“Sweetheart, do you think I give a damn about my car?”
Will hoped she still felt the same when she turned on the news and saw her BMW being tracked up I-75. “Are you at the hospital?”
“I’m at home. Denise gave me a lift while Amanda interviewed the boy. She’s going back to Grady to stay with Aaron until his parents are there. Did Faith tell you?”
“Yes.” Will closed his eyes. He liked thinking about Sara being safe at home. “What are you doing?”
“Lying on the couch. I was going to take a shower, but I feel like I’ve been run over by a truck. I’m too sore to move.”
Will thought about the night before. “Sore from me?”
“A little,” she allowed. “When do you think you’ll be back in Atlanta?”
“I’m driving back tonight.” Will decided at that moment that he would quit his job if that was the only way to make it happen. “I’ll call you when I’m ten minutes out.” He covered the bottom part of the phone with his hand, an easy task considering there was no daylight between his wrists. Still, he lowered his voice, telling Sara, “I want you to fill the bathtub when I call.”
She sounded surprised, but said, “Okay.”
“When I get there, I want you to get in the tub with me.”
Her “Okay” was very different this time.
“Then we’re going to talk.”
Her voice changed again. “Just talk?”
“I’m going to answer every question you ask me.”
“Every question?” she repeated. “The water will go cold.”
“We’ll keep it warm,” he told her. “I mean it, Sara. No more secrets.” Will looked out the kitchen window. He saw a police cruiser kicking up dust in the distance. His resolve started to slip. Will felt like he was stepping out onto a tightrope. His hands were so slick he could barely hold the phone.
Still, he managed to say the one thing he should’ve told her in the first place. “I trust you.”
Sara didn’t speak, but he could hear her breath through the phone.
Will felt his throat start to tighten. He should probably hang up. He wanted to hang up. But he asked, “What do you think? Does that sound good?”
“Baby.” She sighed out the word. “I think that sounds like the perfect way to start the rest of our lives.”
17.
MACON, GEORGIA
FIVE DAYS LATER
Lena sat across the table from yet another Internal Affairs investigator. Brock Patterson’s black-and-white ensemble reminded her of the woman who’d investigated her the week before. Lena wondered whether there was a departmental dress code or if they all secretly worked night shifts at Olive Garden. If their pay was commensurate with Lena’s, it wasn’t a stretch.
“Detective Adams?” Patterson said. He’d obviously asked a question. Lena had stopped paying attention when she’d figured out the repetitive code to his interrogation. Every twenty minutes, he reset, asking the same questions he’d asked before, but using different inflections, different phrasing.
When did you find the boy?
You found the boy when?
Where was the boy when you found him?
The boy. Aaron Winser. He was safe now, but they were all too terrified to say his name on the record.
If Lena was being honest, she never wanted to think about the boy again. Not out of spite, but out of self-preservation. She’d spent four days rehashing every horrible detail of the shooting gallery—the dead bodies, the cold fear that sat in the pit of her belly when she stared down Sid Waller. And then the worst part, the part that she’d left out during the first investigation—finding the boy.
Lena still had nightmares about pulling back that panel in the basement, seeing those two terrified eyes staring back at her. Aaron’s pupils had been black as coal, set in a field of reddish white. He hadn’t said a word when Lena lifted him out of the hole. He’d felt so light. Like a blanket. Lena had cradled him in her arms, cooing to him. She’d never had a maternal bone in her body, but with Aaron, it came naturally. She stroked his hair. Kissed her lips to his dry forehead. Her hand on his back felt the rapid thump-thump-thump of his heart, and she thought of her little bean, forever captured on that ultrasound file she kept on her computer at the office.
“Detective Adams?” Patterson said. “Could you please focus?”
“Can’t you just look back at your notes and write down what I told you the first time?”
“The first time you were interviewed or the first time you told the truth?”
Point taken.
Lena sat back in her chair. It was uncomfortable by design. The room was cold, painted cinder blocks with scuff marks around the vinyl baseboard. She stared at the mirror behind Patterson, wondering who was watching. Her last run-in with the rat squad had taken place in the conference room. Lena guessed with Lonnie Gray sitting in jail, the whole force was being treated differently.
There was a half-empty bottle of Coke on the table. Lena took a long sip before putting it back down. “Tell me why this happened.”
Patterson’s mouth turned down. He looked like the living embodiment of a frowny-faced emoticon.
Lena said, “No one will tell me why Jared and I were attacked. Was it because of the boy? Did they think I knew where he was?”
Predictably, Patterson wouldn’t yield. “It’s my job to ask the questions.”
“Is it really my job to answer them?” Lena asked. She was sick of not knowing. It was all she could think about. What had she done to bring this down on them? What stupid mistake had she made? What asshole had she pissed off?
She told Patterson, “My husband was almost killed. I was attacked in my home. Don’t you think I deserve to know why?”
“My colleague is investigating the attack. As you know, you and I are here on a different matter.” Patterson had the poker face of a banker denying a loan. “Your cooperation would go a long way toward—”
“Toward what?” she interrupted. “I wasn’t involved in any of this. I did what my commanding officer told me to do.”
“You lied under oath.”
“Did I?” Lena smiled. She’d been too careful for that. The first investigator hadn’t asked about the boy. As far as Lena knew, there was no law that said you had to volunteer information.
Patterson sat back in his chair, obviously trying to mimic her relaxed demeanor. “We’re both on the same side, Detective Adams.” He tried to sound reasonable, though they both knew he had skin in this game. He’d be looking at a big promotion if he could weed out a few more bad cops, and the man had made it clear from the beginning that he didn’t trust Lena. “We just want to make sure the case against Mr. Gray holds. It seems to me we share the same goal here.”
“Mr. Gray,” Lena echoed. No one was calling him Chief anymore. No one was laying claim to him at all. “My goal is to get back to my husband. He’s better, by the way. Thanks for your concern.”
Patterson tucked his chin into his chest. He did this whenever Lena pushed back, a physical manifestation of hitting a brick wall. He let out a short puff of air, then stacked together some papers on the table. “I’ll be just a minute.” He stood up. “Feel free to take a bathroom break if you need one.”
Lena gave him a salute as he left the room. He was obviously going to confer with whoever was behind the one-way mirror. She guessed it was Amanda Wagner. The deputy director would count arresting Lonnie Gray as a feather in her cap, though the truth was that Will Trent deserved the credit. He was the one who’d risked his life.
He was also the one who’d kept Lena from killing a man.
While Lena was no stranger to having blood on her hands, taking on the two rednecks who’d broken into her house had been different. If she thought about it too long, the bloodlust came back. She could feel it boiling up into the back of her throat. Her muscles tensed. Her hands clenched. Even standing in the ICU over Jared’s bed, Lena had struggled with the impulse to go one floor down and
finish the job on the monster who’d wanted to kill her husband.
Not that he’d succeeded.
By some miracle, the doctor said that Jared was going to make a full recovery. He was looking at a few months of physical therapy, but his otherwise good health and youth had been on his side. Of course, now the same two things were working against him. Jared had been home less than thirty-six hours and he was already going stir-crazy—staying up too much, moving around too much, getting in her business too much.
She was tempted to send him to his mother’s. Lena didn’t hate the woman as much now, maybe because Darnell Long was the only reason Lena had a functioning kitchen. Fortunately, Jared’s mother seemed to understand that their truce was only as strong as the miles between them. She had already made one trip back to Alabama. If Lena was lucky, Nell wouldn’t return to Macon until the trial.
Not that Lena thought there would be a trial. Just this morning, Fred Zachary, the second shooter, had taken a deal in exchange for giving up the rednecks at Tipsie’s. The rednecks weren’t talking, but it was probably just a matter of time before they decided to play ball.
That left Tony Dell, and Mr. Snitch had made it clear he didn’t want a deal. He admitted to being on the street the night Jared was shot. He admitted to stabbing Eric and DeShawn to death. He corroborated everything DeShawn had told Will Trent about Big Whitey and Sid Waller. Basically, he’d thrown everybody under the bus, including himself. It wouldn’t be long before someone decided Dell should stop talking. Lena figured he was planning his own suicide. The fact was that Tony Dell had nothing to lose.
The Atlanta police had caught up with Dell and Cayla Martin outside the international terminal at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson Airport. Dell was obviously a psychopath, but he was also a survivor. He’d known the gig was up. He’d raised his hands and gotten out of the car.
Cayla Martin wouldn’t go so easy. She’d jumped behind the wheel and tried to outrun the police. Unfortunately, she’d run in the wrong direction. Lena wondered what was going through the nurse’s mind when she saw the shuttle bus speeding straight toward her. According to the accident report, there were about two seconds between the time Martin tried to turn the wheel and the head-on collision. Lena knew what it felt like when you thought you were about to die. Two seconds was an eternity. Martin wasn’t wearing a seatbelt. Probably another second passed as she flew headfirst into the shuttle bus and snapped her neck on one of the seatbacks.
Lena couldn’t help but think that the sweetest part of that story was not Martin’s brutal death, but the fact that Sara Linton’s sixty-five-thousand-dollar BMW had been turned into the world’s most expensive Rubik’s Cube.
Laughter tickled Lena’s throat as she pushed herself up from the chair. She started pacing the room, forcing herself not to count off the steps because she already knew the space was twelve feet across by ten feet deep. She looked up at the camera. She smiled, though she felt the snarl in her teeth. She wanted to get through the pile of paperwork on her desk. She wanted to check on Jared. She wanted to go home and do the things that made her feel like a normal person: clean the house top to bottom, do the laundry, tend to her garden in the front yard. Winter was just around the corner. Lena should probably pull out the petunias, but she didn’t have it in her to let anything die just now.
She’d been to too many funerals lately.
DeShawn Franklin’s body had been unceremoniously cremated at a facility outside of Macon. Other than the mortician, Lena was the only person in attendance. His sister didn’t want her children there. His ex-wife wouldn’t speak his name and his current wife wouldn’t show her face in public. Jared hadn’t wanted Lena to go, but he didn’t try to stop her, either. She had made a lot of mistakes in her life. She figured DeShawn had tried to do right at the end. He’d turned on that recorder on his phone. Lena didn’t know everything that the recording had captured—nobody at the station did—but apparently, DeShawn had given Will Trent enough evidence to bring down Big Whitey’s organization. That detail alone earned DeShawn one pair of clear eyes watching him go to his maker.
Eric Haigh’s interment had been markedly different. The state had cleared him just before the burial yesterday morning, so he’d been given a proper send-off with officers in dress uniforms and a full police escort. Lena guessed she wasn’t the only cop there thinking that the last funeral they’d all attended was Chuck Gray’s. Lonnie’s son had died of leukemia three months ago. Lena had cried at Chuck’s ceremony—not because she liked Chuck, who was the kind of spoiled asshole you’d expect of the chief’s son—but because she’d felt so bad for Lonnie Gray.
She imagined Lonnie was feeling very sorry for himself right now. He had an excellent law firm fighting the charges against him, but as smart as Lonnie was, he’d made one enormous mistake. Lena figured it was arrogance that had brought him down. Lonnie never considered the possibility that the GBI would seize his home computer. Even without the murders, kidnappings, and trafficking, the state had found enough child porn on the chief’s hard drive to send him away for a hundred years.
Stupid, sick bastard.
Last month, Lena had run a 10K with Lonnie. They were raising money for leukemia research. Lonnie had thirty years on her, but he’d beaten her to the finish line. Lena relished the thought of his strong heart ticking away as he marked off prison time for the rest of his miserable life. She hoped some big, nasty con did to Lonnie Gray exactly what he’d done to Marie Sorensen and all those other poor kids. Lena hoped they did it to him every second of every day until Lonnie fell over from exhaustion. And then she hoped they picked him back up and started all over again.
Lena wanted to think Lonnie’s imprisonment would help Marie Sorensen’s mom and the Winser family sleep better at night, but she knew from experience that some demons never went away.
The door opened again. Patterson stood with his hand on the knob. He didn’t enter the room. He looked highly annoyed, which told her everything she needed to know.
Lena said, “I guess the rat didn’t get his cheese.”
She didn’t wait for Patterson’s response. She brushed past him, flashing her teeth the same as she had for the camera. Lena knew that she shouldn’t push it, that she hadn’t gotten away with anything, but anytime you left the rat squad with your badge intact was a reason to celebrate.
Lena felt her smile abruptly drop when she saw Denise Branson standing in the hallway. She had known that Denise was in the building, but Lena had prayed like hell that she would never have to see the woman again. Not that Lena had ever had a prayer answered before in her life.
Nor had she ever seen Denise Branson so obviously uncomfortable. It was hard to look at. She shuffled from one foot to another. She wouldn’t look Lena in the eye. There was an air of humiliation about her, as if she’d been beaten down so many times over the last four days that she’d forgotten what it was like to get back up.
Patterson said, “Ms. Branson?”
His tone had a snarky edge to it that Lena didn’t like. If the man had kept silent, Lena probably would’ve never spoken to Denise again. As it was, she asked the woman, “You need a bathroom break?”
Denise was obviously surprised by the question. Still, she nodded, and they both headed toward the one place Brock Patterson couldn’t follow them. Lena saw the disappointed look on his face as the door to the ladies’ room closed.
Denise got right to the point. Her voice had the practiced tone of somebody who was used to apologizing. “I’m sorry. I’ve got no excuse for what I did to you.”
Lena prompted, “But?”
“No buts.” Denise seemed resolute. There was none of her usual self-assured swagger. “I misled you about the boy. I dragged you into this without your knowledge. I’ve got the rat squad looking at you when you didn’t do anything wrong.”
Lena asked the question. “Is that why they tried to kill me and Jared, because they thought I knew where the boy was?”
Denise s
hook her head, then shrugged. “I don’t know, Lee. It doesn’t make sense that they’d go after y’all instead of me.”
Lena kept coming to the same conclusion. She was a dog chasing its tail. “Who else did you tell about the boy?”
“Friends. People I could trust.”
“I thought I was a friend you could trust.”
This time, Denise had an excuse. “I thought I was protecting you.”
“That’s a lie,” Lena said. “You didn’t trust anybody at work. Not me, not Lonnie. You knew something was wrong. You thought there was a mole, and you thought it could be anybody from the top down.”
Denise let out a heavy sigh. She looked like she couldn’t muster the strength to argue anymore.
Lena asked, “Did you suspect Lonnie was Big Whitey?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted. Lena could tell from her expression that this was the truth. “It seemed odd that Big Whitey was getting tipped off. I thought maybe it was one of Lonnie’s secretaries or somebody on your team.”
“Or me?”
Denise’s gaze settled somewhere behind Lena. “I didn’t think so, but the stakes were too high for that kind of risk.”
Lena studied Denise Branson, thinking not for the first time that she was looking at herself five years ago. The old Lena would’ve absolutely tried to go it alone. She didn’t trust anybody. She didn’t lean on anybody. She never asked for help. She thought there was only one person in the entire world who could do things the right way. Even today, all those tendencies were still there. Lena spent a good deal of her time battling her baser impulses. Sometimes she won. A lot of times she still lost. She consoled herself with the knowledge that at least she was trying.
Lena said, “I heard Lonnie was in the mayor’s office when they grabbed him. Took him straight out the front door of city hall so God and everybody could see him.”
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