Cop Town

by Karin Slaughter

  “You know, now that I think about it, what Chic said was strange.” Kate quoted the pimp’s words as best she could recall. “ ‘The dude my gal saw looked nothing like the brother that’s on the news.’ ”

  Maggie didn’t offer an opinion. Her face was pale. Sweat dotted her forehead.

  Kate opened the window a crack. Cold air whistled in. “Chic must have been referring to the police sketch Jimmy made. It’s been all over the news. It was on the front page of the evening edition. I don’t know the slang, obviously, but it seems to me that a brother is a black man. So, what is a dude? Is that a white man?”

  Maggie rested her hand on the chest of drawers. She looked shaky. “It depends on who you’re talking to.”

  Kate tried to walk her through it. “You told me that Gail said that white people kill white people and black people kill black people, so …”

  Maggie waited.

  “What do you remember from yesterday? I mean after I passed out.”

  Maggie shrugged. “I remember everything.”

  “Clearly? As in, what everyone looked like?” Kate crossed her arms. Thanks to the open window, now she really was cold. “Because I’ve been thinking—for the life of me, I couldn’t describe the Portuguese lady. We spoke to her for several minutes. We were in her house. But if you asked me to describe her features to you, I wouldn’t be able to.”

  Maggie shrugged again. “And?”

  “And if I had seen her at night and she came around the corner with a gun, there’s no way I could describe her face. So, maybe Jimmy—”

  “That’s you, Kate. You’ve been on the job two seconds. You don’t know how to pay attention to things. You ran into a brick wall, for chrissakes.”

  Kate replayed the words in her head. It wasn’t what Maggie had said, which was absolutely true, it was how she’d said it. There was none of her usual irritation. She sounded defensive. And despite the cold air, she was still sweating.

  “You’re right,” Kate relented. “Maybe I need some coffee to wake me up.” She took the carafe and walked into the bathroom. She turned on the tap. And she tried to shake the feeling that she was missing something very important.

  She raised her voice so Maggie could hear her over the running water. “Jimmy has been through several traumatic situations in the last few days. He saw Don murdered. He was shot in the arm. Surely he was upset by what happened to you. Maybe he just needs some time alone? To collect his thoughts?”

  There was no answer at first. Kate started to repeat the question, but Maggie said, “That’s not what Jimmy does.”

  The carafe was full. Kate returned to the bedroom. “Is there a secret person he might be seeing?”

  Maggie studied Kate carefully. “A secret person?”

  Kate made herself busy with the Mr. Coffee. “I never had a brother, but all my girlfriends who do say they’re very secretive, especially when it comes to their love lives.”

  “Did he hit on you in the car?”

  “Jimmy?” The question was strange. Kate wasn’t sure how to answer it. “I think he was just breaking in the new girl. Isn’t that why Terry assigned me to him in the first place?”

  “But he flirted with you?”

  “Yes.” Kate turned on the machine. “Of course. I flirted back. He’s very charming when he wants to be.”

  Maggie’s expression had gone blank. Before, she hadn’t been able to meet Kate’s eye, but now she seemed incapable of looking away.

  Kate said, “Let’s work the case, all right? We’ll pick up where we left off yesterday. We were looking for information that leads to the Shooter. Let’s do the same thing today.”

  Maggie’s head slowly began to nod. “We can’t find Jimmy, but if we find the Shooter, then we’ll know for certain about Jimmy.”

  Kate was relieved she was making some sort of sense. “Is there something else bothering you?”

  “What else would be bothering me?” Maggie went on the defensive again. “Do you have a problem with what I did to Anthony?”

  “Absolutely not. You acted in self-defense. You saved us. All of us.” Kate had to stop so she could swallow down the emotions that wanted to come. She was standing in that phone booth at the Texaco again, overwhelmed with the need to apologize. “If anything, I’m sorry. I failed you. I failed Gail. I should’ve been more alert. I should’ve been able to help you when all hell broke loose.”

  Maggie looked at the coffeemaker. “I should’ve checked the building across the street.”

  “You did,” Kate insisted. “I saw you do it when we walked into Chic’s room. Both you and Gail looked at everything, including the building.”

  Maggie obviously didn’t believe her.

  “You told me the first day that you learn how to be a cop by watching other cops. I was watching you and Gail. You both looked at everything.”

  Maggie obviously wasn’t going to be persuaded. She bought herself some composure by picking a piece of lint off her uniform. “The boss told us we could have a couple of days off.”

  “So?” Kate was standing right by Maggie when Cal Vick told them as much. “You’re not taking off. I imagine Gail would be at roll call this morning if they’d let her out of the hospital.”

  Maggie smiled, before she caught herself.

  “All right.” The coffeemaker was finished. Kate poured two cups as she spoke. “The plan is to figure out the Shooter’s identity, right? I think that we should go back and talk to the Portuguese lady.”

  “Why?”

  “We can assume that the Shooter believed Chic was the witness, but there’s somebody else in that house who probably knows the whole story.”

  Maggie seemed at a loss.

  “Didn’t you get the feeling that the Portuguese lady is the type of busybody who sticks her nose into everybody’s business?”

  “We’re acting on feelings now?” Maggie shook her head. “I can guarantee that woman has been interviewed and deposed by every piece of brass on the force by now. That’s how it goes when bad shit goes down. There’s probably enough paperwork by now to wallpaper this hotel.”

  Kate put the carafe back on the burner. “You told me yesterday that people lie.”

  “They do.”

  “Then maybe the Portuguese lady lied to the police yesterday.” She tried to make it into a story. “Look at it this way: Something bad happened to one of Chic’s girls. She saw a cop murdered. She got scared. Where do you think she went first?” Kate answered her own question. “She went to her boss and she woke him up and she gave him that transmitter. And who let her through the front door at that time of night? Who unlocked the four locks and drew back the chain?”

  “All right,” Maggie finally relented. “It’s a long shot, but that’s all we’ve got left.”

  “Give me a minute to rinse off and change.” Kate collected a fresh set of undergarments. She felt a flash of guilt when she opened her closet door to retrieve her uniform. The rod bowed from all her dresses. Her shoes were boxed two high and three deep and spanned the width of the closet floor.

  Kate grabbed one of the coffees on her way into the bathroom. The pipes squealed when she turned on the shower. She tried not to get her hair wet. Stray nerves fired as she washed herself. She looked battered from the waist down. She tried not to think about the gentle way Philip had kissed her bruises.

  Kate doubted there was anyone to kiss the bruises on Maggie’s neck. There was armor on top of her armor this morning. Was this simply because her brother was missing? Kate felt at her core that there was more to it than that. Had Maggie started to suspect that Jimmy was gay? Was that really why she was looking for him? And it wasn’t just Maggie who wanted to find Jimmy. Terry was looking for him, too. The entire force had been alerted with the BOLO. Every cop in Atlanta would be occupied today, whether they were searching for Jimmy Lawson or hunting down the Shooter.

  Too bad Kate wasn’t a criminal.

  She got out of the shower and quickly dried hers
elf. All she could do with her makeup was freshen it up. With any luck, the liquid color corrector under her eyes would ward off any dark circles. Kate had forgotten her pantyhose, but she doubted anyone would notice. She listened for noise in the bedroom as she finished dressing. She wondered if Maggie had fallen asleep. Part of her hoped that she had. Yesterday, Kate thought that Maggie Lawson was one of the smartest women she’d ever met. Right now, she seemed barely capable of making even the most obvious connections.

  Kate opened the bathroom door. Maggie was standing where she’d left her. The bruises on her neck were getting darker by the hour. Kate could’ve sworn there was another bruise coming up around the cut on her cheek.

  Kate said, “We should look at our notes from yesterday.” Before Maggie could ask, she clarified, “The ones we took from the Shooter cases.”

  “Terry has them.”

  Kate didn’t ask the question she knew Maggie wouldn’t answer. “What about the bar?”

  “Which bar?”

  “Dabbler’s. The one on the matchbook from Don Wesley’s pants.”

  Maggie had obviously forgotten about the place. But then she told Kate, “My next-door neighbor works at the phone company. I talked to him about it last night.” Maggie looked for a place to set down her coffee cup. “He said he’d put the address in my mailbox. We should go there first before anybody finds it.”

  Kate wondered who Maggie thought was going to rob her mailbox. “It’s after six anyway. The Portuguese lady might be in a more talkative mood if we give her a chance to wake up. Just put the cup anywhere.”

  Maggie placed the cup on top of the machine. “It’s probably another dead end. Gail said it’s not a cop hangout.”

  “My father always says if you don’t know what to do, just keep moving forward until you figure it out.” Kate slid her feet into Jimmy’s shoes. She took her belt off the closet doorknob. The metal clips were in her jewelry box. She saw one of her old watches and put it on. “Do we need to get in touch with Delroy and Watson?”

  “For what?”

  Kate hooked the clips on her belt. “To get permission to go into that part of town again.”

  “I shot a man five times yesterday. I don’t think anyone is going to fuck with us.”

  Kate stared at her. Was that the real problem? Did Maggie feel guilty for taking Anthony’s life? Were the bruises around her neck an attempt to quiet the demons?

  “I’m fine,” Maggie told her.

  “I didn’t ask.”

  “You’re like a book.”

  “You know what they say about judging a book.” Kate checked her pockets: lipstick, cash, citation book, notebook, pens. She looped the nightstick through the hook in her belt. She plugged her mic into the transmitter. “Your neighbor seems nice.”

  “He’s deaf.”

  Handcuffs. Keys. Kel-Lite. Back spasm. “Gail’s half-blind. That doesn’t mean you like her any less.”

  “His mother’s a nurse. She used to give abortions.”

  Kate looked up.

  “Before they were legal.” Maggie spoke haltingly. “Girls were in and out of there at all hours. That’s why their house is the nicest on the block. She made a lot of money. Are you ready to go?”

  Kate started for the door, then spun around and opened the top drawer of her bureau. They had given her a new revolver yesterday because the other one was logged into evidence. Kate dropped the weapon into her holster and pressed the snap closed. “Now I’m ready.”

  There was a glimmer of the old Maggie in the wry expression on her face. “Check the safety, Murphy. You almost blew your foot off.”

  25

  Fox could not stop thinking about Kate’s hair. He saw it when he closed his eyes. Strands of gold and honey. Silky wisps trailing down her long neck. Cheekbones carved from ivory. Eyes like the most pristine ocean.

  All lies.

  Light when she should’ve been dark. Taking an Irish name when she was Hebrew. Presenting one face to the world while she hid her true self behind a mask of normalcy. This was the problem—these frauds who sneaked in under the radar, then by the time you saw them for what they really were, it was too late.

  Jews. Italians. Cunts. Chinks. Blacks. Indians.

  The old man had been right. The world really was upside down. People really didn’t know their place anymore. Fox was doing his part to fix it now, but he couldn’t help but wonder what his life would’ve been like if he had been able to put things right for Senior.

  Shoot the greaseball before he could close the factory.

  Gas the Jew bitch before she screwed up his unemployment check.

  Execute the yellow-skinned bastard before he could steal his job.

  Save his mother from Senior’s pain.

  Because it wasn’t his anger that hurt everybody. It was his pain.

  After the factory closed, Senior would sit at the kitchen table every night talking about the people who had fucked him over. The kikes. The spics. The slits. The motherfuckers who didn’t belong. Senior started reading the Bible. He took to it like a true convert. After years of deriding Fox’s mother for her churchgoing ways, he found his calling.

  From one man He made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and He marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands.

  Fox was sitting at the table when Senior found the verse. The old man had thumped his finger against the page and given an “aha” that boomed from his gut. Acts 17:26. God had given Senior a purpose passed down from Adam. His appointed time was being stolen away from him. His boundaries were being redrawn.

  And who were the thieves of Senior’s time in the sun? The kikes. The spics. The greaseballs. The slits. They fell like dominos, crashing down on Senior’s world.

  And then they claimed their final victim: Fox’s mother.

  They were sitting at the kitchen table when she came home from the doctor’s office. The Bible was closed. Senior was drinking Jack straight from the bottle and looking for a reason to hit somebody. Fox wasn’t going to give it to him. He had just gotten in from school. He was eating the snack his mother always prepared for him: a piece of bread with the crust cut off, a slice of cheese. There was supposed to be a cookie, but Fox knew better than to ask what happened to it.

  His mother sat down at the table. Her chair was smaller than theirs. The back was splintered. She always sat on the edge of the seat. Despite a lifetime of smoothing things over, she did not sugarcoat the news. The pain in her stomach was cancer. The tumor was the size of a grapefruit.

  They had given her three months. Four if she took it easy.

  Senior had started to cry. The first of two times total that Fox had seen the old man break down.

  Fox had not cried. He pictured a grapefruit in his mind. He compared it to other known items. A baseball. A softball. His father’s fist.

  It seemed to Fox more than coincidence that his mother had a cancerous tumor in her stomach the same size as Senior’s fist. That was where Senior hit her the most, in the belly. In Fox’s head, he imagined the fist compacting the organ until it was the same shape and consistency. He visualized his mother’s stomach as a fist. He willed the fingers to open. He begged for God to unclench the tumor and release his mother from the pain.

  Morphine was the only thing that could help her now. Maybe two years ago when she first told the doctors about the sharp sensations, or last year when there was blood, something could have been done. But now it was too late.

  Fox could not blame the doctors for not believing her. She lied to them all the time. The broken wrists. The fractured ankles. The cuts and bruises and the panic in her eyes when she was told a wound might need stitches. Nobody accidentally slammed the car door on their leg twice in a row. Nobody got a third-degree burn on their arm from accidentally brushing against the eye on the stove. You got the concentric rings seared into your flesh from someone holding you down to teach you a lesson.

  If a person lie
s all the time, how can you tell when they’re finally telling the truth? Fox had seen the truth. The way his mother’s knees buckled at the sink when the pain cut through. The shaking hands. The shouts of agony when she was in the bathroom. She kept telling the doctors something was wrong, and they kept telling her she just needed some rest.

  Fox needed rest. Countless years had passed, and the thought of her suffering still took the breath out of his lungs.

  He leaned against his basement door. He closed his eyes and listened. The soundproofing was good. He had to press his ear to the wood in order to make out the rattling of the chains. Jimmy Lawson was still crying. He’d been bawling from the moment Fox took him. He did not beg for mercy. He begged for death. Like the rest of them, Jimmy knew what he deserved. Two bullets to the head, just like Senior.

  Or at least like Senior had tried.

  The fucker had never done one thing right in his life.

  It happened after the funeral. Fox had watched his mother’s coffin being lowered into the ground. The day was bitter cold. Fox was freezing. No one had been there to tell him to put on his jacket. He stood in his thin suit by the pile of dirt that had been taken from the earth, tasting the wet clay in the back of his mouth as the wind sliced him in two like a sword.

  Senior had cried. The second time Fox had witnessed this. Big, fat tears rolled down his cheeks. Fox had watched them slap against the tops of his shoes.

  Lesson nine: A man always polishes his shoes.

  Senior was silent as they drove back to the house. No one was there to greet them. Fox’s mother didn’t have any friends. Senior’s former coworkers were all otherwise engaged. There were some casseroles from the ladies at the church. A neighbor had brought in the milk. There was a pie from the pastor’s wife, but no pastor. Just a cold, empty house that Fox had never realized his mother had somehow managed to fill. With her happiness. With her pain. With her fear. With her love.

  Senior walked into the kitchen. He sat down at the table. He opened one of the cabinet drawers. He pulled out a handgun. He pressed the muzzle to his head. He pulled the trigger.