Cop Town

by Karin Slaughter

  Terry said, “This can’t get out. Do you hear me? None of this can get out.”

  Maggie watched him go from one side of the room to the other. He was more enraged about Jimmy being gay than he was about Jimmy being a murderer.

  Delia tried again. “Maybe Bud and Cal can—”

  “No,” Terry stopped her. “Nobody finds out, Dee. That’s it. We handle this on our own.”

  “What are you going to do?” Delia sounded terrified. “Terry, please. Tell me what you’re going to do.”

  He kept pacing. He was thinking it through, trying to see a way out. Finally, he decided, “I’m gonna track him down and kill him myself, is what I’m going to do.”

  “Terry!” Delia screamed. “For the love of—”

  “Goddamn it!” Terry punched the wall so hard that the plaster bowed.

  No one spoke for another moment. Tapestry played on. “So Far Away.”

  Terry stared at his hand. The knuckles were already black and blue from work. Fresh cuts had rent open the skin. He flexed his fingers into and out of a fist.

  He said, “I gotta put him down, Dee. He’s a Lawson. It’s my responsibility.”

  “Terry.” Delia was turning his name into a mantra. “Terry, no. You can’t.”

  “You wanna trial? Is that what you want?” He looked disgusted by the idea. “Your cocksucking son pouring out his heart on the stand? Talkin’ about how he went queer on all them cops he murdered?”

  The color drained from Delia’s face.

  “You tell Cal Vick this, he’ll shoot him himself. Same with Jett, Mack, Red—all of ’em. They’ll put him down and nobody’ll blame ’em.”

  “It won’t be like that,” Delia insisted. “Something’s wrong. He wasn’t right in the head when he wrote this.”

  “You think a jury will buy some kind of temporary insanity?” Terry flexed his hands again. “You wanna roll that dice, take a chance they won’t send him straight to Old Sparky?”

  Delia clutched the doorknob to keep herself from falling.

  “You wanna go to the state pen and watch ’em strap our boy into the electric chair?” Terry wiped his bloody hand on Jimmy’s sheets. “They put ’em in diapers because they shit themselves. They don’t like the guy, maybe they don’t wet the sponge enough, so when the switch is flipped, he catches on fire and burns alive.” Terry grabbed Delia’s arm. “Is that what you want for him, Dee? You wanna watch him burn?”

  “Oh, God, Terry. Please don’t say these things. Please! I can’t hear them.”

  “You need to hear them.” He looked at Maggie. “You need to hear ’em, too, tough gal. He may be a dirty queer, but he’s still your brother.”

  Maggie didn’t know what to say. All of this was too much. Her throat was sore. Her head was pounding. This was insane. She couldn’t believe it—not any of it. Jimmy wasn’t gay, and he sure as hell wasn’t a murderer.

  “Mom.” Maggie needed to make her see reason. She took Delia’s hand. “He didn’t do it. There’s no way—”

  “No!” Delia pulled back like she’d been scalded. “Don’t you talk to me! Don’t you say anything else! You should’ve never taken that job! It was too much stress on Jimmy!”

  The hate in her eyes pierced Maggie’s soul.

  “This is all on you, Margaret.” Delia’s voice got stronger with every word. “If you’d gotten married, then Jimmy would’ve, too.” She seemed almost relieved. She told Terry, “That’s it. He couldn’t meet a girl and get married. He couldn’t abandon us, because no one else would take care of us.”

  Terry said, “I take plenty damn good care of you.”

  “I know you do.” Delia rested her hand on his chest. The panic was winding down now that she had figured out who was really to blame. “I know you do good by us. But Jimmy—he’s a young man. He’s under a lot of pressure. He just didn’t know what he was doing. I’m sure that’s it, Terry. I’m sure he can explain.”

  Terry put his hand over Delia’s. He looked at her in a way that made Maggie’s stomach turn. “I’ll handle this, Dee.”

  Maggie stared down at Jimmy’s note. His confession. His apology.

  I’m sorry I never apologized to you.

  What did he mean? He’d apologized to Maggie at the hospital just yesterday. The moment was seared into her memory. Jimmy had never apologized to her for anything before. Was there something else he was sorry for? Was there some other thing he’d done that Maggie still hadn’t found out about?

  Not murder. She could believe her big, strong brother was a homosexual before she could believe that he would kill five men in cold blood.

  “You have to stop this,” Maggie told Terry. “Jimmy wrote this letter for a reason.”

  “He wrote it because he wants us to stop him. You ever think of that?”

  Maggie didn’t have a response. She hadn’t thought of that. She looked at the last two lines. The apology that ignored the apology from the day before.

  Was it possible that she was wrong about her brother? Eight years was a long time. The Jimmy that Maggie knew was a grown man now. He went places she didn’t know about. He had friends she had never met. Sometimes, he stayed out all night and no one ever asked him questions about it in the morning.

  Terry said, “He’ll be a victim. The Shooter got him. I’ll make it look the same way, unplug his goddamn radio, break his fingernail if I have to. He’ll get a cop’s funeral. He’ll be buried in the cemetery with an honor guard.” He told Delia, “You’ll get benefits. He’ll still be doing his part. That’s what Jimmy wants. He knew what he was doing when he left the note on his bed for anybody to find.”

  Maggie couldn’t accept what Terry was saying. She tried to reason with Delia. “Mama, you were right. We need to show the letter to people. This isn’t our Jimmy. Something’s wrong with him.”

  Suddenly, the paper was wrenched from Maggie’s hands.

  Delia tore Jimmy’s confession to pieces.

  22

  Fox lay behind the fallen log and stared up at the big house situated at the top of a meandering driveway. The kitchen light was on. Kate’s car was parked on the pad down from the garage. His view of the front porch could not have been better. The ground was cold beneath him. He could feel it pressing into his thighs, curling up to his balls.

  Fox shifted. The pressure was getting worse.

  The pressure that Kate caused him.

  He wished for a night sighter. The infrared detector washed the landscape in green light, making it possible for you to see the enemy while the enemy only saw darkness. During the war, Fox had used a scope-mounted sighter to track his prey. The enemy was clever, but technology eluded him. Sometimes, Fox would follow a man through the dark jungle for hours. The green light tracked his every move. Fox would watch the target pause, check his surroundings, stop for a meal, take a piss against a tree—all without knowing that Fox was watching.

  Which was what Fox was doing now, if only for a few more minutes. He couldn’t see his watch, but he estimated from the way the moon hung in the sky that one day was slipping into another.

  He needed rest. He needed to make sure Jimmy was still where he was supposed to be. And then he needed to go over the plan one more time.

  Tonight, Kate would have to go to bed without him.

  23

  Kate sat on the front steps to her parents’ house. A faint glow of headlights passed through the trees as a lone car drove by. The tips of leggy pines kissed the midnight moon. There was a crispness in the air that sent tiny icicles into her lungs. The pain was almost soothing. She wanted to feel things. She wanted to know that she was still alive.

  Kate couldn’t sleep. Her head hit the pillow and then without her knowing how it happened, she found herself dressed and walking across the parking garage. She had spent the last two hours driving around town, aimlessly going up one street and down the next. She’d tried to return home, but found herself passing the hotel two, three, four times before she’d finally dir
ected the car toward Buckhead.

  The only stop Kate had made was at the Texaco station on Ponce de Leon—not for fuel, but for the slim chance of redemption.

  The Lawsons were in the phone book. Kate had dropped a dime into the pay phone. She had dialed the first three digits of the number. And then her hand had frozen as words ran aimlessly through her mind:

  I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you.

  I’m sorry I let Gail get hurt.

  I’m sorry you had to kill a man.

  I’m sorry … I’m sorry … I’m so goddamn sorry.

  Kate was surprised by the apologies that rushed to mind—not because she hated asking for forgiveness, but because she had never felt so horribly responsible for things going wrong.

  Gail might not be in the hospital right now if Kate had been able to help.

  Maggie might not have been forced to kill a man had Kate been able to help.

  Kate realized at that moment that she had never truly been needed before. Sure, she volunteered to help friends move. She went to house-painting parties. She was a good third wheel. She paid for her share of rounds at the club. Her family loved her. Kate’s friends enjoyed her company. Patrick had adored her. She had needed all of them at one point or another, but none of them had ever truly needed Kate.

  The sudden realization had felt like a bell ringing in her head. Kate had stared blankly at the graffiti scrawled above the telephone. She wanted a time machine, but not for Patrick. She wanted to go back to the Portuguese house and in that split second before the bullet whizzed past, she wanted to move her head just slightly away.

  That was the only thing that Kate would take back.

  She didn’t regret going to the Portuguese house. She didn’t want to time-travel back to Monday morning and erase putting on the uniform and going in to work, or go back even further in time and will herself not to read that newspaper article about women motorcycle cops, or to stop herself from going downtown to fill out the application for the police department, or to prevent herself from not showing up that first day at the academy with her notebook already filled with details she’d copied out of her textbook.

  No, Kate would not take any of that back. Her only regret was that she had failed to help her fellow police officers.

  This was what she wanted to say to Maggie Lawson: I am sorry I wasn’t able to help you kill that man. I am sorry that we did not get the information from Chic before he was murdered. I am sorry that I could not stop Gail from getting injured.

  I am sorry, I am sorry, I am so goddamn sorry.

  In the end, Kate had put the receiver back in the cradle without dialing the rest of the numbers. The sound of the dime making its way to the change slot had reminded her of a pinball machine.

  She should’ve done better. She should’ve been better. The only reason Gail was at that house in the first place was because Maggie needed backup, and she didn’t trust Kate to do it. She was right to not trust Kate with her life. Everything they had said about the FNG was true. The China Doll. The Sheep. The worthless Buckhead princess who’d fallen to the floor in a heap when everything went to hell.

  In her mind, Kate knew that she wasn’t using logic. She hadn’t played possum. The fall to the floor was precipitated by gunfire. She’d knocked herself out so badly that she was mildly concussed. It wasn’t as if Kate had been given a choice and failed to act. There was no test of courage. No decision to be made. She hadn’t seen Chic die. She hadn’t seen Anthony attacking Gail. She hadn’t seen Maggie stopping him. She didn’t remember the bullet clipping her ear. She didn’t remember falling. Kate was listening to Gail threaten Sir Chic one moment and the next she was looking around the room and feeling like she had walked into the penultimate scene in Straw Dogs.

  Kate’s first conscious thought when she came to was that she hurt. Her head hurt. Her ear hurt. Her leg hurt where she’d fallen. Her gun was missing. She’d snapped closed the strap when they were outside the house, just as Maggie had told her to. She’d heeded all their warnings about the pimp. She’d even negotiated with Chic, getting him to reveal that he knew something about the shooting. Or at least that he had a girl who knew something. Saw something.

  And for what?

  They would never find the girl now. Chic had taken her location to the grave. Maggie had literally shot Anthony’s head off. There was nothing left of him but a sharp white bone sticking up from his neck like the fin of a great white shark.

  For nothing.

  Another car drove by. Kate caught the glow of a cigarette. There was a person walking along the street in front of the house. A chill went through her. Then she felt silly, because why on earth would anybody care that she was sitting on her parents’ front porch?

  Still, she couldn’t shake the sensation of being watched. If she was being honest, Kate had felt that way a lot lately—as if a pair of eyes was tracking her every move. Even when she was alone in her apartment or inside her parents’ house, she couldn’t quell the unsettling feeling that her every move was being monitored. Maybe this came with the territory. Being paranoid was probably a healthy trait for a police officer. And she was a sitting duck on the front porch steps.

  Kate stood up. She smoothed down the back of her skirt. She touched her hand to the mezuzah on her parents’ front door.

  Methuselah, Gail had called it, and then she had winked at Kate because she’d obviously read Kate’s personnel file and she knew how Patrick had died just like she knew which box had been checked under “religion.”

  Kate whispered the words her Oma had taught her, “May God keep my going out and my coming in from now on and ever more.”

  The door was unlocked; no one locked their doors in Buckhead. They didn’t even know where all the doors were. The front room was dark except for the embers burning in the fireplace. The light was on in the kitchen. Kate heard her grandmother’s laughter, followed by the deep murmur of her father’s voice.

  “Daddy?” she called, but the word got stuck somewhere in Kate’s chest. She had no idea why she had come here. When Kate was a child, she would curl into bed with Oma and count the steady beats of her heart. After Patrick’s death, Kate had slept by her side for over a month.

  She was too old for that now. Too hardened.

  What she really needed was a stiff drink.

  “Darling!” Oma lit up when Kate entered the kitchen. She was playing cards with Kate’s father. Jacob Herschel had two PhDs and a medical degree, but he would have lost everything to Oma had Liesbeth not insisted they play for pennies.

  Jacob took off his glasses to study Kate. He’d spent his summers in South Georgia as a boy. He had a soft, southern drawl that always reminded her of Gregory Peck in To Kill a Mockingbird.

  He asked, “Is everything all right?”

  Kate wrapped her arm around his shoulders. She kissed the top of his head. “Couldn’t sleep,” she told him, which was true. “I was just driving around and I saw the light on.”

  “What a wonderful coincidence.” Oma refilled her glass of sherry. “I love your dress. Is it new?”

  “No. Yes.” Kate sat at the table. She had thrown on the first thing she could find in her closet—a striped yellow, blue, and burgundy dress that cut too low for any occasion that didn’t involve a nightclub.

  “It’s lovely.” Oma touched the material. Her fingers stroked Kate’s arm, then held her hand. She told Jacob, “I’m ready to take more of your money now.”

  Jacob put his glasses back on. “I assumed you were.”

  Kate studied her father’s features as he shuffled the deck of cards. He looked old, though that was only because Kate always thought of him as the young man who used to throw her into the air and catch her. She imagined her father was always surprised by her face, too. He must still see her as that child he could carry in his arms.

  What would Jacob think about Kate’s first two days as a police officer? Nothing, if Kate had anything to do with it. She could not tell her father tha
t she had almost died today, that Kate had literally come within an inch of losing her life. Not even an inch. Less than an inch. A millimeter, the paramedic had said.

  Kate had refused to go to the hospital. They thought she was brave, but she was really terrified. Jacob Herschel was occasionally at Grady Hospital visiting his charity patients. The way Kate’s luck was running, she was certain they would bring her into the emergency room at the exact moment her father arrived for a consultation.

  He would not yell at her. He would not rage. He would simply advise Kate to leave the job and find something different that would please her more. Her father was very clever that way. He knew better than to try to order around the women in his life. He never gave ultimatums or put his foot down. What he did was offer advice. He posited what he might do should he find himself in their situation. He subtly pushed them toward his way of thinking.

  The technique was brilliant, though it did not take into account that the women in his life were also students of human behavior. Oma always complimented him on the idea, then changed the subject. Liesbeth would tell him he was absolutely right, then do whatever she wanted.

  As for Kate, she lied.

  “So.” Jacob shuffled the cards. “What happened to your ear?”

  Kate touched the tiny round Band-Aid the paramedics had wrapped around her ear. “The skin was rubbed raw by that silly hat they make me wear.”

  Oma tsked. “First the blisters on your feet and now this. They should have warned you it was so dangerous.”

  “Yes, they should have.” Jacob studied Kate’s face as he fanned the cards together. They made a slapping noise that echoed off the marble countertops.

  Kate wondered if her father already knew what had happened. There had been early reports on the radio about Gail being injured, but Kate and Maggie were just unnamed officers at the scene. The nightly television news hadn’t mentioned their gender. By ten this evening, the radio reporters were referring to Maggie as an unidentified male officer who had saved the life of a seasoned detective and his partner.