CHAPTER 2

LENA KEPT ONE HAND on the steering wheel as she scrolled through radio stations with the other. She cringed at the vacuous girls screeching from the speakers; when had stupidity become a marketable talent? She gave up when she hit the country music channels. There was a six-disc changer in the trunk, but she was sick of each and every song on each and every disc. Desperate, she reached into the floor of the backseat, groping for a loose CD. She fished out three empty jewel cases in a row, cursing more loudly with each one. She was about to give up when the tips of her fingers brushed a cassette tape underneath her seat.

Her Celica was around eight years old and still had a tape player, but Lena had no idea what this particular cassette contained, or how it had even ended up in her car. Still, she popped it into the dash and waited. No music came, and she turned up the knob, wondering if the tape was blank or had been damaged by last summer’s scorching heat. She turned it up further and nearly had a heart attack when the opening drumbeats of Joan Jett’s “Bad Reputation” filled the car.

Sibyl. Her twin sister had made this tape two weeks before she had died. Lena could remember listening to this exact song nearly six years ago as she sped down the highway, heading back to Grant County from a drop-off she’d made at the Georgia Bureau of Investigation’s lab in Macon. The drive had been much like the one she was making today: a straight shot down a kudzu-lined interstate, the few cars on the road whizzing by eighteen-wheelers and mobile homes that were being transported to waiting families. Meanwhile, her sister was back in Grant County, being tortured and murdered by a sadist while Lena sang with Joan Jett at the top of her lungs.

She popped out the tape and turned off the radio.

Six years. It didn’t seem like so much time had passed, but then again, it felt like an eternity. Lena was just now getting to the point where her dead twin was not the first thing she thought about when she woke up in the morning. It usually wasn’t until later in the day when she saw something funny or heard a crazy story at work that she thought about Sibyl, made a mental note to tell her sister, then realized a split second later that Sibyl was no longer there to hear it.

Lena had always thought of Sibyl as her only family. Their mother had died thirteen days after giving birth. Their father, a cop, had been shot dead by a man he’d pulled over on a speeding violation. He’d never even known his young wife was pregnant. As there were no other relatives to speak of, Hank Norton, their mother’s brother, had raised the two girls. Lena had never thought of her uncle as family. Hank had been a junkie during her childhood and a sober, self-righteous asshole during her teen years. Lena thought of him as more like a warden, somebody who made the rules and held all of the power. From the beginning, Lena had only wanted to break out.

She pushed in the cassette tape again, twisted the knob to lower the sound to a low, angry growl.

 

I don’t give a damn about my bad reputation…

 

The sisters had sung this as teenagers, their anthem against Reese, the backwater town they lived in until they were old enough to get the hell out. With their dark complexions and exotic looks that came courtesy of their Mexican-American grandmother, neither one of them had been particularly popular. Other kids were cruel, and Lena’s strategy was to take them on one by one while Sibyl kept to her studies, working hard to get the scholarships she needed to continue her education. After high school, Lena had spun her wheels for a while, then entered the police academy, where Jeffrey Tolliver plucked her from a group of recruits and offered her a job. Sibyl had already taken a professorship at the Grant Institute of Technology, which made the decision to accept the job that much easier.

Lena found herself thinking about her first weeks in Grant County. After Reese, Heartsdale had seemed like a major metropolis. Even Avondale and Madison, the other cities that constituted Grant, were impressive to her small-town eyes. Most of the kids Lena had gone to school with had never traveled outside the state of Georgia. Their parents worked twelve-hour days at the tire plant or drew unemployment so they could sit around and drink. Vacations were for the wealthy—people who could afford to miss a couple of days of work and still pay the electric bill.

Hank owned a bar on the outskirts of Reese, and once he had stopped injecting the profits into his veins, Sibyl and Lena had lived a fairly comfortable life compared to their neighbors. Sure, the roof on their house was bowed and a 1963 Chevy truck had been on blocks in the backyard for as long as she could remember, but they always had food on the table and each year when school came around, Hank drove the girls into Augusta and bought them new clothes.

Lena should have been grateful, but she was not.

Sibyl had been eight when Hank, on a drunken bender, had slammed his car into her. Lena had been using an old tennis ball to play catch with her sister. She overthrew, and when Sibyl ran into the driveway and leaned down to pick up the ball, the bumper of Hank’s reversing car had caught her in the temple. There hadn’t even been much blood—just a thin cut following the line of her skull—but the damage was done. Sibyl hadn’t been able to see anything after that, and no matter how many Alcoholics Anonymous meetings Hank attended or how supportive he tried to be, in the back of her mind, Lena always saw his car hitting her sister, the surprised look on Sibyl’s face as she crumpled to the ground.

Yet, here Lena was, using up one of her valuable vacation days to go check on the old bastard. Hank hadn’t telephoned in two weeks, which was strange. Even though she seldom returned his calls, he still left messages every other day. The last time she had seen her uncle was three months ago, when he’d driven to Grant County—uninvited—to help her move. She was renting Jeffrey’s house after he’d found out his previous tenants, a couple of girls from the college, were using the place as their own personal bordello. Hank had said maybe a handful of words to her as he moved boxes, and Lena had been just as chatty. As he was leaving, guilt had forced her to suggest dinner at the new rib place up the street, but he was climbing into his beat-up old Mercedes, making his excuses, before she got the words out of her mouth.

She should have known then something was wrong. Hank never passed up an opportunity to spend time with her, no matter how painful that time was. That he had driven straight back to Reese should have been a clue. She was a detective, for chrissakes. She should notice when things were out of the ordinary.

She also shouldn’t have let two whole weeks pass without calling to check on him.

In the end, it was Charlotte, one of Hank’s neighbors, who called to tell Lena that she needed to come down and see about her uncle.

“He’s in a bad way,” the woman had said. When Lena tried to press her, Charlotte had mumbled something about one of her kids needing her and hung up the phone.

Lena felt her spine straighten as she drove into the Reese city limits. God, she hated this town. At least in Grant, she fit in. Here, however, she would always be the orphan, the troublemaker, Hank Norton’s niece—no, not Sibyl, Lena, the bad one.

She passed three churches in rapid succession. There was a big billboard by the baseball field that read, “Today’s Forecast: Jesus Reigns!”

“Christ,” she murmured, taking a left onto Kanuga Road, her body on autopilot as she coasted through the back streets that led to Hank’s house.

Classes weren’t out for another hour, but there were enough cars leaving the high school to cause a traffic jam. Lena slowed, hearing the muffled strains of competing radio stations as souped-up muscle cars stripped their tires on the asphalt.

A guy in a blue Mustang, the old kind that drove like a truck and had a metal dashboard that could decapitate you if you hit the right tree, pulled up in the lane beside her. Lena turned her head and saw a teenage kid openly staring at her. Gold chains around his neck sparkled in the afternoon sun and his ginger-red hair was spiked with so much gel that he looked more like something you’d find at the bottom of the ocean than in a small Southern town. Oblivious to how stupid he looked, his head bobbed with the rap music pounding out of his car stereo and he gave her a suggestive wink. Lena looked away, thinking she’d like to see his spoiled white ass dropped off in the middle of downtown Atlanta on a Friday night. He’d be too busy pissing his pants to appreciate the gangsta life.

She turned off at the next street, taking the long way to Hank’s, wanting to get away from the kids and traffic. Hank was probably fine. Lena knew one thing she shared with her uncle was a tendency toward moodiness. Hank was probably just in a dark place. He’d probably be angry to find her on his doorstep, invading his space. She wouldn’t blame him.

A white Cadillac Escalade was parked in the driveway behind Hank’s old Mercedes. Lena pulled her Celica close to the curb and turned off the ignition, wondering who was visiting. Hank might be hosting an AA meeting; in which case, she hoped the Escalade’s driver was the last to leave instead of the first to show up. Her uncle was just as hooked on self-help bullshit as he had been addicted to speed and alcohol. She had known Hank to drive six hours straight to hear a particular speaker, attend a particular meeting, only to turn around and drive another six hours back so that he could open the bar for the early afternoon drunks.

She studied the house, thinking that the only thing that had changed about her childhood home was its state of decay. The roof was more bowed, the paint on the clapboard peeling so badly that a thin strip of white flecks made a chalk line around the house. Even the mailbox had seen better days. Someone had obviously taken a bat to the thing, but Hank, being his usual handy self, had duct-taped it back onto the rotting wood post.

Lena palmed her keys as she got out of the car. Her hamstrings were tight from the long drive, and she bent at the waist to stretch out her legs.

A gunshot cracked the air, and Lena bolted up, reaching for her gun, realizing that her Glock was in her glove compartment at the same time she processed that the gunshot was just the front door slamming shut.

The slammer was a stocky, bald man with arms the size of cannons and an attitude she could read from twenty paces. A large sheath containing a hunting knife was on his right hip and a thick metal chain dangled from his belt loop to his wallet in his back left pocket. He trotted down the rickety front stairs, counting a wad of money he held in his meaty hands.

He looked up, saw Lena, and gave a dismissive snort before climbing into the white Cadillac. The SUV’s twenty-two-inch wheels kicked up dust as he backed out of the driveway and swung out into the street beside her Celica. The Escalade was about a yard longer than her car and at least two feet wider. The roof was so high she couldn’t see over the top. The side windows were heavily tinted, but the front ones were rolled down, and she could clearly see the driver.

He’d stopped close enough to crowd her between the two cars, his beady eyes staring a hole into her. Time slowed, and she saw that he was older than she’d thought, that his shaved head was not a fashion statement but a complement to the large red swastika tattooed on his bare upper arm. Coarse black hair grew in a goatee and mustache around his mouth, but she could still see the sneer on his fat, wet lips.

Lena had been a cop long enough to know a con, and the driver had been a con long enough to know that she was a cop. Neither one of them was about to back down, but he won the standoff by shaking his head, as if to say, “What a fucking waste.” His wifebeater shirt showed rippling muscles as he shifted into gear and peeled off.

Lena was left standing in his wake. Five, six, seven… she counted the seconds, standing her ground in the middle of the road as she waited for the Cadillac to make the turn, taking her out of sight of the guy’s rearview mirrors.

Once the car was gone, she went around to the passenger’s side of the Celica and found the six-inch folding knife she kept under the seat. She slipped this into her back pocket, then got her Glock out of the glove compartment. She checked the safety on the gun and clipped the holster to her belt. Lena did not want to meet the man again, especially unarmed.

Walking toward the house, she wouldn’t let her mind consider the reasons why such a person would be at her uncle’s house. You didn’t drive a car like that in a town like Reese by working at the tire factory. You sure as shit didn’t leave somebody’s house flashing a wad of money unless you knew that no one was going to try to take it off you.

Her hands were shaking as she walked toward the house. The doorjamb had splintered from being slammed so hard, or maybe from being kicked open. Pieces of rotting wood and rusting metal jutted into the air near the knob, and Lena used the toe of her shoe to push open the door.

“Hank?” she called, fighting the urge to draw her weapon. The man in the Escalade was gone, but his presence still lingered. Something bad had happened here. Maybe something bad was still going on.

Being a cop had given Lena a healthy respect for her instinct. You learned to listen to your gut when you were a rookie. It wasn’t something that could be taught at the academy. Either you paid attention to the hairs sticking up on the back of your neck or you got shot in the chest on your first call by some whacked-out drug addict who thought the aliens were trying to get him.

Lena pulled the Glock, pointed it at the floor. “Hank?”

No answer.

She stepped carefully through the house, unable to tell if the place had been tossed or if Hank just hadn’t bothered to straighten up in a while. There was an unpleasant odor in the air, something chemical, like burned plastic, mixed with the usual reek of cigarettes from Hank’s chain-smoking and chicken grease from the takeout he got every night. Newspapers were scattered on the living room couch. Lena leaned down, checked the dates. Most were over a month old.

Cautiously, she walked down the hallway, weapon still drawn. Lena and Sibyl’s bedroom door stood open, the beds neatly made. Hank’s room was another matter. The sheets were bunched up at the bottom like someone had suffered a fever dream and an unpleasant brown stain radiated from the center of the bare mattress. The bathroom was filthy. Mold blackened the grout, pieces of wet plaster hung from the ceiling.

She stood outside the closed kitchen door, Glock at the ready. “Hank?”

No answer.

The hinges creaked as she pushed open the swinging door.

Hank was slumped in a chair at the kitchen table. AA pamphlets were stacked hundreds deep in front of him, right beside a closed metal lockbox that Lena instantly recognized from her childhood.

His kit.

Junkies loved their routines almost as much as they loved their drugs. A certain type of needle, a particular vein…they had a habit for their habits, an M.O. they followed that was almost as hard to break as the addiction. Thump the bag, tap out the powder, flick the lighter, lick your lips, wait for the powder to turn to liquid, the liquid to boil. And then came the needle. Sometimes thinking about the rush was enough to get them halfway there.

Hank’s drug kit was a metal lockbox, dark blue with chipped paint that showed the gray primer underneath. He kept the key in his sock drawer, something even a seven-year-old girl could figure out. Though the box was shut now, Lena could see the contents as clearly as if the lid was open: hypodermics, tin foil, torch lighter, filters broken off from cigarettes. She knew the spoon he used to heat the powder as well as she knew the back of her hand. Tarnished silver, the ornate handle bent into a loop that you could wrap around your index finger. Hank had caught her with it once and spanked the skin off her ass. Whether this was because Lena was messing with his stuff or because he wanted her to stay clean, she still did not know.

She was leaning against the kitchen counter, gun still in her hand, when Hank finally stirred. Milky eyes looked up at her, but she could tell he couldn’t focus, couldn’t see, didn’t care. Drool slid out of his open mouth. He hadn’t put in his teeth, hadn’t bathed or combed his hair in what looked like weeks. His shirtsleeves were rolled up and she saw the tiny scars that needles had left so many years ago mingling with new punctures—ulcerous, gaping holes—where the drain cleaner or talcum powder or whatever the hell had been used to cut the shit he was putting into his veins had set up an infection.

The gun raised up into the air. She felt outside herself, as if the weapon was not connected to her hand, as if it wasn’t her finger on the trigger, and her own voice saying, “Who the fuck was that man?”

Hank’s mouth opened, and she saw the dark red gums where his teeth had been, teeth that had rotted in his mouth because the drugs had eaten him from the inside out.

“Tell me!” she demanded, shoving the Glock in his face.

His tongue lolled outside his mouth as he struggled to speak. She had to use both hands to keep the gun steady, keep it from going off in her hands. Minutes passed, maybe hours. Lena didn’t know; she was incapable of keeping time, figuring out if she was in the present or somehow trapped in the past, back thirty years ago when she was just a scared kid wondering why her uncle’s grin was so wide when blood was streaming from his nose, his ears. She felt her skin prickling from the heat inside the house. The odor coming off Hank was unbearable. She remembered that smell from her childhood, knew he wouldn’t take care of himself, didn’t want to bathe because the layer of grime on his skin clogged his pores and helped hold in the drug longer.

Lena forced her hands to put the gun down on the counter, keeping her back to him as she tried to stop the memories that came flooding back: Hank passed out in the yard, children’s services coming to the front door to take them away. Sibyl crying, Lena screaming. Even now, hot tears slid down her cheeks, and she was suddenly that little girl again, that helpless, powerless little girl whose only hope in life was a useless fucking junkie.

She swung around, slapping him so hard that he fell into a heap on the floor.

“Get up!” she shouted, kicking him. “Get the fuck up!”

He groaned, curling into a ball, and she was reminded that even in a weakened state, the body did what it could to protect itself. She wanted to pummel him with her fists. She wanted to beat his face until no one would recognize him. How many nights had she lain awake, crying her eyes out as she waited for him to finally come home? How many mornings had she found him facedown in his own vomit? How many strangers had stayed the night—nasty, vile men with their leering smiles and fat, prodding fingers—while Hank remained oblivious to anything but chasing his high?

“Was that your dealer?” Lena demanded, feeling a wave of nausea building in her stomach. “Was that your connection?”

He whispered something, blood spraying in a fine mist on the filthy linoleum.

“Who?” she screamed, leaning over his curled body, wanting to hear his words, to get the dealer’s name. She would track him down, take him into the woods, and put a bullet in his skull. “Who was that man?”

“He was…” Hank wheezed.

“Give me his name,” Lena ordered, kneeling beside him, her fists clenched so tight that her fingernails were cutting into her palms. “Tell me who he is, you stupid fucker.”

His head turned up, and she saw him struggling to focus. When his eyelids began to flutter closed, she grabbed his greasy yellow hair in her fist, yanked his head up so he had no choice but to look at her.

“Who is he?” she repeated.

“The man…”

“Who?” Lena said. “Who is he?”

“He’s the one,” Hank mumbled, his eyes closing as if the effort of keeping them open was just too much. Still, he finished, “He killed your mother.”