put her hand to her gun, but she was too late. She felt a drop of blood trickle down her neck before her body registered the pain of the cold steel of a knife pressing into her skin.