Lena sat at her desk staring at her computer monitor. Fireworks filled the screen. She knew if she tapped one of the keys, the desktop would appear. She also knew what the files would be—open cases, closed cases, court documents, witness statements, suspect statements—endless bytes of data that summed up the lives of thousands of people.
There was only one life on the computer that she cared about.
Not that there was life anymore.
Lena closed her eyes. Let the grief have its way.
She had been electrocuted once. Not electrocuted like on death row, but shocked by an electric current. Lena was fifteen when it happened. She’d been helping Sibyl with her hair. They were both standing in front of the mirror. The glass was steamed over from a recent shower. The smell of mold was in the air.
The house they grew up in had been wired by their uncle Hank, so they were used to smoking outlets and popping lightbulbs. He’d also built the bookcases that had no shelves, and removed a load-bearing wall, which resulted in the roof settling into a camel-back sway. Just walking through the front door, you knew you were taking your life into your own hands.
Which is why Lena should’ve known better than to plug in the hair dryer without first unplugging the box fan. The shock had streaked up her arm, down her spine, then legs, and into the tips of her toes, which happened to be touching standing water from the shower. There was some sort of delay. Lena didn’t feel the brunt of the electrocution until she saw the water. She thought, This is dangerous. The lights zapped out. Her body seized. Then, the next thing she knew, she was lying on the bathroom floor and Sibyl was screaming for Hank to call an ambulance.
That’s what Lena felt like now—shocked. Almost electrocuted. Laid flat on her back. Her body tensed. Her nerves on fire. Only this time, there was no one around to help her. This time, she was completely alone.
Lena watched the colorful bursts of light explode across the computer screen. She rested her hand on the mouse. She gently pressed down. The desktop came up. She moved the arrow to the file that contained the ultrasound. Lena had torn up the photo, but the video remained. Her hand froze on the mouse. She didn’t need to open the file. She didn’t need to see the picture. The image was forever seared into her retinas. She felt weak as rain every time she saw it.
Little black bubble. White folds and ridges. The tiny flutter of a beating heart that was no bigger than a drop of rain.
How could she love something so much when she couldn’t even see it with her naked eye? How could she feel that heart beat inside of her when it took a machine just to let her know it was there?
How could she have lost it so easily?
How could one horrible moment erase weeks of happiness, destroy a prospective lifetime that had made Lena’s heart feel weightless with anticipation?
The arrow hovered over the file. There was a slight shake to the image.
Her cell phone rang. Lena moved her hand off the mouse and picked up the phone. “Detective Adams.”
“Oh.” The woman seemed surprised that Lena had answered.
“Yes?” Lena asked. She touched her hand to the mouse. She didn’t need to see the file again. She should get rid of it. Throw it in the computer’s trash.
“Ma’am?” the woman said. “Hello?”
“Yes.” Lena turned away from the computer. She made herself listen to the call.
The woman was saying, “… from Dr. Benedict’s office? You saw me yesterday?”
Lena couldn’t stand people who raised their voices at the end of every sentence. “Are you calling about the bill? We haven’t gotten it yet.”
“Oh, no, of course not.” She sounded offended. “I just wanted to check on you? Your husband said you were back at work?”
Lena rubbed her eyes with her fingers. Jared had slept on the couch last night. He was gone this morning when Lena woke up. She’d checked the duty roster when she got in. He’d changed shifts so he didn’t have to see her.
“Ma’am?”
Lena dropped her hand. “Is there something you wanted?”
“Dr. Benedict asked me to check on you, see if the cramping’s subsided?”
Lena put her hand to her stomach. “It’s better,” she said, not knowing whether or not this was the truth. Every time she thought about it, she could feel it happening all over again. The excruciating pain that woke her from a deep sleep. The panic as she tried to dress herself. The fear as they raced to the hospital. The agony as they heard the doctor’s words. The screaming argument she’d gotten into with Jared when they got home.
He wouldn’t let Lena throw away the bloody sheets. He said she was trying to pretend it hadn’t happened. That she was unfeeling. Incapable of grieving. That throwing away the sheets was her way of getting rid of the evidence.
As if Lena needed a visual reminder to understand what she had lost.
“Ma’am?”
Lena shook her head, trying to get rid of the thoughts. “Yes?”
“I asked, no excessive bleeding?”
Lena didn’t know what “excessive” meant. She had no point of reference.
“Mrs. Long?” The woman’s voice filled with a warmth that was ten times worse than her stupid interrogatory tone. “I can have Dr. Benedict write you a note for work. You shouldn’t be back so soon. Most women take a few weeks, sometimes a month or even two if they can get off that long.”
“Well, I can’t do that,” Lena said. Yesterday was bad enough. They’d gotten home from the hospital around ten in the morning. Lena had slept away the afternoon, then stayed up arguing with Jared well into the night. The thought of being trapped at home again with nothing to do but wait for Jared to walk through the door was unbearable. Besides, no one at work even knew she was pregnant.
Had been pregnant.
Lena told the woman, “I have work to do.”
“I’m sure you do, Mrs. Long, but people will understand. What you lost—”
“I’m fine,” Lena interrupted. She wanted to correct her, to tell the woman that her last name was Adams, that Jared had told her to keep it because Lena Long sounded like something you’d buy off an infomercial.
Instead, Lena said, “I don’t need a note. Thank you.”
“Oh, darlin’, please don’t hang up.” She was obviously concerned. “You should go home. Be with your husband. Trust me, he might not be showing it, but he’s hurting just as much as you.”
Lena pressed her fingers into her eyes again. Jared was showing it. Lena was the problem. According to her husband, she was some kind of machine. She wasn’t the woman he’d married. He wasn’t sure she was the woman he wanted to stay married to.
Lena looked at the clock. She had a briefing in five minutes. Her team was waiting for her. She should end the call. She should shut up. But the words came out of her mouth before she could stop them. “I wondered—”
Instead of pushing Lena, or making an inane statement with her voice raised at the end, the woman was silent. The trick was a good one. Lena used it in interrogations. People naturally wanted to fill silences, especially when they felt guilty about something.
Lena said, “I had an abortion.”
Still the woman was silent.
“Six years ago.” Lena put her hand to her face. Her skin felt hot to the touch. “I wondered—”
“No. That has nothing to do with what happened the other night.” The answer had a certain finality to it. “If that were the case, I wouldn’t have my two little ones.”
Lena felt some of the tension leave her chest. She opened her mouth for air. For just a moment, she could breathe again.
The woman said, “Give yourself time to grieve. You and your husband can try again. Trust me, what you’re going through now—it gets easier. It doesn’t ever go away, but it gets different.”
Lena pulled a box of tissues out of her desk. She had to get her shit together. She was at work. She had to stop dwelling on this. There was no way she could lead her team if they saw her sobbing at her desk. She wiped her eyes, blew her nose.
“Okay,” Lena told the woman. “Thank you. I need to get back to work.”
“Mrs. Long. Lena. You really should go home. Don’t do this to yourself. Nobody gets a medal for being tough.”
“Okay.” Lena made her voice stronger. “Thank you for calling. I have to go.”
“But—”
Lena hung up the phone. She blew her nose again. She wiped her eyes until they felt raw. Maybe it was different at a doctor’s office, but at the police station, they gave out medals all the time for being tough.
Lena turned to her computer. She clicked on the ultrasound file and dragged it into the trashcan. She clicked on the Finder menu, then scrolled down to Empty Trash. Her finger stayed pressed down on the mouse. Her heart thumped in her chest.
“Lee?” Paul Vickery banged on the door as he walked into her office. He stopped. “What’s wrong? Somebody yank your nose hair?”
“I’ve gotta stupid cold.” Lena scrolled back up the menu, went to Edit, then selected Undo Move to Trash. She didn’t look up at Paul until she saw the file safely back on her desktop. “What is it?”
“You make a decision yet, boss?”
The decision. They’d planned the raid for next week, but their snitch had told them a big shipment was coming in tonight. Even before she lost the baby, Lena wasn’t comfortable moving up the schedule. She wanted more time to prepare. Apparently, no one else felt this way. She was feeling pressure from all sides to go in. More money, more guns, more dope, more jail time.
She told Paul, “Yeah, everybody else knows but you.”
“Just checking, Kemosabe. No need to get your panties in a wad.”
She heard a familiar chug from her computer. Paul wasn’t the only one who was getting antsy. Denise Branson had sent another email. Lena scanned the first line, which dove straight into the fact that after last night’s overtime, Lena’s investigation had crossed the one-million-dollar mark.
“Damn, girl.” Paul read over her shoulder. “You pissed her off something righteous. What’re you gonna do?”
“She’ll be fine once she gets her picture in the paper.”
“Vanhorn and Gresham,” Paul read from the email. “Sid Waller’s lawyer’s from that firm, right?”
Lena clicked the email closed as she stood up. “We’re gonna draw straws to see who goes down into the basement first. I’m gonna hold them. One person gets to pick from each team.”
Paul grinned like a possum. “Good thing I’m feeling lucky, partner.”
“Did y’all finish taping off the diagram?”
“Yeah. Had to keep DeShawn from using his protractor.”
“Good. We’re going to rehearse this thing until we know it in our sleep.” Lena grabbed her jacket on the way out.
Paul said, “It’s eighty degrees in the shop.”
“Thanks for the weather update.” Lena pulled on the jacket as she walked down the hallway. Her hormones were still out of whack. She was cold all the time, except when she was burning up. That’s what she should’ve asked that stupid woman from Dr. Benedict’s office about, not something that had happened six years ago.
Paul said, “You’re going to—”
“Shit.” The zip was caught in her shirt.
“Here.” Paul stood in front of her. He started working on the zipper like she was three. Paul wasn’t the only one who’d been treating her more delicately lately. Lena guessed she was putting out some pregnant woman pheromones. Or at least she had been.
Paul said, “I think we’re gonna have a problem with Eric. He’s acting weird.”
“How?”
“He’s being too quiet.” He added, “That thing in the van the other day was funny, but he’s hiding something.”
“Hiding what?”
“Exactly.”
Lena watched Paul’s fingers as he tried to free her shirt from the zipper. She thought about the little blue jacket she’d ordered online. Jared’s family loved Auburn football to the point of making it a religion. Lena had yelled at him for painting the nursery, but she couldn’t resist going online last week and ordering a baby-sized Auburn hoodie from Tiger Rags.
The jacket was on back order. She wondered when it would be delivered. What day in the near future would she go home and find a tiny jacket waiting for little arms that would never exist?
“Lee?” Paul asked. “Where’d you go?”
She shook her head. “It’s too late to switch out Eric. He’s just gonna have to man up.”
He finally freed the zipper. “You’re the boss.”
The word grated; it had started taking on mocking undertones. “Lucky me,” she muttered. Technically, their lieutenant was supposed to be the boss, but a particularly aggressive form of leukemia had taken him out of the equation and Denise Branson had yet to find a suitable replacement. At first, Lena had been happy to fill the role, but now she was seeing the downside of her new responsibilities.
Paul said, “Shit, look smart.” He puffed out his chest and pressed his back to the wall as he stood at attention.
Lena didn’t have to ask why. Lonnie Gray was talking on his cell phone as he walked down the hallway. He ended the call when he saw Paul and Lena. There was no preamble. He asked, “Status?”
Lena provided, “We’re doing run-throughs. No mistakes this time. We’re gonna nail Waller.”
Gray’s voice was stern. “That’s exactly what needs to happen, Detective.”
“Yes, sir,” she said, knowing he wasn’t kidding around. Lena had seen more than one detective leave the Macon PD before he was planning to because he’d disappointed the chief. “You have my word that the entire team is at one hundred percent.”
Paul added, “You can count on us, sir,” sounding like a third-grader bringing an apple to his teacher.
“Good.” Gray headed back down the hallway, but not before giving Paul a curt nod. Lena could practically hear Vickery’s ball sac quiver. She felt the same respect toward Gray, but she hoped she didn’t look like she was creaming her pants every time the chief was around.
As soon as Gray was gone, Paul clapped his hands together. “You heard the chief. Let’s rock this bad boy.”
He preceded Lena down the hall toward the shop. Paul was obviously pumped, and not just because of the chief. He walked on the balls of his feet in that weird way that made him look a little effeminate. Lena knew Paul had served two tours in Afghanistan before a piece of shrapnel got lodged in his arm. Physical therapy had brought him back to one hundred percent, but being home had made him lose his taste for war.
Paul still relished a good fight, though—one of the many characteristics they both shared. At first, Lena thought their matched temperaments made for a good partnership, but she was beginning to see that maybe a differing opinion would offer a better balance.
Part of the reason Lena had respected Jeffrey Tolliver so much was that he’d always told Lena when he thought she was wrong.
Paul kicked open the door to the shop. The sound of metal hitting metal reverberated through the hangar-like building. The shop was where they brought seized automobiles and boats so they could take them apart and look for drugs or contraband. They also used it to do routine maintenance on the squad cars, which was why three cruisers were hanging on lifts.
The mechanics had cleared out a large space for Lena’s team to work. The footprint of the shooting-gallery house was thirty-five by sixty, and even in the large building, space was at a premium. They were using the log sergeant’s duty desk as their workspace, which had infuriated the sergeant, but orders were orders. Lena was surprised Denise Branson hadn’t taken the space away from them. She was pissed enough at Lena to strike out, and Branson didn’t get to the rank of major without knowing how to punish people.
DeShawn Franklin, Mitch Cabello, and Keith McVale stood around the duty desk. Lena took the lead ahead of Paul. She lengthened her stride so that he wouldn’t pass her. Back in Grant County, Lena had been the only female detective on an all-male force. She knew the rules when she signed up. Every second of the day, she had to fight to keep her place in the pecking order.
“Hey, boss.” Mitch looked up from the diagram they had gotten from the tax assessor’s office. “You gotta cold?”
Lena knew what she probably looked like: red-rimmed eyes, bloodshot from crying. She wiped under her nose with the back of her hand. “Yeah. Jared gave it to me.”
“I bet he gave it to you.” DeShawn made a grunting sound that invited a chorus of porn music from the team.
“Shut up, assholes. I just ran into Chief Gray in the hall. He made it clear we’d better come back here with Waller or keep on driving out of town.” She gave DeShawn a pointed look. “That means you, too, golden boy.”
Mitch made a “rut-roh” sound straight out of a Scooby-Doo cartoon, though they all knew DeShawn was one of Gray’s favorites.
Lena looked around the shop. The mechanics had gone to lunch and the duty sergeant was probably sulking in his car. The B-Team had worked surveillance last night. Lena told them they could come in late. During the raid, they were assigned to guarding the perimeter, so they didn’t need to run the inside drills like the rest of them.
Still, someone was missing.
She asked, “Where’s Eric?”
DeShawn provided, “Shitting out lunch from the sound of it.”
Lena glanced at Paul, whose face tended to show every single thought that crossed his mind. He was still worried about Eric. Maybe he had a right to be. To mangle the old saying, Eric’s stomach was the window to his soul.
DeShawn asked, “Something wrong, boss?”
Lena tried to summon up her old self. “Yeah, I gotta bunch of little girls on my team.”
They greeted this with the expected howls and finger pointing.
Lena ignored them. She looked down at the concrete floor where they had taped off the house. The diagram was to exact scale. Den, two bedrooms, bathroom, dining room, kitchen. They could pace off the steps here so that it came as second nature when they were doing the raid in real time. The only unknown was the basement.
Thumb latch. Deadbolt. Slide lock. There was no telling how the door would be secured, though they had wasted plenty of time considering the options.
The biggest issue was the four guys, maybe five, who were usually in the house. Sometimes a couple of junkies stayed the night, but that tended to be after a weekend of partying. Traffic started flowing around seven-thirty in the morning—either kids on their way to school or adults on their way to work. Two or three hours later, the moms came in their SUVs, seeking a bump to get them through their daily chores. Lunchtime traffic was unreliable, but rush hour started at four-thirty and didn’t slow down until after three in the morning.
This was when Sid Waller showed up. Like clockwork, he took the northbound exit onto Allman Road, hung a left onto Redding Street, then slowly drove his Corvette down the rutted gravel driveway to the shooting gallery.
Waller usually stayed at the house for three hours. No one knew what he did while he was there. It was too dangerous to send in the snitches at that time of day. They were usually passed out by then, anyway. Paul thought Waller was sampling the product. DeShawn thought he was banging some girls. Denise Branson thought he was counting all the money.
Lena prayed to God he was doing all three, and that by the time they made their way into that dark, dank basement, Sid Waller was too stoned, too fucked, and too scared to do anything but watch helplessly as Lena ratcheted the cuffs around his wrists.
She looked up. They were all waiting on her. DeShawn was staring at his hands like he was trying to decide whether or not he needed a manicure. Mitch and Keith were mumbling to each other because the two of them couldn’t shut up if you held a gun to their heads. Paul’s face said it all. He was like a puppy, bouncing around on his feet, about to wet himself with anticipation.
The door creaked open. Eric Haigh gave a sheepish smile as he walked into the shop. Paul was right. There was something off about the man. He seemed too hesitant, which became enormously clear as he joined the rest of the team around the desk. They were all ready to go. Eric looked like the only place he wanted to go was back out the door he’d just walked in.
Well, they all had shit going on in their lives.
“All right, ladies.” Lena clapped her hands together. “Decision’s been made. We’re hitting this place at oh-dark-thirty tomorrow morning.”