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 wal
l 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.”
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