Cop Town

by Karin Slaughter

  Terry said, “Chipper?”

  Chip Bixby. Kate recognized him from the academy. He and a man named Bud Deacon had been responsible for teaching them how to shoot. Both men had worn matching red ties, seemingly for the sole purpose of telling the women that the only rule in handling a gun was not to shoot the men wearing red ties.

  “Gentlemen.” Chip waited for silence. “The Shooter carried a weapon similar to the pistol in my hand.” He held a handgun over his head that looked nothing like the revolver Kate had been issued. “This is a Raven MP-25 from the original Ring of Fire. Twenty-five-cal semi with a blowback action. Holds six in the mag and one in the chamber. A piece of shit, this gun. Jams all the time. American made, so what’s their excuse?”

  “No excuse!” a drunken voice called. Jett Elliott. Kate recognized him from the shooting range. He was sitting in the front row, listing to the side. The man beside him held a hand at his back to keep him from toppling over.

  “Okay.” Terry took over again. “This Raven handgun is the type what took out Don Wesley. Chip’s has the wood grain grip. The one that killed Don had imitation pearl. Anybody not familiar with this weapon, come up after and take a look. I want the real deal in my hands by close of business today. That sound like a plan?”

  There were nods around the room.

  Terry said, “Since all of ya’ll are wondering, I’m gonna make it easy for you and lay out what happened straight from Jimmy’s statement. I don’t want no gossip after this. Nobody pimpin’ to no damn reporters.”

  Jett spoke up again. “Nobody pimpin’ to Reggie, neither.”

  There were mumurs of agreement around the room.

  Reginald Eaves, Kate assumed. At the academy, she’d heard a lot of whispers about pimping to Reggie, which she gathered meant reporting infractions to the commissioner.

  “Jett’s right,” Terry said. “Everything I tell you stays in this room. No pimpin’ up to nobody.”

  “Damn straight.” This came from the man sitting beside the drunk. They were strikingly similar with their cheap suits and bad haircuts. Kate wondered if they were twins, then decided they were both stamped from the same blue-collar machine that had spit out Cal Vick and Terry Lawson.

  “All right, quiet down,” Terry said. He bent down his head and read from the report again. “Last night around three in the a.m., Officer Don Wesley and Officer Jimmy Lawson received a report of a possible break-in at the C&S Bank, Five Points, off of Whitehall Road. They went to investigate. Officer Wesley was on foot, checking the back entrance, while Officer Lawson, also on foot, checked the front.”

  Kate felt Maggie stiffen beside her. Another Lawson. The place was crawling with them.

  Terry folded up the paper. He rested his elbow on the podium like an old man telling a story. “Jimmy finished securing the front and called in a false alarm. He was maybe ten, fifteen feet away from Don in the alley behind the bank when out of nowhere, this black brother rounds the corner. Brother fires. Twice. Don takes both in the head. Jimmy goes for cover. He squeezes off three shots, but the brother hoofs it. Jimmy has to stay with his partner.” He paused. “Your partner’s safety is your first priority. Right?”

  Staunch, manly echoes of “Right” bounced around the room.

  Beside Kate, Maggie put down her pen.

  Terry said, “We’re gonna shut this city down today, gentlemen. Nobody does any business until we get a name.”

  There were whoops all around.

  Terry banged his fist on the podium. “We’re gonna shake the monkeys outta the trees. We’re gonna knock some heads. We’re gonna get this asshole.” The bang turned into a drumbeat. Some men had joined him, hitting the tables. “Am I right?”

  There was an eruption of noise—banging on tables, stamping the floor, calls for blood. Kate wondered if this was what halftime inside a football locker room was like.

  “All right. All right.” Vick took Terry’s place behind the podium. He calmed them with his hands, lowering the tone. “Jimmy’s working with a sketch artist, so we’ll have something to release to the press and TV news.” Vick raised his voice over the rumble of disgust. “Check your usual places for the Raven, see if anybody’s pawned it or tossed it.” He stared over the crowd, expectant. Everyone turned to look at the young man standing in the back of the room. He was handsome, with an athletic build, and long sideburns that framed his square jaw.

  Vick asked, “We miss anything, Jimmy?”

  Jimmy shook his head. His eyes scanned the crowd, settling on Kate first, then Maggie. Or, technically, on the back of Maggie’s head. She was the only one in the room who had not turned around to look at Jimmy.

  She obviously sensed Kate’s scrutiny. Maggie nodded toward Jimmy. “Brother.” She nodded toward the man at the podium. “Uncle.”

  Kate mumbled, “I’m sorry for what happened.”

  Maggie stared ahead.

  “All right.” Terry held up two sheets of mimeographed paper. “I got your assignments. They’ll be posted on the board.” He stacked the pages together. “This is serious business out there today, gentlemen. No chicks riding with dicks. Except you. New girl.” Kate’s heart jumped in her chest. He was pointing at her. Everybody was looking. “You’re with Jimmy.”

  There were some wolf whistles and laughs. Kate felt her face turning red.

  “That’s enough,” Terry said. “Get to work. Remember, no cowboys.”

  Kate turned to Maggie, hoping for help. “What should I—”

  Maggie stood up and walked away.

  Clack and Compton hadn’t abandoned her, but Kate was under no impression they’d stuck around to help.

  “Jimmy-boy,” Clack said. “Lucky you.”

  Kate tried, “I didn’t ask—”

  “Do yourself a favor, sweetheart. Put a towel down if you let him fuck you in the back of his squad car.”

  7

  Kate followed Jimmy Lawson across the parking lot, feeling like the walking embodiment of a Keystone Kop. She had to shuffle her feet to keep them from slipping out of her too-large shoes. Her nightstick slapped her leg. The hooks on her belt dug into her sides. She kept having to tip back her hat on her head so she could see. She felt as if her every move was being scrutinized, though the crowd around her seemed intent on leaving, not watching the FNG to see what mayhem would befall her.

  Despite Jimmy’s quick pace, he walked with a pronounced limp. She wondered if he’d been injured in Vietnam. She doubted she’d find out his life story. He hadn’t spoken one word to her, just nodded toward the door and started walking. Kate had prayed to be partnered with a male cop. She should’ve been more specific. Jimmy seemed to be the only guy on the squad who wanted nothing to do with Kate.

  He stopped to talk to a group of men. Kate recognized Jett Elliott and his seatmate as well as Captain Cal Vick, Chip Bixby, Bud Deacon, Terry Lawson, and a handful of other men who could easily be mistaken for extras in a Sam Peckinpah movie. They showed Jimmy great deference, which was strange considering they all had at least two decades on the younger man. Maybe this was because Jimmy’s partner had been shot. Or because they were drunks making an effort to appear sober.

  Kate didn’t know what to make of their drinking and she was hard pressed to care. Instead, she thought of all the things she’d left in her purse. And then she wondered how she was going to retrieve her purse at the end of the day. Maggie hadn’t told her the combination to the lock.

  “Let’s go.” Jimmy spun his key ring around his middle finger. The keys made a clinking sound every time he caught them. The noise corresponded with his limp as he made his way toward one of the last cruisers left in the lot. The white Plymouth Fury mirrored the early morning sun. The red and blue Atlanta Police Department badge on the door was faded to almost pink and baby blue.

  Jimmy popped the trunk so he could secure the shotgun over the spare wheel well. He told Kate, “Check the car.”

  She had learned basic patrol procedures at the academy. Kate
knew how to take apart a back seat, replace a flat tire, and top off a radiator. She’d even learned how to pump gas into the tank, which was the only thing Kate learned at the police academy that had truly shocked her father.

  She inspected the inside of the car as instructed, checking for weapons or personal belongings that had been left behind. It was important to ascertain that there was nothing in the back seat that an arrestee might find and use as a weapon. The flimsy chain-link fence was the only thing separating the front of the car from the back. A knife or even a sharpened plastic fork could be easily jammed through the diamond-shaped openings.

  Jimmy pulled on a pair of leather racing gloves as he watched her. “You gonna take all day?”

  Kate locked the back seat into place with her knee. “Ready.”

  He unclipped the transmitter from the back of his belt, then climbed behind the wheel. He had to angle his leg because of his bum knee. When he shut the door, he gave Kate a challenging look, daring her to mention the injury.

  Kate unclipped her transmitter. She rested it in her lap as opposed to between her legs, as Jimmy had. “I’m sorry about your partner.”

  “Why? You didn’t know him.” He turned the key in the ignition. “Write this down, ’cause I ain’t gonna repeat it.” He put the gear in reverse, but didn’t move the car. “Where’s your notebook?”

  “In my—” She cut to the point. “In the locker room.”

  Jimmy slammed the gear back into park. “Go get it.”

  Kate felt her cheeks burning again. “It’s in somebody else’s locker.”

  “Motherfucker.”

  Kate flinched at the word. She didn’t know why. She’d certainly heard it before.

  Fortunately, Jimmy didn’t seem to notice her reaction. He leaned over and opened the glove box. Instinctively, Kate pulled away from him. He glared at her as he dropped a spare notebook on her lap. “First rule is, don’t leave your fucking notebook.”

  She flipped the cover open to a blank sheet, but she didn’t have anything to write with.

  “Christ.” Jimmy took a pen out of his pocket and threw it in her direction.

  Kate missed the pen. Of course she missed it. She leaned down to retrieve it from the floor just as he backed up the car. The brim of her hat slammed into the dash, sending a slash of pain across her forehead. Kate felt something close to a swoon. Her vision blurred. Her stomach curdled.

  Jimmy pulled out onto the road. “Write that down,” he said. “Never forget your notebook.”

  Kate sat up. She pushed her hat back on her head. She was still seeing pricks of stars, but she clicked the pen, started writing: Never forget your notebook. She felt like an idiot, but she looked to him for more.

  He said, “Rule number two: you type all the reports. I’m not here to do paperwork. That’s why you write down every single fucking thing that happens. Mark the time, what the weather’s like, what people look like, how they sound—they crackers or hillbillies? Southside or West?” He paused, waiting for Kate to finish. At least that’s what she thought he was doing. She couldn’t help but notice that his eyes never went above her chest.

  “Rule number three: I’m the boss of this car. I say where we go, when we stop, where we stop. If you gotta pee every ten minutes, you bring a cup to piss in. I don’t wanna hear about it. Got me?”

  Kate kept her head down, thinking if she just kept writing, the words wouldn’t matter.

  “Rule three, section A, I always drive, and you shut the hell up about it.”

  Kate didn’t have to write that one down.

  “Four: Ask. Tell. Make. You ask somebody to do something. They don’t do it, you tell them to do it. They still don’t do it, you make them do it.”

  Her hand was cramping. She could barely keep up.

  “Number five: forget rule number four. It don’t matter. You’re not talking to anybody. You’re not looking at anybody. You stay in the car when I get out and you still be in the car when I get back in.”

  Kate looked up. This was the exact opposite of what they told her during her training. You never left your partner’s side. Even Jimmy’s own uncle had said as much during roll call.

  Jimmy seemed to read her mind. “I don’t care what they taught you. There’s different rules for men and women. You go out into the street, you’re my responsibility. I can’t look after me and look after you at the same time.”

  She stared down at the point of the pen pressing into the white notebook paper. “You don’t find it possible that I can look after myself?”

  He laughed, but not because he thought it was funny. “Look at this shithole.” He waved his hand out the window. “You think you can handle yourself outside this car?”

  Kate felt her eyes go wide. She’d been too busy writing to notice the scenery had changed. They were smack in the middle of the projects. Young black men were clumped around the street corners. Scantily clad girls strolled the sidewalks. She suppressed a shudder of fear. They were the only white people around.

  “Capitol Homes,” Jimmy announced, as if it wasn’t obvious they were in a government housing project. “Look behind you.”

  Kate turned. The gold capitol dome shadowed the complex.

  He said, “Funny thing, ain’t one of those windows looking this way. They all look toward downtown, where the money comes in. They don’t see the filth and the trash the city shits out behind them.”

  Kate took in her surroundings. Scores of two-story brick buildings dotted the complex. There were no trees, nothing on the lawns but red Georgia clay. Children who should have been in school were playing outside, their bare feet kicking up dust. The temperature was low, but people had their windows open. She saw old men sitting on front stoops. Women leaned out the windows to yell at their kids. Litter was everywhere. Graffiti. Condoms and needles collected around the drains in the street.

  And the smell. The stench was indescribable.

  Jimmy slowed the car to a crawl. “You get a whiff of that?”

  Kate tried not to gag. The air burned her eyes and nose, cut into her pores. Sweat, urine, rancid food. Kate didn’t know what the odor was, but she would never forget it as long as she lived.

  He said, “Roll down your window.”

  Kate didn’t want to, but she grabbed the handle. Her hand was sweating so badly she couldn’t get the lever to turn.

  Jimmy leaned across her and cranked down the window. He yelled, “Romeo, get your ass over here.”

  A black man sauntered over, his fingers tucked into the waist of his pants. He was dressed in wide yellow bell-bottoms and a vivid green shirt. The buttons were open so low that Kate could see the hair trailing down from his belly button. And then she saw it closer, because he was standing so near that Kate’s shoulder almost touched him.

  Jimmy said, “Stop fuckin’ around, Romeo.”

  The man finally leaned down and stuck his head through the open window. Kate pressed her spine so hard into the seat that her handcuffs pushed apart the vertebrae.

  Romeo asked Jimmy, “Whatchu want, honky?”

  “You hear about Don?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Don’t dick me around,” Jimmy warned. “Tell me what you know.”

  “I know y’all lookin’ to do some beatin’ today.”

  “You wanna be my first?”

  Romeo winked at Kate. Like Jimmy, he seemed incapable of looking at anything higher than her chest. “Shit, man, you know I don’t know nothin’ about that. I’m just a bidness man goin’ ’bout my bidness.”

  Jimmy lightened the pressure. “You got your ear to the ground.”

  Romeo nodded his head. “That might be true.”

  “You get me a name, I’ll give you a coupla passes.”

  “I’m gone need more than a coupla somethin’. My black ass’ll be toast folks find out I’m helpin’ you crackers.”

  Jimmy’s face was stone. “Whatta you want?”

  “I’ll thinka somethin’.”
>
  “You get me that name, you better think fast. I don’t leave no open tabs.”

  “I hear ya, brother.” Romeo turned his attention to Kate. She held her breath. The odor off him was foul—something sickly sweet, like burned candy. He showed her a row of gold teeth. “You a foxy little thing.”

  To Kate’s horror, Jimmy said, “She is, ain’t she?”

  “Blonde hair. Pretty white skin. Got them fine, full lips. I liked to feel me some a them lips. You ever suck a chocolate creamsicle, baby?”

  Jimmy chuckled. “I bet she ain’t.”

  “Lemme show you, baby.” Romeo’s face got closer. Kate moved so far away that she was almost in Jimmy’s lap. “Why don’t you pucker up them fine lips for me, gal?” Romeo’s shoulder moved. She could tell his hand was touching the front of his pants. “Come on. Open up that sweet mouth for me.”

  Kate willed herself not to look down. Not to breathe. Not to scream.

  “Do you recognize that burned-cotton-candy smell?” Jimmy asked, like Kate was sitting in a classroom instead of about to be raped. “That’s heroin. They put it in a spoon and cook it to a boil with a lighter.”

  Romeo’s tongue darted out. “Got-damn, you the whitest white bitch I ever seen.”

  “They pull the liquid into a needle then shoot it in their veins.” Jimmy said, “That right, Romeo?”

  Romeo wouldn’t be distracted. His hand was doing things below the window that Kate didn’t want to know about. “You just stay there just a little minute more and I—”

  Jimmy hit the gas. Romeo slipped out the window. Kate was flung back against the seat. She struggled to turn around, to get her bearings. Jimmy was laughing so hard that he had tears in his eyes.

  “You stupid bitch,” he said. “Holy shit, you shoulda seen your face.”