Will had met Angie Polaski when he was eight years old. Angie was three years older, thrown into the system because her mother had overdosed on a nasty combination of heroin and speed. While Diedre Polaski lay comatose in the bathroom, Angie was being looked after by her mother’s pimp in the bedroom. Finally, someone had called the police. Diedre was put on life support at the state hospital, where she remained to this day, and Angie was sent to the Atlanta Children’s Home for the remaining seven years of a childhood that had already been lost. Will had fallen in love with her on sight. At eleven, she’d had a chip on her shoulder and hell in her eyes. When she wasn’t giving boys handjobs in the coat closet, she was beating the snot out of them with her unsurprisingly quick fists.
Will had loved her for her fierceness, and when her fierceness had worn him down, he had clung to her for her familiarity. Last year, she had married him on a dare after years of empty promises. She cheated on him. She pushed him to the breaking point, then sank her claws into his flesh and yanked him back. His relationship with Angie was more akin to a twisted hokey pokey. She was in Will’s life. She was out. She was in. She was shaking him all about.
Will found Main Street after a couple of wrong turns. The rain wasn’t coming down in sheets anymore, so he could make out the small shops lining the road. One place was obviously a hardware store. The other looked like a shop to buy ladies’ clothing. Directly across from the station was a dry cleaners. Will thought about his dirty laundry piled on the couch. Maybe he could find time to sneak back and get it. He usually wore a suit and tie to work, but he hadn’t had a lot of options this morning. There was just one T-shirt and a pair of boxers left. His jeans were clean enough to last another day. The sweater was the one he wore last night. The cashmere blend hadn’t responded well to the rain. He felt the material tighten every time he flexed his shoulders.
Will pulled into the farthest space from the front door, backing in so that the Porsche was facing the street. Catty-corner to the station, he saw a low office building with glass brick on the front. The faded sign out front had a teddy bear holding some balloons. Probably a daycare center. A squad car rolled down the street but didn’t stop, going ahead through the gates of what must have been the college. Will’s was the only car in the lot. He supposed Larry Knox was inside the station, or maybe they’d given him a relief when Will left last night. Either way, he wasn’t going to spend the next twenty minutes standing in the rain outside the locked door.
He dialed Amanda Wagner’s number, holding out slim hope that she wasn’t in the office yet.
His luck took a nasty turn. Amanda answered the phone herself.
“It’s Will,” he said. “I’m outside the station house.”
Amanda never gave anyone the benefit of the doubt, not least of all Will. “Did you just get there?”
“I got in last night.” He felt a slight bit of relief. In the back of his mind, he’d been worried that Sara would call Amanda and ask that Will be taken off the case. She would want the best the GBI had to offer, not a functional illiterate with a suitcase full of dirty laundry.
Amanda’s tone was clipped. “Run it down for me, Will. I haven’t got all day.”
He told her Sara’s story: that she had gotten a call from Julie Smith, then Frank Wallace. That she had gone to the jail and found Tommy Braham dead. He didn’t tell her about Sara’s beef with Lena Adams, instead skipping ahead to the Cross pens that Jeffrey Tolliver had given his staff. “I’m pretty sure the ink cartridge Braham used came from one of those pens.”
“Good luck finding out whose.” Amanda picked at the same thread Will had spotted. “There’s no way of knowing exactly when Tommy Braham died—before or after Frank Wallace called Sara.”
“We’ll see what the autopsy brings. Dr. Linton is going to do it.”
“There’s a bright spot in a bleak day.”
“It’s good to have someone down here who knows what they’re doing.”
“Shouldn’t that be you, Will?”
He let the remark go unanswered.
She asked, “What’s your impression on the Allison Spooner homicide?”
“I’m fifty-fifty. Maybe Tommy Braham did it. Or maybe her killer’s assuming he got away with murder.”
“Well, figure it out and get back here fast, because they’re not going to like you very much if you prove he’s innocent.”
She was right. One thing cops hated more than bad guys was being proven wrong about the bad guys. Will had seen an Atlanta detective nearly go into convulsions as he argued that the DNA exonerating his suspect had to be wrong.
Amanda told him, “I called Macon General this morning. Brad Stephens had to be taken back into surgery. They missed a bleeder the first time.”
“Is he all right?”
“Prognosis is guarded. They’re keeping him sedated for the time being, so he’s not going to talk to anyone anytime soon.”
“I’m pretty sure he’s not going to remember anything useful except that his fellow officers saved his life.”
“Be that as it may, he’s still a cop. You need to go over there at some point and share in the camaraderie. Donate some blood. Buy him a magazine.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“What’s your game plan?”
“I’m going to rattle some cages this morning and see if anything falls out. Faith is working on the paper trail for Julie Smith and Carl Phillips. Talking to them is my priority, but we’ve got to find them first. I want to check out the lake where Spooner was found, then go see the garage where she lived. It feels like her murder is at the center of this. Whatever they’re hiding from me goes back to her death.”
“You don’t think they’re tap-dancing because of the suicide?”
“They might be, but my gut is telling me something else is going on.”
“Ah, your famous women’s intuition.” Amanda never missed an opportunity to insult him. “What about Adams?”
“I’ll keep her close by.”
“I met her once. She’ll be a hard nut to crack.”
“So I hear.”
“Loop me in at the end of the day.”
She hung up the phone before Will could respond. He rubbed his fingers through his hair, wondering if the damp was from the rain or his own sweat.
For the second time that morning, Will jumped when someone knocked on the window of his car. This time the knocker was an older black man, and he stood at the passenger door, grinning at Will’s reaction. He made a rolling motion with his arm. Will leaned over and opened the door.
“Come in out of the rain,” Will offered, thinking the man was the first nonwhite face he’d seen since he’d arrived in Grant County. He didn’t want to make assumptions, but he would’ve bet half his paycheck that the African Americans in town didn’t make a habit of approaching investigators outside the police station.
The man groaned as he climbed into the bucket seat. Will saw that he walked with a cane. His leg was stiff, and bent awkwardly at the knee. Rain dripped from his heavy coat. A slight mist clung to his salt-and-pepper beard. He wasn’t as old as Will had first thought—maybe early sixties. When he spoke, his voice was like sandpaper scratching through gravel.
“Lionel Harris.”
“Will Trent.”
Lionel took off his glove and they shook hands. “My father was named Will. Short for William.”
“Me too,” Will told him, though his birth certificate said no such thing.
Lionel pointed up the street. “Daddy worked at the diner for forty-three years. Old Pete closed it down back in oh-one.” He rubbed his hand along the leather dashboard. “What year is this?”
Will assumed he meant the car. “Seventy-nine.”
“You do all the work yourself?”
“Is it that obvious?”
“Nah,” he said, though he’d found the kink in the leather under the handle of the glove box. “You did a good job, son. Real good job.”
“I take it you
’re interested in cars?”
“My wife would tell you I’m too interested for my own good.” He glanced pointedly at Will’s wedding ring. “You known Sara long?”
“Not too long.”
“She took care of my grandson. He had asthma real bad. She’d rush over in the middle of the night to help him. Sometimes she’d still be in her pajamas.”
Will tried not to think of Sara in her pajamas, though he imagined from Lionel’s story that they were probably not the ones his mind had conjured.
“Sara’s from good people.” He ran his finger along the trim on the door, which, thankfully, Will had done a better job covering. Lionel seemed to agree. “You learned from your mistakes. Got a good fold on this corner here.”
“It took me half the day.”
“Worth every minute,” he approved.
Will felt foolish even as he asked, “Your son isn’t Carl Phillips, is he?”
Lionel gave a deep, satisfied laugh. “ ’Cause he’s black and I’m black—”
“No,” Will interrupted, then, “Well, yes.” He felt uncomfortable even as he explained, “There doesn’t seem to be much of a minority population around here.”
“I guess coming from Atlanta, you’ve had a bit of a culture shock.”
He was right. In Atlanta, Will’s white skin made him a minority. Grant County stood as a stark contrast. “I’m sorry.”
“That’s all right. You aren’t the first person to do that. Carl goes to my church, but I don’t know him other than that.”
Will tried to steer the conversation away from his own stupidity. “How do you know I’m from Atlanta?”
“License plate says Fulton County.”
Will smiled patiently.
“All right, you got me,” Lionel relented. “You’re here to look into that stuff with Tommy?”
“Yes, sir.”
“He was a good kid.”
“You knew him?”
“I saw him in town a lot. He’s the kind of kid got thirty different jobs—mowing lawns, walking dogs, hauling trash, helping people move house. Just about everybody in town knew him.”
“How do people feel about him stabbing Brad Stephens?”
“About how you’d expect. Confused. Angry. Torn between thinking there was some mistake and thinking …” His voice trailed off. “He was a bit tetched in the head.”
“He’d never been violent before?”
“No, but you never know. Maybe something set him off, turned on the crazy.”
In Will’s experience, people were either prone to violence or not. He didn’t think Tommy Braham was an exception. “Do you think that’s what happened—he just snapped?”
“I don’t know what to think about nothin’ anymore, and that’s the God’s honest truth.” He gave a weary sigh. “Lord, I feel old today.”
“The weather gets into your bones,” Will agreed. He’d broken his hand many years ago, and every time it got cold like this, his fingers ached. “Have you lived here all your life?”
Lionel smiled again, showing his teeth. “When I was a boy, people called where we lived Colored Town.” He turned to Will. “Can you believe that? Colored Town, and now I live on a street with a bunch of professors.” He gave a deep laugh. “A lot’s changed in fifty years.”
“Has the police force?”
Lionel stared openly at Will, as if he was trying to decide how much to say. Finally, he seemed to make up his mind. “Ben Carver was chief when I left town. I wasn’t the only young black man who thought it was a good idea to leave while the gettin’ was good. Joined the army and got this for my trouble.” He knocked on his leg. There was a hollow sound, and Will realized the man wore a prosthetic. “Laos. Nineteen and sixty-four.” Lionel paused for a minute as if to reflect on the loss. “There was two kinds of living for people back then, just like there was two kinds of law under Chief Carver: one for black and one for white.”
“I heard Carver retired.”
Lionel nodded approvingly. “Tolliver.”
“Was he a good cop?”
“I never met the man, but I can tell you this: A long while back, my father was working at the diner when a lady professor from the college got killed. Everybody saw a black face and made their assumptions. Chief Tolliver spent the night at Daddy’s house just to make sure he woke up the next morning.”
“It was that bad?”
“Chief Tolliver was that good.” Lionel added, “Allison was a good girl, too.”
Will got the feeling that they had finally reached the point of Lionel’s impromptu visit. “You knew her?”
“I own the diner now. You believe that?” He shook his head as if he still could not believe it himself. “I came back a few years ago and took it off Pete’s hands.”
“Is business good?”
“It was slow at first, but most days now we’re full up. My wife works the books. Sometimes my sister pitches in but it’s better if she doesn’t.”
“When was the last time you saw Allison?”
“Saturday night. We’re closed on Sundays. I guess except for Tommy, I was one of the last people to see her alive.”
“How was she?”
“Same as usual. Tired. Glad to be getting off work.”
“What sort of person was she?”
His throat worked, and he took a few moments to collect himself before he could continue. “I never hire kids from the college. They don’t know how to talk to people. They just know how to type into their computers or their phones. No work ethic and nothing’s ever their fault no matter how red-handed you catch ’em. Except for Allison. She was different.”
“How so?”
“She knew how to work for a living.” He pointed to the open gates at the end of Main Street. “Not a kid in that school knows how to do an honest day’s work. This economy is their wake-up call. They’re gonna have to learn the hard way that a job is something you earn, not something you’re given.”
Will asked, “Did you know much about Allison’s family?”
“Her mama was dead. She had an aunt she didn’t talk about much.”
“Boyfriend?”
“She had one, but he never bothered her at work.”
“Do you know his name?”
“She never mentioned him except in passing, like I’d ask what she was going to do over the weekend and she’d say she was going to study with her boyfriend.”
“He never called her or dropped by? Not even once?”
“Not even once,” he confirmed. “She was mindful that I was paying for her time, you see. I never saw her on her cell phone. She never had her friends come in and take up her time. It was work for her, and she knew that she had to take care of business.”
“Did she make a good living?”
“Hell no.” He laughed at what must have been a surprised look on Will’s face. “I don’t pay much and my customers are cheap—mostly old men and cops, sometimes students from the school who think it’s funny to run out on the bill. Or, try to run out. Pretty stupid thinking you’re gonna stiff the check in a room full of cops.”
“Did she carry a purse or book bag with her?”
“She had this pink book bag with a tassel on the zipper. Left it in her car when she was at work. Except her wallet. She wasn’t one’a them primpin’ girls, can’t stay away from a mirror.”
“Was there anyone suspicious hanging around her? Customers who were too attentive?”
“I would’ve taken care of that myself. Not that I’d need to. That girl was street-smart. She knew how to take care of herself.”
“Did she carry a weapon? Maybe pepper spray or a pocket knife?”
“Not that I ever saw.” He held up his hands. “Now, don’t get the impression she was hard. She was a real sweet girl, one’a them who just wanted to go along to get along. She didn’t take to confrontation, but she stood up for herself when it mattered.”
“Had her attitude changed lately?”
“Sh
e seemed a little more stressed than usual. She asked me a couple of times could she study when we were slow. Don’t get me wrong—I’m an easy man to work for so long as you do your job. I let her crack open her books when we weren’t busy. I made sure she had a hot meal before she went home.”
“Do you know what kind of car she drove?”
“Old Dodge Daytona with Alabama plates. You remember those? Based on the Chrysler G platform. Front-wheel drive, kind of low to the ground.”
“Four door?”
“Hatchback. The pistons were blown. She kept the trunk tied down with a bungee cord. I think it’s a ’92, ’93.” He tapped his head. “Mind ain’t as good as it used to be.”
“What color?”
“Red, you could say. Mostly it’s primer and rust. Spits out smoke from the tailpipe every time she cranks it.”
“Where did she park?”
“Behind the diner. I checked this morning. It’s not there.”
“Did she ever walk home from work?”
“Sometimes when the weather was good, but it ain’t been good in a long while, and she wasn’t making her way home.” He pointed behind them. “The lake’s back there. Behind the station. Behind the diner.” He pointed across the street. “When she walked home, she always went that way, out the front door.”
“Do you know Gordon Braham?”
“I believe he works for the power company. He also dates the woman who works at the five and dime across from the diner. They come in for lunch every couple’a three days.”
“You seem to know a lot about people.”
“This is a small town, Mr. Trent. Everybody knows a lot about everybody else. That’s why we live here. Cheaper than cable TV.”
“Who do you think killed Allison?”
Lionel didn’t seem surprised by the question, but he gave the expected answer. “Police say it was Tommy Braham.”
“What do you say?”
He looked at his watch. “I say I’d better go fire up the grill before the breakfast crowd comes in.” He put his hand on the door, but Will stopped him.
The Will Trent Series 5-Book Bundle Page 142