Broken

CHAPTER ONE

FORTUNATELY, THE WINTER WEATHER MEANT THE BODY AT THE bottom of the lake would be well preserved, though the chill on the shore was bone-aching, the sort of thing that made you strain to remember what August had been like. The sun on your face. The sweat running down your back. The way the air conditioner in your car blew out a fog because it could not keep up with the heat. As much as Lena Adams strained to remember, all thoughts of warmth were lost on this rainy November morning.

“Found her,” the dive captain called. He was directing his men from the shore, his voice muffled by the constant shush of the pouring rain. Lena held up her hand in a wave, water sliding down the sleeve of the bulky parka she had thrown on when the call had come in at three this morning. The rain wasn’t hard, but it was relentless, tapping her back insistently, slapping against the umbrella that rested on her shoulder. Visibility was about thirty feet. Everything beyond that was coated in a hazy fog. She closed her eyes, thinking back to her warm bed, the warmer body that had been wrapped around her.

The shrill ring of a phone at three in the morning was never a good sound, especially when you were a cop. Lena had woken out of a dead sleep, her heart pounding, her hand automatically snatching up the receiver, pressing it to her ear. She was the senior detective on call, so she in turn had to start other phones ringing across south Georgia. Her chief. The coroner. Fire and rescue. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation to let them know that a body had been found on state land. The Georgia Emergency Management Authority, who kept a list of eager civilian volunteers ready to look for dead bodies on a moment’s notice.

They were all gathered here at the lake, but the smart people were waiting in their vehicles, heat blasting while a chill wind rocked the chassis like a baby in a cradle. Dan Brock, the proprietor of the local funeral home who did double duty as the town coroner, was asleep in his van, head back against the seat, mouth gaping open. Even the EMTs were safely tucked inside the ambulance. Lena could see their faces peering through the windows in the back doors. Occasionally, a hand would reach out, the ember of a cigarette glowing in the dawn light.

She held an evidence bag in her hand. It contained a letter found near the shore. The paper had been torn from a larger piece-college ruled, approximately eight and a half inches by six. The words were all caps. Ballpoint pen. One line. No signature. Not the usual spiteful or pitiful farewell, but clear enough: I WANT IT OVER.

In many ways, suicides were more difficult investigations than homicides. With a murdered person, there was always someone you could blame. There were clues you could follow to the bad guy, a clear pattern you could lay out to explain to the family of the victim exactly why their loved one had been stolen away from them. Or, if not why, then who the bastard was who’d ruined their lives.

With suicides, the victim is the murderer. The person upon whom the blame rests is also the person whose loss is felt most deeply. They are not around to take the recriminations for their death, the natural anger anyone feels when there is a loss. What the dead leave instead is a void that all the pain and sorrow in the world can never fill. Mother and father, sisters, brothers, friends and other relatives-all find themselves with no one to punish for their loss.

And people always want to punish someone when a life is unexpectedly taken.

This was why it was the investigator’s job to make sure every single inch of the death scene was measured and recorded. Every cigarette butt, every discarded piece of trash or paper, had to be catalogued, checked for fingerprints, and sent to the lab for analysis. The weather was noted in the initial report. The various officers and emergency personnel on scene were recorded in a log. If a crowd was present, photographs were taken. License plates were checked. The suicide victim’s life was investigated just as thoroughly as with a homicide: Who were her friends? Who were her lovers? Was there a husband? Boyfriend? Girlfriend? Were there angry neighbors or envious co-workers?

Lena knew only what they had found so far: a pair of women’s sneakers, size eight, placed a few feet away from the suicide note. Inside the left shoe was a cheap ring-twelve-karat gold with a lifeless ruby at the center. The right shoe contained a white Swiss Army watch with fake diamonds for numbers. Underneath this was the folded note.

I want it over.

Not much of a comfort for those left behind.

Suddenly, there was a splash of water as one of the divers surfaced from the lake. His partner came up beside him. They each struggled against the silt on the lake bottom as they dragged the body out of the cold water and into the cold rain. The dead girl was small, making the effort seem exaggerated, but quickly Lena saw the reason for their struggle. A thick, industrial-looking chain was wrapped around her waist with a bright yellow padlock that hung low, like a belt buckle. Attached to the chain were two cinder blocks.

Sometimes in policing, there were small miracles. The victim had obviously been trying to make sure she couldn’t back out. If not for the cinder blocks weighing her down, the current would have probably taken the body into the middle of the lake, making it almost impossible to find her.

Lake Grant was a thirty-two-hundred-acre man-made body of water that was three hundred feet deep in places. Underneath the surface were abandoned houses, small cottages and shacks where people had once lived before the area was turned into a reservoir. There were stores and churches and a cotton mill that had survived the Civil War only to be shut down during the Depression. All of this had been wiped out by the rushing waters of the Ochawahee River so that Grant County could have a reliable source of electricity.

The National Forestry Service owned the best part of the lake, over a thousand acres that wrapped around the water like a cowl. One side touched the residential area where the more fortunate lived, and the other bordered the Grant Institute of Technology, a small but thriving state university with almost five thousand students enrolled.

Sixty percent of the lake’s eighty-mile shoreline was owned by the State Forestry Division. The most popular spot by far was this one, what the locals called Lover’s Point. Campers were allowed to stake tents. Teenagers came here to party, often leaving behind empty beer bottles and used condoms. Occasionally, there would be a call about a fire someone had let get out of control, and once, a rabid bear had been reported, only to turn out to be an elderly chocolate Labrador who had wondered away from his owners’ campsite.

And bodies were occasionally found here, too. Once, a girl had been buried alive. Several men, predictably teenagers, had drowned performing various acts of stupidity. Last summer, a child had broken her neck diving into the shallow waters of the cove.

The two divers paused, letting the water drip off the body before resuming their task. Finally, nods went around and they dragged the young woman onto the shore. The cinder blocks left a deep furrow in the sandy ground. It was six-thirty in the morning, and the moon seemed to wink at the sun as it began its slow climb over the horizon. The ambulance doors swung open. The EMTs cursed at the bitter cold as they rolled out the gurney. One of them had a pair of bolt cutters hefted over his shoulder. He slammed his hand on the hood of the coroner’s van, and Dan Brock startled, comically flailing his arms in the air. He gave the EMT a stern look, but stayed where he was. Lena couldn’t blame him for not wanting to rush into the rain. The victim wasn’t going anywhere except the morgue. There was no need for lights and sirens.

Lena walked closer to the body, carefully folding the evidence bag containing the suicide note into her jacket pocket and taking out a pen and her spiral-bound notebook. Crooking her umbrella between her neck and shoulder, she wrote the time, date, weather, number of EMTs, number of divers, number of cars and cops, what the terrain was like, noted the solemnity of the scene, the absence of spectators-all the details that would need to be typed exactly into the report.

The victim was around Lena ’s height, five-four, but she was built much smaller. Her wrists were delicate, like a bird’s. The fingernails were uneven, bitten down to the quick. She had black hair and extremely white skin. She was probably in her early twenties. Her open eyes were clouded like cotton. Her mouth was closed. The lips looked ragged, as if she chewed them out of nervous habit. Or maybe a fish had gotten hungry.

Her body was lighter without the drag of the water, and it only took three of the divers to heft her onto the waiting gurney. Muck from the bottom of the lake covered her head to toe. Water dripped from her clothes-blue jeans, a black fleece shirt, white socks, no sneakers, an unzipped, dark blue warm-up jacket with a Nike logo on the front. The gurney shifted, and her head turned away from Lena.

Lena stopped writing. “Wait a minute,” she called, knowing something was wrong. She put her notebook in her pocket as she took a step closer to the body. She had seen a flash of light at the back of the girl’s neck-something silver, maybe a necklace. Pondweed draped across the victim’s throat and shoulders like a shroud. Lena used the tip of her pen to push away the slippery green tendrils. Something was moving beneath the skin, rippling the flesh the same way the rain rippled the tide.

The divers noticed the undulations, too. They all bent down for a better look. The skin fluttered like something out of a horror movie.

One of them asked, “What the-”

“Jesus!” Lena jumped back quickly as a small minnow slithered out from a slit in the girl’s neck.

The divers laughed the way men do when they don’t want to admit they’ve just soiled themselves. For her part, Lena put her hand to her chest, hoping no one noticed that her heart had practically exploded. She took a gulp of air. The minnow was floundering in the mud. One of the men picked it up and tossed it back into the lake. The dive captain made the inevitable joke about something being fishy.

Lena shot him a hard look before leaning down toward the body. The slit where the fish had come out was at the back of the neck, just to the right of the spine. She guessed the wound was an inch wide, tops. The open flesh was puckered from the water, but at one point the injury had been clean, precise-the kind of incision that was made by a very sharp knife.

“Somebody go wake up Brock,” she said.

This wasn’t a suicide investigation anymore.

CHAPTER TWO

FRANK WALLACE NEVER SMOKED IN HIS COUNTY-ISSUED LINCOLN Town Car, but the cloth seats had absorbed the fug of nicotine that seeped from every pore in his body. He reminded Lena of Pig Pen from the Peanuts comic strip. No matter how clean he was or how often he changed his clothes, the stench followed him like a dust cloud.

“What’s wrong?” he demanded, not even giving her time to shut the car door.

Lena shucked her wet parka onto the floorboard. Earlier, she had thrown on a jacket with two shirts underneath to help fight the cold. Still, even with the heat blasting, her teeth were chattering. It was as if her body had stored up all the chill while she was standing outside in the rain and only let it out now that she was safely sheltered.

She held her hands up to the vent. “God, it’s freezing.”

“What’s wrong?” Frank repeated. He made a show of pulling back his black leather glove so he could see his watch.

Lena shivered involuntarily. She couldn’t keep the excitement out of her voice. No cop would ever admit it to a civilian, but murders were the most exciting cases to work. Lena was so pumped through with adrenaline that she was surprised the cold was getting to her. Through chattering teeth, she told him, “It’s not a suicide.”

Frank looked even more annoyed. “Brock agree with you?”

Brock had gone back to sleep in his van while he waited for the chains to be cut, which they both knew because they could see his back molars from where they were sitting. “Brock wouldn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground,” Lena shot back. She rubbed her arms to coax some warmth back into her body.

Frank took out his flask and handed it to her. She took a quick sip, the whisky burning its way down her throat and into her stomach. Frank took a hefty drink of his own before returning the flask to his coat pocket.

She told him, “There’s a knife wound in the neck.”

“Brock’s?”

Lena gave him a withering glance. “The dead girl.” She leaned down and searched her parka for the wallet she had found in the pocket of the woman’s jacket.

Frank said, “Could be self-inflicted.”

“Not possible.” She put her hand to the back of her neck. “Blade went in about here. The killer was standing behind her. Probably took her by surprise.”

Frank grumbled, “You get that from one of your textbooks?”

Lena held her tongue, something she wasn’t used to doing. Frank had been interim police chief for the last four years. Everything that happened in the three cities that comprised Grant County fell under his purview. Madison and Avondale carried the usual drug problems and domestic violence, but Heartsdale was supposed to be easy. The college was here, and the affluent residents were vocal about crime.

Even without that, complicated cases had the tendency to turn Frank into an asshole. Actually, life in general could turn him into an asshole. His coffee going cold. The engine in his car not catching on the first try. The ink running dry in his pen. Frank hadn’t always been like this. He’d certainly leaned toward grumpy for as long as Lena had known him, but his attitude lately was tinged with an underlying fury that seemed ready to boil to the surface. Anything could set him off. In the blink of an eye he’d turn from being manageably irritated to downright mean.

At least in this particular matter Frank’s reluctance made sense. After thirty-five years of policing, a murder case was the last thing he wanted on his plate. Lena knew that he was sick of the job, sick of the people it brought him into contact with. He had lost two of his closest friends in the last six years. The only lake he wanted to be sitting in front of right now was in sunny Florida. He should’ve had a fishing pole and a beer in his hands, not a dead kid’s wallet.

“Looks fake,” Frank said, opening the wallet. Lena agreed. The leather was too shiny. The Prada logo was plastic.

“Allison Judith Spooner,” Lena told him, watching Frank try to peel apart the soaked plastic picture sleeves. “Twenty-one. Driver’s license is from Elba, Alabama. Her student ID’s in the back.”

“College.” Frank breathed out the word with something like despair. It was bad enough Allison Spooner had been found on or near state property. Add to that the fact that she was an out-of-state kid attending Grant Tech, and the case just got twenty times more political.

He asked, “Where’d you find the wallet?”

“In her jacket pocket. I guess she didn’t have a purse. Or maybe whoever killed her wanted us to know her identity.”

He was looking at the girl’s driver’s license photo.

“What is it?”

“Looks like that little waitress who works at the diner.”

The Grant Diner was on the opposite end of Main Street from the police station. Most of the force ate there for lunch. Lena stayed away from the place. She usually brown-bagged it, or, more often than not, didn’t eat.

She asked, “Did you know her?”

He shook his head and shrugged at the same time. “She was good-looking.”

Frank was right. Not many people had a flattering driver’s license photo, but Allison Spooner had been luckier than most. Her white teeth showed in a big smile. Her hair was pulled back off her face, revealing high cheekbones. There was merriment in her eyes, as if someone had just made a joke. This was all in sharp contrast to the body they had pulled out of the lake. Death had erased her vibrancy.

Frank said, “I didn’t know she was a student.”

“They usually don’t work in town,” Lena allowed. Grant Tech’s students tended to work on campus or not at all. They didn’t mix with the town and the town did its best not to mix with them.

Frank pointed out, “The school’s closed this week for Thanksgiving break. Why isn’t she home with her family?”

Lena didn’t have the answer. “There’s forty bucks in the wallet, so this wasn’t a robbery.”

Frank checked the money compartment anyway, his thick, gloved fingers finding the twenty and two tens glued together with lake water. “She could’ve been lonely. Decided to take the knife and end it herself.”

“She’d have to be a contortionist,” Lena insisted. “You’ll see when Brock gets her on the table. She was stabbed from behind.”

He gave a bone-weary sigh. “What about the chain and cinder blocks?”

“We can try Mann’s Hardware in town. Maybe the killer bought them there.”

He tried again. “You’re sure about the knife wound?”

She nodded.

Frank kept staring at the license photo. “Does she have a car?”

“If she does, it’s not in the vicinity.” Lena pressed the point. “Unless she carried forty pounds’ worth of cinder blocks and some chains through the woods…”

Frank finally closed the wallet and handed it back to her. “Why is it every Monday just gets shittier and shittier?”

Lena couldn’t answer him. Last week wasn’t that much better. A young mother and her daughter had been taken by a flash flood. The whole town was still reeling from the loss. There was no telling what they’d make of a pretty, young college girl being murdered.

She told Frank, “Brad’s trying to track down somebody from the college who can get into the registrar’s office and give us Spooner’s local address.” Brad Stephens had finally worked his way up from patrol to the rank of detective, but his new job didn’t have him doing much more than his old one did. He was still running errands.

Lena offered, “Once the scene is cleared, I’ll work on the death notification.”

“ Alabama ’s on central time.” Frank looked at his watch. “It’ll probably be better to call the parents direct instead of waking up the Elba P.D. this early in the morning.”

Lena checked her own watch. They were coming up on seven o’clock, which meant it was almost six in Alabama. If Elba was anything like Grant County, the detectives were on call during the night, but not expected to be at their desks until eight in the morning. Normally at this time of the day, Lena would be just getting out of bed and fumbling with the coffeemaker. “I’ll put in a courtesy call when we get back to the station.”

The car went quiet except for the brushing sound of rain against steel. A bolt of lightning, thin and mean, sparked in the sky. Lena instinctively flinched, but Frank just stared ahead at the lake. The divers weren’t worried about the lightning. They were taking turns with the bolt cutters, trying to disentangle the dead girl from the two cinder blocks.

Frank’s phone rang, a high-pitched warble that sounded like a bird sitting somewhere in the rain forest. He answered it with a gruff “Yeah.” He listened for a few seconds, then asked, “What about the parents?” Frank grumbled a string of curses under his breath. “Then go back inside and find out.” He snapped his phone shut. “Jackass.”

Lena gathered Brad had forgotten to get the parents’ information. “Where does Spooner live?”

“ Taylor Drive. Number sixteen and a half. Brad’s gonna meet us there if he manages to get his head out of his ass.” He put the engine in gear and slung his arm over the seat behind Lena as he backed up the car. The forest was dense and wet. Lena braced her palm against the dashboard as Frank slowly made his way back to the road.

“Sixteen and a half must mean she’s in a garage apartment,” Lena noted. Many of the local residents had converted their garages or empty toolsheds into the semblance of a living space so that they could charge exorbitant rent to the college students. Most students were so desperate to live off campus that they didn’t ask too many questions.

Frank said, “Gordon Braham’s the landlord.”

“Brad found that out?”

They hit a bump that made Frank’s teeth clamp together. “His mother told him.”

“Well.” Lena searched her mind for something positive to say about Brad. “Shows initiative that he found out who owns the house and the garage.”

“Initiative,” Frank mocked. “That kid’s gonna get his head shot off one day.”

Lena had known Brad for over ten years. Frank had known him even longer. They both still saw him as a goofy young boy, a teenager who looked out of place with his gun belt tightened high on his waist. Brad had put in his years in uniform and passed the right tests to garner his gold detective shield, but Lena had done this job long enough to know that there was a difference between a paperwork promotion and a street promotion. She could only hope that in a small town like Heartsdale, Brad’s lack of street smarts wouldn’t matter. He was good at filling out reports and talking to witnesses, but even after ten years behind the wheel of a squad car, he still tended to see the good in people instead of the bad.

Lena had been on the job less than a week when she’d realized that there was no such thing as a truly good person.

Herself included.

She didn’t want to waste time worrying about Brad right now. She flipped through the photographs in Allison Spooner’s wallet as Frank made his way through the forest. There was a picture of an orange tabby cat lying in a ray of sunshine, and a candid snapshot that showed Allison with a woman Lena assumed was her mother. The third photo showed Allison sitting on a park bench. On her right was a man who looked a few years younger than she was. He was wearing a baseball cap pulled down low and had his hands tucked deep into the pockets of his baggy pants. On Allison’s left was an older woman with stringy blond hair and heavy makeup. Her jeans were skintight. There was a hardness to her eyes. She could have been thirty or three hundred. All three of them sat close together. The boy had his arm around Allison Spooner’s shoulders.

Lena showed Frank the picture. He asked, “Family?”

She studied the photo, concentrating on the background. “Looks like this was taken on campus.” She showed Frank. “See the white building in the back? I think that’s the student center.”

“That girl don’t look like a college student to me.”

He meant the older blonde. “She looks local.” She had the unmistakably trashy, bleach-blond air of a town-bred girl. Fake wallet aside, Allison Spooner appeared to be several rungs up on the social ladder. It didn’t jibe that the two would be friends. “Maybe Spooner had a drug problem?” Lena guessed. Nothing crossed class lines like methamphetamine.

They’d finally made it to the main road. The back wheels of the car gave one final spin in the mud as Frank pulled onto asphalt. “Who called it in?”

Lena shook her head. “The 911 call was made from a cell phone. The number was blocked. Female voice, but she wouldn’t leave her name.”

“What’d she say?”

Lena carefully thumbed back through her notebook so the damp pages would not tear. She found the transcription and read aloud, “‘Female voice: My friend has been missing since this afternoon. I think she killed herself. 911 Operator: What makes you think she killed herself? Female voice: She got into a fight last night with her boyfriend. She said she was going to drown herself up by Lover’s Point.’ The operator tried to keep her on the line, but she hung up after that.”

Frank was quiet. She saw his throat work. His shoulders were slumped so low that he looked like a gangbanger holding on to the steering wheel. He’d been fighting the possibility that this was a murder since Lena got into the car.

She asked, “What do you think?”

“Lover’s Point,” Frank repeated. “Only a townie would call it that.”

Lena held the notebook in front of the heating vents, trying to dry the pages. “The boyfriend is probably the kid in the picture.”

Frank didn’t pick up on her train of thought. “So, the 911 call came in, and Brad drove out to the lake and found what?”

“The note was under one of the shoes. Allison’s ring and watch were inside.” Lena bent down again to the plastic evidence bags buried in the deep pockets of her parka. She shifted through the victim’s belongings and found the note, which she showed to Frank. “‘I want it over.’”

He stared at the writing so long she was worried he wasn’t minding the road.

“Frank?”

One of the wheels grazed the edge of the asphalt. Frank jerked the steering wheel. Lena held on to the dash. She knew better than to say anything about his driving. Frank wasn’t the type of man who liked to be corrected, especially by a woman. Especially by Lena.

She said, “Strange note for a suicide. Even a fake suicide.”

“Short and to the point.” Frank kept one hand on the wheel as he searched his coat pocket. He slid on his reading glasses and stared at the smeared ink. “She didn’t sign it.”

Lena checked the road. He was riding the white line again. “No.”

Frank glanced up and steered back toward the center line. “Does this look like a woman’s handwriting to you?”

Lena hadn’t considered the possibility. She studied the single sentence, which was written in a wide, round print. “It looks neat, but I couldn’t say if a man or woman wrote it. We could get a handwriting expert. Allison’s a student, so there are probably notes she took from classes or essays and tests. I’m sure we could find something to compare it with.”

Frank didn’t address any of her suggestions. Instead, he said, “I remember when my daughter was her age.” He cleared his throat a few times. “She used to draw circles over her i’s instead of dots. I wonder if she still does that.”

Lena kept quiet. She had worked with Frank her entire career, but she didn’t know much about his personal life beyond what most everyone else in town knew. He had two children by his first wife, but that was many wives ago. They’d moved out of town. He didn’t seem to have contact with any of them. The subject of his family was one he never broached, and right now Lena was too cold and too wired to start sharing.

She put the focus back on the case. “So, someone stabbed Allison in the neck, chained her to some cinder blocks, threw her in the lake, then decided to make it look like a suicide.” Lena shook her head at the stupidity. “Another criminal mastermind.”

Frank gave a snort of agreement. She could tell his mind was on other things. He took off his glasses and stared at the road ahead.

She didn’t want to, but she asked, “What’s going on?”

“Nothing.”

“How many years have I been riding with you, Frank?”

He made another grunting noise, but he relented easily enough. “Mayor’s been trying to track me down.”

Lena felt a lump rise in her throat. Clem Waters, the mayor of Heartsdale, had been trying for some time to make Frank’s job as interim chief a more permanent position.

Frank said, “I don’t really want the job, but there’s nobody else lining up to take it.”

“No,” she agreed. No one wanted the job, not least of all because they would never in a million years match the man who’d held it before.

“Benefits are good,” Frank said. “Nice retirement package. Better health care, pension.”

She managed to swallow. “That’s good, Frank. Jeffrey would want you to take it.”

“He’d want me to retire before I have a heart attack chasing some junkie across the campus quad.” Frank took out his flask and offered it to Lena. She shook her head and watched him take a long pull, one eye on the road as he tilted back his head. Lena ’s focus stayed on his hand. There was a slight tremor to it. His hands had been shaking a lot lately, especially in the morning.

Without warning, the rain’s steady beat turned into a harsh staccato. The noise echoed in the car, filling up the space. Lena pressed her tongue to the roof of her mouth. She should tell Frank now that she wanted to resign, that there was a job in Macon waiting for her if she could bring herself to make the leap. She had moved to Grant County to be near her sister, but her sister had died almost a decade ago. Her uncle, her only living relative, had retired to the Florida Panhandle. Her best friend had taken a job at a library up North. Her boyfriend lived two hours away. There was nothing keeping Lena here except inertia and loyalty to a man who had been dead for four years and probably hadn’t thought she was a good cop anyway.

Frank used his knees to hold the steering wheel steady as he screwed the cap back on the flask. “I won’t take it unless you say it’s okay.”

She turned her head in surprise. “Frank-”

“I mean it,” he interrupted. “If it’s not okay with you, then I’ll tell the mayor to shove it up his ass.” He gave a harsh chuckle that rattled the phlegm in his chest. “Might let you come along to see the look on the little prick’s face.”

She made herself say, “You should take the job.”

“I don’t know, Lee. I’m gettin’ so damn old. Children are all grown up. Wives have moved on. Most days, I wonder why I even get out of bed.” He gave another raspy chuckle. “Might find me in the lake one day with my watch in my shoes. But for real.”

She didn’t want to hear the tiredness in his voice. Frank had been on the job twenty years longer than Lena, but she could feel the weariness in his tone like it was her own. This was why she had been spending every free minute of her time taking classes at the college, trying to get a bachelor’s degree in forensic science so she could work on the crime scene investigation end instead of enforcement.

Lena could handle the early morning calls that yanked her from sleep. She could handle the carnage and the dead bodies and the misery that death brought to each and every moment of your life. What she could not take anymore was being on the front lines. There was too much responsibility. There was too much risk. You could make one mistake and it could cost a life-not your own, but another person’s. You could end up getting someone’s son killed. Someone’s husband. Someone’s friend. You found out fairly quickly that another person dying on your watch was far worse than the specter of your own death.

Frank said, “Listen, I need to tell you something.”

Lena glanced at him, wondering at his sudden openness. His shoulders had slumped even more and his knuckles were white from gripping the steering wheel. She ran through the catalogue of things she might be in trouble for at work, but what came out of his mouth took her breath away. “Sara Linton’s back in town.”

Lena tasted whisky and bile in the back of her throat. For a brief, panicked moment, she thought she was going to throw up. Lena could not face Sara. The accusations. The guilt. Even the thought of driving down her street was too much. Lena always took the long way to work, bypassing Sara’s house, bypassing the misery that churned up every time she thought of the place.

Frank kept his voice low. “I heard it in town, so I gave her dad a call. He said she was driving down for Thanksgiving today.” He cleared his throat. “I wouldn’t’a told you, but I’ve stepped up patrols outside their house. You’d see it on the call sheet and wonder-so, now you know.”

Lena tried to swallow the sour taste in her mouth. It felt like glass going down her throat. “Okay,” she managed. “Thanks.”

Frank took a sharp turn onto Taylor Road, blowing through a stop sign. Lena grabbed the side of the door to brace herself, but the movement was automatic. Her mind was caught up in how to ask Frank for time off during the middle of a case. She would take the week and drive over to Macon, maybe scope out some apartments until the holiday was past and Sara was back in Atlanta where she belonged.

“Look at this dumbass,” Frank mumbled as he slowed the car.

Brad Stephens was standing outside his parked patrol car. He was wearing a tan suit pressed to within an inch of its life. His white shirt almost glowed against the blue striped tie that his mama had probably laid out for him with the rest of his clothes this morning. What was obviously bothering Frank was the umbrella in Brad’s hand. It was bright pink except for the Mary Kay logo stitched in yellow.

“Go easy on him,” Lena tried, but Frank was already getting out of the car. He wrestled with his own umbrella-a large black canopy that he’d gotten from Brock at the funeral home-and stomped over to Brad. Lena waited in the car, watching Frank berate the young detective. She knew what it felt like to be on the other end of Frank’s tirades. He had been her trainer when she first entered patrol, then her partner when she made detective. If not for Frank, Lena would’ve washed out of the job the first week. The fact that he didn’t think women belonged on the force made her damned determined to prove him otherwise.

And Jeffrey had been her buffer. Lena had come to the realization some time ago that she had a tendency to be mirror to whoever was in front of her. When Jeffrey was in charge, they did everything the right way-or at least as right as they could. He was a solid cop, the kind of man who had the trust of the community because his character came through in everything he did. That was why the mayor had hired him in the first place. Clem wanted to break the old ways, to pull Grant County into the twenty-first century. Ben Carver, the outgoing chief of police, was as crooked as a stick in water. Frank had been his right-hand man and just as jagged. Under Jeffrey, Frank had changed his ways. They all had. Or at least they had as long as Jeffrey was alive.

Within the first week of Frank being put in charge, things had started to slip. It was slow at first, and hard to spot. A Breathalyzer result had gone missing, freeing one of Frank’s hunting buddies from a DUI. An unusually careful pot dealer at the college was suddenly caught with a huge stash in the trunk of his car. Tickets disappeared. Cash was missing from the evidence locker. Requisitions turned iffy. The service contract for the county cars went to a garage Frank had part ownership in.

Like a dam breaking, these small cracks had led to larger issues until the whole thing burst open and every cop on the force was doing something they shouldn’t do. Which was one of the biggest reasons Lena had to get out. Macon didn’t do things the easy way. The city was bigger than the three cities of Grant County combined, topping out at a population of around a hundred thousand. People sued if they were wronged by the police, and they tended to win. Macon ’s murder rate was one of the highest in the state. Burglaries, sex crimes, violent crimes-there was plenty of opportunity for a detective, but even more work for a crime scene tech. Lena was two courses away from getting her criminal science degree. There were no shortcuts in evidence collection. You dusted for prints. You vacuumed the carpets for fibers. You photographed the blood and other fluids. You catalogued the evidence. Then you handed it all off to someone else. The lab techs were responsible for doing the science. The detectives were responsible for catching the bad guys. All Lena would be was a glorified cleaner with a badge and state benefits. She could spend the rest of her life processing crime scenes, then retire young enough to supplement her pension with private investigation work.

She would end up being one of those asshole private detectives who were always putting their noses where they didn’t belong.

“ Adams!” Frank slammed his hand on the hood of the car. Water splashed up like a dog shaking itself. He was finished yelling at Brad and was spoiling for someone else to rip into.

Lena took the dripping wet parka off the floor and put it on, tightening the strings on the hood so her hair wouldn’t get soaked. She caught a look at herself in the rearview mirror. Her hair had started to twist into curls. The rain had brought out her Irish Catholic father’s roots and managed to suppress her Mexican grandmother’s.

“ Adams!” Frank yelled again.

By the time she got out of the car, he was concentrating another tirade on Brad, yelling at him about how he was wearing his gun holster too low on his belt.

Lena forced her lips into a tight smile, trying to give Brad some silent support. She had been a dumb cop herself many years ago. Maybe Jeffrey had thought she was worthless, too. The fact that he had tried to turn her into something worthwhile was a testament to his determination. One of the few reasons Lena could give herself for not taking the job in Macon was thinking that she could do something to help Brad be a better cop. She could keep him away from the corruption, train him to do things the right way.

Do as I say, not as I do.

“Are you sure this is it?” Frank demanded. He meant the house.

Brad’s throat worked. “Yes, sir. That’s what the college had on file. Sixteen and a half Taylor Drive.”

“Did you knock on the door?”

Brad seemed unsure of which answer was the right one. “No, sir. You said to wait for you.”

“You got a phone number for the owner?”

“No, sir. His name is Mr. Braham, but-”

“Christ,” Frank muttered, stalking up the driveway.

Lena couldn’t help but feel sorry for Brad. She thought about reaching up and patting him on the shoulder, but he tilted his bright pink umbrella the wrong way and ended up sending a sheet of rain down on her head.

“Oh,” Brad breathed. “Gosh, I’m sorry, Lena.”

She pressed down some expletives that wanted to come and walked ahead of him, joining Frank.

Sixteen and a half Taylor Drive was a one-story garage that was slightly deeper than a minivan and twice as wide. “Converted” was a loose term, because the structure had not been altered well on the outside. The roll-up metal door was still in place, black construction paper covering the windows. Because of the overcast day, the lights inside the apartment showed through the cracks in the aluminum siding. Tufts of pink fiberglass insulation were matted down by rain. The tin roof was rusted red, a blue tarp covering the back corner.

Lena stared at the structure, wondering why any woman in her right mind would live here.

“Scooter,” Frank noted. There was a purple Vespa parked by the garage. A bike chain attached the back wheel to an eyebolt screwed into the concrete drive. He asked, “Same chain as what was on the girl?”

She saw a flash of bright yellow under the wheel. “Looks like the same padlock.”

Lena glanced toward the main house, a split ranch with a sloping gable on the front. The windows were dark. There was no car by the house or on the street. They would have to find the landlord for permission to go into the garage. She flipped open her cell phone to call Marla Simms, the station’s elderly secretary. Between Marla and her best friend, Myrna, they represented a combined Rolodex of every person in town.

Brad pressed his face up to one of the windows in the garage door. He squinted, trying to see past a rip in the construction paper. “Jeesh,” he whispered, backing up so quickly that he almost tripped over his feet. He drew his gun and went into a crouch.

Lena ’s Glock was in her hand before she thought about putting it there. Her heart had jumped into her throat. Adrenaline made her senses sharpen. A quick look over her shoulder showed Frank had drawn his weapon, too. They all stood there, guns pointed toward the closed garage door.

Lena motioned for Brad to move back. She kept a low crouch as she walked up to the garage window. The tear in the construction paper seemed larger now, more like a target she was about to put her face in front of. Quickly, she glanced inside. There was a man standing at a folding table. He was wearing a black mask. He looked up as if he heard a noise, and Lena ducked down again, her heart racing. She stood still, counting off the seconds as her ears strained to hear footsteps, a gun loading. There was nothing, and she slowly let out the breath she’d been holding.

She held up one finger to Frank: one person. She mouthed the word “mask,” and saw his eyes widen in surprise. Frank indicated his gun and she shrugged as she shook her head. She hadn’t been able to see whether or not the man was holding a weapon.

Without being told, Brad walked toward the side of the building. He went around the back, obviously checking for exits. Lena counted the seconds, reaching twenty-six by the time he showed up on the other side of the building. Brad shook his head. No back door. No windows. Lena indicated that he should go down the driveway and serve as backup. Let her and Frank handle this. Brad started to protest, but she cut him with a look. Finally, he hung his head in surrender. She waited until he was at least fifteen feet away before nodding to Frank that she was ready to go.

Frank walked toward the garage and leaned down, wrapping his hand around the steel handle at the base of the roll-up door. He checked with Lena, then yanked up on the handle hard and fast.

The man inside was startled, his eyes going wide behind the black ski mask covering his face. He had a knife in his gloved hand, raised as if to charge. The blade was long and thin, at least eight inches. What looked very much like dried blood was caked around the handle. The concrete beneath his feet was stained a dark brown. More blood.

“Drop it,” Frank said.

The intruder didn’t comply. Lena took a few steps to her right, closing any escape routes. He was standing behind a large cafeteria table with paperwork strewn across it. A twin bed was angled out from the wall so that between the bed frame and the table, the entire room was cut down the middle.

“Put down the knife,” Lena told him. She had to turn sideways to get past the bed. There was another dark stain on the concrete under the bed. A bucket with brown water and a filthy-looking sponge was beside it. She kept her gun trained at the man’s chest, stepping carefully around boxes and scattered pieces of paper. He glanced nervously between Lena and Frank, the knife still raised in his fist.

“Drop it,” Frank repeated.

The man’s hands started to lower. Lena let herself exhale, thinking this was going to go easy. She was wrong. Without warning, the man shoved the table violently to the side, slamming it into Lena ’s legs, sending her back onto the bed. Her head grazed the frame as she rolled onto the concrete floor. A shot rang out. Lena didn’t think it was from her gun, but her left hand felt hot, almost on fire. Someone shouted. There was a muffled groan. She scrambled to stand. Her vision blurred.

Frank was lying on his side in the middle of the garage. His gun lay on the ground beside him. His fist was clamped around his arm. She thought at first that he was having a heart attack. The blood seeping between his fingers showed that he had been cut.

“Go!” he yelled. “Now!”

“Shit,” Lena hissed, pushing away the table. She felt nauseated. Her vision was still blurred, but it sharpened on the black-clad suspect bolting down the driveway. Brad was standing stock-still, mouth open in surprise. The intruder ran right past him.

“Stop him!” she screamed. “He stabbed Frank!”

Brad jerked around, giving chase. Lena ran after them, sneakers slapping against the wet ground, water flying up into her face. She rounded the end of the driveway and flew down the street. Ahead, she saw Brad gaining on the suspect. He was taller, fitter, every stride closing the gap between him and the intruder.

Brad yelled, “Police! Stop!”

Everything slowed. The rain seemed to freeze in midair, tiny droplets trapped in time and space.

The suspect stopped. He reared around, slicing the knife through the air. Lena reached for her gun, felt the empty holster. There was a popping sound of metal breaking through flesh, then a loud groan. Brad crumpled to the ground.

“No,” Lena gasped, running to Brad, falling to her knees. The knife was still in his belly. Blood seeped into his shirt, turning the white to crimson. “Brad-”

“It hurts,” he told her. “It hurts so bad.”

Lena dialed her cell phone, praying the ambulance team was still at the lake and not making the half-hour trip back to the station. Behind her, she heard loud footsteps, shoes pounding pavement. With startling speed, Frank sprinted past her, yelling with uncontrolled rage. The suspect turned around to see what hell was about to be unleashed upon him just as Frank tackled him to the asphalt. Teeth shattered. Bones snapped. Frank’s fists were flying, a windmill of pain raining down on the suspect.

Lena pressed the phone to her ear. She listened to the rings that were going unanswered at the station.

“ Lena…” Brad whispered. “Don’t tell my mom I messed up.”

“You didn’t mess up.” She used her hand to shield the rain from his face. His eyelids fluttered, trying to close. “No,” she begged. “Please don’t do this to me.”

“I’m sorry, Lena.”

“No!” she yelled.

Not again.

CHAPTER THREE

SARA LINTON NO LONGER THOUGHT OF GRANT COUNTY AS HER home. It was of another place, another time, as tangible to her as Rebecca’s Manderley or Heathcliff’s moors. As she drove through the outskirts of town, she couldn’t help but notice that everything looked the same, yet nothing was quite real. The closed military base that was slowly reverting to nature. The trailer parks on the bad side of the railroad tracks. The abandoned box store that had been converted into a storage center.

Three and a half years had passed since Sara had been home, and she wanted to think that her life was okay now, getting closer to a new normal. Actually, her current life in Atlanta looked a lot like it would have if she had stayed there after medical school instead of moving back to Grant County. She was the chief pediatric attending in Grady Hospital ’s emergency room, where students followed her around like puppy dogs and the security guards carried multiple clips on their belts in case the gangbangers tried to finish the job they started on the streets. An epidemiologist who worked for the Centers for Disease Control on Emory’s campus had started asking her out. She went to dinner parties and grabbed coffee with friends. Occasionally, on the weekends, she would take the dogs to Stone Mountain Park to give the greyhounds space to run. She read a lot. She watched more television than she should. She was living a perfectly normal, perfectly boring life.

And yet, the minute she saw the sign announcing that she had officially entered Grant County, her carefully constructed façade started to crack. She pulled over to the side of the road, feeling a constriction in her chest. The dogs stirred in the back seat. Sara forced herself not to give in. She was stronger than this. She had fought tooth and nail to climb out of the depression she’d spiraled into after her husband’s death, and she was not going to allow herself to fall back in just because of a stupid road sign.

“Hydrogen,” she said. “Helium, lithium, beryllium.” It was an old trick from her childhood, listing out the elements from the periodic table to take her mind off the monsters that might be lurking under her bed. “Neon, sodium, magnesium…” She recited from memory until her heart stopped racing and her breathing returned to normal.

Finally, the moment passed, and she found herself laughing at the thought of Jeffrey finding out she was chanting the periodic table on the side of the road. He’d been a jock in high school-handsome, charming, and effortlessly cool. It had tickled him no end to see Sara’s geeky side.

She reached around and gave the dogs some attention so they would settle back down. Instead of starting the car again, she sat for a while, staring out the window at the empty road leading into town. Her fingers went to the collar of her shirt, then lower to the ring she wore on a necklace. Jeffrey’s Auburn class ring. He’d been on the football team until he got tired of warming the bench. The ring was bulky, too big for her finger, but touching it was the closest she could come to touching him. It was a talisman. Sometimes, she found herself touching it without remembering putting her hand there.

Her only consolation was that there was nothing left unsaid between them. Jeffrey knew that Sara loved him. He knew there was no part of her that did not belong wholly and completely to him, just as she knew that he felt the same. When he died, his last words were to her. His last thoughts, his last memories, all were of Sara. Just as she knew that her last thoughts would always be of him.

She kissed the ring before tucking it back into her shirt. Carefully, Sara pulled the car off the shoulder and back onto the road. The overwhelming feeling threatened to come back as she drove farther into town. It was so much easier to push away the things that she had lost when they weren’t staring her right in the face. The high school football stadium where she had first met Jeffrey. The park where they had walked the dogs together. The restaurants where they ate. The church that Sara’s mother had occasionally guilted them into attending.

There had to be one place, one memory, that was untouched by this man. Long before Jeffrey Tolliver even knew there was such a thing as Grant County, she’d had a life here. Sara had grown up in Heartsdale, gone to the high school, joined the science club, helped out at the women’s shelter where her mother volunteered, done the occasional odd job with her father. Sara had lived in a house Jeffrey had never stepped foot in. She’d driven a car he’d never seen. She had shared her first kiss with a local boy whose father owned the hardware store. She had gone to dances at the church and attended potlucks and football games.

All without Jeffrey.

Three years before he entered her life, Sara had taken the part-time job of county medical examiner in order to buy out her partner at the children’s clinic. She had kept the job long after her loan had been paid off. She was surprised to find out that helping the dead was sometimes more rewarding than saving the living. Every case was a puzzle, every body riddled with clues to a mystery that only Sara could solve. A different part of her brain that she hadn’t even known existed was engaged by the coroner’s job. She had loved both her jobs with equal passion. She had worked countless cases, given testimony in court on countless suspects and circumstances.

Now, Sara could not remember one detail from any of them.

What she could vividly recall was the day that Jeffrey Tolliver had strolled into town. The mayor had wooed him away from the Birmingham police force to take over for the retiring chief of police. Every woman Sara knew practically tittered with joy whenever Jeffrey’s name was mentioned. He was witty and charming. He was tall, dark, and handsome. He’d played college football. He drove a cherry red Mustang, and when he walked, he had the athletic grace of a panther.

That Jeffrey set his sights on Sara had shocked the entire town, Sara included. She wasn’t the type of girl who got the good-looking guy. She was the type of girl who watched her sister or her best friend get the good-looking guy. And yet, their casual dates turned into something deeper, so that a few years later, no one was surprised when Jeffrey asked her to marry him. Their relationship had been hard work, and God knew there had been ups and downs, but in the end, she had known with every fiber of her being that she belonged to Jeffrey and, more important, that he belonged completely to her.

Sara wiped her tears with the back of her hand as she drove. The longing was the hardest part, the physical ache her body felt at the memory of him. There was no part of town that didn’t slap her in the face with what she had lost. These roads had been kept safe by him. These people had called him friend. And Jeffrey had died here. The town he’d loved so much had become his crime scene. There was the church where they mourned his death. There was the street where a long line of cars had pulled over as his casket was driven out of town.

She would only be here for four days. She could do anything for four days.

Almost anything.

Sara took the long way to her parents’ house, bypassing Main Street and the children’s clinic. The bad storms that had followed her all the way from Atlanta had finally subsided, but she could tell from the dark clouds in the sky that this was only a temporary reprieve. The weather seemed to fit her mood lately-sudden, violent storms with fleeting rays of sunshine.

Because of the coming Thanksgiving holiday, lunchtime traffic was nonexistent. No cars were snaking a long line toward the college. No noontime shoppers were heading into downtown. Still, she took a left instead of a right at Lakeshore Drive, going two miles out of her way around Lake Grant so that she would not drive past her old house. Her old life.

The Linton family home, at least, was welcoming in its familiarity. The house had been tinkered with over the years-additions tacked on, bathrooms added and updated. Sara’s father had built out the apartment space over the garage when she went away to college so that she would have a place to stay during summer break. Tessa, Sara’s younger sister, had lived there for almost ten years while she waited for her life to start. Eddie Linton was a plumber by trade. He had taught both his girls the business, but only Tessa had stuck around long enough to do anything with it. That Sara had chosen medical school instead of a life navigating dank crawl spaces with her sister and father was a disappointment Eddie still tried his best to cover. He was the kind of father who was most happy when his daughters were close by.

Sara didn’t know how Eddie felt about Tessa leaving the family business. Around the time Sara had lost Jeffrey, Tessa had gotten married and moved her life eight thousand miles away to work with children in South Africa. She was as impulsive as Sara was steady, though no one would have guessed when the girls were teenagers that either of them would be where they were today. The idea of Tessa as a missionary was still hard for Sara to believe.

“Sissy!” Tessa bounded out of the house, her pregnant belly swaying as she angled herself down the front stairs. “What took you so long? I’m starving!”

Sara was barely out of the car when her sister threw her arms around her. The hug turned from a greeting into something deeper, and Sara felt the darkness coming back. She was no longer certain that she could do this for four minutes, let alone four days.

Tessa mumbled, “Oh, Sissy, everything’s changed.”

Sara blinked back tears. “I know.”

Tessa pulled away. “They got a pool.”

Sara laughed in surprise. “A what?”

“Mama and Daddy put in a pool. With a hot tub.”

Sara wiped her eyes, still laughing, loving her sister more than words could ever convey. “You’re kidding me?” Sara and Tessa had spent most of their childhood begging their parents to put in a pool.

“And Mama took the plastic off the couch.”

Sara gave her sister a stern look, as if to ask when the punch line was coming.

“They redecorated the den, changed all the light fixtures, redid the kitchen, painted over the pencil marks Daddy made on the door… It’s like we never even lived there.”

Sara couldn’t say she mourned the loss of the pencil marks, which had recorded their height until the eighth grade, when she had officially become the tallest person in her family. She grabbed the dog leashes from the passenger seat. “What about the den?”

“All the paneling’s down. They even put up crown molding.” Tessa tucked her hands into her expansive hips. “They got new lawn furniture. The nice wicker-not the kind that pinches your ass every time you sit down.” Thunder made a distant clapping sound. Tessa waited for it to pass. “It looks like something out of Southern Living.”

Sara blocked the back door of the SUV as she wrangled with her two greyhounds, trying to snap on their leashes before they bolted off into the street. “Did you ask Mama what made her change everything?”

Tessa clicked her tongue as she took the leashes from Sara. Billy and Bob jumped down, heeling beside her. “She said that she could finally have nice things now that we were gone.”

Sara pursed her lips. “I’m not going to pretend that doesn’t sting.” She walked around the car and opened the trunk. “When’s Lemuel coming?”

“He’s trying to get a flight out, but those bush pilots won’t take off unless every chicken and goat in the village buys a ticket.” Tessa had come home a few weeks ago to have the baby in the States. Her last pregnancy had ended badly, the child lost. Understandably, Lemuel didn’t want Tessa to take any chances, but Sara found it odd that he hadn’t yet joined his wife. Her due date was less than a month away.

Sara said, “I hope I get to see him before I leave.”

“Oh, Sissy, that’s so sweet. Thank you for lying.”

Sara was about to respond with what she hoped was a more artful lie when she noticed a patrol car driving down the street at a slow crawl. The man behind the wheel tipped his hat at Sara. Their eyes met, and she felt herself tearing up again.

Tessa stroked the dogs. “They’ve been driving by like that all morning.”

“How did they know I was coming?”

“I might’ve let it slip at the Shop ’n Save the other day.”

“Tess,” Sara groaned. “You know Jill June got on the phone as soon as you left. I wanted to keep this quiet. Now everybody and their dog’ll be dropping by.”

Tessa kissed Bob with a loud smack. “Then you’ll get to see your friends, too, won’t you, boy?” She gave Bill a kiss to even things out. “You’ve gotten two calls already.”

Sara pulled out her suitcase and closed the lift gate. “Let me guess. Marla at the station and Myrna from down the street, both trying to milk every ounce of gossip.”

“No, actually.” Tessa walked alongside Sara back to the house. “A girl named Julie something. She sounded young.”

Sara’s patients had often called her at home, but she didn’t remember anyone named Julie. “Did she leave a number?”

“Mama took it down.”

Sara lugged her suitcase up the porch stairs, wondering where her father was. Probably rolling around on the plastic-free couch. “Who else called?”

“It was the same girl both times. She said she needed your help.”

“Julie,” Sara repeated, the name still not ringing any bells.

Tessa stopped her on the porch. “I need to tell you something.”

Sara felt a creeping dread, instinctively knowing bad news was coming. Tessa was about to speak when the front door opened.

“You’re nothing but skin and bones,” Cathy chided. “I knew you weren’t eating enough up there.”

“It’s good to see you, too, Mother.” Sara kissed her cheek. Eddie came up behind her, and she kissed his cheek, too. Her parents petted the dogs, cooing at them, and Sara tried not to notice that the greyhounds were getting a warmer welcome.

Eddie grabbed Sara’s suitcase. “I got this.” Before she could say anything else, he headed up the stairs.

Sara took off her sneakers as she watched her father leave. “Is something-”

Cathy shook her head in lieu of an explanation.

Tessa kicked off her sandals. The freshly painted wall was scuffed where she had obviously done this many times before. She said, “Mama, you need to tell her.”

Cathy exchanged a look with Tessa that raised the hair on the back of Sara’s neck.

“Tell me what?”

Her mother started off with an assurance. “Everybody’s fine.”

“Except?”

“Brad Stephens got hurt this morning.”

Brad had been one of her patients, then one of Jeffrey’s cops. “What happened?”

“He got stabbed trying to arrest somebody. He’s at Macon General.”

Sara leaned against the wall. “Stabbed where? Is he all right?”

“I don’t know the details. His mama’s at the hospital with him now. I guess we’ll get a phone call one way or another tonight.” She rubbed Sara’s arm. “Now, let’s not worry until it’s time to worry. It’s in the Lord’s hands now.”

Sara felt blindsided. “Why would anyone hurt Brad?”

Tessa supplied, “They think it had something to do with the girl they pulled out of the lake this morning.”

“What girl?”

Cathy cut off any further conversation on the matter. “They don’t know anything, and we are not going to add to these rampant rumors.”

Sara pressed, “Mama-”

“No more.” Cathy squeezed her arm before letting go. “Let’s remember the things we have to be thankful for, like both of my girls being home at the same time.”

Cathy and Tessa walked down the hall toward the kitchen, the dogs following them. Sara stayed in the foyer. The news about Brad had been brushed over so quickly that she hadn’t had time to process it. Brad Stephens had been one of Sara’s first patients at the children’s clinic. She had watched him grow from a gawky teenager into a clean-cut young man. Jeffrey had kept him on a tight leash. He was more like a puppy than a cop-a sort of mascot at the station. Of course, Sara knew better than anyone else that being a cop, even in a small town, was a dangerous job.

She fought the urge to call the hospital in Macon and find out about Brad. An injured cop always brought a crowd. Blood was donated. Vigils were started. At least two fellow police officers stayed with the family at all times.

But Sara wasn’t part of that community anymore. She wasn’t the police chief’s wife. She had resigned as the town’s medical examiner four years ago. Brad’s condition was none of her business. Besides, she was supposed to be on vacation right now. She had worked back-to-back shifts in order to get the time off, trading weekends and full moons in exchange for the Thanksgiving holiday. This week was going to be hard enough without Sara sticking her nose into other people’s problems. She had enough problems of her own.

Sara looked at the framed photographs that lined the hallway, familiar scenes from her childhood. Cathy had put a fresh coat of paint on everything, but if the paint had not been recent, there would have been a large rectangle near the door that was lighter in color than the rest of the wall: Jeffrey and Sara’s wedding picture. Sara could still see it in her head-not the picture, but the actual day. The way the breeze stirred her hair, which miraculously had not frizzed in the humidity. Her pale blue dress and matching sandals. Jeffrey in dark pants and a white dress shirt, ironed so crisp that he hadn’t bothered to button the cuffs. They had been in the backyard of her parents’ house, the lake offering a spectacular sunset. Jeffrey’s hair was still damp from the shower, and when she put her head on his shoulder, she could smell the familiar scent of his skin.

“Hey, baby.” Eddie was standing on the bottom stair behind her. Sara turned around. She smiled, because she wasn’t used to having to look up to see her father.

He asked, “You get bad weather coming down?”

“Not too bad.”

“I guess you took the bypass?”

“Yep.”

He stared at her, a sad smile on his face. Eddie had loved Jeffrey like a son. Every time he spoke to Sara, she felt his loss in double measure.

“You know,” he began, “you’re getting to be just as beautiful as your mother.”

She could feel her cheeks redden from the compliment. “I’ve missed you, Daddy.”

He took her hand in his, kissed her palm, then pressed it over his heart. “You hear about the two hats hanging on a peg by the door?”

She laughed. “No. What about them?”

“One says to the other, ‘You stay here. I’ll go on a head.’”

Sara shook her head at the bad pun. “Daddy, that’s awful.”

The phone rang, the old-fashioned sound of an actual ringing bell filling the house. There were two telephones in the Linton home: one in the kitchen and one upstairs in the master bedroom. The girls were only allowed to use the one in the kitchen, and the cord was so long from being stretched into the pantry or outside, or anywhere else there might be an infinitesimal bit of privacy, that it had lost all of its curl.

“Sara!” Cathy called. “Julie is on the phone for you.”

Eddie patted her arm. “Go.”

She walked down the hall and into the kitchen, which was so beautiful that she froze mid-stride. “Holy crap.”

Tessa said, “Wait till you see the pool.”

Sara ran her hand along the new center island. “This is marble.” Previously, the Linton décor had favored Brady Bunch orange tiles and knotty pine cabinetry. She turned around and saw the new refrigerator. “Is that Sub-Zero?”

“Sara.” Cathy held out the phone, the only thing in the kitchen that had not been updated.

She exchanged an outraged look with Tessa as she put the phone to her ear. “Hello?”

“Dr. Linton?”

“Speaking.” She opened the door on the cherry wall cabinet, marveling at the antique glass panels. There was no answer on the phone. She said, “Hello? This is Dr. Linton.”

“Ma’am? I’m sorry. This is Julie Smith. Can you hear me okay?”

The connection was bad, obviously a cell phone. It didn’t help matters that the girl was speaking barely above a whisper. Sara didn’t recognize the name, though she guessed from the twangy accent that Julie had grown up in one of the poorer areas of town. “What can I do for you?”

“I’m sorry. I’m calling from work and I gotta be quiet.”

Sara felt her brow furrow. “I can hear you fine. What do you need?”

“I know you don’t know me, and I’m sorry to be calling you like this, but you have a patient named Tommy Braham. You know Tommy, don’t you?”

Sara ran through all the Tommys she could think of, then came up not with a face, but with a disposition. He was just another young boy who’d had myriad office visits for the sorts of things you would expect: a bead shoved up his nose. A watermelon seed in his ear. Unspecified belly aches on important school days. He stuck out mostly because his father, not his mother, had always brought him to the clinic, an unusual occurrence in Sara’s experience.

Sara told the girl, “I remember Tommy. How’s he doing?”

“That’s the thing.” She went quiet, and Sara could hear water running in the background. She waited it out until the girl continued, “Sorry. Like I was saying, he’s in trouble. I wouldn’t have called, but he told me to. He texted me from prison.”

“Prison?” Sara felt her heart sink. She hated to hear when one of her kids turned out bad, even if she couldn’t quite recall what he looked like. “What did he do?”

“He didn’t do anything, ma’am. That’s the point.”

“Okay.” Sara rephrased the question. “What was he convicted of?”

“Nothing as far as I know. He doesn’t even know if he’s arrested or what.”

Sara assumed the girl had confused prison with jail. “He’s at the police station on Main Street?” Tessa shot her a look and Sara shrugged, helpless to explain.

Julie told her, “Yes, ma’am. They got him downtown.”

“Okay, what do they think he did?”

“I guess they think he killed Allison, but there ain’t no way he-”

“Murder.” Sara did not let her finish the sentence. “I’m not sure what he wants me to do.” She felt compelled to add, “For this sort of situation, he needs a lawyer, not a doctor.”

“Yes, ma’am, I know the difference between a doctor and a lawyer.” Julie didn’t sound insulted by Sara’s clarification. “It’s just that he said he really needed someone who would listen to him, because they don’t believe that he was with Pippy all night, and he said that you were the only one who ever listened to him, and that one cop, she’s been really hard on him. She keeps staring at him like-”

Sara put her hand to her throat. “What cop?”

“I’m not sure. Some lady.”

That narrowed things down enough. Sara tried not to sound cold. “I really can’t get involved in this, Julie. If Tommy has been arrested, then by law, they have to provide him with a lawyer. Tell him to ask for Buddy Conford. He’s very good at helping people in these sorts of situations. All right?”

“Yes, ma’am.” She sounded disappointed, but not surprised. “Okay, then. I told him I’d try.”

“Well…” Sara did not know what else to say. “Good luck. To both of you.”

“Thank you, ma’am, and like I said, I’m sorry to bother you’uns over the holiday.”

“It’s all right.” Sara waited for the girl to respond, but there was only the sound of a flushing toilet, then a dead line.

Tessa asked, “What was that about?”

Sara hung up the phone and sat down at the table. “One of my old patients is in jail. They think he killed somebody. Not Brad-someone named Allison.”

Tessa asked, “Which patient was she calling about? I bet it’s the boy who stabbed Brad.”

Cathy slammed the refrigerator door to express her disapproval.

Still, Tessa pressed, “What’s his name?”

Sara studiously avoided her mother’s disapproving gaze. “Tommy Braham.”

“That’s the one. Mama, didn’t he used to cut our grass?”

Cathy gave a clipped “Yes,” not adding anything else to the conversation.

Sara said, “For the life of me, I can’t remember what he looks like. Not too bright. I think his father is an electrician. Why can’t I remember his face?”

Cathy tsked her tongue as she spread Duke’s mayonnaise onto slices of white bread. “Age will do that to you.”

Tessa smiled smugly. “You should know.”

Cathy made a biting retort, but Sara tuned out the exchange. She strained to remember more details about Tommy Braham, trying to place him. His father stuck out more than the son; a gruff, muscled man who was uncomfortable being at the clinic, as if he found the public act of caring for his son to be emasculating. The wife had run off-Sara remembered that at least. There had been quite a scandal around her departure, mostly because she had left in the middle of the night with the youth minister of the Primitive Baptist church.

Tommy must have been around eight or nine when Sara first saw him as a patient. All boys looked the same at that age: bowl hair cuts, T-shirts, blue jeans that looked impossibly small and bunched up over bright white tennis shoes. Had he had a crush on her? She couldn’t remember. What stuck out the most was that he had been silly and a bit slow. She imagined if he’d committed murder, it was because someone else had put him up to it.

She asked, “Who is Tommy supposed to have killed?”

Tessa answered, “A student from the college. They pulled her out of the lake at the crack of dawn. At first they thought it was a suicide, then they didn’t, so they went to her house, which happens to be that crappy garage Gordon Braham rents out to students. You know the one?”

Sara nodded. She had once helped her father pump the septic tank outside the Braham house while she was on a holiday break from college, an event that had spurred her to work doubly hard to get into medical school.

Tessa supplied, “So, Tommy was there in the garage with a knife. He attacked Frank and ran out into the street. Brad chased after him and he stabbed Brad, too.”

Sara shook her head. She had been thinking something small-a convenience store holdup, an accidental discharge of a gun. “That doesn’t sound like Tommy.”

“Half the neighborhood saw it,” Tessa told her. “Brad was chasing him down the street and Tommy turned around and stabbed him in the gut.”

Sara thought it through to the next step. Tommy hadn’t stabbed a civilian. He had stabbed a cop. There were different rules when a police officer was involved. Assault turned into attempted murder. Manslaughter turned into murder in the first.

Tessa mumbled, “I hear Frank got a little rough with him.”

Cathy voiced her disapproval as she took plates down from the cabinets. “It’s very disappointing when people you respect behave badly.”

Sara tried to imagine the scene: Brad running after Tommy, Frank bringing up the rear. But it wouldn’t have just been Frank. He wouldn’t waste his time pounding on a suspect while Brad was bleeding out. Someone else would have been there. Someone who had probably caused the whole takedown to go bad in the first place.

Sara felt anger spread like fire inside her chest. “Where was Lena during all of this?”

Cathy dropped a plate on the floor. It shattered at her feet, but she did not bend to pick up the pieces. Her lips went into a thin line and her nostrils flared. Sara could tell she was struggling to speak. “Don’t you dare say that hateful woman’s name in my house ever again. Do you hear me?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Sara looked down at her hands. Lena Adams. Jeffrey’s star detective. The woman who was supposed to have Jeffrey’s back at all times. The woman whose cowardice and fear had gotten Jeffrey murdered.

Tessa struggled to kneel down and help her mother clean up the broken dish. Sara stayed where she was, frozen in place.

The darkness was back, a suffocating cloud of misery that made her want to curl into a ball. This kitchen had been filled with laughter all of Sara’s life-the good-natured bickering between her mother and sister, the bad puns and practical jokes from her father. Sara did not belong here anymore. She should find an excuse to leave. She should go back to Atlanta and let her family enjoy their holiday in peace rather than dredging up the collective sorrow of the last four years.

No one spoke until the phone rang again. Tessa was closest. She picked up the receiver. “Linton residence.” She didn’t make small talk. She handed the phone to Sara.

“Hello?”

“I’m sorry to be bothering you, Sara.”

Frank Wallace always seemed to be making an effort when he said Sara’s name. He had played poker with Eddie Linton since Sara was in diapers, and had called her “Sweetpea” until he realized that it was inappropriate to address his boss’s wife with such familiarity.

Sara managed a “Hi” as she opened the French door leading onto the back deck. She hadn’t realized how hot her face was until the cold hit her. “Is Brad all right?”

“You heard about that?”

“Of course I heard.” Half the town probably knew about Brad before the ambulance had arrived on the scene. “Is he still in surgery?”

“Got out an hour ago. Surgeons say he’s got a shot if he makes it through the next twenty-four hours.” Frank said more, but Sara couldn’t concentrate on his words, which were meaningless anyway. The twenty-four-hour mark was the gold standard for surgeons, the difference between explaining a death at the weekly morbidity and mortality meeting or passing off an iffy patient to another doctor to manage their care.

She leaned against the house, cold brick pressing into her back, as she waited for Frank to get to the point. “Do you remember a patient named Tommy Braham?”

“Vaguely.”

“I hate to pull you into this, but he’s been asking for you.”

Sara listened with half an ear, her mind whirring with possible excuses to answer the question she knew that he was going to ask. She was so caught up in the task that she hadn’t realized Frank had stopped talking until he said her name. “Sara? You still there?”

“I’m here.”

“It’s just that he won’t stop crying.”

“Crying?” Again, she had the sensation of missing an important part of the conversation.

“Yeah, crying,” Frank confirmed. “I mean, a lot of them cry. Hell, it’s jail. But he’s seriously not right. I think he needs a sedative or something to calm him down. We got three drunks and a wife beater in here gonna break through the walls and strangle him if he don’t shut up.”

She repeated his words in her head, still not sure she’d heard right. Sara had been married to a cop for many years, and she could count on one hand the number of times Jeffrey had worried about a criminal in his cells-and never a murderer, especially a murderer who had harmed a fellow officer. “Isn’t there a doctor on call?”

“Honey, there’s barely a cop on call. The mayor’s cut half our budget. I’m surprised every time I flip a switch that the lights still come on.”

She asked, “What about Elliot Felteau?” Elliot had bought Sara’s practice when she left town. The children’s clinic was right across the street from the station.

“He’s on vacation. The nearest doc is sixty miles away.”

She gave a heavy sigh, annoyed with Elliot for taking a week off, as if children would wait until after the holiday to get sick. She was also annoyed with Frank for trying to drag her into this mess. But mostly, she was annoyed with herself that she had even taken the call. “Can’t you just tell him that Brad’s going to be okay?”

“It’s not that. There was this girl we pulled out of the lake this morning.”

“I heard.”

“Tommy confessed to killing her. Took him a while, but we broke him. He was in love with the girl. She didn’t want to give him the time of day. You know the kind of thing.”

“Then it’s just remorse,” she said, though she found the behavior strange. In Sara’s experience, the first thing most criminals did after they confessed was fall into a deep sleep. Their bodies had been so shot through with adrenaline for so long that they collapsed in exhaustion when they finally got the weight off their chests. “Give him some time.”

“It’s more than that,” Frank insisted. He sounded exasperated and slightly desperate. “I swear to God, Sara, I really hate asking you this, but something’s gotta help him get through. It’s like his heart’s gonna break if he doesn’t see you.”

“I barely remember him.”

“He remembers you.”

Sara chewed her lip. “Where’s his daddy?”

“In Florida. We can’t get hold of him. Tommy’s all alone, and he knows it.”

“Why is he asking for me?” There were certainly patients she had bonded with over the years, but, to her recollection, Tommy Braham had not been one of them. Why couldn’t she remember his face?

Frank said, “He says you’ll listen to him.”

“You didn’t tell him I’d come, did you?”

“Course not. I didn’t even want to ask, but he’s just bad off, Sara. I think he needs to see a doctor. Not just you, but a doctor.”

“It’s not because-” She stopped, not knowing how to finish the question. She decided to be blunt. “I heard you took him down hard.”

Frank couched his language. “He fell down a lot while I was trying to arrest him.”

Sara was familiar with the euphemism, code for the nastier side of law enforcement. Abuse of prisoners in custody was a subject she never broached with Jeffrey, mostly because she did not want to know the answer. “Is anything broken?”

“A couple of teeth. Nothing bad.” Frank sounded exasperated. “He’s not crying over a split lip, Sara. He needs a doctor.”

Sara looked through the window into the kitchen. Her mother was sitting at the table beside Tessa. Both of them stared back at her. One of the reasons Sara had moved back to Grant County after medical school was because of the paucity of doctors serving rural areas. With the hospital downtown closed, the sick were forced to travel almost an hour away to get help. The children’s clinic was a blessing for the local kids, but, apparently, not during holidays.

“Sara?”

She rubbed her eyes with her fingers. “Is she there?”

He hesitated a moment. “No. She’s at the hospital with Brad.”

Probably concocting a story in her head where she was the hero and Brad was just a careless victim. Sara’s voice shook. “I can’t see her, Frank.”

“You won’t have to.”

She felt grief tighten her throat. To be at the station house, to be where Jeffrey was most at home.

Lightning crackled high up in the clouds. She could hear rain, but not see it yet. Out on the lake, waves crashed and churned. The sky was dark and ominous with the promise of another storm. She wanted to take it as a sign, but Sara was a scientist at heart. She had never been good at relying on faith.

“All right,” she relented. “I think I have some diazepam in my kit. I’ll come through the back.” She paused. “Frank-”

“You have my word, Sara. She won’t be here.”

SARA DID NOT want to admit to herself that she was glad to leave her family, even if it meant going to the station house. She felt awkward around them, a piece of a puzzle that didn’t quite fit. Everything was the same, yet everything was different.

She took the back way around the lake again, avoiding her old house that she had shared with Jeffrey. There was no way to get to the station without driving down Main Street. Thankfully, the weather had turned, rain dripping down in a thick, hazy curtain. This made it impossible for people to sit on the benches that lined the road or stroll up the cobblestone sidewalks. All the shop doors were tightly closed against the cold. Even Mann’s Hardware had taken down their porch swing display.

She turned down a back alley that ran behind the old pharmacy. The paved road gave way to gravel, and Sara was glad that she was in an SUV. She had always driven sedans while she lived in Heartsdale, but Atlanta ’s streets were far more treacherous than any country road. The potholes were deep enough to get lost in and the constant flooding during the rainy season made the BMW a necessity. Or at least that’s what she told herself every time she paid sixty dollars to fill up her gas tank.

Frank must have been waiting for her, because the back door to the station opened before Sara put the car in park. He unfolded a large black umbrella and came out to the car to walk her back to the station. The rain was so loud that Sara did not speak until they were inside.

She asked, “Is he still upset?”

Frank nodded, fiddling with the umbrella, trying to get it closed. Sutures crisscrossed the knuckles of his right hand. There were three deep scratches on the back of his wrist. Defensive wounds.

“Christ.” Frank winced from pain as he tried to get his stiff fingers to move.

Sara took the umbrella from him and closed it. “Do they have you on antibiotics?”

“Got a prescription for something. Not sure what it is.” He took the umbrella from her and tossed it into the broom closet. “Tell your mama I’m sorry for taking you away your first day back.”

Frank had always seemed old to Sara, mostly because he was a contemporary of her father’s. Looking at him now, she thought Frank Wallace had aged a hundred years since the last time she had seen him. His skin was sallow, his face etched with deep lines. She looked at his eyes, noticing the yellow. Obviously, he was not well.

“Frank?”

He forced a smile. “Good to see you, Sweetpea.”

The name was meant to put up a barrier, and it worked. She let him kiss her cheek. His dominant odor had always been cigarette smoke, but today she smelled whisky and chewing gum on his breath. Instinctively, she looked at her watch. Eleven-thirty in the morning, the time of day when a drink meant that you were biding time until your shift ended. On the other hand, this wasn’t like a usual day for Frank. One of his men had been stabbed. Sara probably would have had her share of alcohol in the same situation.

He asked, “How you been holding up?”

She tried to look past the pity in his eyes. “I’m doing great, Frank. Tell me what’s going on.”

He quickly shifted gears. “Kid thought the girl was into him. He finds out she’s not and sticks her with a knife.” He shrugged. “Did a real bad job covering it up. Led us right to his doorstep.”

Sara was even more confused. She must be mixing up Tommy with one of her other kids.

Frank picked up on this. “You really don’t remember him?”

“I thought I did, but now I’m not so sure.”

“He seems to think y’all have some kind of bond.” He saw Sara’s expression and amended, “Not in a weird way or anything. He’s kind of young.” Frank touched the side of his head. “Not a lot going on up there.”

Sara felt a flash of guilt that this boy she barely remembered had felt such a connection to her. She had seen thousands of patients over the years. There were certainly names that stuck out, kids whose graduations and wedding days she had witnessed, a couple whose funerals she had attended. Other than a few stray details, Tommy Braham was a blank.

“It’s this way,” Frank said, as if she had not been in the station a thousand times. He used his plastic badge to open the large steel door that led to the cells. A blast of hot air met them.

Frank noticed her discomfort. “Furnace is acting up.”

Sara took off her jacket as she followed him through the door. When she was a child, the local school had sent kids on field trips to the jail as a way of scaring them away from a life of crime. The Mayberry motif of open cells with steel bars had changed over long ago. There were six steel doors on either side of a long hallway. Each had a wire-mesh glass window and a slot at the bottom through which food trays could be passed. Sara kept her focus straight ahead as she followed Frank, though out of the corner of her eye, she could see men standing at their cell doors, watching her progress.

Frank took out his keys. “I guess he stopped crying.”

She wiped away a bead of sweat that had rolled down her temple. “Did you tell him I was coming?”

He shook his head, not stating the obvious: he hadn’t been sure that Sara would show up.

He found the right key and glanced through the window to make sure Tommy wasn’t going to be any trouble. “Oh, shit,” he muttered, dropping the keys. “Oh, Christ.”

“Frank?”

He snatched up the keys off the floor, uttering more curses. “Christ,” he murmured, sliding the key into the lock, turning back the bolt. He opened the door and Sara saw the reason for his panic. She dropped her coat, the bottle of pills she’d shoved in the pocket before she left the house making a rattling sound as they hit the concrete.

Tommy Braham lay on the floor of his cell. He was on his side, both arms reaching out to the bed in front of him. His head was turned at an awkward angle as he stared blankly up at the ceiling. His lips were parted. Sara recognized him now, the man he had become not much different from the little boy he’d once been. He’d brought her a dandelion once, and turned the color of a turnip when she’d kissed his forehead.

She went to him, pressing her fingers to his neck, doing a cursory check for a pulse. He had obviously been beaten-his nose broken, his eye blackened-but that was not the reason for his death. Both his wrists were cut open, the wounds gaping, flesh and sinew exposed to the stale air. There seemed to be more blood on the floor than there was inside of his body. The smell was sickly sweet, like a butcher’s shop.

“Tommy,” she whispered, stroking his cheek. “I remember you.”

Sara closed his eyelids with her fingers. His skin was still warm, almost hot. She had driven too slowly getting here. She shouldn’t have used the restroom before leaving the house. She should have listened to Julie Smith. She should have agreed to come without a fight. She should have remembered this sweet little boy who’d brought her a weed he’d picked from the tall grass growing outside the clinic.

Frank bent down and used a pencil to drag a thin, cylindrical object out of the blood.

Sara said, “It’s an ink cartridge from a ballpoint pen.”

“He must have used it to…”

Sara looked at Tommy’s wrists again. Blue lines of ink crossed the pale skin. She had been the coroner for Grant County before she’d left for Atlanta, and she knew what a repetitive injury looked like. Tommy had scraped and scraped with the metal ink cartridge, digging into his flesh until he found a way to open a vein. And then he had done the same thing to his other wrist.

“Shit.” Frank was staring over her shoulder.

She turned around. On the wall, written in his own blood, Tommy had scrawled the words Not me.

Sara closed her eyes, not wanting to see any of this, not wanting to be here. “Did he try to recant?”

Frank said, “They all do.” He hesitated, then added, “He wrote out a confession. He had guilty knowledge of the crime.”

Sara recognized the term “guilty knowledge.” It was used to describe details that only the police and the criminal knew. She opened her eyes. “Is that why he was crying? He wanted to take back his confession?”

Frank gave a tight nod. “Yeah, he wanted to take it back. But they all-”

“Did he ask for a lawyer?”

“No.”

“How did he get the pen?”

Frank shrugged, but he wasn’t stupid. He could guess what had happened.

“He was Lena ’s prisoner. Did she give him the pen?”

“Of course not.” Frank stood up, walked to the cell door. “Not on purpose.”

Sara touched Tommy’s shoulder before standing. “ Lena was supposed to frisk him before she put him in the cell.”

“He could’ve hidden it in-”

“I’m assuming she gave him the pen to write his confession.” Sara felt a deep, dark hate burning in the pit of her stomach. She had been back in town for less than an hour and already she was in the middle of yet another one of Lena ’s epic screwups. “How long did she interrogate him?”

Frank shook his head again, like she had it all wrong. “Couple’a three hours. Not that long.”

Sara pointed to the words Tommy had written in his own blood. “‘Not me,’” she read. “He says he didn’t do it.”

“They all say they didn’t do it.” Frank’s tone told her his patience was running thin. “Look, honey, just go home. I’m sorry about all this, but…” He paused, his mind working. “I gotta call the state, start the paperwork, get Lena back in…” He rubbed his face with his hands. “Christ, what a nightmare.”

Sara picked her coat up off the floor. “Where is his confession? I want to see it.”

Frank dropped his hands. He seemed stuck in place. Finally, he relented, leading her toward the door at the opposite end of the hall. The fluorescent lights of the squad room were harsh, almost blinding, compared to the dark cells. Sara blinked to help her eyes adjust. There was a group of uniformed patrolmen standing by the coffeemaker. Marla was at her desk. They all stared at her with the same macabre curiosity they had shown four years ago: How awful, how tragic, how long before I can get on the phone and tell somebody I saw her?

Sara ignored them because she did not know what else to do. Her skin felt hot, and she found herself looking down at her hands so that she would not see Jeffrey’s office. She wondered if they had left everything as it was: his Auburn memorabilia, his shooting trophies and family photographs. Sweat rolled down her back. The room was so stifling that she thought she might be sick.

Frank stopped at his desk. “Allison Spooner is the girl he killed. Tommy tried to make it look like a suicide-wrote a note, stuck Spooner’s watch and ring in her shoes. He would’ve gotten away with it but Le-” He stopped. “Allison was stabbed in the neck.”

“Has an autopsy been performed?”

“Not yet.”

“How do you know the stab wasn’t self-inflicted?”

“It looked-”

“How deep did it penetrate? What was the trajectory of the blade? Was there water in her lungs?”

Frank talked over her, an air of desperation to his voice. “She had ligature marks around her wrists.”

Sara stared at him. She had always known Frank to be an honorable man, yet she would have sworn on a stack of Bibles that he was lying through his teeth. “Brock confirmed this?”

He hesitated before shaking his head and shrugging at the same time.

Sara could feel herself getting angrier. She knew somewhere in the back of her mind that her anger was unreasonable, that it was coming from that dark place she had ignored for so many years, but there was no stopping it now-even if she wanted to. “Was the body weighted down in the water?”

“She had two cinder blocks chained to her waist.”

“If she floated with both hands hanging down, livor mortis could have settled into her wrists, or her hands could have rested at an angle on the bottom of the lake, making it look to the untrained eye as if she’d been tied up.”

Frank looked away. “I saw them, Sara. She was tied up.” He opened a file on his desk and handed her a piece of yellow legal paper. The top was torn where it had been ripped away from the pad. Both sides were filled. “He copped to everything.”

Sara’s hands shook as she read Tommy Braham’s confession. He wrote in the exaggerated cursive of an elementary school student. His sentence construction was just as immature: Pippy is my dog. She was sick. She ate a sock. She needed a picture took of her insides. I called my dad. He is in Florida. Sara turned the page over and found the meat of the narrative. Allison had spurned a sexual advance. Tommy had snapped. He’d stabbed her and taken her to the lake to help cover his crime.

She looked at both sides of the paper. Two pages. Tommy had ended his life in less than two pages. Sara doubted he’d understood half of it. The only time he’d used a comma was right before a big word. These, he printed in block letters, and she could see small dots where he had pressed the pen under each letter to make sure he’d spelled it correctly.

Sara could barely speak. “She coached him.”

“It’s a confession, Sara. Most cons have to be told what to write.”

“He doesn’t even understand what he’s saying.” She skimmed the letter, reading, “‘I punched Allison to subdude.’” She stared at Frank, disbelieving. “Tommy’s IQ is barely above eighty. You think he masterminded this fake suicide? He’s less than one standard deviation from being classified as mentally disabled.”

“You got that from reading two paragraphs?”

“I got that from treating him,” Sara snapped. It had all come flooding back to her as she read the confession: Gordon Braham’s face when Sara suggested his son might be developing too slowly for his age, the tests Tommy had endured, Gordon’s devastation when Sara told him his son would never mature past a certain level. “Tommy was slow, Frank. He didn’t know how to count change. It took him two months to learn how to tie his shoes.”

Frank stared back at her, exhaustion seeping from every pore. “He stabbed Brad, Sara. He cut me in the arm. He ran from the scene.”

Her hands started shaking. Her body surged with anger. “Did you think to ask Tommy why?” she demanded. “Or were you too busy beating his face to a pulp?”

Frank glanced back at the officers by the coffee machine. “Keep your voice down.”

Sara was not going to be silenced. “Where was Lena when all this happened?”

“She was there.”

“I bet she was. I bet she was right there pulling everybody’s strings. ‘The victim was tied up. She must have been murdered. Let’s go to her apartment. Let’s get everybody around me hurt while I walk away without so much as a scratch.’” Sara could feel her heart shaking in her chest. “How many people does Lena have to get injured-killed-before somebody stops her?”

“Sara-” Frank rubbed his hands over his face. “We found Tommy in the garage with-”

“His father owns the property. He had every right to be in that garage. Did you? Did you have a warrant?”

“We didn’t need a warrant.”

“Have the laws changed since Jeffrey was alive?” Frank winced at the name. “Did Lena identify herself as a cop or just start waving her gun around?”

Frank didn’t answer her question, which was answer enough. “It was a tense situation. We did everything by the book.”

“Does Tommy’s handwriting match the suicide note?”

Frank blanched, and she realized he hadn’t asked the question himself. “He probably forged it, made it look like the girl’s.”

“He didn’t have the intelligence to forge anything. He was slow. Is that not getting through to you? There’s no way in hell Tommy could’ve done any of this. He wasn’t mentally capable of plotting out a trip to the store, let alone a fake suicide. Are you being willfully blind? Or just covering for Lena like you always do?”

“Mind your tone,” Frank warned.

“This is going to catch her.” Sara held up the confession like a trophy. The shaking in her hands had gotten worse. She felt hot and cold at the same time. “ Lena tricked him into writing this. All Tommy wanted to do was please people. She pushed him into a confession and then she pushed him into taking his own life.”

“Now, hold on-”

“She’s going to lose her badge for this. She should go to prison.”

“Sounds to me like you care a hell of a lot more about some punk kid than a cop who’s fighting for his life.”

He could have slapped her face and the shock would have been less. “You think I don’t care about a cop?”

Frank sighed heavily. “Listen, Sweetpea. Just calm down, okay?”

“Don’t you dare tell me to calm down. I’ve been calm for the last four years.” She took her cell phone out of her back pocket and scrolled through the contacts, looking for the right number.

Frank sounded scared. “What are you going to do?”

Sara listened to the phone ring at the Georgia Bureau of Investigation’s headquarters in Atlanta. A secretary answered. She told the woman, “This is Sara Linton calling for Amanda Wagner.”

CHAPTER FOUR

SARA SAT IN HER CAR IN THE HOSPITAL PARKING LOT, STARING out at Main Street. The facility had stopped accepting patients a year ago, but the building had looked abandoned long before that. Weeds sprouted in the ambulance bay. Windows on the upper floors were broken. The metal door that used to be propped open for smokers was bolted shut with a steel bar.

Guilt about Tommy Braham still weighed heavily on her-not just because she hadn’t remembered him, but because in the space of a few seconds, she had taken his death and used it as a launching pad for her own revenge fantasy against Lena Adams. Sara realized now that she should have just let it play out on its own instead of inserting herself into the middle. A suicide in police custody automatically triggered an investigation by the state. Frank would have followed the chain of command, calling in Nick Shelton, Grant County ’s local field agent for the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. Nick would have talked to all the officers and witnesses involved. He was a good cop. In the end, he would have come to the same conclusion as Sara: that Lena had been negligent.

Unfortunately, Sara hadn’t been patient enough to trust the process. She had unilaterally decided to be town coroner again, elbowing poor Dan Brock out of the way, taking her own photographs of the scene, doing sketches of Tommy’s cell, before she allowed the body to be removed. She’d made copies of every sheet of paper she could find in the station house that referred to Tommy Braham. Even with all of this, calling Amanda Wagner, a deputy director with the GBI, was the worst of her transgressions. It was like swinging a sledgehammer at a thumbtack.

“Stupid,” she whispered, leaning her head into the steering wheel. She should be home right now looking at the marble tile her father had installed in the master bathroom, not waiting for someone straight from GBI headquarters to show up so she could unduly influence an investigation.

She leaned back against the seat, checking the clock on the dashboard. Special Agent Will Trent was almost an hour late, but she had no way of calling him. The trip from Atlanta was four hours-less if you knew you could flash your badge and talk your way out of a speeding ticket. She looked at the clock again, waiting out the flicker of 5:42 changing to 5:43.

Sara had no idea what she was going to say to him. She had talked to Will Trent probably a half dozen times while he worked a case involving one of Sara’s patients at Grady’s ER. She had shamelessly inserted herself into the investigation then, much as she was doing now. Will would probably start to wonder if she was some kind of crime scene voyeur. At the very least, he would question her obsession with Lena Adams. He would probably think that she was crazy.

“Oh, Jeffrey,” Sara whispered. What would he think of the mess she was getting herself into? What would he say about how awful being back in his adoptive town, the town he loved, made her feel? Everyone was so careful around her, so respectful. She should be grateful, but on some level, her skin crawled when she saw the pity in their eyes.

She was so damn tired of being tragic.

The roar of an engine announced Will Trent’s arrival. He was in a beautiful old Porsche, black on black. Even in the rain, the machine looked like an animal ready to pounce.

He took his time getting out of the car, snapping the faceplate off the radio, removing the GPS receiver from the dash, and locking them both in the glove compartment. He lived in Atlanta, where you bolted your front door even if you were just going out to get your mail. Sara knew he could leave the Porsche sitting in the parking lot with the doors wide open and the worst thing that might happen is someone would come along and close them for him.

Will smiled at her as he locked the door. Sara had only ever seen him in three-piece suits, so she was surprised to find him dressed in a black sweater and jeans. He was tall, at least six-three, with a lean runner’s body and an easy gait. His sandy blond hair had grown out, no longer the military cut he’d sported when they first met. Initially, Sara had taken Will Trent for an accountant or lawyer. Even now, she had a hard time reconciling the man with the job. He didn’t walk with a cop’s swagger. He didn’t have that world-weary stare that let you know he carried a gun on his hip. Still, he was an excellent investigator, and suspects underestimated him at their own peril.

This was one of the reasons that Sara was glad that Amanda Wagner had sent Will Trent. Lena would hate him on sight. He was too soft-spoken, too accommodating-at least on first blush. She wouldn’t know what she was getting herself into until it was too late.

Will opened the car door and got in.

Sara said, “I thought you’d gotten lost.”

He gave her a half-grin as he adjusted the seat so his head wasn’t hitting the roof. “I apologize. I actually did get lost.” He looked at her face, obviously trying to get a read off her. “How are you doing, Dr. Linton?”

“I’m…” Sara let out a long sigh. She didn’t know him very well, which, oddly, made it easier for her to be honest. “Not so great, Agent Trent.”

“Agent Mitchell said to tell you she’s sorry she couldn’t make it.”

Faith Mitchell was his partner, a onetime patient of Sara’s. She was currently on maternity leave, fairly close to her due date. “How is she holding up?”

“With her usual forbearance.” His smile indicated the opposite. “Excuse me for changing the subject so quickly, but how can I help you?”

“Did Amanda tell you anything?”

“She told me there was a suicide in custody and to get down here as fast as possible.”

“Did she tell you about…” Sara waited for him to fill in the blank. When he didn’t, she prompted, “My husband?”

“Is that relevant? I mean, to what’s going on today?”

Sara felt her throat tighten.

Will asked, “Dr. Linton?”

“I don’t know that it’s relevant,” she finally answered. “It’s just history. Everyone you meet in this town is going to know about it. They’re going to assume that you do, too.” She felt tears sting her eyes for the millionth time that day. “I’m sorry. I’ve been so angry for the last six hours that I haven’t really thought about what I’m dropping you in the middle of.”

He leaned up and pulled a handkerchief out of his back pocket. “There’s no need to apologize. I get dropped in the middle of stuff all the time.”

Aside from Jeffrey and her father, Will Trent was the only man Sara knew who still carried a handkerchief. She took the neatly folded white cloth he handed her.

Will repeated, “Dr. Linton?”

She wiped her eyes, apologizing again. “I’m sorry. I’ve been tearing up like this all day.”

“It’s always hard to go back.” He said this with such certainty that Sara found herself really looking at him for the first time since he’d gotten into the car. Will Trent was an attractive man, but not in a way that you would quickly notice. If anything, he seemed eager to blend in with his surroundings, to keep his head down and do his job. Months ago, he’d told Sara that he’d grown up in the Atlanta Children’s Home. His mother had been killed when he was an infant. These were big revelations, yet Sara felt like she knew nothing about him at all.

His head turned toward her and she looked away.

Will said, “Let’s try it this way: You tell me what you think I should know. If I have more questions, I’ll try to ask them as respectfully as I can.”

Sara cleared her throat several times, trying to find her voice. She was thinking about her own recovery after Jeffrey’s death, the year of her life she had lost to sleep and pills and misery. None of that mattered right now. What she needed to convey to Will was that Lena Adams had a long-standing pattern of risking other people’s lives, of sometimes getting people killed.

She said, “Lena Adams was responsible for my husband’s death.”

Will’s expression did not change. “How so?”

“She got mixed up with someone…” Sara cleared her throat again. “The man who killed my husband was Lena ’s lover. Boyfriend. Whatever. They were together for several years.”

“They were together when your husband died?”

“No.” Sara shrugged. “I don’t know. He had this hold on her. He beat her. It’s possible that he raped her, but-” Sara stopped, not knowing how to tell Will not to feel sorry for Lena. “She goaded him. I know this sounds horrible, but it was like Lena wanted to be abused.”

He nodded, but she wondered if he really understood.

“They had this sick relationship where they brought out the worst in each other. She put up with it until it stopped being fun, then she called in my husband to clean up her mess and…” Sara stopped, not wanting to sound as desperate as she felt. “ Lena painted a target on his back. It was never proven, but her ex-lover is the man who killed my husband.”

Will said, “Police officers have a responsibility to report abuse.”

Sara felt a spark of anger, thinking he was blaming Jeffrey for not stepping in. “She denied it was happening. You know how hard domestic violence is to prove when-”

“I know,” he interrupted. “I’m sorry my words were unclear. I meant to say that the onus was on Detective Adams. Even when the officer is herself the victim of abuse, by law, it’s her duty to report it.”

Sara tried to even out her breathing. She was getting so worked up about this that she must have seemed slightly crazy. “ Lena ’s a bad cop. She’s sloppy. She’s negligent. She’s the reason my husband is dead. She’s the reason Tommy is dead. She’s probably the reason Brad got stabbed in the street. She gets people into situations, puts them in the line of fire, then backs away and watches the carnage.”

“On purpose?”

Sara’s throat was so dry she could barely swallow. “Does it matter?”

“I suppose not,” he admitted. “I’m guessing Detective Adams was never charged with anything in your husband’s murder?”

“She’s never held accountable for anything. She always manages to slither back under her rock.”

He nodded, staring ahead at the rain-soaked windshield. Sara had turned off the engine. She had been cold before Will came, but now their combined body heat was warm enough to cloud the windows.

Sara chanced another look at Will, trying to guess what he was thinking. His face remained impassive. He was probably the hardest person to read that Sara had ever met in her life.

She finally said, “This all sounds like a witch hunt on my part, doesn’t it?”

He took his time answering. “A suspect killed himself while in police custody. The GBI is charged with investigating that.”

He was being too generous. “Nick Shelton is the Grant County field agent. I leapfrogged over about ten heads.”

“Agent Shelton wouldn’t have been allowed to conduct the investigation. He’s got a relationship with the local force. They would’ve sent me or somebody like me to look into this. I’ve worked in small towns before. Nobody feels bad about hating the pencil pusher from Atlanta.” He smiled, adding, “Of course, if you hadn’t called Dr. Wagner directly, it might’ve taken another day to get somebody down here.”

“I’m so sorry that I dragged you away this close to a holiday. Your wife must be furious.”

“My…?” He seemed puzzled for a second, as if he’d forgotten about the ring on his finger. He covered for it badly, saying, “She doesn’t mind.”

“Still, I’m sorry.”

“I’ll live.” He turned her back to the matter at hand. “Tell me what happened today.”

This time the words came much more easily-Julie’s phone call, the rumors about Brad’s stabbing, Frank’s plea for her help. She finished with finding Tommy in the cell, seeing the words he had scrawled on the wall. “They arrested him for Allison Spooner’s murder.”

Will’s eyebrows furrowed. “They charged Braham with murder?”

“Here’s the worst part.” She handed him the photocopy she’d made of Tommy’s confession.

Will seemed surprised. “They gave this to you?”

“I have a relationship-a past relationship.” She didn’t really know how to explain why Frank had let her bulldoze her way through. “I was the town coroner. I was married to the boss. They’re used to showing me evidence.”

Will patted his pockets. “I think my reading glasses are in my suitcase.”

She dug around in her purse and pulled out her own pair.

Will frowned at the glasses, but slid them on. He blinked several times as he scanned the page, asking, “Tommy is local?”

“Born and raised.”

“How old is he?”

Sara couldn’t keep the outrage out of her tone. “Nineteen.”

He looked up. “Nineteen?”

“Exactly,” she said. “I don’t know how they think he masterminded this. He can barely spell his own name.”

Will nodded as he turned back to the confession, his eyes going back and forth across the page. Finally, he looked at Sara. “Did he have some kind of reading problem, like dyslexia?”

“Dyslexia is a language disorder. But, no, Tommy wasn’t dyslexic. His IQ was around eighty. Intellectually disabled people test out at seventy or below-what used to be called retarded. Dyslexia has nothing to do with IQ. Actually, I had a couple of kids with it who ran circles around me.”

He gave his half-grin. “I find that very hard to believe.”

She smiled back, thinking he didn’t know the first thing about her. “Don’t get hung up on a couple of spelling mistakes.”

“It’s more than a couple.”

“Think about it this way: I could sit across from a dyslexic all day and never know it. With Tommy, he could talk about baseball or football until the cows came home, but get him into more complex areas of thinking and he’d be completely lost. Concepts that required logic, or processing cause and effect, were incredibly difficult for him to grasp. You couldn’t talk a dyslexic into a false confession any more easily than you could talk someone who had green eyes or red hair into saying they did something they didn’t do. Tommy was incredibly gullible. He could be talked into anything.”

Will stared at her, not speaking for a moment. “You think Detective Adams elicited a false confession?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Do you think she’s criminally negligent?”

“I don’t know the legal threshold. I just know that her actions led to his death.”

He spoke carefully, and she finally realized that he was interviewing her. “Can you tell me how you reached that conclusion?”

“Other than the fact that he scrawled ‘Not me’ in his own blood before he died?”

“Other than that.”

“Tommy is-was-very suggestible. It goes hand in hand with his low IQ. He didn’t test low enough to be classified as severely disabled, but he had some of the same attributes: the desire to please, the innocence, the gullibility. What happened today-the note, the shoes, the botched cover-up. On the surface, it seems like the kind of thing a person who is slow or stupid might do, but it’s all too complicated for Tommy.” She tried to listen to herself from Will’s perspective. “I know this sounds like I’m hell-bent on going after Lena, and obviously I am, but that doesn’t mean that what I’m saying isn’t scientific fact. I had a hard time treating Tommy because he would always say he had whatever symptom I asked him about, whether it was a headache or a cough. If I put it into his head the right way, he would’ve told me he had the bubonic plague.”

“So you’re saying Lena should have recognized that Tommy was slow and…?”

“Not badgered him into killing himself, for one.”

“And two?”

“Sought proper medical care for him. He was obviously stricken. He wouldn’t stop crying. He wouldn’t talk to anybody…” Her voice trailed off as she saw the hole in her argument. Frank had called Sara for help.

Instead of pointing out the obvious, Will asked, “Isn’t the prisoner the responsibility of the booking officer?”

“ Lena is the one who put him there. She didn’t frisk him-or at least didn’t frisk him well enough to find the ink cartridge he used to kill himself with. She didn’t alert the guards to keep a close eye on him. She just got the confession and walked away.” Sara could feel herself getting angrier by the second. “Who knows how she left him emotionally. She probably talked him into thinking his life wasn’t worth living. This is what she does over and over again. She creates these shitstorms and someone else always pays the price.”

Will stared out at the parking lot, his hands resting lightly on his knees. Though the hospital had closed, the electricity was still working. The parking lot lights flickered on. In their yellow glow, Sara could see the scar that ran down the side of Will’s face and into his collar. It was old, probably from his childhood. The first time she’d seen it, she’d thought maybe he’d ripped the skin sliding into first base or failing at some daring feat on a bicycle. That was before she’d found out that he’d grown up in an orphanage. Now, she wondered if there was more to the story.

Certainly, it wasn’t Will Trent’s only scar. Even in profile, she could see the spot between his nose and lip where someone or something had repeatedly busted the skin apart. Whoever had stitched the flesh back together hadn’t done a very good job. The scar was slightly jagged, giving his mouth an almost raffish quality.

Will exhaled a breath of air. When he finally spoke, he was all business. “They charged Tommy Braham with murder? Nothing else?”

“No, just murder.”

“Not attempted murder for Detective Stephens?” Will asked. Sara shook her head. “Wasn’t Chief Wallace also injured?”

Sara felt a blush work its way up her chest. She imagined Frank was calling it that even after the beating he gave Tommy in the middle of the street. “The arrest report said murder. Nothing else.”

“The way I see it is that I have two issues here. One is that a suspect killed himself while he was in Detective Adams’s custody, and two is that I’m not sure why she arrested Tommy Braham for murder based on his confession. And not just his confession, but any confession.”

“Meaning?”

“You don’t just arrest someone for murder based solely on their confession. There has to be corroborative evidence. The sixth amendment gives a defendant the right to confront his accuser. If you’re your own accuser and you recant your confession…” He shrugged. “It’s like a dog chasing its tail.”

Sara felt stupid for not making this connection hours ago. She had been the county medical examiner for almost fifteen years. The police didn’t necessarily need a cause of death to hold someone for suspicion of murder, but they needed the official finding that a murder had been committed before an arrest warrant was issued.

Will said, “They had plenty of reason to hold Braham without the murder charge: assault with a deadly weapon, attempted murder, assault on a police officer during the course of duty, assault during the course of arrest, evading arrest, trespassing. These are serious felonies. They could hold him on any combination for the next year and no one would complain.” He shook his head, as if he couldn’t grasp the logic. “I’ll need to get their reports.”

Sara turned around to the back seat and retrieved the copies she’d made. “I’ll have to wait for the drugstore to open in the morning so I can print the photographs.”

Will marveled at her access as he flipped through the pages. “Wow. All right.” He skimmed the pages as he talked. “I know you’re convinced Tommy didn’t kill this girl, but it’s my job to prove it one way or another.”

“Of course. I didn’t mean to…” Sara let her voice trail off. She had meant to influence him. That was the point of them being here. “You’re right. I know you have to be impartial.”

“I just need you to be prepared, Dr. Linton. If I find out Tommy did it, or can’t find solid proof that he didn’t, no one is going to care how he was treated in jail. They’re going to think your Detective Adams saved them a lot of their tax dollars by avoiding a trial.”

Sara felt her heart sink. He was right. She had seen people in this town make assumptions before that weren’t necessarily rooted in fact. They didn’t embrace nuance.

He gave her an alternate scenario. “On the other hand, if Tommy didn’t kill this girl, then there’s a murderer out there who’s either very lucky or very clever.”

Again, Sara hadn’t let herself think this far. She had been so concerned with Lena ’s involvement that it hadn’t occurred to her that Tommy’s innocence would point to another killer.

Will asked, “What else did you find out?”

“According to Frank, both he and Lena saw marks on Spooner’s wrists that indicated she was tied up.”

Will made a skeptical noise. “That’s really hard to tell when a body’s been in the water that long.”

Sara did not revel in her feelings of vindication. “There’s a stab wound, or what they think is a stab wound, in her neck.”

“Is it possible that it was self-inflicted?”

“I haven’t seen it, but I can’t imagine anyone would kill themselves with a stab to the back of the neck. And there would’ve been a lot of blood, especially if her carotid was hit. We’re talking high velocity, up and back, like a hose turned on full blast. I would guess you’d find anywhere from four to five pints of blood at the scene.”

“What about Spooner’s suicide note?”

“‘I want it over,’” Sara recalled.

“That’s strange.” He closed the folder. “Is the local coroner any good?”

“Dan Brock. He’s a funeral director, not a doctor.”

“I’ll take that as a no.” Will stared at her. “If I transfer Spooner and Braham up to Atlanta, we lose another day.”

She was already a step ahead of him. “I talked to Brock. He’s happy to let me do the autopsies, but we’ll have to start after eleven so we don’t disturb anyone. He’s got a funeral tomorrow morning. He’s supposed to call me later with the exact time so we can coordinate the procedures.”

“Autopsies are done at the funeral home?”

She indicated the hospital. “We used to do them here, but the state cut funding and they couldn’t stay open.”

“Same story, different town.” He looked at his cell phone. “I guess I should go introduce myself to Chief Wallace.”

“Interim Chief,” she corrected, then, “Sorry, it doesn’t matter. Frank’s not at the station right now.”

“I’ve already left two messages for him about meeting up with me. Did he get called out?”

“He’s at the hospital with Brad. And Lena, I imagine.”

“I’m sure they’re taking some time to get their stories straight.”

“Will you go to the hospital?”

“They’re going to hate me enough without me trampling into the hospital room of an injured cop.”

Sara silently conceded the point. “So, what are you going to do now?”

“I want to go to the station and see where they were keeping Tommy. I’m sure they’ll have an extremely hostile patrolman there who’s going to tell me he just got on shift, doesn’t know anything, and Tommy killed himself because he was guilty.” He tapped the file. “I’ll talk to the other prisoners if they haven’t already let them go. I imagine Interim Chief Wallace won’t show up until the morning, which will give me some time to go over these files.” He leaned up to get his wallet out of his back pocket. “Here’s my business card. It’s got my cell number on the back.”

Sara read Will’s name next to the GBI logo. “You have a doctorate?”

He took the card back from her and stared at the printing. Instead of answering her question, he said, “The numbers are good. Can you tell me where I can find the closest hotel?”

“There’s one over by the college. It’s not very nice, but it’s fairly clean. It’ll be quiet since the kids are on break.”

“I’ll get supper there and-”

“They don’t have a restaurant.” Sara felt a flash of shame for her small town. “Everything’s closed this time of night except the pizza place, and they’ve been shut down by the health department so many times that only the students will eat there.”

“I’m sure there are some snack machines at the hotel.” He put his hand on the door handle, but Sara stopped him.

“My mother made a huge dinner and there’s plenty left over.” She took the file from him and wrote her address on the front. “Crap,” she muttered, scratching through the street number. She had given her old address, not her parents’. “Lakeshore,” she said, pointing at the street directly across from the hospital. “Go right. Or left if you want the scenic route. It’s just a big circle around the lake.” She wrote down her cell number. “Call if you get lost.”

“I couldn’t impose on your family.”

“I’ve dragged you all the way down here. You could at least let me feed you. Or let my mother feed you, which would be far better for your health.” Then, because she knew he was not a stupid man, she added, “And you know I want to know what’s happening on the case.”

“I don’t know how late I’ll be.”

“I’ll wait up.”

CHAPTER FIVE

WILL TRENT PRESSED HIS FACE TO THE CLOSED GLASS DOOR of the station house. The lights were out. There was no one at the front desk. He rapped his keys on the door for a third time, thinking if he used any more pressure, the glass would break. The building overhang wasn’t doing much to keep the rain off his head. His stomach was grumbling from hunger. He was cold and wet, and extremely irritated that he had been ordered to this small-town hellhole during his vacation.

The worst part about this particular assignment was that this was the first time in his working life that Will had ever asked for a whole week off from work. Back home, his front yard was torn up where he had been digging a trench around the sewer line from his house to the street. Tree roots had taken over the ninety-year-old clay pipe, and a plumber wanted eight thousand dollars to change it out to plastic. Will was digging the trench by hand, trying not to destroy the thousands of dollars worth of landscaping he’d planted in the yard over the last five years, when the phone rang. Not answering didn’t seem like an option. He’d been expecting news from Faith-that her baby was finally coming or, even better, that it was already here.

But, no, it was Amanda Wagner, telling him, “We don’t say no to a cop’s widow.”

Will had put a tarp over the trench, but something told him his two days of digging would be erased by a mudslide by the time he got back home. If he ever made it back home. It seemed like he was destined to spend the rest of his life standing in the pouring-down rain outside this Podunk police station.

He was about to tap on the glass again when a light finally came on inside the building. An elderly woman headed toward the door, taking her time as she waddled across the carpeted lobby. She was large, a bright red prairie-style dress draping over her like a tent. Her gray hair was wrapped up in a bun on the top of her head, held there by a butterfly clip. A gold necklace with a cross dangled into her ample cleavage.

She put her hand on the lock, but didn’t open it. Her voice was muffled through the glass. “Help you?”

Will took out his ID and showed it to her. She leaned in, scrutinizing the photograph, comparing it with the man in front of her. “You look better with your hair longer.”

“Thank you.” He tried to blink away the rain pouring into his eyes.

She waited for him to say something else, but Will held his tongue. Finally, she relented, unlocking the door.

The temperature inside was negligibly warm, but at least he was out from the rain. Will ran his fingers through his hair, trying to get the wet out. He stamped his feet to knock off the damp.

“You’re making a mess,” the woman said.

“I apologize,” Will told her, wondering if he could ask for a towel. He took out his handkerchief and wiped his face. He smelled perfume. Sara’s perfume.

The woman gave him a steely look, as if she could read what was going through Will’s mind and didn’t like it. “You gonna just stand there all night sniffing your handkerchief? I got supper to make.”

He folded the cloth and put it back in his pocket. “I’m Agent Trent from the GBI.”

“I already read that on your ID.” She looked him up and down in open appraisal, obviously not liking what she saw. “I’m Marla Simms, the station secretary.”

“Nice to meet you, Ms. Simms. Can you tell me where Chief Wallace is?”

“Mrs.” Her tone was cutting. “Not sure if you heard, but one of our boys was almost killed today. Struck down in the street while trying to do his job. We’ve been a little busy with that.”

Will nodded. “Yes, ma’am, I did hear that. I hope Detective Stephens is going to be okay.”

“That boy has worked here since he was eighteen years old.”

“My prayers are with his family,” Will offered, knowing religion paid currency in small towns. “If Chief Wallace isn’t available, may I speak with the booking officer?”

She seemed annoyed that he knew such a position existed. Frank Wallace had obviously given her the task of stalling the asshole from the GBI. Will could almost see the wheels in her head turning as she tried to figure out a way around his question.

Will politely pressed, “I know that the prisoners aren’t left unattended. Are you in charge of the cells?”

“Larry Knox is back there,” she finally answered. “I was about to leave. I already locked up all the files, so if you want-”

Will had tucked the file Sara had given him down the front of his pants so that it wouldn’t get wet. He lifted his sweater and handed Marla the file. “Can you fax these twelve pages for me?”

She seemed hesitant to take the papers. He couldn’t blame her. The file was warm from being pressed against his body. “The phone number is-”

“Hold on.” She extracted a pen from somewhere deep inside her hair. It was plastic, a retractable Bic that you’d find in any office setting. “Go ahead.”

He gave her his partner’s fax number. The woman took her time writing it down, pretending to get the numbers mixed up. Will glanced around the lobby, which looked like every other small-town police station lobby he had ever walked into. Wood paneling lined the walls. Group photographs showed patrolmen in their uniforms, shoulders squared, jaws tilted up, smiles on their faces. There was a tall counter opposite the photographs, a gate filling in the space between the front part of the building and the back, where all the desks were lined up in a row. The lights were all off.

“All right,” she said. “I’ll fax them before I go.”

“Do you have an extra pen I can borrow?”

She offered him the Bic.

“I wouldn’t want to take your last one.”

“Go ahead.”

“No, really,” he insisted, holding up his palms. “I couldn’t take-”

“There’s twenty boxfuls in the closet,” she snapped. “Just take it.”

“Well, all right. Thanks.” He tucked the pen into his back pocket. “About the fax-I’ve numbered the pages, so if you can make sure all twelve go in the same order?”

She grumbled as she walked toward the gate. He waited as she bent over to find the release. There was a loud buzz and the click of a lock. Will found it strange that there was such a high level of security in the station, but small towns had found lots of inventive ways to spend Homeland Security money after 9/11. He had visited a jail once that had Kohler toilets in all the cells and nickel-plated fixtures on the sinks.

Marla busied herself in front of the row of office machines by the coffeemaker. Will took in the space. Three rows of three desks were in the center of the room. Tables with folding chairs lined the back wall. On the side of the building facing the street was a closed office door. There was a window looking out onto the squad room, but the blinds were tightly shut.

“Jail’s in the back,” Marla advised. She stacked the pages on the table, giving him a careful eye. Will looked back at the office and something like panic seemed to take hold of Marla, as if she was afraid he would open the door.

“Through here?” he said, indicating a metal door in the back of the room.

“That’s the back, isn’t it?”

“Thank you,” he told her. “I appreciate your help.”

Will let the door close before taking out Marla’s pen and unscrewing the barrel. As he suspected, the ink cartridge inside was plastic. Sara had said the cartridge Tommy Braham used to cut open his wrists was metal. Will was guessing it came from a nicer pen than the Bic.

He reassembled the pen as he walked down the hall. Exit signs illuminated a tiled floor that was around sixty feet long and four feet wide. Will opened the first door he came to, a storage room. He checked over his shoulder before turning on the light. Boxes of paper clips and various office supplies lined the shelves, as did the twenty boxes of retractable Bic pens Marla had mentioned. Two tall stacks of yellow legal pads were beside the pens, and Will imagined the detectives coming into this closet, grabbing a pen and a legal pad so they could give suspects something to write their confessions with.

There were three more doors off the hallway. Two led to empty interrogation rooms. The setup was as you would expect: a long table with a metal eyebolt sticking out of the top, chairs scattered around. Two-way mirrors looked into each room. Will guessed you had to stand in the supply closet to see the first room. The other viewing room was behind the third door. He tried the knob and found it locked.

The door at the end of the hall opened and a cop in full uniform, including hat, came out. Will glanced over his shoulder, finding a camera in the corner that had tracked his progress down the hallway.

The cop asked, “What do you want?”

“Officer Knox?”

The man’s eyes narrowed. “That’s right.”

“You’re the booker?” Will asked, surprised. The position of booking officer was a necessary but tedious job. They were responsible for processing all the newly arrested prisoners and in charge of their well-being while they were housed in the cells. Generally, this was the sort of job an old-timer was given, a light desk position that eased the transition into retirement. Sometimes it was given to a cop who was being punished. Will doubted that was the case with Knox. Frank Wallace wouldn’t have left an aggrieved officer here to handle Will.

Knox was staring at him with open anger. “You just gonna stand there?”

Will took out his badge. “I’m Special Agent Trent. I’m with the GBI.”

The man took off his hat, showing a shock of carrot red hair. “I know who you are.”

“I’m sure your chief has briefed you. We were called in as a matter of routine to investigate the suicide of Tommy Braham.”

“You were called in by Sara Linton,” he countered. “I was standing right there when she did it.”

Will smiled at the man, because he had found that smiling at people when they thought you should be mad was a good way of bringing down some of the tension. “I appreciate your cooperation in this investigation, Officer. I know how difficult things must be for you right now.”

“Do you now?” So much for the smiling. Knox looked like he wanted to punch Will in the throat. “A good man is fighting for his life in that hospital over in Macon and you’re worried about the piece of shit who stabbed him. That’s what I see.”

“Did you know Tommy Braham?”

He was taken aback by the question. “What does that matter?”

“I was just curious.”

“Yeah, I knew him. Had a screw loose in his head from the day he was born.”

Will nodded as if he understood. “Can you take me to the cell where Tommy was found?”

Knox seemed to be really trying to think of a reason to say no. Will waited him out. Any cop would tell you that the best way to get someone to talk was to be quiet. There was a natural, human inclination to fill silence with noise. What most cops didn’t realize was that they were just as susceptible to the same technique.

Knox said, “All right, but I don’t like you, and you don’t like me, so let’s not pretend anything otherwise.”

“Fair enough,” Will agreed, following him through the door, finding himself in a smaller hallway with yet another door. A bench was on one side with a row of gun lockers. Every jail Will had ever visited had the same setup. Rather wisely, weapons were not allowed back with the prisoners.

Knox indicated the lockers. “Be sure to take out your clip and eject the round.”

“I don’t have my gun on me.”

From the look Knox gave him, Will might as well have said he’d left his penis at home.

The man’s lip curled in disgust. He turned around, walking toward the next door.

Will asked, “You said you were here when Dr. Linton made her phone call. Were you just coming on shift?”

Knox turned. “I wasn’t here when the boy killed himself, if that’s what you mean.”

“Were you on shift?” Will repeated.

He hesitated again, as if it wasn’t already clear that he didn’t want to cooperate.

Will said, “I’m assuming you’re not the regular booking officer. You’re patrol, right?”

Knox didn’t answer.

“Who was the booking officer this afternoon?”

He took his time answering. “Carl Phillips.”

“I’ll need to talk to him.”

He smiled. “Carl’s on vacation. Left this afternoon. Camping with his wife and kids. No phones.”

“When will he be back?”

“You’ll have to ask Frank about that.”

Knox took out his keys and opened the door. To Will’s relief, they were finally at the jail. Beside another large door was a viewing window showing another hallway, but this one had the familiar metal doors of jail cells. Just outside the cells was a sort of office for the officer in charge. To one side was a large filing cabinet. To the other was a built-in desk with six flat-screen monitors showing the inside of five of the cells. The sixth monitor had a game of solitaire going. Knox’s supper, a homemade sandwich with chips, was laid out in front of a computer keyboard.

Knox said, “Only got three people in here tonight,” by way of explanation.

Will checked the screens. One man was pacing his cell, the other two were curled up on their bunks. “Where’s the tape for the cameras?”

The cop rested his hand on the computer. “Stopped recording yesterday. We’ve got a call in to get it fixed.”

“That’s really strange that it stopped working right when you needed it.”

Knox shrugged. “Like I said, I wasn’t here.”

“Were any of the prisoners released after Braham was found?”

He shrugged. “I wasn’t in on that.”

Will took the answer as a tacit yes. “Do you have the visitors’ log?”

He opened up one of the filing cabinets and pulled out a sheet of paper, which he handed to Will. The form was lined with columns for names and times, the usual sort of paperwork you found in any jail in America. At the top of the page, someone had written in the date. The rest of the form was blank.

Knox said, “Guess Sara didn’t sign in.”

“Have you known her long?”

“She looked after my kids until she left town. How long have you known her?”

Will noticed a subtle change in the man’s anger. “Not long.”

“Looked like you knew her plenty well, sitting in the car with her for an hour like that in front of the hospital.”

Will hoped he didn’t look as surprised as he felt. He had forgotten how insular and incestuous small towns could be. He pressed his luck. “She’s a lovely woman.”

Knox puffed out his chest. He was at least six inches shorter than Will, obviously trying to make up for it with bravado. “Jeffrey Tolliver was the finest man I ever worked with.”

“His reputation is well known in Atlanta. It was out of respect for him that my boss sent me down here to look after his people.”

Knox narrowed his eyes, and Will realized the patrolman could take his words in many different ways, not least of all as a sign that Will planned to go light on the investigation out of respect for Jeffrey Tolliver. This seemed to relax Knox, so Will did not correct him.

Knox said, “Sara just gets a little hot under the collar sometimes. Real emotional.”

Will would hardly describe Sara as someone ruled by her emotions. He didn’t trust his ability to pull off a cliché like “Women!” He simply nodded and shrugged at the same time, as if to say, “What are you gonna do?”

Knox kept staring at him, trying to make up his mind. “All right, then,” he finally said. He used a plastic card to open the last door. His keys were still in his hand, and he jangled them as he walked. “This’n’s a drunk sleeping it off. Came in about an hour ago.” He indicated the next cell. “Meth head. He’s coming down hard. Last time we tried to wake him, he near about knocked somebody’s teeth out.”

“What about door number three?” Will asked.

“Wife beater.”

“I am not!” came a muffled shout from behind the door.

Knox silently nodded to Will. “Third time he’s been locked up for it. She won’t testify-”

“Goddamn right!” the man screamed.

“He’s covered in his own puke, so I’m gonna have to hose him down if you wanna talk to him.”

“I hate to ask…” Will shrugged. “It might help expedite this so we can all get back to our lives. My wife’s gonna kill me if I’m not home for the holiday.”

“Know whatcha mean.” Knox motioned Will to the next cell. The door was open. “This is it.”

Tommy Braham’s blood had been cleaned up, but the red stain on the concrete floor told the story. His feet would have been toward the door, head back. Maybe he was lying on his side, arm out in front of him. Will guessed from the circumference of the stain that Tommy had not just stopped at one wrist. He had cut open both to make sure the job was done right.

Will stepped into the cell, feeling a slight sense of claustrophobia. He took in the cinder-block-lined walls, the metal bed frame with its thin mattress. The toilet and sink were built as one stainless steel unit. The bowl looked clean, but the smell of sewage was pungent. Beside the sink was a toothbrush, a metal cup, and a small tube of toothpaste like the kind you’d get at a hotel. Will wasn’t superstitious, but he was keenly aware that Tommy Braham had, in his misery, taken his life here less than eight hours ago. The feel of his death still lingered.

“‘Not me,’” Knox said.

Will turned around, wondering what he meant.

Knox nodded toward the faded wall. “That’s what he wrote. ‘Not me.’” He took on a knowing tone. “If it wasn’t you, buddy, then why’d you kill yourself?”

Will had never found it useful to ask dead men to explain their motivations, so he threw the question back to Knox. “Why do you think he kept insisting he didn’t kill Allison Spooner?”

“Told you.” Knox touched the side of his head. “Not right up here.”

“Crazy?”

“Nah, just stupider than shit.”

“Too stupid to know how to kill somebody?”

“Hell, I wish there was such a thing. Wouldn’t have to keep such a close eye on the wife during that time of month.” He gave a loud laugh, and Will forced himself to join in, pushing away thoughts of Tommy lying on the floor of this cell, slicing and slicing the ink cartridge across his wrist, trying to draw blood. How long would it take before the flesh opened? Would the skin get hot from the friction? Would the metal ink cartridge start to get warm? How long would it take for enough blood to leave his body so that his heart stopped?

Will turned back to the faded letters on the wall. He didn’t want to break this new, if false, camaraderie with Knox. “Did you know Allison Spooner?”

“She worked at the diner. All of us knew her.”

“What was she like?”

“Good girl. Got the plates out fast. Didn’t stand around yapping too much.” He looked down at the floor, shaking his head. “She was good-lookin’, too. I guess that’s what caught Tommy’s eye. Poor thing. She probably thought he was harmless.”

“Did she have any friends? A boyfriend?”

“I guess it was just Tommy. Never saw anybody else around her.” He shrugged. “Not like I was paying attention. Wife don’t like it when my eye wanders.”

“Did you see Tommy at the diner a lot?”

Knox shook his head. Will could see his compliance was waning.

“Can I talk to the wife beater?”

“I didn’t touch her!” the prisoner screamed back, slamming his hand against the cell door.

“Thin walls,” Will noted. Knox was leaning against the door, arms crossed. His shirt pocket was bunched up, a silver pen clipped to the material. “Hey, can I borrow your pen?”

Knox touched the clip. “Sorry, this’n’s the only one I got.”

Will recognized the Cross logo. “Nice.”

“Chief Tolliver gave ’em to us the Christmas before he passed.”

“All of you?” Knox nodded. Will gave a low whistle. “That must’ve been expensive.”

“They sure ain’t cheap.”

“It takes a special cartridge, right? A metal one?”

Knox opened his mouth to respond, then caught himself.

Will asked, “Who else got one?”

Knox’s lip curled up in a sneer. “Fuck you.”

“That’s all right. I can ask Sara about it when I see her later.”

Knox stood up straight, blocking the door. “You better be careful, Agent Trent. Last guy who was in this cell didn’t end up too well.”

Will smiled. “I think I can take care of myself.”

“That a fact?”

Will forced a grin. “I hope so, because you seem to be threatening me.”

“You think?” Knox banged on the open cell door. “You hear that, Ronny? Mr. GBI here says I’m threatening him.”

“What’s that, Larry?” the wife beater shouted back. “I can’t hear nothing through these thick walls. Not a goddamn thing.”

WILL SAT IN the interrogation room, trying to breathe through his mouth as he stared at the photocopied pages Sara had given him. Officer Knox had rescinded his offer to hose down the wife beater. Will had endured the man’s stench for twenty minutes before giving up on interrogating him. In Atlanta, Ronny Porter would have sung his way to freedom, giving Will any information he had in order to get out of jail. Small towns were different. Instead of trying to cop a plea, Porter had defended every officer in the building. He’d even waxed poetic on Marla Simms, who apparently used to be his Sunday school teacher.

Will spread out the files, trying to put them into some sort of order. Tommy Braham’s confession was handwritten, the copy dark from the yellow paper. He set that aside. The police report was like every form Will had ever handled at the GBI. Boxes provided space for dates, times, weather, and other details of the crime, to be written in by hand. The suicide note had caught the light from the copier, the letters blurring.

There were two other pages that were photocopies of notepaper from a small pad, the sort of thing most cops carried in their back pocket. Four sheets of the smaller paper had been lined up to fit on one copied page. In all, there were eight pages that had been torn from the notepad. Will studied the positioning. He could see faint marks where the lined paper had been taped to a bigger sheet for copying. Instead of jagged edges at the top where the paper had been ripped from the spiral, there was a clean line as if someone had used scissors to cut them out. This he found strangest of all-not just because cops didn’t tend to be neat, but because he had never in his career known a police officer to tear pages out of their notebook.

The arrest warrant was the last page in the pile, but this part of the process, at least, was computerized. All the spaces were printed in a typewriter font. The suspect’s name was at the top, his address and home phone. Will found the lined box for Tommy’s employer. He leaned over the form, squinting his eyes as he held his finger under the tiny letters. His mouth moved as he tried to sound out the word. Will was tired from the monotonous drive. The letters mixed around. He blinked, wishing there was more light in the room.

Sara Linton had been right about one thing. She had sat across from Will for a solid hour and not realized that he was dyslexic.

His phone rang, the noise startling him in the small space. He recognized Faith Mitchell’s number. “Hey, partner.”

“You were going to call me when you got there.”

“Things have been busy,” he said, which was sort of the truth. Will had always been bad with directions, and there were parts of Heartsdale between Main Street and the interstate that weren’t on his GPS.

She asked, “How’s it going?”

“I’m being treated with the utmost respect and care.”

“I wouldn’t drink anything unless it’s in a sealed bottle.”

“Good advice.” He sat back in the chair. “How’re you holding up?”

“I’m about to kill somebody or myself,” she admitted. “They’re going to do the C-section tomorrow afternoon.” Faith was diabetic. Her doctors wanted to control the delivery so her health wasn’t jeopardized. She started to give Will the details of the procedure, but he dazed out after she used the word “uterus” the second time. He studied his reflection in the two-way mirror, wondering if Mrs. Simms was right about his hair looking better now that he’d let it grow out.

Finally, Faith wound down her story. She asked, “What’s this fax you sent me?”

“Did you get all twelve pages?”

He could hear her counting the sheets. “I’ve got seventeen total. All from the same number.”

“Seventeen?” He scratched his jaw. “Are some of them duplicates?”

“Nope. Got a police report, xeroxed field notes-pages are cut out of the notebook, that’s weird. You don’t take pages out of your field book-and…” He assumed she was reading Tommy Braham’s confession. “Did you write this?”

“Very funny,” Will said. He hadn’t been able to make out the words when Sara had shown him the confession in the car, but even to Will, the looped, cartoonish shape of Tommy Braham’s handwriting seemed off. “What do you think?”

“I think this reads like one of Jeremy’s book reports when he was in first grade.”

Jeremy was her teenage son. “Tommy Braham is nineteen.”

“What is he, retarded?”

“You’re supposed to call it ‘intellectually disabled’ now.”

She made a snorting sound.

“Sara says his IQ was around eighty.”

Faith sounded suspicious, but she had been prickly the last time about Sara inserting herself into their case. “How does Sara happen to know his IQ?”

“She used to treat him at her clinic.”

“Did she apologize for dragging you below the gnat line on your vacation?”

“She doesn’t know it’s my vacation, but, yes, she apologized.”

Faith was quiet for a moment. “How’s she doing?”

He thought not of Sara, but of the scent she had left on his handkerchief. She didn’t strike him as the type of woman who would wear perfume. Maybe it was one of those fancy soaps that women used to wash their faces.

“Will?”

He cleared his throat to cover for his silence. “She’s okay. She was very upset, but mostly I think she has a good reason.” He lowered his voice. “Something doesn’t feel right about any of this.”

“You think Tommy didn’t kill the girl?”

“I don’t know what I think yet.”

Faith went quiet; never a good sign. He had been partnered with her for over a year, and just when Will thought he was learning to read her moods, she had gotten pregnant and the whole thing went out of whack. “All right,” she said. “What else did Sara tell you?”

“Some stuff about the man who killed her husband.” Will knew that Faith had already gone behind Sara’s back to find out the details. She didn’t know about Lena Adams’s involvement, or the fact that Sara believed Lena was responsible for Tolliver’s death. Will stood up and walked into the hall, making sure Knox wasn’t there. Still, he kept his voice low as he relayed the story Sara had told him about her husband’s murder. When he finished, Faith let out a long breath of air.

“Sounds like Sara has a hard-on for this Adams woman.”

Will sat back down at the table. “That’s one way to put it.” He did not share the part of Sara’s story that had stuck out the most. The entire time she spoke, she had not once uttered Jeffrey Tolliver’s name. She had only referred to him as “my husband.”

Faith offered, “I think priority number one is tracking down this Julie Smith. She either saw the murder or heard about it. Do you have her cell phone number?”

“I’ll get it from Sara later.”

“Later?”

Will ignored the question. Faith would want an explanation for why he was having dinner at Sara’s house, and then she’d want a report on how it went. “Where does-did-Tommy Braham work?”

She shuffled through the pages. “Says here he was employed at the bowling alley. Maybe that’s why he killed himself-to keep from having to spray Lysol in shoes all day.”

Will didn’t laugh at the joke. “They charged him with murder right off the bat. Not assault, not attempted murder, not resisting.”

“Where did they get murder? Am I missing the autopsy report? Lab reports? Forensic filings?”

Will laid it out for her. “Brad Stephens is stabbed. He’s airlifted to the hospital. The first thing Adams does is take Tommy Braham back to the station and get his confession for the Spooner girl’s murder.”

“She didn’t go to the hospital with her partner?”

“I’m assuming the chief did. He’s been a no-show.”

“Did Braham have a lawyer present?” Faith answered her own question. “No lawyer would let him make this confession.”

“A murder charge resonates more than assault. It could be political-get the town behind them so no one cares that a killer has killed himself.” Will had told Sara the same thing. If Tommy Braham was Allison Spooner’s murderer, then people would assume justice had already been served.

Faith said, “This confession is strange. He’s got details out the wazoo until the murder. Then, it’s taken care of in three lines. ‘I got mad. I had a knife on me. I stabbed her once in the neck.’ Not much of an explanation.” She added, “And there would be a boatload of blood from something like this. Remember that case where the woman’s throat was slit?”

Will cringed at the memory. Blood had sprayed everywhere-the walls, ceiling, floor. It was like walking into a paint booth. “Allison Spooner was stabbed in the back of the neck. Maybe that’s different?”

“That brings up another good point. One stab wound doesn’t sound mad. That sounds very controlled to me.”

“Detective Adams was probably in a hurry to get back to the hospital. Maybe she was planning a follow-up interview. Maybe Chief Wallace was going to have a go at Tommy later.”

“That’s not how you do it. If a suspect is talking, especially confessing, you get every detail.”

“They haven’t shown much of an aptitude for policing so far. Sara thinks Adams is sloppy, that she plays it too loose. From what I’m seeing with the Spooner investigation, she’s right about that.”

“Is she pretty?”

For a moment, Will thought she was asking about Sara. “I haven’t seen a picture yet, but the cop I spoke with said she was good-looking.”

“Young girl, college aged. The press is going to be all over this, especially if she’s pretty.”

“Probably,” he acknowledged. Yet another motive for putting Allison Spooner’s murderer behind bars as quickly as possible. “The girl worked at the local diner. I gather a lot of the cops in the station knew her.”

“That could explain why they made such a quick arrest.”

“It could,” he agreed. “But, if Sara is right and Tommy didn’t kill the girl, then we’ve still got a murderer out there.”

“When is the autopsy?”

“Tomorrow.” Will didn’t tell her that Sara had volunteered to do the procedure.

“It all seems very convenient,” Faith pointed out. “Dead girl found in the morning, murderer arrested before noon, found dead in his cell before suppertime.”

“If Brad Stephens doesn’t make it, they’re probably not going to let Tommy Braham be buried in the city limits.”

“When are you going to the hospital?”

“I hadn’t planned on it.”

“Will, a cop is in the hospital. If you’re within a hundred miles, you go see him. You hang around and comfort his wife or his mother. You give blood. It’s what cops do.”

Will chewed his lip. He hated hospitals. He had never understood why it was necessary to hang around them unless you had to.

“Isn’t Brad Stephens a potential witness, too?”

Will laughed. Unless Stephens was a Boy Scout, he doubted the man would help shed any light on what happened yesterday. “I’m sure he’ll be as courteous as he is forthcoming.”

“You still have to go through the motions.” She paused before continuing. “And since I’m being a cop, let me state the obvious: Tommy killed himself for the same reason he ran when they confronted him in the garage. He was guilty.”

“Or he wasn’t, and he knew no one would believe him.”

“You sound like a defense lawyer,” Faith noted. “What about the rest of this stuff? It looks like the first few pages of a novel.”

“What do you mean?”

“The handwritten notes from Spooner’s crime scene. ‘Found on the shore approximately thirty yards from the tide line and twelve feet from a large oak is a pair of white Nike Sport tennis shoes, sized women’s eight. Inside the left, resting on the sole, which is blue with the word ‘Sport’ emblazoned where the heel rests, is a yellow-gold ring…’ I mean, come on. This isn’t War and Peace. It’s a field report.”

“Did you get the suicide note?”

“‘I want it over.’” She had the same reaction as Will. “Not exactly the ‘goodbye cruel world’ you’d expect. And the paper is torn from a larger sheet. That’s strange, right? You’re going to write a suicide note and you tear it from another sheet of paper?”

“What else did you get? You said there were seventeen pages.”

“Incident reports.” She read aloud, “Police were called to Skatey’s roller rink on Old Highway 5 at approximately twenty-one hundred hours…” Her voice trailed off as she skimmed the words. “All right. Last week, Tommy got into a fight with a girl whose name they didn’t bother to get. He wouldn’t stop shouting. He was asked to leave. He refused. The police came and told him to leave. He left. No one arrested.” Faith was quiet again. “The second report involves a barking dog at the residence from five days ago. The last one is about loud music. This was two days ago. There’s a note on the last page where the cop who took the report makes a reminder to follow up with Tommy’s father when he gets back in town.”

“Who took the reports?”

“Same cop. Carl Phillips.”

That name was more than familiar. “I was told Phillips was the booking officer on duty when all of this went down.”

“That doesn’t make sense. You don’t put a street cop on booking.”

“Either he’s a really bad liar or they’re afraid he’s going to tell me the truth.”

“So, find him and figure it out for yourself.”

“I was told he’s out camping with his wife and kids right now. No cell phone. No way to get in touch with him.”

“What an amazing coincidence. His name’s Carl Phillips?”

“Right.” Will knew Faith was writing down the name. She hated when people tried to hide. He told her, “Their security cameras in the cells aren’t recording, either.”

“Did they tape the interview with Tommy?”

“If they did, I’m sure the film met with some kind of dropping accident involving electricity and water.”

“Shit, Will. You numbered these pages yourself, right?”

“Yeah.”

“One through twelve?”

“Right. What’s going on?”

“Page number eleven is missing.”

Will thumbed through his originals. They were all out of order.

She asked, “You’re sure you numbered-”

“I know how to number pages, Faith.” He muttered a curse as he saw that the eleventh page was missing from his copies, too.

“Why would someone take out a page and send the incident reports instead?”

“I’ll have to see if Sara-”

He heard a noise behind him. A cough, maybe a sneeze. He guessed that Knox was standing in the viewing room listening to everything that was being said.

“Will?”

He stood up, stacking the pages together, putting them back in the file. “You still seeing your mom for Thanksgiving?”

She took her time answering, misinterpreting his meaning. “You know I’d ask you to come if-”

“Angie’s planning a surprise for me. You know how she loves to cook.” He walked into the hallway and stopped outside the storage room, where he rapped his knuckles on the door. “Thank you for your help, Officer Knox.” The door didn’t open, but Will heard feet shuffling on the other side. “I’ll let myself out.”

Faith didn’t question him until he was in the squad room. “You clear?”

“Give me another minute.”

“Angie loves to cook?” She gave a deep belly laugh. “When’s the last time you saw the elusive Mrs. Trent?”

Seven months had passed since Angie had made an appearance, but that was none of Faith’s business. “How’s Betty doing?”

“I raised a child, Will. I think I can take care of your dog.”

Will pushed open the glass front door and walked into the drizzle. His car was parked at the end of the lot. “Dogs are more sensitive than children.”

“You’ve obviously never spent time around a sullen eleven-year-old.”

He glanced over his shoulder. Knox, or at least a figure looking very much like Knox, was standing in the window. Will kept his gait slow, casual. He didn’t speak again until he was safely inside the car. “There’s something else going on with this girl’s murder, Faith.”

“What do you mean?”

“Call it gut instinct.” Will looked back up at the station. One by one, the lights went off in the front of the building. “It’s just convenient that the one person who could probably tell me the truth about what really happened is dead.”

CHAPTER SIX

LENA HELD BRAD’S HAND. HIS SKIN FELT COOL. THE MACHINES in the room beeped and blipped and hummed, yet none of them could tell the doctors how Brad was really doing. She’d heard a nurse use the phrase “touch and go” a few hours ago, but Brad looked the same to Lena. He smelled the same, too. Antiseptic, sweat, and that stupid Axe body wash he’d started using because of the TV commercials.

“You’re going to be okay,” she told him, hoping her words were true. Every bad thing she’d thought about Brad today was ringing in her head like a bell. He wasn’t street smart. He wasn’t cut out for the job. He didn’t have the skills to be a detective. Was Lena to blame for Brad’s injuries because she had kept her mouth shut? Should she have told Frank that Brad shouldn’t be on the force? Frank knew this better than anybody. Every week for the last two years he’d muttered something about firing Brad. Ten minutes before Brad was stabbed, Frank was chewing him out.

But was it really Brad’s fault? Lena could see this morning’s events like a movie playing endlessly in her head. Brad ran down the street. He told Tommy to stop. Tommy stopped. He turned. The knife was in his hands. The knife was in Brad’s stomach.

Lena rubbed her hands over her face. She should be congratulating herself for getting Tommy Braham to confess. Instead, she couldn’t get past the feeling that she had missed something. She needed to talk to Tommy again, pull out more details about his movements before and after the murder. He was holding out on her, which wasn’t unusual in murder cases. Tommy didn’t want to admit that he was a bad person. That much had been evident the entire interview. He had skirted around the gory details, and Lena had let him because she wanted-needed-to get to Brad to see if he was okay. Lena wasn’t so exhausted that she couldn’t see that Tommy had more to say. She just needed some sleep before she went at him again. She had to make sure that her part of the case, at least the part she could control, was airtight.

The biggest problem was that Tommy was so damn hard to talk to. Less than a minute into his interrogation, Lena had figured out the kid wasn’t right in the head. He wasn’t just slow, he was stupid. Eager to fill in whatever blanks Lena left open so long as she gave him a map and directions. She had promised him he could go home if he confessed. She could still see the confused look on his face when she’d taken him back to the cells. He was probably sitting on his bunk right now wondering how on earth he had gotten himself into this mess.

Lena was wondering the same thing. All the pieces had come together so quickly this morning that she hadn’t had time to consider whether they really fit or if she was just forcing them into place. The stab wound in Allison Spooner’s neck. The suicide note. The 911 call. The knife.

The stupid knife.

Lena’s phone vibrated in her pocket. She ignored it the same way she had ignored everything around her since she had gotten to the hospital. Two hours with Tommy at the station. Two hours driving to Macon. More hours spent standing vigil outside Brad’s room. She had given blood. She’d drunk too much coffee. Delia Stephens, his mother, was getting some air now. She only trusted Lena to stay with her son.

Why? Lena was the last person on earth the woman should trust with her boy.

She got some tissue out of the box and wet the edge in the cup of water by the bed. Brad was on a ventilator, and some dried saliva was caked around his mouth. His lung had collapsed. His liver was damaged. There was lots of internal bleeding. They were worried about infection. They were worried he would not make it through the night.

She wiped his chin, surprised to feel stubble. Lena had always thought of Brad as a kid, but the hair on his face, the size of his hand that she held in hers, reminded her that he was a grown man. He knew the risks that came with being a cop. Brad had been on the scene when Jeffrey died, the first responding officer. He never talked about it, but Brad was different after that day. More grown up. The chief’s death was a grim reminder that none of them was impervious to the bad guys they arrested.

Her phone vibrated again. Lena took it out of her pocket and scrolled through the numbers. She had called her uncle Hank in Florida to let him know she was okay in case he saw something on the news. Jared had called her as she was putting Tommy Braham in the back of the car. He was a cop. He’d heard about the stabbing on his radio. She had told him two words, “I’m okay,” then hung up before she started crying.

All of the other incoming calls on her phone were from Frank. He had been trying to reach her for the last five hours. She hadn’t seen him since he took off with Brad in the helicopter that had landed in the middle of the street. The look in his rheumy eyes had told a story she hadn’t wanted to hear. And now he was worried that she was going to tell everyone what she knew.

He should be worried.

Her phone rang again as she held it in her hand, but Lena pressed the button until the device powered down. She didn’t want to talk to Frank, didn’t want to hear any more of his excuses. He knew what had gone wrong today. He knew that Brad’s blood was on his hands just as much as it was on Lena’s-maybe more so.

She should just quit. Her resignation letter was in her jacket pocket, had been for weeks. She had gotten Tommy’s confession in record time. Let someone else get the details from him. Let another cop stare at Tommy Braham’s slack-jawed face for another two hours trying to figure out what was going on in that tiny little brain of his. They could not fault Lena for her work. Jeffrey’s ghost could not hold her here after what had happened today.

Delia Stephens came back into the room. She was a large woman, but she moved quietly around the bed, fluffing Brad’s pillows, kissing his forehead. She stroked back her son’s thinning blond hair. “He loves being a police officer.”

Lena found her voice. “He’s very good at it.”

Delia had a sad smile on her face. “He always wanted to please you.”

“He never failed to,” she lied. “He’s a good detective, Ms. Stephens. He’s going to be back on the street in no time.”

Delia’s eyes clouded with worry. She rubbed Brad’s shoulder. “Maybe I can talk him into selling insurance with his uncle Sonny.”

“You’ll have plenty of time to persuade him,” Lena’s voice cracked. Her false optimism was fooling no one.

Delia stood up. She clasped her hands in front of her. “Thank you for watching him. I always feel safer when he’s with you.”

Lena felt dizzy again. The room was too small, too hot. “I’m just gonna go to the bathroom for a second.”

Delia smiled, her gratefulness so apparent that Lena felt like a knife was being twisted in her chest. “Take your time, sweetheart. You’ve had a long day.”

“I’ll be right back.”

Lena kept her head up as she walked down the hallway. There were a couple of Grant County patrolmen standing vigil outside the ICU waiting room. Inside, she could see local Macon cops milling around. Frank Wallace was nowhere to be seen. More than likely he was bellied up at a bar trying to drink the bad taste out of his mouth. It was probably best for her not to see him right now. If he’d been standing in the hallway, she would’ve called him out on his drinking, his lies-everything that she’d been ignoring for the past four years. No more. After today, Lena’s knee-jerk loyalty to the man was gone for good.

At least Gavin Wayne, the Macon chief of police, was there. He nodded as Lena walked by. A few weeks ago, he had talked to Lena about joining his force. She was picking up Jared from his shift because his truck was in the shop. Lena had liked Chief Wayne all right, but Macon was a huge, sprawling city. Wayne was more politician than policeman. He was nothing like Jeffrey, an obstacle that had seemed insurmountable when he’d mentioned a job.

Lena pushed open the door of the ladies’ room, glad to find it empty. She turned on the cold faucet. Water ran through her hands. She had washed them a thousand times but the blood-Brad’s blood as well as her own-was still stuck under her fingernails.

She had been shot in the hand. The bullet had taken a chunk of skin off the outside edge of her palm. Lena had doctored it herself, using the first aid kit at the station. Oddly, there hadn’t been much blood. Maybe the heat of the bullet had cauterized the wound. Still, it took three overlapping Band-Aids to cover it up. At first the pain was manageable, but now that the shock had worn off, her whole hand throbbed. She couldn’t have anyone at the hospital look at it. Gunshot wounds had to be reported. Lena would have to call in a favor for some antibiotics so she didn’t get an infection.

At least it was her left hand. She reached toward the faucet with her good hand and added hot water to the cold. Lena felt filthy. She wet a paper towel, added some soap from the dispenser, and washed under her arms. She kept going, giving herself a whore’s bath at the sink. How long had she been up? Brad’s call about the body in the lake came around three this morning. The last time she’d checked a clock, it was coming up on ten in the evening. No wonder she was punch-drunk from exhaustion.

“Lee?” Jared Long stood in the doorway. He was dressed in his motorcycle patrol uniform. His boots were scuffed. His hair was a mess. Lena’s heart jumped at the sight of him.

The words rushed from her mouth. “You shouldn’t be here.”

“My squad came over to donate blood.” He let the door close behind him. It felt like forever as he crossed the room and took her into his arms. Her head rested on his shoulder. She fit into him like a puzzle being solved. “I’m so sorry, baby.”

She wanted to cry, but nothing was left inside.

“I nearly died when I heard one of you got hurt.”

“I’m okay.”

He took her hand in his, saw the Band-Aids she had used to cover her wound. “What happened?”

She pressed her face against his chest again. She could hear his heart beating. “It was bad.”

“I know, baby.”

“No,” she said. “You don’t know.” Lena pulled back, still letting him hold her. She wanted to tell him what had really happened-not what the reports would say, not what the newspapers would be told. She wanted to confess her complicity, to unburden her soul.

But when she looked into his deep brown eyes, words failed.

Jared was ten years younger than she was. She thought of him as pure and perfect. He didn’t have crow’s feet or lines around his mouth. The only scar on his body came from a bad tackle during a high school football game. His parents were still happily married. His younger sister worshipped him. He was the exact opposite of Lena’s type. The exact opposite of any man she had ever been with.

She loved him so much that it frightened her.

He said, “Tell me what happened.”

She settled on half of the truth. “Frank was drunk. I didn’t realize how much until…” She shook her head. “Maybe I just haven’t been paying attention. He’s been drinking a lot lately. He can usually handle it, but…”

“But?”

“I’m through,” Lena told him. “I’m going to resign. I’ve got some vacation time coming. I just need to get my head clear.”

“You can move in with me until you figure out what to do.”

“I’m serious this time. I’m really quitting.”

“I know you are, and I’m glad.” Jared put his hands on her shoulders so he could look at her. “But, right now, I just wanna take care of you. You’ve had a hard day. Let me be there for you.”

She relented easily. The thought of handing over the next few hours of her life to Jared seemed like the best gift in the world. “You go first. I’ll check in on Brad and then follow you in my car.”

He tilted up her chin and kissed her mouth. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

He reached for the door just as it opened. Frank stood stock-still, staring at Jared as if he’d seen a ghost.

“Jesus Christ,” he whispered. She could smell the whisky on him from five feet away.

“Go,” Lena told Jared. “I’ll meet you back at the house.”

Jared wasn’t so easily directed. He stood his ground, glaring at Frank.

“Please go,” she begged him. “Jared. Please.”

He finally moved his gaze from Frank to Lena. “You sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine,” she told him. “Just go.”

Reluctantly, he left. Frank stared after him so long that Lena had to close the door before he would look away.

“What the hell are you doing?” Frank demanded. He had to keep his hand on the wall to steady himself. “How old is he?”

“It’s none of your damn business.” Still, she told him, “He’s twenty-five.”

“He looks ten,” Frank countered. “How long have you been seeing him?”

Lena wasn’t in the mood to answer questions. “What are you doing here, Frank? You can barely stand up straight.”

He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

“Did you drive here? Don’t answer that.” She didn’t want to think about how many lives he had risked climbing behind the wheel.

“Is the kid okay?”

He meant Brad. “They don’t know. He’s stable for now. Have you had anything to drink today that didn’t have alcohol in it?”

Frank’s footing was off. He didn’t go to the sink so much as fall into it.

Lena turned on the water for him. She had a flash of her childhood, her uncle Hank so drunk that he’d pissed himself. She tried to separate her emotions, to distance herself from the anger she was feeling. It didn’t work. “You smell like a bar.”

“I keep thinking about what happened.”

“Which part?” she asked, leaning down so that her face was close to his. “The part where we didn’t identify ourselves as cops or the part where we nearly shot a boy for holding up a letter opener?”

Frank gave her a panicked look.

“You didn’t think I’d find out about that?”

“It was a hunting knife.”

“It was a letter opener,” she insisted. “Tommy told me, Frank. It was a gift from his grandfather. It was a letter opener. It looked like a knife, but it wasn’t.”

Frank spit into the sink. Lena’s stomach roiled at the dark brown color of his phlegm. “It doesn’t matter. He stabbed Brad with it. That makes it a weapon.”

“What did he cut you with?” Lena asked. Frank had been writhing on the floor of the garage, clutching his left arm. “You were bleeding. I saw it. That’s what set this whole thing in motion. I told Brad he cut you.”

“He did.”

“Not with a letter opener, and I didn’t find anything else on him except a toy car and some chewing gum.”

Frank glanced at himself in the mirror. Lena stared at his reflection. He looked like he was two steps from falling into the grave.

She peeled off the Band-Aids on the side of her hand. The wound was red and raw. “Your shot went wild. Did you even realize I was hit?”

His throat worked as he swallowed. He probably wanted a drink. By the looks of him, he needed it.

“What happened, Frank? You had your gun out. Tommy came for you. You pulled the trigger and shot me. How did you get cut on the arm? How did a hundred-thirty-pound wimp of a kid get past you with a goddamn letter opener?”

“I told you that he cut me with the knife. He was wrong about the letter opener.”

“You know, for a cop, you’re a shitty liar.”

Frank braced himself on the sink. He could barely stand. “Tommy doesn’t mention a letter opener in his confession.”

Lena’s voice was more like a snarl. “Because I’ve got about two drips of loyalty left for you, old man, and they’ve been circling the drain all damn day. Tell me what happened in that garage.”

“I don’t know. I don’t remember.”

“How did Tommy get past you? Did you black out? Did you fall?”

“It doesn’t matter. He ran. That’s the point. Everything that happened after that is on him.”

“We didn’t identify ourselves in the garage. We were just three people pointing guns at his head.”

He glared at her. “I’m glad to hear you admitting you did something wrong today, princess.”

Lena felt overwhelmed with fury, ready to do any kind of damage she could. “When Brad shouted ‘Police,’ Tommy stopped. He turned around. He had the letter opener in his hand. Brad ran into it. Tommy didn’t mean to stab him. I’ll tell that to anyone who asks me.”

“He killed that girl in cold blood. You telling me you don’t care about that?”

“Of course I care about that,” she snapped. “Jesus, Frank, I’m not saying he didn’t do it. I’m saying the minute Tommy gets a lawyer, you’re screwed.”

“I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Let’s hope the judge agrees with you, otherwise he’ll invalidate the arrest, the confession, everything that came out of finding Tommy in that garage. That kid’s gonna get away with murder because you can’t stand up straight without a bottle of whisky in you.” She put her face inches from his. “Is that how you want to be remembered, Frank? As the cop who let a killer get away because he couldn’t stay off the booze while he was on the job?”

Frank turned on the faucet again. He splashed water on his face, the back of his neck. She saw his hands were shaking again. His knuckles were busted up. There were deep scratch marks on his wrist. How hard had Frank hit Tommy that the boy’s teeth had managed to break through Frank’s leather gloves?

She said, “It’s your fault this went bad. Tommy got past you. I don’t know what you were doing rolling on the floor, how your arm got cut, but I do know if you had done your job and stopped him at the door-”

“Shut up, Lena.”

“Screw you.”

“I’m still your boss.”

“Not anymore, you drunk, worthless bastard.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out her resignation. When he didn’t take it, she threw it in his face. “I’m done with you.”

He didn’t pick up the letter. He didn’t shoot back a stream of obscenities. Instead, he asked, “Which pen did you use?”

“What?”

“Your pen that Jeffrey gave you. Is that the one you used?”

“Are you trying to guilt me into staying? You’re going to tread on Jeffrey’s memory so I’ll stick around to help you clean up this mess?”

“Where’s your pen?” When she didn’t volunteer it, he started searching her coat, patting her pockets. She resisted, and he slapped her around, throwing her against the wall.

“Get away from me!” She shoved him back into the sink. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

He looked her in the eye for the first time since he’d walked into the room. “Tommy killed himself in the cells.”

Lena put her hand to her mouth.

“He cut his wrists open with an ink cartridge. The metal kind that you use in good pens. Good pens like the ones Jeffrey gave us.”

Lena’s hands wouldn’t work for a few seconds. She found the pen where she always kept it-inside the spiral of the notebook in her back pocket. She twisted the barrel. The ballpoint didn’t come out. “Shit,” Lena hissed, unscrewing the cap. “No… no…” The pen was empty. “How did he get…” She felt sick with grief. Her stomach clenched. “What did he…”

Frank asked, “Did you frisk him before you put him in the cells?”

“Of course I-” Had she? Had Lena taken the time to pat him down or just thrown him into a cell as fast as she could so she could get to the hospital?

“It’s a good thing he didn’t attack anybody while he was back there. He already killed one person and stabbed a cop.”

She couldn’t stand anymore. Her knees gave out. She sank to the floor. “He’s really dead? Are you sure?”

“He bled out.”

Lena put her head in her hands. “Why?”

“What did you say to him?”

“I didn’t…” She shook her head, trying to clear out the image of Tommy Braham lying dead. He had been upset when she’d locked him up, but suicidal? She didn’t think so. Even as rushed as she was to get to the hospital, Lena would have said something to the booking officer if she thought Tommy needed to be watched. “Why did he do it?”

“Must’ve been something you said.”

She looked up at Frank. He was paying her back now. She could tell it by the petty look in his eyes.

He added, “At least that’s what Sara Linton thinks.”

“What does Sara have to do with this?”

“I called her because Tommy, your prisoner, wouldn’t calm down. I thought she could give him something to help. She was there when I found him.”

Lena knew she should be worried about her own hide, but all she could think about was Tommy Braham. What had gotten into him? What had pushed that stupid kid over the edge?

“She’s got some bigwig from the GBI down here to look into the case. Knox has already dealt with him. He’s figured out Tommy got the pen from one of us.”

Lena tasted something awful in the back of her throat. Tommy was her prisoner. He was in her care. Legally, he was her responsibility. “Do they know the cartridge came from me?”

Frank dug around in his coat pocket. He tossed Lena a cardboard packet. She recognized the Cross logo. A new ink cartridge was wrapped in a plastic shell.

She asked, “Did you just buy this?”

“I’m not that stupid,” he told her. “I buy them online. You can’t get the cartridges local.”

Everyone else did, too. It was a pain in the butt, but the gift meant a lot, especially now that Jeffrey was gone. Lena had a stack of ten cartridges in a box back home.

Frank said, “We’re both in trouble on this.”

Lena didn’t respond. She was running through her time with Tommy, trying to figure out when he’d decided to take his own life. Had he said anything to her before she locked the cell door? Lena didn’t think so. Maybe that was one of the many clues she had missed. Tommy had calmed down too quickly after she’d left the room to get him some tissues. She had taken him back to the cells shortly after. He’d been sniffling, but he’d kept his mouth shut, even as she shut the heavy metal door. They always said the quiet ones were the ones who had made up their minds. How had she missed that? How had she not noticed?

Frank said, “We need to stick together, get our stories straight.”

She shook her head. How did she get into this mess? Why was it that the minute she crawled out of one pile of shit, she fell back into another one?

“Sara’s out for blood. Your blood. She thinks she’s finally found a way to punish you for what you did to Jeffrey.”

Lena’s head shot up. “I didn’t do anything.”

“We both know different from that, don’t we?”

His words cut straight through her. “You’re a bastard. You know that?”

“Yeah, well, back at you.”

Lena felt her hand stinging. She was gripping the plastic packet hard enough to cut into her skin. She tried to pry it open, but her nails were too short. She ended up biting the cardboard with her teeth and ripping it away from the plastic.

Frank asked, “How solid is that confession?”

She jammed the new cartridge into her pen. “Tommy admitted to everything. He put it on paper.”

“You better shout that to whoever listens or his daddy’s gonna sue you for everything you have.”

She snorted. “A fifteen-year-old Celica and an eighty-thousand-dollar mortgage on a sixty-thousand-dollar house? He can have the keys right now.”

“You’ll lose your badge.”

“Maybe I should.” She gave up on the pen. She gave up on everything. Four years ago, Lena would have been scrambling for a way to cover this up. Now, all she wanted to do was tell the truth and move on. “This doesn’t change anything, Frank. Tommy was my responsibility. I’ll take the consequences. But you’ll have to take yours, too.”

“It doesn’t have to be like that.”

She looked up at him, wondering at the sudden shift. “What do you mean?”

“Tommy killed that girl. You think anybody’s gonna care about some little retard murderer slitting his wrists in a jail cell?” Frank wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “He killed that girl, Lee. He stabbed her through the neck like he was taking down an animal. All because she wouldn’t let him get his pecker off.”

Lena closed her eyes. She was so damn tired that she couldn’t think. But she knew Frank was right. No one would care about Tommy’s death. But that didn’t mean it was okay. That didn’t change what happened in the garage today, or fix the damage that had been done to Brad.

She told him, “Your drinking is out of hand. I didn’t say anything about Brad being unfit. Maybe he’ll be okay or maybe my silence will end up meaning the death of him. I don’t know. I’m not gonna watch the same thing happen to you. You’re not fit for duty, Frank. You shouldn’t be behind the wheel of a car, let alone carrying a gun.”

Frank knelt down in front of her. “There’s a hell of a lot more you could lose than just your shield, Lena. Think about that.”

“There’s nothing to think about. I’ve made up my mind.”

“I could always put in a word with Gavin Wayne about your little boyfriend.”

“Be sure to brush the whisky off your breath before you do.”

“We both know the kind of trouble I could make.”

“Jared will know I made a mistake,” Lena said. “And he’ll know I stood up to take the consequences.”

“When did you turn so noble?”

She didn’t answer, but the thought of Tommy Braham sitting in those cells, scraping away at his wrists with Lena’s ink pen, made her feel like the least noble person on the planet. How had she managed to fuck up so much in so little time?

Frank pressed, “Does your little boyfriend really know you, Lena? I mean, really know you?” His lips curled up in a smile. “Think about all the things you’ve told me over the years. All those squad cars we sat in together. All those late nights and early mornings after Jeffrey died.” He showed his yellow teeth. “You’re a dirty cop, Lee. You think your boyfriend’s gonna forgive that?”

“I’m not dirty.” She had stepped right up to the line many times, but Lena had never crossed it. “I’m a good cop, and you know it.”

“You sure about that?” He sneered at her. “Brad got stabbed while you were standing with your thumb up your ass. You talked a nineteen-year-old retard into killing himself. I got a witness in the next cell who will say anything I tell him to as long as I let him go back to his wife.”

Lena felt her heart stop in her chest.

“You think I’m just gonna walk away from my pension, lay down my gun and my shield, because you’ve developed a conscience?” He spat out a laugh. “Trust me, girl, you don’t want me to start telling people what I know about you, because by the time I shut up, you’ll be lucky if you don’t find yourself sitting on the wrong side of a jail door.”

“You wouldn’t do that to me.”

“You strut around town like you’re some hot piece of shit wearing your bad reputation on your sleeve. Wasn’t that what Jeffrey was always warning you about? Too many burned bridges. Too many people in town with knives in their backs.”

“Shut up, Frank.”

“The thing about having a bad reputation is that folks will believe just about anything people say about you.” He sat back on his heels. “The chief could’ve gotten away with murder because no one thought he was capable of doing anything bad. You think people feel that way about you? You think they trust your character?”

“You can’t prove anything and you know it.”

“Do I need to?” He smiled again, his lips peeling back from his teeth. “I’ve lived in this town all my life. People know me. They trust me-trust what I tell them. And if I say you’re a dirty cop…” He shrugged.

Lena’s chest was so tight she could barely breathe.

“Maybe I’ll ask ol’ Jared out for a beer,” Frank continued. “I bet Sara Linton wouldn’t mind tagging along, either. What do you think of that? The two of them together having a nice chat about you?” Lena stared her hate into him. Frank’s rheumy eyes glared back. “Don’t forget what a son of a bitch I am, girlie. And don’t for a minute think I won’t throw your worthless ass under the bus to save mine.”

She knew he was serious. She knew the threat was as real and as dangerous as a ticking bomb.

Frank took out his flask. He carefully unscrewed the top and took a long drink.

Lena’s voice was barely above a whisper. “What do you want me to do?”

Frank smiled in a way that made her feel like she was something he’d just scraped off his shoe. “Just stick to the truth. Tommy confessed to killing Allison. He stabbed Brad. Nothing else matters.” Frank shrugged again. “You play by my rules until we’re clear of this, and maybe I’ll let you go over to Macon and be with your little boyfriend.”

“What else?” she asked. There was always something else.

He pulled a plastic evidence bag out of his pocket. Now that it was close up, Lena wondered how she’d ever thought it was real-the thick, dull blade, the fake leather handle. The letter opener.

He tossed the bag onto her lap. “Get rid of it.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

SARA SAT AT THE DINING ROOM TABLE THUMBING THROUGH A magazine while her sister and mother played cards. Her cousin Hareton had joined them half an hour ago, dropping by without a phone call as usual. Hare was two years older than Sara. They had always competed in everything, which was why he had made her go out into the pouring rain to look at his brand-new BMW 750Li. How he could afford such a luxurious car on a rural doctor’s salary was beyond her, but Sara had made the appropriate noises because she didn’t have the strength to do otherwise.

She loved her cousin, but sometimes it seemed as if his goal in life was to get on her nerves. He made fun of her height. He called her “Red” just to annoy her. The worst part was that everyone thought he was charming. Even her own mother thought he walked on water-a particularly sore point considering Cathy did not extend this rose-colored view to her own children. The biggest problem Sara had with Hare was that he never came across a situation he couldn’t make light of, which could be a heavy burden to those around him.

Sara finished her magazine and started over from the beginning, wondering why none of the pages looked familiar. She was too distracted to read and too smart to try to have a conversation with anyone at the table. Especially Hare, who seemed determined to catch her eye.

Finally, she asked, “What?”

He slapped a card down on the table. “How’s the weather up there, Red?”

Sara gave him the same look she’d given him thirty years ago when he’d first asked her that question. “Balmy.”

He put down another card. Tessa and Cathy groaned. “You’re on vacation, Red. What’s the problem?”

Sara closed the magazine, fighting the desire to tell him that she was sorry she wasn’t more upbeat, but that she couldn’t quite get the image out of her mind of Tommy Braham lying dead on the jailhouse floor. A quick glance at her mother told Sara that Cathy knew exactly what she was thinking.

“I’m expecting someone,” she finally confessed. “Will Trent. He’s an agent with the GBI.”

Cathy’s eyes narrowed. “What’s a GBI agent doing here?”

“He’s investigating the murder at the lake.”

“And the death at the police station.” Cathy spoke pointedly. “Why is he coming to the house?”

“He missed supper. I thought you could-”

“Am I responsible for feeding strangers now?”

Tessa, as usual, didn’t help matters. “You’re gonna be responsible for putting him up for the night, too.” She told Sara, “The hotel’s closed for remodeling. Unless he wants to drive forty-five minutes into Cooperstown, you’d better go straighten up the apartment over the garage.”

Sara held back the curse that came to her lips. Hare was leaning forward, chin resting in his hands, as if he was watching a movie.

Cathy shuffled through the cards again. The noise was made louder by the tension. “How does this man know you?”

“Police officers are always at the hospital.” Not technically a lie, but close enough.

“What’s going on here, Sara?”

She shrugged, the gesture feeling so fake that she had trouble letting her shoulders drop back down. “It’s complicated.”

“Complicated?” Cathy echoed. “That sure did happen fast.” She slapped the cards down on the table as she stood up. “I guess I’ll go tell your father to put some pants on.”

Tessa waited until their mother had left. “You might as well tell her, Sissy. She’ll get it out of you somehow.”

“It’s none of her business.”

Tessa gave a shocked bark of laughter. Everything was their mother’s business.

Hare picked up the cards. “Come on, Red. Aren’t you taking this a little too seriously? This is probably the most exciting thing that’s happened to Brad Stephens in his entire life. The guy still lives with his mother.”

“That’s not funny, Hare. Two people are dead.”

“A retard and a college student. The town mourns.”

Sara bit her tongue so that she wouldn’t cut him in two.

Hare sighed as he shuffled the cards between his hands. “All right. The thing about the girl in the lake was a cheap shot, but Tommy’s fair game. People don’t just up and kill themselves for no reason. He felt guilty for killing the girl. That’s why he stabbed Brad. End of story.”

“You sound like a cop.”

“Well…” He put his hand to his chest. “You know I did dress up as one for Halloween.” He turned to Tessa. “Remember the thong?”

“That was my birthday party, not Halloween,” Tessa reminded him. She asked Sara, “Why did you go to the jail in the first place?”

“Tommy needed…” She didn’t bother to finish the sentence. “I don’t know why I went down there.” She stood from the table. “I’m sorry. All right? I’m sorry I went to the station. I’m sorry for bringing this home. I’m sorry Mama’s mad at me. I’m sorry I came here in the first place.”

Tessa began, “Sissy-” but Sara left before she could say more.

Tears filled her eyes for the umpteenth time that day as she went down the hall and stood at the front door. She should go upstairs and talk to her mother. At the very least, Sara could try to come up with an explanation that would stop Cathy from worrying. Of course, Cathy would see right through any explanation Sara could come up with, because they both knew the truth: Sara was trying to get Lena in trouble. Her mother would take no joy in telling Sara that she might as well go outside and howl at the rain. She would be right-at least partially. Lena was good at lying, cheating, and doing whatever else it took to keep herself out of trouble. Sara was no match for the woman because she lacked the basic deviousness with which Lena approached every situation in her life.

And what about the dead girl? Sara was as bad as Hare. She had completely ignored Allison Spooner, treating her death as yet another springboard for attacking Lena. People around town who knew Allison were starting to talk. Tessa had been on the phone most of the afternoon and had the whole story for Sara by the time she got back from downtown. Allison was petite and cheery, the sort of girl with good country manners and a bright smile for strangers. She had worked at the diner during lunch and over the weekends. She must have a family somewhere, a mother and father who had just gotten the worst news a parent could ever hear. Surely they were on their way to Grant County right now, heavy hearts sinking further with every mile.

There were footsteps on the stairs behind her-Cathy, judging by the light tread. Sara heard her mother pause on the landing, then head toward the kitchen.

Sara let out a breath of air she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.

“Sweetpea?” Eddie called from upstairs. He was listening to his old records, something he did when he was feeling melancholy.

“I’m all right, Daddy.” She waited for the squeaking floorboards to signal he was going back to his room. They took an awful long time.

She closed her eyes again. Her father put on some Bruce Springsteen, the needle skipping on the vinyl record as he found the right place. She could hear her mother moving around the kitchen. Plates and pans banged. Hare said something that must have been funny, because Tessa’s laugh rang through the house.

Sara stared out at the street, rubbing her arms to fight the chill that had come over her. This was silly, she knew, to stand at the door waiting for a man who might not even come. As much as Sara did not want to admit it, she wanted more than information from Will. He was from her Atlanta life. He was a reminder that there was something else waiting for her.

And thank God he was finally here.

For the second time that day, Sara watched Will hide the various electronics in his Porsche. It seemed to take longer this time, or maybe she was more impatient. Finally, he got out of the car. He held the file she had given him over his head to shield himself from the rain as he ran up the driveway.

She started to open the door, then reconsidered. She didn’t want him to think she’d been standing here waiting for him. Then again, if she was trying to be covert, she probably shouldn’t have been staring at him through the window.

“Idiot,” she muttered, opening the door.

“Hi.” He shook the rain out of his hair, taking advantage of the cover of the front porch.

“You want me to-” She reached for the wet file in his hand. Sara suppressed a groan of disappointment. It was soaked through. Everything would be ruined.

“Here,” he said, lifting his sweater, untucking his undershirt. Sara saw the pages she’d given him pressed against his bare skin. She also saw what looked like a dark bruise fanning across his abdomen, disappearing into the waist of his jeans.

“What-”

He quickly pulled down his shirt. “Thanks.” He scratched his face, a nervous habit she had forgotten about. “I think we can just throw the folder away.”

She nodded, not knowing what to say. Will seemed at a loss for words, too. They stared at each other until the hall light snapped on.

Cathy stood in the kitchen doorway with her hands on her hips. Eddie came down the stairs. There was a brief moment of the most uncomfortable silence Sara had ever experienced in her life. She felt for the first time what a monumental mess she had made of the day. If she could’ve clicked her heels and gone back to the beginning, she would still be in Atlanta and her family would have been spared this awful situation. She wanted to melt into the floor.

The silence broke with her father. He held out his hand to Will. “Eddie Linton. Glad we can give you respite from this rain.”

“Will Trent.” Will gave him a firm handshake.

“I’m Cathy,” her mother chimed in, patting Will on the arm. “Goodness, you’re soaked through. Eddie, why don’t you see if you can find him something dry?” For some reason, her father chuckled to himself as he ran up the stairs. Cathy told Will, “Let’s get this sweater off before you catch a chill.”

Will looked as uncomfortable as any man would look if an overly polite sixty-three-year-old woman told him to undress in her foyer. Still, he complied, lifting his sweater over his head. He was wearing a long-sleeved black T-shirt underneath. It started to ride up when he lifted his arms and Sara reached out without thinking, holding down the shirt.

Cathy gave her a sharp look that made Sara feel like she’d been caught stealing.

“Mama,” Sara began, feeling a cold sweat coming on. “I really need to talk to you.”

“We’ll have plenty of time later, sweetheart.” Cathy looped her hand through Will’s arm as she led him down the hall. “You’re from Atlanta, my daughter tells me?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“What part? I have a sister who lives in Buckhead.”

“Uh…” He glanced back at Sara. “Poncey-Highlands, it’s near-”

“I know exactly where that is. You must live close to Sara.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Mother-”

“Later, honey.” Cathy shot her a cat’s smile as she took Will into the dining room. “This is Tessa, my youngest. Hareton Earnshaw is my brother’s boy.”

Hare gave him a look of open appraisal. “My, you’re a tall drink of water.”

“Just ignore him,” Tessa advised as she shook Will’s hand. “Nice to meet you.”

Will started to sit in the closest chair, and Sara felt her heart drop in panic. Jeffrey’s place.

Cathy was not completely devoid of a soul. “Let’s put you at the head of the table,” she suggested, tugging Will gently in the right direction. “I’ll be right back with your dinner.”

Sara sank down beside Will. She put her hand on his arm. “I am so sorry.”

He feigned surprise. “About what?”

“Thank you for pretending, but we don’t have much time before-” Sara jerked her hand away. Her mother was already back with a plate of food.

“I hope you like fried chicken.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Will stared down at the full plate. There was enough food for half the town.

“Sweet tea?” Cathy asked. Sara started to stand, but her mother nodded toward Tessa to fetch a glass. “Tell me how you know my daughter.”

Will held up his finger for a minute so that he could swallow a mouthful of butterbeans. “I met Dr. Linton at the hospital.”

Sara could have kissed him for his odd adherence to formality. She explained, “Mama, Agent Trent’s partner was a patient of mine.”

“Is that right?”

Will nodded, taking a healthy bite of fried chicken. Sara couldn’t tell if he was hungry or just desperate to have a reason not to speak. She chanced a look at Hare. For once in his miserable life, he was choosing to be silent.

“Is your wife in law enforcement, too?”

Will stopped chewing.

“I noticed your ring.”

He looked down at his hand. Cathy kept him trained in her sights. He chewed some more. Finally, he answered, “She’s a private investigator.”

“That must give you two a lot to talk about. Did you meet during the course of one of your investigations?”

He wiped his mouth. “This food is very good.” Tessa put a glass of tea down in front of him. Will took a long drink, and Sara wondered if he was wishing there was something stronger in the glass.

Cathy kept up her subtle pressure. “I wish my daughters had been interested in cooking, but neither one of them took to it.” She paused for a breath. “Tell me, Mr. Trent, where are your people from?”

Sara fought the urge to drop her head into her hands. “Mama, really. It’s none of our-”

“That’s all right.” Will wiped his mouth with his napkin. He told Cathy, “I was raised in state care.”

“Bless your heart.”

Will didn’t seem to know how to answer her. He took another long drink of tea.

Cathy continued, “Mr. Trent, my youngest daughter reminded me that the hotel is closed for renovations. I hope you’ll accept the offer of my home while you’re here?”

Will choked on his tea.

“There’s an apartment over the garage. I’m sorry to say it’s not much, but I wouldn’t feel right making you drive all the way over to Cooperstown in this weather.”

Will wiped the tea off his face. He looked to Sara for help.

She shook her head, helpless to stop the onslaught of her mother’s southern hospitality.

THE LINTON HOME renovation had not extended to the laundry room. Sara had to go down the stairs into the unfinished part of the basement to get some clean towels for Will. The dryer was still running when she turned on the lights. She checked the towels. They were damp.

Sara turned the dryer back on. She started up the stairs, but stopped halfway and sat down. She had been acting pretty dimwitted throughout most of the day, but she wasn’t crazy enough to offer herself up to her mother right now.

She rested her chin in her hand. Her cheeks had been beet red from the moment Cathy welcomed Will Trent into the house.

“Sis?” Tessa whispered from the top of the stairs.

“Quiet,” Sara admonished. The last thing she needed was more of her mother’s attention.

Tessa gently pulled the door to. She held one hand under her stomach and grabbed the railing with the other as she descended the stairs. “You all right?”

Sara nodded, helping Tessa sit on the stair above her.

“I can’t believe they didn’t move the laundry room upstairs.”

“Her sanctuary?”

They both laughed. As teenagers, Tessa and Sara had studiously avoided the laundry room for fear of being ordered to help out. They’d both thought they were so clever until they realized their mother was actually enjoying the lack of company.

Sara placed her hand on her sister’s stomach. “Hey, what’s this?”

Tessa grinned. “I think it’s a baby.”

Sara spanned both of her hands across the width. “You’re enormous.”

“I love it,” Tessa whispered. “You wouldn’t believe all the shit I’ve been eating.”

“You must be feeling it kick all the time now.”

“She’s going to be a soccer player.”

“She?” Sara raised an eyebrow.

“I’m just guessing. Lem wants to be surprised.”

“We could go to the clinic tomorrow.” Elliot Felteau had bought Sara’s practice, but she still owned the building. “I can just pretend I’m doing something landlord-y over by the ultrasound machine.”

“I want to be surprised, too. Besides, I think you have enough on your plate right now.”

Sara rolled her eyes. “Mother.”

Tessa chuckled. “My God, that was epic. What a shakedown!”

“I can’t believe how awful she was.”

“You kind of sprung him on her.”

“I thought…” Sara shook her head. What had she been thinking? “Hare wasn’t any help.”

“He’s taking this harder than you think.”

“I doubt that.”

“Tommy used to cut his grass, too.” Tessa shrugged. “You know how Hare is. He’s been through a lot.”

Hare had lost many friends as well as his longtime lover to AIDS, but Sara thought she was the only person in her family who remembered that his casual attitude had predated the epidemic. “I hope he didn’t embarrass Will.”

“Will took care of himself just fine.”

Sara shook her head as she thought about the mess she had made. “I’m sorry, Tess. I didn’t mean to bring all of this to your doorstep.”

“What’s ‘all this’?”

She thought about the question. “A vendetta,” she admitted. “I think I’ve finally found a way to get Lena.”

“Oh, honey, will it make a difference?”

Sara felt tears in her eyes. She didn’t fight them this time. Tessa had seen her in much worse shape before. “I don’t know. I just want…” She paused for breath. “I want her to be sorry for what she did.”

“Don’t you think she’s sorry?” Tessa tread carefully. “As awful as she is, she loved Jeffrey. She worshipped him.”

“No. She’s not sorry. She won’t even accept that she’s the reason Jeffrey died.”

“You can’t really think that she knew that bastard boyfriend of hers was going to kill Jeffrey.”

“It’s not what she wanted to happen,” Sara admitted. “But it’s what she let happen. Jeffrey would’ve never even known that the man existed but for Lena. She put him in our life. If someone throws a grenade, you don’t say they’re innocent because they never considered that it’d actually blow up.”

“Let’s not talk about her anymore.” Tessa wrapped her arm around Sara’s shoulder. “All that matters is that Jeffrey loved you.”

Sara could only nod. This was the one truth in her life. She had known without a doubt that Jeffrey had loved her.

Tessa surprised her. “Will’s nice.”

Sara’s laugh didn’t sound very convincing, even to her own ears. “Tess, he’s married.”

“He was looking at you all googly-eyed at the table.”

“That was fear you saw.”

“I think he likes you.”

“I think your hormones are making you see things.”

Tessa leaned back on the stairs. “Just prepare yourself for the first time being awful.” Sara’s look must’ve given her away. Tessa’s mouth dropped. “Oh, my God. Have you already slept with somebody?”

“Shh,” Sara hissed. “Keep your voice down.”

Tessa leaned forward. “Why am I trekking all the way to the only pay phone in Oobie Doobie to call you if you’re not gonna tell me about your sex life?”

Sara waved her away. “There’s nothing to tell. You’re right. It was awful. It was too soon and he never called me again.”

“What about now? Are you seeing anybody?”

Sara thought of the epidemiologist from the CDC. The fact that this was the first time all week that she’d really considered the man said it all. “Not really. I’ve been on a few dates, but… What’s the point?” Sara threw up her hands. “I’m never going to connect with anyone like that again. Jeffrey ruined me for everybody else.”

“You’ll never know if you don’t try,” Tessa countered. “Don’t deny yourself, Sara. Jeffrey wouldn’t want that.”

“Jeffrey wouldn’t want me to ever touch another man ever again and you know it.”

“You’re probably right.” Still, she said, “I think Will could be good for you.”

Sara shook her head, wishing Tessa would drop the subject. Even if Will was available-even if by some miracle he was interested-Sara would never date another cop again. She couldn’t have a man leave her bed every morning not knowing whether or not he would come back in one piece that night. “I told you. He’s married.”

“Now, there’s married and there’s married.” Tessa had dabbled in more than her share of trysts before settling down. She’d practically had a revolving door to her bedroom. “Where’d he get that scar on his lip?”

“I have no idea.”

“Makes you want to kiss his mouth.”

“Tess.”

“Did you know about him growing up in a home?”

“I thought you were in the kitchen when he talked about that.”

“I had my ear pressed to the door,” she explained. “He eats like the kids at the orphanage.”

“What do you mean?”

“The way he sort of wraps his arm around his plate so no one can steal his food.”

Sara hadn’t noticed, but now she realized it was true.

“I can’t imagine growing up without parents. I mean-” She laughed. “After tonight, it seems ideal, but it must’ve been hard for him.”

“Probably.”

“Ask him about it.”

“That would be rude.”

“Don’t you want to know more about him?”

“No,” Sara lied, because of course she did. She wanted to know about the scars. She wanted to know how he had entered the system as an infant and never been adopted. She wanted to know how he could stand in a room full of people and still seem completely alone.

“The kids in my orphanage are so happy,” Tessa said. “They miss their parents-there’s no question about that. But, they get to go to school. They get three meals a day, clean clothes. They don’t have to work. The other kids who still have parents are jealous.” She smoothed out her skirt. “Why don’t you ask Will what it was like for him?”

“It’s none of my business.”

“Give Mama another go at him and you’ll find out everything.” Tessa pointed her finger at Sara’s chest. “You have to admit she was at the top of her game tonight.”

“I don’t have to admit anything.”

Tessa affected their mother’s soft accent. “Tell me, Mr. Trent, do you prefer boxers or briefs?” Sara laughed, and Tessa continued, “Was your first sexual experience from a missionary position or more of a canine nature?”

Sara laughed so hard that her stomach ached. She wiped her eyes, thinking this was the first time she was actually happy to be home. “I’ve missed you, Tess.”

“I’ve missed you, too, Sissy.” Tessa struggled to stand. “But right now, I’d better go to the bathroom before I pee in my pants from all this laughing.” She made her way up the stairs, taking them one tread at a time. The door closed softly behind her.

Sara stared into the basement. Her mother’s rocking chair and lamp were in a corner by a small window. The ironing board was out, ready to be used. Plastic containers along the back wall held all of Sara and Tessa’s childhood mementos, at least the ones that her mother deemed worth keeping. Yearbooks, school photos, report cards, and class papers filled two boxes for each girl. Eventually, Tessa’s baby would get her own box. She would have baby shoes and flyers from school plays and piano recitals. Or soccer trophies, if Tessa got her way.

Sara couldn’t have children. An ectopic pregnancy while she was in medical school had taken away her ability. She’d been trying to adopt a child with Jeffrey, but that dream had disappeared the day he’d died. He had a son somewhere, a brilliant, strong young man who had never been told that Jeffrey was his real father. Jeffrey was just an honorary uncle, Sara an honorary aunt. She often thought about reaching out to the boy, but the decision was not hers. He had a mother and father who had done a very good job of raising him. Ruining that, telling him he had a father he could never talk to, seemed like an act of cruelty.

Except where Lena was concerned, Sara had an intense aversion to inflicting cruelty.

The dryer buzzed. The towels were ready enough, considering she had to walk outside in the pouring rain. She put on her jacket and left the house as quietly as she could. Outside, the rain had turned into a drizzle again. She glanced up at the night sky. Even with the dark clouds, she could see the stars. Sara had forgotten what it was like to be away from the lights of the city. The night was as black as coal. There were no sirens or screams or random gunshots piercing the air. There were only crickets and the occasional howl of a lonely dog.

Sara stood outside Will’s door, wondering if she should knock. It was late. He might have already gone to sleep.

He opened the door just as she turned around. Will certainly wasn’t looking at her all googly-eyed, as Tessa had stated. If anything, he seemed distracted.

“Towels,” she told him. “I’ll just leave them with you.”

“Wait.”

Sara held up her hand to keep the rain from pelting her in the eyes. She found herself staring at Will’s mouth, the scar above his lip.

“Please come in.” He stepped back so she could walk through the door.

Sara felt an unexplained wariness. Still, she went inside. “I am so sorry about my mother.”

“She should teach a class on interrogation at the academy.”

“I cannot apologize enough.”

He handed her one of the clean towels to wipe her face. “She loves you very much.”

Sara hadn’t expected his response. She supposed a man who had lost his mother at such a young age had a different perspective on Cathy’s obtrusiveness.

“Did you ever-” Sara stopped. “Never mind. I should let you get to sleep.”

“Ever what?”

“I mean…” Sara felt her cheeks redden again. “Were you in foster homes? Or…”

He nodded. “Sometimes.”

“Good ones?”

He shrugged. “Sometimes.”

Sara was thinking about the bruise on his belly-not a bruise at all, but something far more sinister. She had seen her share of electrical burns in the morgue. They left their own distinct mark, like a dusting of gunpowder that got under the skin and never washed away. The dark branding on Will’s body had faded with time. He’d probably been a child when it happened.

“Dr. Linton?”

She shook her head by way of apology. Instinctively, her hand went to his arm. “Can I get you anything else? I think there’s some extra blankets in the closet.”

“I’ve got some questions for you. If you have a few minutes?”

She had forgotten the reason she’d come up here in the first place. “Of course.”

He indicated the couch. Sara sank into the old cushion, which nearly swallowed her. She looked around the room, seeing it as Will might. There was nothing fancy about the space. A galley kitchen. A tiny bedroom with an even tinier bathroom. The shag carpet had seen better days. Buckled wood paneling covered every vertical surface. The couch was older than Sara. And it was big enough for two people to comfortably lie down on, which was why Cathy had moved it from the den to the upstairs apartment when Sara turned fifteen. Not that Sara had boys lining up to lie on the couch with her, but Tessa, three years younger, had.

Will put the towels on the kitchen counter. “Can I get you some water?”

“No, thank you.” Sara indicated the apartment. “I’m so sorry we couldn’t offer you better accommodations.”

He smiled. “I’ve stayed in a lot worse.”

“If it’s any consolation, this is actually nicer than the hotel.”

“The food’s better anyway.” He gestured toward the opposite end of the couch. There was really nowhere else for him to sit. Still, he asked, “May I?”

Sara bent her legs up underneath her as he sat on the edge of the cushion. She crossed her arms, suddenly aware that they were alone in the same room together.

The uncomfortable silence was back. He played with his wedding ring, twisting it around his finger. She wondered if he was thinking about his wife. Sara had met the woman once at the hospital. Angie Trent was one of those vivacious, life-of-the-party types who never left the house without her makeup on. Her nails were perfect. Her skirt was tight. Her legs would have given the Pope second thoughts. She was about as different from Sara as a ripe peach was from a Popsicle stick.

Will clasped his hands together between his knees. “Thank you for dinner. Or, thank your mother. I haven’t eaten like that in…” He chuckled, rubbing his stomach. “Well, I’m not sure I’ve ever eaten like that in my life.”

“I’m so sorry she questioned you like that.”

“It’s no bother. I’m sorry for imposing.”

“It’s my fault for bringing you down here.”

“I’m sorry the hotel was closed.”

Sara cut to the chase, afraid they would spend the rest of the night trading inconsequential apologies. “What questions did you have for me?”

He paused another few seconds, staring openly. “The first one is kind of delicate.”

She tightened her arms around her waist. “All right.”

“When Chief Wallace called you earlier today to come help Tommy…” He let his voice trail off. “Do you always keep diazepam on you? That’s Valium, right?”

Sara couldn’t look him in the eye. She stared down at the coffee table. Will had obviously been working here. His laptop was closed, but the light was pulsing. Cables connected the machine to the portable printer on the floor. An unopened packet of colored folders was beside it. A wooden ruler was on top alongside a pack of colored markers. There was a stapler, paper clips, rubber bands.

“Dr. Linton?”

“Will.” She tried to keep her voice steady. “Don’t you think it’s time you started calling me Sara?”

He acquiesced. “Sara.” When she didn’t speak, he pressed. “Do you always have Valium with you?”

“No,” she admitted. She felt such shame that she could only look at the table in front of her. “They were for me. For this trip. In case…” She shrugged the rest of her answer away. How could she explain to this man why she would need to drug herself through a family holiday?

He asked, “Did Chief Wallace know that you had the Valium?”

She tried to think back on their conversation. “No. I volunteered to bring it.”

“You said you had some in your kit?”

“I didn’t want to tell him they were for-”

“It’s all right,” he stopped her. “I’m really sorry that I had to ask such a personal question. I’m just trying to figure out how it happened. Chief Wallace called you to help, but how would he know that you’d be able to?”

Sara looked up at him. Will stared back, unblinking. There was no judgment in his gaze, no pity. Sara couldn’t remember the last time someone had looked at her and really seen her. Certainly not since she’d gotten into town this morning.

She told him, “Frank thought I could talk to Tommy. Talk him down, I guess.”

“Have you helped prisoners in the jail before?”

“Not really. I mean, I got called in a couple of times when there was an overdose. Once, someone had a burst appendix. I transferred them all to the hospital. I didn’t really treat them at the jail. Not medically.”

“And on the phone with Chief Wallace-”

“I’m sorry,” Sara apologized. “Could you call him Frank? It’s just-”

“You don’t have to explain,” he assured her. “On the phone before, when you said that you didn’t really remember Tommy Braham, that there was no connection with him. Did you feel like Frank was trying to push you into coming to the station?”

Sara finally saw where this was going. “You think he called me after the fact. That Tommy was already dead.” She remembered Frank looking through the cell door window. He had dropped his keys on the floor. Had that all been an act?

“As you know, time of death isn’t an exact science,” Will said. “If he called you right after he found Tommy-”

“The body was still warm,” she remembered. “But the temperature inside the cells was hot. Frank said the furnace was acting up.”

“Had you ever known it to act up before?”

She shook her head. “I haven’t stepped foot in that station in over four years.”

“The temperature was normal when I was there tonight.”

Sara sat back on the couch. These were people who had worked with Jeffrey. People she had trusted all of her life. If Frank Wallace thought Sara was going to cover something up, he was sadly mistaken. “Do you think they killed him?” She answered her own question. “I saw the blue ink from the pen. I can’t imagine they held Tommy down and scraped it across his wrists. There are easier ways to kill someone and make it look like a suicide.”

“Hanging,” he suggested. “Eighty percent of custodial suicides are achieved by hanging. Prison inmates are seven times more likely to kill themselves than the general population. Tommy fits just about every part of the profile.” Will listed it out for her. “He was unusually remorseful. He wouldn’t stop crying. He wasn’t married. He was between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five. This was his first offense. He had a strong parent or guardian at home who would be angry or disappointed to learn of his incarceration.”

She admitted, “Tommy was all of those things. But why would Frank postpone finding the body?”

“You’re well respected here. A prisoner killed himself in police custody. If you say there’s nothing hinky about it, then people will believe you.”

Sara couldn’t argue with him. Dan Brock was a mortician, not a doctor. If people got it into their heads that Tommy had been killed at the jail, then Brock would be hard-pressed to disprove the rumor.

“The cartridge from the pen that Tommy used,” Will began. “Tonight, Officer Knox told me that your husband gave them all pens for Christmas one year. That’s a very thoughtful thing to do.”

“Not exactly,” Sara said before she could catch herself. “I mean, he was busy, so he asked me to…” She waved her hand, dismissing her words. She had been so annoyed with Jeffrey for asking her to track down the pens, as if her life was less busy than his. She passed this off by telling Will, “I’m sure there are things you ask your wife to do for you when you’re tied up.”

He smiled. “Do you remember where you got the pens?”

Sara felt another wave of shame crashing down. “I asked Nelly, my office manager at the clinic, to find them online. I didn’t have time to…” She shook her head, feeling like a heel. “I might be able to find the credit card receipt if it’s important. This was over five years ago.”

“How many did you get?”

“Twenty-five, I think? Everyone on the force got one.”

“That’s a lot of money.”

“Yes,” she acknowledged. Jeffrey hadn’t given her a budget, and Sara’s idea of an expensive gift had a higher price tag than Jeffrey’s. It all seemed so silly now. Why had they wasted days being angry at each other? Why had it mattered so much?

Will surprised her, saying, “Your accent is different down here.”

She laughed, taken off guard. “Do I sound country?”

“Your mother has a beautiful accent.”

“Cultured,” Sara said. Except for tonight, she had always loved the sound of her mother’s voice.

He surprised her again. “You’ve kind of been dragged into the middle of this case, but in a lot of ways, you’ve put yourself there on your own.”

She felt a blush brought on by his candor.

His expression was soft, understanding. She wondered if it was genuine or if he was using one of his interviewing techniques. “I know this sounds forward, but I’m assuming you had me meet you at the hospital in plain view of Main Street for a reason.”

Sara laughed again, this time at herself, the situation. “It wasn’t that calculated. It must seem that way now.”

“I’m staying at your house. People are going to see my car parked on the street. I know how small towns work. They’re going to think something’s going on between us.”

“But there’s not. You’re married and I’m-”

His smile was more of a wince. “The truth isn’t much help in these types of situations. You must know that.”

Sara looked back at his office supplies. He had separated the rubber bands by color. Even the paper clips were turned in the same direction.

Will said, “Something is going on here. I’m not sure if it’s what you think, but something’s not right at that station house.”

“What is it?”

“I don’t know yet, but you need to prepare yourself for some bad reactions.” He spoke carefully. “Cases like this, where the police get questioned. They don’t like that. Part of the reason they’re good at their jobs is because they think they’re right about everything.”

“I’m a doctor. Trust me, it’s not just cops who feel that way.”

“I want you to be prepared, because when we get to the end of this, whether I find out Tommy was guilty, or Detective Adams screwed up, or if I find out nothing was wrong at all, people are going to hate you for bringing me down here.”

“They’ve hated me before.”

“They’re going to say you’re dragging your husband’s memory through the mud.”

“They don’t know anything about him. They have no idea.”

“They’ll fill in the blanks themselves. It’s going to get a lot harder than it is now.” He turned his body toward her. “I’m going to make it harder. I’m going to do some things on purpose to get them mad enough to show their hand. Are you going to be okay with that?”

“What if I say no?”

“Then I’ll find another way to do it that doesn’t upset you.”

She could see that his offer was genuine, and felt guilty for questioning his motives before. “This isn’t my home anymore. I’m leaving in three days no matter what happens. Do what you have to do.”

“And your family?”

“My family supports me.” Sara wasn’t certain about a lot of things these days, but this, at least, was true. “They may not agree with me, but they support me.”

“All right.” He looked relieved, as if he’d gotten the hard part out of the way. “I need to get Julie Smith’s phone number from you.”

Sara had anticipated the request. She took a sheet of folded paper out of her pocket and handed it to Will.

He pointed to the Princess phone beside the couch. “Is this the same line as the house?”

She nodded.

“I wanted to make sure the caller ID was the same.” He picked up the phone and stared at the rotary dial.

Sara rolled her eyes. “My parents don’t exactly embrace technology.”

He started spinning the dial, but the rotary slipped out from under his finger in the middle of the number.

“Let me,” she offered, taking the phone before he could protest. She spun the dial, the motion coming back to her more quickly than she wanted to admit.

Will put the receiver to his ear just as an automated squawk blared down the line. He held the phone between them so they both could hear the recorded voice advising the caller that the line he was trying to reach had been disconnected.

Will put the phone back on the hook. “I’ll have Faith do a trace tomorrow. My bet is that it was a throwaway phone. Do you remember anything else about Julie? Anything she said?”

“I could tell that she was calling from a bathroom,” Sara told him. “She said that Tommy had texted her that he was in jail. Maybe you can get the transcript from his phone?”

“Faith can do that, too,” he offered. “What about Julie’s voice? Did she sound young? Old?”

“She sounded really young and really country.”

“Country how?”

Sara smiled. “Not like me. At least I hope not. She sounded more like the wrong side of the tracks. She used the word ‘you’uns.’”

“That’s mountain talk.”

“Is it? I’m not up on dialects.”

“I had an assignment in Blue Ridge a while back,” he explained. “Do you hear that word around here much?”

She shook her head. “Not really. Not that I can remember.”

“All right, so we’ve got someone young, probably a transplant from north Georgia or Appalachia. She told you that she was Tommy’s friend. We’ll dump his phone line and see if they’ve ever called each other.”

“Julie Smith,” Sara said, wondering why it had never occurred to her that the girl might be using an alias.

“Maybe the phone taps will give us something.”

Sara indicated the photocopies she’d made. “Were these helpful?”

“Not in the way you’re thinking.” He thumbed through the pages. “I asked the station secretary, Mrs. Simms, to fax these to Faith. Can you look at them for me?”

Sara glanced through the pages. There were handwritten numbers at the top. She stopped on the eleventh page. Someone had written the number twelve in the corner. The two was backward. “Did you number these?”

“Yes,” he said. “When I got them back from Mrs. Simms, one of the pages was missing. Page eleven. The page right after Detective Adams’s field report.”

Sara thumbed back to the second page. The two was written the correct way. She checked the third and fifth page. Both numbers were facing the correct direction. The pen had been pressed so hard that the paper felt embossed.

He asked, “Can you remember what’s missing?”

Sara went through them again, concentrating on the content instead of the numbering. “The 911 transcript.”

“You’re sure?”

“There was another page from Lena’s notebook. It was taped on the sheet of paper by itself. She wrote down the contents of the 911 call.”

“Can you remember what it said?”

“I know that it was a woman’s voice. I can’t really remember the rest.”

“Did they trace the number she called from?”

“I didn’t see anything indicating they had.” She shook her head. “Why can’t I remember what else it said?”

“We can get it from the call center.”

“Unless they managed to lose it.”

“It’s no big deal,” he told her. “You got the file from Frank, right?”

“From Carl Phillips.”

“The booking officer?”

“Yes. Did you talk to him tonight?”

“He’s gone on vacation with his family. No idea when he’ll be back. No phone. No cell. No way to get in touch with him.”

Sara felt her mouth drop open.

“I doubt he’s really gone. They’re probably keeping him away from me. He might even be at the station tomorrow, hiding in plain sight.”

“He’s the only African American on the force.”

Will laughed. “Thanks for the tip. That narrows things down considerably.”

“I can’t believe they’re doing this.”

“Cops don’t like to be questioned. They circle their wagons, even if they know it’s wrong.”

She wondered if Jeffrey had ever done anything like this. If he had, it was only because he wanted to be the one to clean out his own house. He would never let someone come in and do his job for him.

Will asked, “Where did you make the copies?”

“At the front of the room.”

“The copier that’s on the table by the coffeemaker?”

“That’s right.”

“Did you get some coffee?”

“I didn’t want to dawdle.” Everyone had been staring at her like she was a monster. Sara’s only goal had been to make the copies and get out of there as soon as possible.

“So, you’re standing by the copier waiting for the pages to come out. That looked like an old machine. Does it make a noise?”

She nodded, wondering where this was going.

“Like a whirring or a clunking?”

“Both,” she answered, and she could hear the sound in her head.

“How much coffee was left in the pot? Did anyone come up?”

She shook her head. “No. The pot was full.” The machine was older than the copier. She could smell the grounds burning.

“Did anyone talk to you?”

“No. No one would even look at-” She saw herself standing by the copier. The machine was old, the kind you had to feed the pages into one at a time. She had read the file to keep from staring aimlessly at the wall. “Oh.”

“What do you remember?”

“I skimmed the 911 transcript while I was waiting for the copier to warm up.”

“What did it say?”

She could see herself standing back in the station reading the files. “The woman called it a possible suicide. She said she was worried her friend had done something.” Sara narrowed her eyes, trying to force the memory to come. “She was worried Allison was going to kill herself because she’d gotten into a fight with her boyfriend.”

“Did she say where she thought Allison was?”

“Lover’s Point,” she recalled. “That’s what town people call it. It’s the cove where Allison was found.”

“What’s it like?”

“A cove.” Sara shrugged. “It’s romantic if you’re out for a walk, but not in the pouring rain and cold.”

“Is it secluded?”

“Yes.”

“So, according to this caller, Allison got into a fight with her boyfriend. The caller was worried Allison was suicidal. The caller also knew she was going to be at Lover’s Point.”

“It was probably Julie Smith. Is that what you’re thinking?”

“Maybe, but why? The caller wanted to bring attention to Allison’s murder. Julie Smith was trying to help Tommy Braham get away with murder. They seem to have opposite goals.” He paused. “Faith is trying to track her down, but we’re going to need more than a disconnected number to find her.”

“Frank and Lena are probably thinking the same thing,” Sara guessed. “That’s why they hid the transcript. They either don’t want you to talk to her or they want to talk to her first.”

Will scratched his cheek. “Maybe.” He was obviously considering another option. For her part, Sara could not get past Marla Simms hiding information in a formal investigation. The old woman had worked at the station longer than anyone could remember.

Will sat up on the couch. He thumbed through the pages on the coffee table. “Mrs. Simms took it upon herself to send some extra information. I had Agent Mitchell scan these in so I could print them out.” He found what he was looking for and handed it to Sara. She recognized the form, a two-page incident report. Patrolmen filled out dozens of these a week to notate cases where they had been called in but no arrest had been made. They were useful to have in case something bad happened later, sort of like a progress report on a person or an area of town.

Will said, “These are incident reports documenting Tommy’s run-ins with the law.” He indicated the pages in Sara’s hands. “This one talks about a girl he got into a screaming match with at the roller rink.”

She saw there was a yellow dot in the corner of the report.

He asked, “Did you ever know Tommy to have a temper?”

“Never.” Sara checked through the other incident reports. There were two more, each two stapled pages, each with a dot from a colored marker in the corner. One was red. The other was green.

She looked back up at Will. “Tommy was pretty even-keeled. Kids like that tend to be very sweet.”

“Because of their mental state?”

Sara stared at him, thinking back on their conversation in the car. “Yes. He was slow. Very gullible.”

Much like Sara.

She handed a different report back to Will, showing it to him upside down. She pointed to the middle of the page where Carl Phillips had described the incident. “Did you read this part?”

She watched Will’s eyes go to the red dot. “The barking dog. Tommy started screaming at his neighbor. The woman called the cops.”

“Right.” She took the third report and handed it to him in the right direction. “Then there’s this.”

Again, his eyes went not to the words, but to the colored dot. “Loud music reported a few days ago. Tommy yelled at the officer.”

She was silent, waiting for him to send out another feeler.

He took his time, finally asking, “What are you thinking?”

She was thinking he was incredibly clever. Sara looked at the folders, the markers. He color-coded everything. His penmanship was awkward, like a child’s. He’d written the number two backward, but not with any consistency. He couldn’t tell whether a page was upside down or not. Sara might not have even noticed under different circumstances. Hell, she hadn’t noticed the last time she’d spent time with him. He’d been in her home. She had watched him work and never realized there was a problem.

He joked, “Is this some kind of test?”

“No.” She couldn’t do this to him. Not like this. Maybe not ever. “I was looking at the dates.” She shuffled through the forms to give herself something to do. “All the incidents happened within the last few weeks. Something must have set him off. Tommy didn’t have a temper until recently.”

“I’ll see what I can find.” He took back the pages and stacked them on the table. He was nervous, and he was not stupid. He had spent a lifetime looking for cues, searching for tells and ticks, so that he could keep his secret hidden.

Sara put her hand on his arm. “Will-”

He stood up, moving out of her reach. “Thank you, Dr. Linton.”

Sara stood, too. She fumbled for something to say. “I’m sorry I couldn’t help more.”

“You’ve been great.” He walked to the door and held it open for her. “Please thank your mother for her hospitality.”

Sara left before she was pushed out. She got to the bottom of the steps and turned around, but Will had already gone inside.

“Good Lord,” Sara mumbled as she walked across the wet grass. She’d actually managed to make Will feel more uncomfortable than her mother had.

The distant sound of a car came from up the road. Sara watched a police cruiser roll by. This time, the cop behind the wheel did not tip his hat at her. In fact, he seemed to glare at her.

Will had warned her this would happen, that the town would turn against her. Sara hadn’t thought the time would come so quickly. She laughed at herself, the circumstances, as she crossed the driveway and went into the house. Will might have trouble reading the words on a page, but he was pretty damn good at reading people.

CHAPTER EIGHT

JASON HOWELL PACED BACK AND FORTH ACROSS HIS TINY DORM room, the shuffling of his feet blending with the shushing of the rain outside his window. Papers were strewn across the floor. His desk was cluttered with open books and empty Red Bull cans. His ancient laptop made a sound like an exhausted sigh as it went to sleep. He needed to be working, but his brain was spinning in his head. Nothing could hold his attention for more than a few minutes-not the broken lamp on his desk or the emails flooding his inbox and certainly not the paper he was supposed to be working on.

Jason rested his palm just below the keyboard on the laptop. The plastic was hot to the touch. The fan that cooled the motherboard had started clicking a few weeks ago, around the same time he’d nearly gotten a third-degree burn on his legs from keeping the computer on his lap. He guessed there was something bad happening between the battery and the charger plugged into the wall. Even now there was a slight tinge of burning plastic in the air. Jason grabbed the plug but stopped short of yanking it out of the socket. He chewed the tip of his tongue as he stared at the snaking electrical cord in his hand. Did he want the machine to overheat? A dead laptop was a life-altering catastrophe. Maybe his work would be lost, his footnotes and research and the last year of his life melting into one giant lump of stinking plastic.

And then what?

He didn’t have any friends left. Everyone in the dorm avoided him when he walked down the hall. Nobody talked to him in class or asked to borrow his notes. He hadn’t been out for a drink in months. Except for his professors, Jason couldn’t recall one meaningful conversation he’d had with anyone since before Easter break.

Anyone but Allison, but that didn’t count. They weren’t really talking lately. All they did was end up screaming at each other about the stupidest things-who was supposed to order the pizza, who forgot to shut the door. Even the sex was bad. Confrontational. Mechanical. Disappointing.

Jason couldn’t blame Allison if she hated him right now. He couldn’t do anything right. His paper was a mess. His grades had started to slip. He was running out of money from his grandfather’s trust. Papa had left him twelve thousand dollars to supplement Jason’s scholarships and loans for school. At the time, the number had seemed enormous. Now that Jason was a year into his graduate program, it seemed like a pittance. And that pittance was getting smaller every day.

No wonder he was so depressed he barely had the strength to raise his head.

What he really wanted was Allison. No, scratch that-he wanted the Allison he had known for one year and eleven months. The one who smiled when she saw him. The one who didn’t burst into tears every five minutes and yell at him for being a bastard when Jason asked her why she was sad.

“Because of you,” she would say, and who wanted to hear that? Who wanted to be blamed for somebody else’s misery when you were knee-deep in your own?

And Jason was miserable. It radiated off him like the heat lamp over the french fries at McDonald’s. He’d lost track of the last time he’d showered. He couldn’t sleep. Nothing could make his brain shut down long enough for rest. As soon as he lay down, his eyelids started going up and down like a lazy yo-yo. Darkness tended to bring it all fresh into his mind, and before long that monster weight of loneliness started pressing on his chest so that he felt like he couldn’t breathe.

Not that Allison cared. He could be dead right now for all she knew. He hadn’t seen another human being since the dorm cleared out for Thanksgiving break three days ago. Even the library had closed early on Sunday, the last stragglers clawing at the steps as the staff finally locked the doors. Jason had watched them go from his window, wondering if they were going to be alone, if they had anyone to spend their holiday with.

Except for the constant hum of the Cartoon Network and Jason’s occasional mumblings to himself, the place was completely silent. Even the janitor hadn’t shown his face in days. Jason probably wasn’t supposed to be in the building. The heat had been turned off when the last students left. He was sleeping in his warmest clothes, holed up under his winter coat. And the one person who was supposed to care about this evidently didn’t give a shit.

Allison Spooner. How had he fallen in love with a girl who had such a stupid name?

She had called him like crazy for days, and then yesterday-nothing. Jason had watched his phone light up each time with her caller ID and each time he hadn’t answered it. Her messages were all the same: “Hey, call me.” Would it kill her to say something else? Would it kill her to say that she missed him? He had conversations in his head where he asked her these questions and she said, “You know what? You’re right. I should be a better girlfriend.”

Conversations. More like fantasies.

For three days, all the phone did was ring. He started to worry that Allison’s caller ID would get etched into the screen on his phone. He’d watched the bars for the battery indicator disappear one by one. With each bar, he told himself he would answer the phone if she called before the next one disappeared. Then it would blink off with no call and he’d say the next one. Then the next one. Finally, the phone had turned itself off while he was sleeping. Jason had panicked as he searched for the charger. He’d plugged it into the wall and-nothing.

Her silence was loud and clear. You didn’t give up on somebody like that if you loved them. You kept calling. You left messages that said something more deep and personal than “Hey, call me.” You apologized. You didn’t send a stupid IM every twenty minutes saying “where r u?” You banged on their door and yelled at the top of your lungs for them to please, please see you.

Why had she given up on him?

Because he didn’t have any balls. That’s what she had told him the last time they talked. Jason wasn’t man enough to do what needed to be done. He wasn’t man enough to take care of her. Maybe she was right. He was afraid. Every time they talked about what they were going to do, he felt like his intestines were squeezing up on him. He wished that he had never talked to that asshole from town. He wished that he could take it all back-everything they had done over the past two weeks. Allison acted like she was fine with it, but he knew she was afraid, too. It wasn’t too late. They could back out of this. They could pretend like it didn’t happen. If only Allison would see that there was no good way out. Why was Jason the only person in this whole damn mess who seemed to be cursed with a conscience?

Suddenly, there was a noise outside. He threw open the door and went into the hallway. Jason stood in the dark, glancing around like a madman. No one was there. No one was watching him. He was just being paranoid. Considering the number of Red Bulls he’d chugged and the two bags of Cheetos that were sitting like a brick in his stomach, it was no wonder he was feeling wired.

Jason went back into his room. He opened the window to let in some air. The rain had slacked off, but the sky hadn’t given up the sun in days. He checked his bedside clock, unsure whether it was morning or night. Midnight was only a few minutes away. A stiff wind was blowing, but he had been holed up inside for so long that he welcomed fresh air, even if it was cold enough to make his breath appear as a cloud in front of his face. Outside, he could see the empty student parking lot. In the distance, a dog barked.

He sat back down at his desk. He stared at the lamp by his laptop. The neck was broken. The shade dangled from two wires, hanging its head as if in shame. The light cast weird shadows in the room. He had never liked the dark. It made him feel vulnerable and lonely. It made him think about things he didn’t want to think about.

Thanksgiving was a few days away. Last week, Jason had made the usual call to his mother, but she wasn’t interested in seeing him. She never was. Jason was from his mother’s first marriage, to a man who’d gone out for beer one day and never come back. Her second husband made it clear from the start that Jason wasn’t his son. They had three daughters who barely knew Jason existed. He wasn’t invited to family get-togethers. He didn’t get invitations to weddings or holidays. His mother’s only connection to him was through the U.S. Postal Service. She mailed a check for twenty-five dollars every birthday and Christmas.

Allison was supposed to make things different. They were supposed to spend all of their holidays together. They were supposed to create their own family. That’s what they’d done for the last year and eleven months. They went to movies or ate Chinese food while the rest of the planet was holed up with relatives they didn’t like, eating food they didn’t enjoy. That was their thing-they were two against the world, filled with combined glee because they had each other. Jason had never known what it was like to be inside something good. He was always on the outside, his face pressed against the glass. Allison had given him that, and now she had taken it away.

He didn’t even know if she was still in town. She might have gone home to visit her aunt. Maybe she had run off with another guy. Allison was attractive. She could do a hell of a lot better than Jason. He wouldn’t be surprised if she was screwing some new guy right now.

A new guy.

The thought cut him like a knife. Their legs and arms entangled, her long hair draped across another guy’s chest. Probably it was a hairy chest, the kind of chest that men had, not a concave, pasty white chest that hadn’t changed since junior high school. This new guy would have balls the size of grapefruits. He would pick Allison up in his arms and take her like a beast whenever he wanted.

How could she be with another guy? Jason knew from the first time they kissed that he was going to marry her. He’d given her that ring with the promise that as soon as all of this was over, he’d buy her a better one. A real one. Had Allison forgotten that? Could she really be that cruel?

Jason chewed at his tongue, rolling it around with his front teeth until he tasted blood. He stood up and started pacing again. The broken lamp traced his movements in an eerie shadow that swung back and forth across the wall. Six paces one way. Six paces back. The shadow hesitated, stopped and started, clinging to Jason like a bad dream. He raised his hands, hunched his shoulders, and the shadow grew into a monster.

Jason dropped his hands, thinking he was going to freak himself out if he didn’t stop this.

If he could just get through Thanksgiving, all of this would be over. He and Allison would be rich, or at least not as poor. Tommy would be able to buy enough equipment to start his own gardening business. Allison would be able to quit her job at the diner and concentrate on school. Jason would… What would Jason do?

He would buy Allison that ring. He would block that other guy and his stupid hairy chest from his mind, and he and Allison would go on and live their lives together. They could get married. Have children. They’d both be scientists, doctors. They could buy a new house, new cars, leave the air-conditioning on sixty all summer if they wanted to. The last three months would be a distant memory, something they would talk about in ten, fifteen years when it was all behind them. They would be at a dinner party. Allison would’ve had a little too much to drink. Talk would turn to wild college days, and her eyes would sparkle in the candlelight as she looked at Jason, a smile tugging at her lips.

“Oh, we can top that,” she would say, and proceed to shock them all with the crazy mess they had gotten themselves into over the last few weeks.

That’s what it would end up being-a party story, like the one Jason told about the first time his papa took him duck hunting and Jason had accidentally maimed two decoys.

He needed to finish his paper for that to happen. He couldn’t just settle for a degree now. He had to be the best, the top in his class, because Allison didn’t say it, but she liked having nice things. She liked the idea of being able to go into a store and buy whatever she wanted. She hated having to balance her checkbook down to the last penny every month. Jason wasn’t going to be the kind of husband who asked how much a pair of shoes cost or why she needed another black dress. He was going to be the kind of husband who made so much money that Allison could fill ten closets with designer clothes and there would still be money left over to go to Cancún or St. Croix or wherever it was filthy rich people went on their private jets for the holidays.

Jason rested his fingers on the keys but did not type. He felt feverish. Guilt had always been a problem for him. There was no punishment that anyone could mete out that was worse than the distress brought on by Jason’s own disappointment in himself. And he should be disappointed. He should be feeling horrified by what he had done. He should have protected Allison from all of this, told her that no matter how much money was involved, it wasn’t worth it. He’d endangered her. He’d gotten Tommy mixed up in it, too, because Tommy was stupid enough to go along with anything as long as you pushed him in the right direction. Jason was responsible for both of them. He was supposed to protect his friends, not push them into oncoming traffic. Were their lives really worth so little? Was that what it boiled down to at the end of the day, twenty-something years of life for less money than what a janitor brought home?

“No,” he said, the sound of his voice drowned out by the howling rain. He couldn’t let all of them get dragged down into this. Allison was wrong. Jason had balls. He had balls enough to do the right thing.

Instead of working on his paper, he opened his Internet browser. A quick search brought him to the right place. He found the contact information buried in the site map. Jason clicked on the icon to write new mail, but changed his mind. He didn’t want this traced back to him. It was the coward’s way out, but Jason would rather be an honest coward than a jailed whistle-blower. There was no denying his culpability in all of this-extortion, fraud, who knew what else. The feds would be involved. This might even count as attempted murder.

Jason opened up the Yahoo account he used for porn and pasted the contact address into the email. He spoke aloud as he wrote, “I don’t know if you are the right person to talk to about this, but there is something seriously wrong going on at your Grant County…” Jason’s voice trailed off as he searched for the right word. Was it a site? A location? Facility?

“Hey.”

Jason jerked up his head, surprised. “You scared the crap out of me.” He fumbled for the mouse to close the browser.

“You all right?”

Jason glanced nervously at the computer. “What are you doing here?” The stupid email program was asking if he wanted to save. Jason moved the mouse again to minimize the page. It still asked if he wanted to save.

“What are you writing?”

“School stuff.” Instead of hitting Save, Jason pressed the Delete key. The program closed down. He could hear the laptop’s fan clicking, trying to cool the processor enough to complete the request. His dissertation flashed up, then disappeared. The screen went black.

“Shit,” he whispered. “No, no, no…”

“Jason.”

“Just give me a minute.” Jason tapped the space bar, trying to wake the computer. Sometimes that’s all it took. Sometimes, it just needed to know he was paying attention.

“You asked for this.”

“Wha-” Jason pitched forward, his jaw snapping shut as his face slammed into his computer. The plastic was hot against his cheek. Dark liquid pooled around the keys. He had the crazy thought that the computer was injured, bleeding.

Wind gusted in from the open window. Jason tried to cough. His throat wouldn’t comply. He coughed again. Something wet and thick came out of his mouth. He stared at it, thinking it looked like a piece of pork. Pink flesh. Raw meat.

Jason gagged.

He was staring at his tongue.