The Silent Wife: From the No. 1 Sunday Times bestselling author comes a gripping new crime thriller (Will Trent Series, Book 10)

by Karin Slaughter

  There was also a length of chain attached to a metal ring that was concreted into the floor.

  No blood. No fluids. No hair. No DNA. The shed looked like a prison cell, but having a shed that looked like a prison cell was not illegal. Neither was working near a fire road that offered easy access to the location where a body was found. Or owning a 1.5-pound mallet that was part of a Brawleigh Dead Blow set. Or driving a charcoal van. Or your number showing up in the phones of two women who were both attacked.

  The child porn, on the other hand, was enough to put Daryl Nesbitt away for at least five years.

  Five years.

  Jeffrey could work with that. Witnesses would come forward. People would remember things. Tommi Humphrey could decide to break her silence. Jeffrey was dubious of her negative response to Daryl Nesbitt’s booking photo. He wanted to put the pedophile in a line-up, allow Tommi time to study his face from the safety of darkness. Seeing a one-dimensional mugshot was very different from seeing a man in person.

  The biggest obstacle was Nesbitt’s lawyer. He was from Memminger, well-versed in the defense of scumbags. The lawyer would fight a line-up. He’d already refused to grant access to his client. He’d wrangled Nesbitt an extended stay in the Macon Hospital rather than in county lock-up. Worse, he’d filed a motion to dismiss based on a lack of probable cause to enter the house. If a judge bought his story, then Daryl Nesbitt would be allowed to go free.

  Jeffrey and Lena were the only two people who could stop that from happening. Both of them had signed sworn statements under penalty of perjury. Both of them were willing to put their hand on a Bible and promise to tell the truth.

  Both of them knew that everything they said would be a lie.

  There was a doctrine in law called the fruit of the poisoned tree. Basically, if probable cause didn’t exist to enter a residence, then anything the police found once they stepped inside the residence could be deemed inadmissible in court.

  Lena had definitely stepped inside the house without cause. It was perfectly legal to be inside your home with an erection. It was perfectly legal to refuse to speak to the police. You were even allowed to slam the door in their faces. The mistake Lena had made was grabbing Daryl’s arm. He’d pulled away. Instead of letting go, she had stepped inside the house. Then she had taken another step. Then the door had closed and all hell had broken loose.

  The “I smelled weed on him” defense had collapsed in that moment.

  Fortunately, Lena and Jeffrey had been able to arrive at an alternative set of events, where the thing that Frank had warned them would happen had actually happened: Daryl had grabbed Lena and closed the door.

  It was worth the giant I told you so Frank kept hurling around. Matt and Hendricks were backing up the story. Jeffrey assumed they thought it was true. The men had been fifty feet away, crouched behind a Malibu. It was hard to tell at that distance who was pulling whom.

  There were a lot of embarrassing details that were glossed over by the lie. Lena failing to announce that she was a police officer. Matt and Hendricks breaking formation. Brad running into the kitchen and firing off his shotgun. Frank collapsing on the other side of the shed. Lena losing her gun as she chased Daryl up the stairs. And, most crucially, Daryl flinging Lena across the bedroom like a rag doll. She’d banged her head against the desk. The laptop computer had been jostled awake.

  Dumb luck, but still luck.

  The child porn was the only reason Daryl Nesbitt was looking at a prison cell instead of stalking his next victim. There were a lot of bad things that could happen to a pedophile in prison. Grown men didn’t tend to land behind bars because they’d had happy childhoods. There was probably at least one inmate who would be more than willing to take care of the Daryl Nesbitt problem. Barring that, men like Nesbitt tended to find all kinds of ways to keep themselves inside once the walls started to close in around them.

  Jeffrey stepped off the sidewalk, pretending like the strained muscles in his back hadn’t balled into a fist. He had finished the cough drop by the time he reached the Grant Medical Center. The parking lot was empty but for the Linton and Daughters Plumbing van. He opened the side door, hoping that Tessa would use the elevator.

  This hope was crushed on the fourth step down. Jeffrey heard whistling. He looked over the railing, expecting to see the top of a strawberry blonde head.

  Another crushing blow.

  Eddie Linton looked up. He was smiling.

  And then he saw Jeffrey.

  Jeffrey was in no shape to run. Even a fast clip wouldn’t do the job. Sara’s father was remarkably fit for a man who spent most of his working life under a kitchen sink or shimmying through a crawl space.

  Eddie stopped on the landing below Jeffrey. His work belt was low on his hips. Between his plumbing business and real estate investments, Eddie was probably one of the wealthier men in town, but he dressed like a homeless person. Torn T-shirts. Ripped jeans. His hair was seldom combed. His eyebrows corkscrewed like fusilli.

  Jeffrey broke the ice. “Eddie.”

  Eddie crossed his arms over his chest. “How’s the Colton place treating you?”

  “Like a man who needs a plumber.”

  Eddie grinned. “Get a metal bucket. Plastic absorbs the smell.”

  Jeffrey had to admire the synchronicity. “How long is this going to last?”

  “How long do you expect to live?”

  Eddie was blocking the stairs. Jeffrey was not stupid enough to push past him and he was too proud to walk away.

  Eddie said, “I’ve been giving a lot of thought to this situation we both find ourselves in.”

  Jeffrey figured only one of them was in it by choice.

  “My wife told me something profound when Sara was born. You know my wife?”

  Jeffrey gave him a look. “I believe she goes to my church.”

  “Yeah, well, she’s a pretty smart lady. I remember something she told me when Sara was born. We were in the maternity ward. I was holding this beautiful little red-headed girl in my arms, and my wife—Cathy, that’s her name—told me that I’d better stay on the straight and narrow, because girls tend to marry men who are like their fathers.” He gave a wistful smile. “Right there in that hospital, I vowed to be kind and respectful to my baby girl. To listen to her and trust her and to make it clear that she should only expect the best.”

  Jeffrey said, “I know there’s a point in there somewhere.”

  “The point is, I wasted my time.” He shrugged. “I should’ve ignored her so she’d know how to deal with men who treat her like shit.”

  Eddie grabbed the railing and pulled himself up the stairs. His shoulder bumped Jeffrey’s. The pulled muscle in his back screeched like a howler monkey, but he was not going to give Eddie Linton the satisfaction.

  Jeffrey grimaced as he took a step down. Pain gripped his spine. It was nothing compared to how he felt when he saw the closed door to the morgue.

  For his coroner duties, Brock used the basement of his family funeral home. Sara had used the hospital morgue. Her name was still etched into the glass from her last stint in the job. The letters read SARA TOLLIVER.

  Masking tape covered his last name. LINTON was written over it in black marker.

  Jeffrey guessed he could’ve chosen a different woman to cheat on Sara with than the town’s only sign maker.

  He picked at the corner of the tape, but his sense of dignity kept him from ripping it away. He cocked his head, listening for sounds on the other side of the door. He wasn’t in the mood to be pounced on by Tessa. He didn’t hear voices. He heard music. Paul Simon.

  “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover.”

  Sara was playing their song.

  Jeffrey straightened his shoulders. He ignored the twitch of protest in his back. He opened the door.

  Sara was on her knees, rubber gloves on her hands, blue bandana tied around her head, as she scrubbed the tile floor.

  She looked up at Jeffrey over the rim of her glasses. “
Did you run into my father?”

  “Yeah, he played me the full Götterdämmerung.”

  She caught herself before she smiled. The scrub brush dropped into the bucket. The gloves came off. She stood up and wiped the grime off her knees. She was in shorts and a paint-spattered T-shirt that had a faded orange and blue Heartsdale High logo on the front.

  She asked, “Nesbitt?”

  “The DA is holding back on everything but the porn charges. Between us, I can’t blame him. It’s a weak case. Everything is circumstantial, and that’s being generous. We’re looking at a lawsuit over Caterino. Nobody wants to jump unless we know where we’re going to land.”

  “You’re certain it’s Nesbitt?”

  “Who else would it be?” Jeffrey asked. “Set aside the circumstantial evidence. The killer knows the woods. He knew about the fire road. He was familiar with the campus. He stalked the victims. He stole personal items. He knew their routines. All that points to a man who can easily blend in.”

  She said, “All that points to someone who was raised in Grant County.”

  “Daryl Nesbitt,” Jeffrey concluded.

  Sara allowed, “He attacked two women within half an hour of each other. It says something that no one else has been hurt since he was arrested.”

  “I’m hoping that a con with Daddy issues takes him out before he goes to trial.”

  Sara frowned. She had the luxury of not believing in vigilante justice. As a cop, Jeffrey had learned that sometimes you had to skate into the gray areas to make sure the wrong people didn’t get hurt. The trick was making sure you didn’t spend your life there.

  She asked, “Have you talked to Brock?”

  Jeffrey had talked to Brock more times in the last week than he’d talked to any cop on his force. The man wanted to hear. every single detail of the investigations. “I’ve got five voicemails on my phone. He’s pretty upset about the attacks.”

  “I don’t think that’s it,” Sara said. “He’s floundering without his father. You know how hard it is for Brock to make connections. His family means everything to him.”

  Jeffrey felt guilty for brushing off Brock’s calls, which was exactly what Sara had intended. “He’s still got his mother.”

  “I’m not sure for how long,” Sara said. “Myrna almost died last year. She was at home by herself and had a bad asthma attack. Brock is the one who found her. It was touch and go for a few weeks. I’ve seen him cry before, but never like that. He was sobbing.”

  Jeffrey shook his head. “I don’t remember.”

  “I only remember the date because the attack on Tommi Humphrey happened while Myrna was in the hospital.” Sara pulled the bandana off her head and shook out her hair. She explained, “Brock asked me to sit with her. His daddy was drunk. Brock was effectively running the business. I stayed with her for a few hours to give him a break. He was so frantic when he came to relieve me. Almost giddy, I guess from lack of sleep and fear. I worried about him the rest of the night. Then I went to work that morning and Sibyl called me about Tommi.”

  Jeffrey got the message. “I’ll return Brock’s calls.”

  “Thank you.”

  Sara picked up the plastic bucket. She asked him, “Did you want to take this home?”

  “I’ve been told that metal is better.”

  Sara was smiling as she carried the bucket to the sink.

  Jeffrey looked around the morgue while she rinsed out the soapy residue. He hadn’t been inside the basement for at least a year. Nothing had changed, but then nothing had changed in almost a century. The hospital had been built in 1930, during one of the county’s boom times. The basement hadn’t been touched since then. The light-blue tiles on the walls were so old that they were coming back into style. The floors were a mixed check pattern of green and tan. The autopsy table was porcelain with cupped sides and a drain at the center. A shallow sink and faucet were at the foot. A scale like you’d find in a grocery store’s produce section hung from the ceiling.

  “Jeff?” The faucet was off. Sara was leaning against the counter. “Why are you here?”

  “I missed your pretty blue eyes.”

  He watched those eyes roll in her head. It was an old joke from their marriage. Sara’s eyes were green.

  He said, “I wanted to tell you that I’m glad you’re taking over for Brock. The county needs a medical examiner. Things are changing. Even rural communities are experiencing a spike in violent crime.”

  “Are you testing out a law enforcement workshop on me?”

  “Sorry,” he said. “I’m a little off balance without my emotional scaffolding to hold me up.”

  She looked at his face for the first time since he’d walked through the door. “How are your lungs? Did the doctor give you breathing exercises?”

  “Three times a day.” Jeffrey made a mental note to start doing them. “My nose hurts more than anything else.”

  “It looks broken.”

  “You should see the other girl.”

  Sara didn’t smile this time. She took off her glasses and cleaned the lenses with the tail of her shirt. She didn’t look back up at him until she was finished. “Was that really why you cheated? Because I was spending too much time with my family?”

  Jeffrey tried to recalibrate.

  “That’s what you said in my office last week. One of the many things you said.” Sara reminded him, “That I should’ve spent more time with you instead of being with my family.”

  Jeffrey took a cough drop out of his pocket. He carefully opened the wrapper.

  “You’ve forgotten the sequence of events,” Sara said. “I didn’t waltz into town the next morning and file for a divorce without talking to you. I called you at the motel the night it happened. I was willing to hear you out.”

  Jeffrey remembered his first drunken evening at the Kudzu Arms. He’d had a woman in the shower and his furious, very-soon-to-be ex-wife on the phone.

  She said, “I asked you to go to couple’s therapy with me.”

  He stuck the cough drop in his mouth. “I didn’t want to pay for another woman to tell me I’m an asshole.”

  Sara tucked her chin into her chest. They both knew that she would’ve been the one writing the checks.

  She said, “You could’ve told me. About my family. That it was bothering you.”

  “We weren’t talking that much by then.” Jeffrey saw an opening. “Before we were married, we used to talk all the time. Do you remember that?”

  She stared at him, her expression inscrutable.

  “I loved talking to you, Sara. I love the way your brain works. You see things in a way that I can’t.”

  Her chin tucked down into her chest again.

  “I felt like your life turned into a secret that only your family could know.”

  “They’re my family.”

  “They’re a Jericho wall around you, which is fine. I knew that when I married you.” He told her the truth. “But you asked me what happened. You stopped talking to me. That was a big part of it.”

  The heartfelt confession earned him a quick laugh. “I’ve never been accused of not talking enough.”

  “I mean about the important things. How you feel. What’s bothering you. Problems at work. I used to be your confidant. You could tell me anything.” He laid out all of his cards on the table. “I thought I was marrying my lover. I ended up with a silent wife.”

  He saw the change in her body, a familiar tension that she always held onto when she was hurting.

  “This,” he said, trying to keep his voice gentle. “This is what you do when I try to talk to you.”

  “What do you want me to say?” Her voice was little more than a whisper, another indication that she was hurt. “What did you want me to say?”

  He shook his head. He couldn’t do this when she was upset.

  “Tell me what I did wrong,” she said. “Tell me, because I’m going to eventually meet someone new, and I don’t want to make the same mistake again
.”

  The thought of her meeting someone new made Jeffrey want to tear down the building. “I told you before, I was okay with you choosing your family. But sometimes, I wanted you to choose me.”

  “Would it have changed anything?” Sara asked. “You would’ve found another reason. You’ve cheated on every woman you’ve ever been with. You’re not happy unless you’re in a constant state of limerence.”

  “Limerence.” He tried to take some of the heat out of her tone. “Is this like when you said you wished that I was semelparous, and I was humiliated a second time because I had to look up the word?”

  She gave a begrudging smile. “It’s a state of infatuation. It’s how you feel when you first fall in love with someone. You’re obsessed with them. Euphoric. They’re all you can think about.”

  “Sounds great.”

  “It is, but then you have to take out the garbage and pay the bills and pretend you like your in-laws and that’s a relationship. Limerence gets you into it, but there’s got to be something else that keeps you there.”

  “I know you’re not accusing me of not loving you.”

  “Jeffrey—”

  “What can I do to win you back?”

  The question earned him a genuine laugh. “I’m not a trophy.”

  She had no idea.

  Jeffrey got out the words before common sense stopped him. “I still love you.”

  Her body held itself in tension again. He thought about her skin. The soft curves and crevices. They’d had sex just once since the divorce. Sara had knocked on his door in the middle of the night. She hadn’t given him time to ask why she was there. She was kissing him, then they were in bed. They had both had tears in their eyes. Jeffrey hadn’t realized at the time that Sara was mourning something she had lost while he was thinking that he’d gotten something precious back.

  “Sara, I still love you.” The more he said it, the more he knew it was true. “I’m not going to give up. I’ll keep pushing that boulder up the hill until it goes over.”

  She shook her head, asking, “How did that work out for Sisyphus?”