Cop Town: A Novel

by Karin Slaughter

  “Jesus Christ!” Terry banged his fist on the table. “Will you shut the hell up so I can read the paper?”

  “Terry?” Delia called from the kitchen. “The drain’s clogged again. Do you think you can—”

  “In a minute.” He kept his gaze on Maggie. “I wanna know what tough girl here is thinking. You got it figured out, Columbo? You see something guys who’ve been on the job since you were a tickle in your daddy’s ball sac missed?”

  Maggie figured if she was going to get hit, it was going to be for a good reason. “In the other Shooter cases, both guys were on their knees. They were shot in the head, execution-style, one after the other. Don was shot. So why wasn’t Jimmy?”

  Terry leaned over the table. She could smell the whiskey and sweat bleeding from his pores. “Whatever bullshit thing you’ve got going with your brother stops right now. You hear me?”

  Maggie felt the floor shift beneath her. “It’s not that,” she said, and they all knew what “that” was.

  “Then what is it?” Terry asked. “Why are you asking all these questions?”

  She wanted to tell him that it was because she was a cop, and that the way cops solved crimes was asking questions, but she settled on “Because it doesn’t make sense.”

  “Sense.” He snorted. “Since when did you start making sense?”

  “He’s here!” Lilly screamed.

  They all startled at her sudden outburst. But it was true. Maggie could hear Jimmy’s car pulling into the driveway. The Fairlane’s muffler was nearly rusted off. The exhaust huffed the same grumbly cough as Delia when she got out of bed in the morning.

  Maggie tried to stand, but Terry clamped his hand around her arm and forced her back down in her chair.

  She knew better than to fight him. All Maggie could do was listen. The sounds were the same as when Terry had arrived: The car door slammed. Shoes scuffed across the carport and up the stairs. The kitchen door was already open, so Jimmy closed it. He lingered for a few seconds. Maggie could imagine the look exchanged between mother and son. Maybe Jimmy nodded at Delia. Maybe he handed her his hat to make her feel useful.

  When Jimmy came into the dining room, Maggie recognized that he probably had no idea where his hat was. He wasn’t in uniform. He was wearing green hospital clothes. The shirt was tight across his shoulders. His face was chalk white. His eyes were red-rimmed. His lips were pale below his mustache. There was something haunted about him. Maggie was reminded of the way their father looked when it was time for him to go back to the hospital.

  Terry asked, “Mack and Bud take care of you?”

  All Jimmy seemed capable of offering was a nod. He rubbed his hand along the back of his neck. He’d done a bad job cleaning himself. There were still dots of dried blood on his neck and face. Maggie saw a clump of dirt in one of his sideburns.

  Lilly clutched her chest. Tears filled her eyes.

  Terry said, “Don’t—” but it was too late. Lilly ran to Jimmy and threw her arms around his waist. She buried her face in his stomach and started to sob.

  “It’s all right.” Jimmy’s voice was gruff. He rubbed Lilly’s back. He kissed the top of her head. “Come on. Upstairs. Don’t be late for school.”

  Lilly released him just as quickly as she’d grabbed him, then ran from the room. Her footsteps pounded on the bare wooden stairs. For just a moment, Jimmy looked ready to follow her, but then his shoulders dropped, his chin tilted down, and he stared at the floor.

  He said, “I don’t wanna talk about it.”

  “And we don’t wanna hear it.” Delia was behind him. She reached her hand up to Jimmy’s shoulder, but stopped herself just shy of touching him. In general, their mother’s only gestures of affection came in the form of grooming. She used her fingers to smooth creases in Lilly’s sweater. She plucked stray hairs off the shoulders of Maggie’s uniform. And now, she picked the clump of dirt out of Jimmy’s sideburn.

  Delia looked at the tiny speck on her fingertips, and Maggie could tell from her mother’s expression that it wasn’t dirt. Delia clenched her hand and shoved it into her apron pocket.

  She said, “All of you—eat your breakfast before it gets cold. We can’t afford to waste food.”

  Jimmy limped around the table and took his usual place. He winced every time he put weight on his left leg. Maggie wanted to help him. She longed to run over just as Lilly had and put her arms around her brother.

  But she knew she couldn’t.

  “So.” Delia had already fixed Jimmy’s coffee. Now, she loaded up his plate. She used one hand. Her other was still clenched in her apron pocket. “Anybody need anything else?”

  “We’re fine.” Terry waved her away.

  Delia said, “The eggs are cold. I’ll make more eggs.” She went back into the kitchen.

  Maggie stared at her brother because she knew that he would not look back. The faded red spots of blood on his skin reminded her of when he was a pimply teenager. Jimmy had obviously been crying. She couldn’t remember the last time she had seen her brother cry. Eight years ago, at least.

  She told him, “You missed Tapestry this morning.”

  Jimmy grunted as he forked a pile of eggs into his mouth.

  She tried again. “I hung your uniforms in your closet.”

  Jimmy swallowed loudly. “Too much starch in the collars.”

  “I’ll redo them after work. Okay?”

  He crammed more eggs into his mouth.

  “Just put them back in my room.” Maggie was inexplicably nervous. She couldn’t stop talking. “I’ll do them when I get in from work.”

  Terry made a hissing sound to shut her up.

  Maggie followed orders this time—not for Terry, but for Jimmy. She was scared she’d say the wrong thing and make it worse for her brother. This wouldn’t be the first time. There was a tightrope between them that started to fray every time one took a step toward the other.

  In the silence, she listened to Jimmy chew. He made a wet, mechanical sound. She found herself watching the hinge of his jaw, the way it poked out when he bit down. He was like a construction machine scooping eggs into his mouth, chewing, then scooping in more. There was no expression on his face. His eyes were almost glazed. He stared at a fixed point on the wall opposite his chair.

  She knew what he was seeing. Gray plaster with a brown patina from all the cigarette smoke. This was the room Hank Lawson occupied on the rare occasions he lived with his family. The minute he got home, he carried down the TV from Delia’s bedroom and put it on the buffet table. Then he’d chain-smoke and watch the set until the national anthem started playing. Some nights, Maggie would go downstairs to get some water and find her father staring at the American flag waving across a blank background.

  Maggie doubted Jimmy was thinking about their father right now. Maybe he was remembering that last football game. His life before a linebacker turned his knee into oatmeal. Maggie had been in the stands alongside everybody else. She’d watched Jimmy saunter onto the field with his usual confidence. He raised his fist. The crowd roared. They chanted his name. He was their golden boy, the hometown kid who was making good. His future was already set. He was going to UGA on somebody else’s dime. He was going to get drafted into the pros, and the next time anybody saw him, Jimmy Lawson would be coming out of a nightclub wearing a mink, with a girl on each arm like Broadway Joe.

  Instead, he was sitting at his mother’s dining room table with another man’s blood on his face.

  “Here.” Delia swapped out Jimmy’s plate for a fresh one. She added some bacon. Then pancakes. She doused it all with syrup the way he liked.

  “Mom.” Jimmy waved her away with his fork. “Enough.”

  Delia sat down and lit another cigarette. Maggie tried to eat. The eggs were cold. The grease around the bacon had congealed. Maggie forced it down because she had questions that she knew she would ask if she didn’t stuff food into her mouth.

  She couldn’t work out how the shooting had hap
pened. The minute some guy approached Jimmy and Don, especially a colored guy, they would’ve instantly, automatically, pulled their revolvers. It was basic survival. Don had been in Nam long enough to know you didn’t let some fella get the drop on you. And Jimmy had been on the job since he was eighteen.

  Maggie glanced at her brother across the table. Maybe he’d panicked. Maybe he’d stood there with Don’s blood all over him and been so seized by fear that he couldn’t do anything but drop to the ground and pray that he wasn’t going to die.

  Maggie thought about the clump her mother had picked out of Jimmy’s sideburn. The piece of Don Wesley’s head that was probably in the kitchen garbage on top of the broken eggshells and the plastic package that the bacon came in.

  “Time to go.” Terry folded his newspaper. He told Jimmy, “You get some sleep, son. I’ll call you if anything happens.”

  Jimmy started shaking his head before Terry finished the sentence. “No way. I’m not sleeping until we catch the bastard.”

  “Damn right we’ll get him.” Terry winked at Maggie like it was just him and Jimmy against the world.

  Maybe that’s why she asked her brother, “What really happened?”

  Terry grabbed Maggie’s knee so hard that the pain took her breath away. She cried out, scratching the back of his hand.

  He tightened his grip. “What did I tell you about nagging your brother?”

  Pain knifed up and down her leg. Maggie’s lips trembled. She wasn’t going to beg. She couldn’t beg.

  “She’ll hear it at the station anyhow.” Jimmy sounded more irritated than concerned. “Come on, Terry. Let her go.”

  Terry released his hold.

  “Jesus!” Maggie rubbed her knee. She was panting. A shiver ran through her body.

  “Stop making a scene.” Delia picked a stray piece of lint off Maggie’s bathrobe. “What happened, Jimmy?”

  He shrugged. “Don went down. I got off three shots. The shooter ran. I started to chase him, but I couldn’t leave Don.” As an afterthought, he added, “I didn’t get a good look at him. Colored. Average height. Average build.”

  Maggie kept rubbing her knee as she listened. The tendon was pulsing with every heartbeat.

  “Cal Vick’s gonna have me sit down with a sketch artist.” Jimmy shrugged. “Not sure what good it’ll do. The alley was dark. It happened fast.”

  Delia said, “You’re lucky he didn’t try to shoot you, too.”

  “ ’Course he did,” Jimmy quipped, an edge to his tone. “His gun jammed. He tried to shoot me, but nothing happened. Lucky Lawson, right?” That was the name they’d given him in high school. “That’s me. Lucky guy.”

  Terry obviously didn’t like the way this conversation was going. He told Jimmy, “Get yourself cleaned up. I’ll see you at the station.” He made to leave.

  Maggie panicked. “You have to give me a ride.”

  “Why’s that?”

  He knew why. Maggie’s car had been in the shop for a week. “I can’t be late for roll call.”

  “Then you’d better hurry.” Terry tapped his folded newspaper against her mouth. “But you keep that slit under your nose closed, you hear?”

  Maggie grabbed the plates from the table and limped into the kitchen. Jimmy’s utility belt was on the counter. His gun was in the holster.

  Maggie easily heard the conversation in the dining room. Terry was making lewd comments about some new female recruits at the academy. Maggie put the plates in the sink. She ran some water so they wouldn’t glue together before Lilly could wash them.

  And then she limped over to Jimmy’s belt.

  Carefully, she unsnapped the leather safety strap and slid the revolver from the holster. She checked the cylinder. Fully loaded. No empty casings. Maggie kept the muzzle pointed down as she sniffed along the firing pin, the top strap, and the cylinder end of the barrel.

  No smell of burnt copper and sulfur, just the usual tinge of oil and steel.

  Maggie slid the gun back into the holster, snapped the strap closed. She grabbed the railing on the stairs to help propel herself up. She could hear Terry and Jimmy talking baseball, wondering how the Braves were going to do without Hank Aaron. The two men had always had an easy rapport. They could talk about anything—at least so long as none of it mattered.

  Like the fact that whatever had happened in that alley this morning, Jimmy Lawson hadn’t fired his gun.

  2

  Kate Murphy sat on her bed at the Barbizon Hotel and listened to the news. Congress had effectively defunded the war. Nixon was finally gone. President Ford had offered amnesty to draft dodgers. Charges had been dropped against the Ohio State National Guardsmen. William Calley was free after serving less than four years for his part in the My Lai massacre.

  Kate couldn’t bring herself to care. She was out of outrage. All that mattered was that the war was over. Men had finally returned home. POWs were being released. It was never going to happen again. No more boys dying in jungles. No more grieving families back home.

  She looked at the framed photograph by the radio. Patrick’s smile offered an eerie contrast to the haggard look in his eyes. A starburst of sunlight caught the edge of his dog tags. His rifle was slung over his shoulders, helmet tilted at a jaunty angle. His shirt was off. He had new muscles she had never touched. A scar on his face that she had never kissed. The picture was black-and-white, but in the letter that had accompanied it, he’d told Kate that his normally pasty skin was lobster red—an Irish suntan.

  Kate had yet to meet Patrick Murphy when she watched the first draft lottery on television. She was in the living room with her family. Cold wind tapped against the windowpanes. Kate had a shawl wrapped around her shoulders. Her grandmother had remarked that the whole horrible process reminded her of that carnival game—what was it called?

  “Bingo,” Kate had supplied, thinking it was closer to the Shirley Jackson short story.

  Instead of numbered balls, there were 366 blue capsules. Inside each capsule was a slip of paper. On each slip of paper was written a number that corresponded to a month and day of the calendar year. All the sealed capsules were mixed together in a box, then they were dropped into a large glass jar that was so deep that the man doing the drawing had to stretch to reach the capsules with the tips of his fingers.

  The system was simple: as each capsule was drawn, a draft number was assigned, starting at one and working up to 366, which accounted for leap years. All males born between 1944 and 1950 were eligible for conscription. The month and day of your birth determined your draft number. The lower your number, the more likely you were to be drafted. A second lottery employed all twenty-six letters of the alphabet to determine the priority, by last name, for each date of birth.

  September 14th was the first date that was drawn. When it was read aloud, there was a horrible cry from the kitchen. They later found out that Mary Jane, their housekeeper, had a grandson who was born on September 14th.

  In the space of a few hours, every boy Kate knew had been assigned a number. No one understood what they meant—when the groups would be called up, where they would be sent, in which branch they would serve, if they were to serve at all. Lower numbers were obviously bad, but how high was high enough to be safe?

  Patrick Murphy and his family were asking the same questions on the other side of town. Their TV set was black-and-white. They had no idea the capsules were blue. What they did know was that by the end of the broadcast, their sons had been assigned numbers. Declan came in at 98, Patrick at 142.

  Of course, Kate didn’t know any of this until much later. She met Patrick in April of ’71, a little over a year after that first lottery. Kate was outside Lenox Mall, bored to death as she waited in her car for the tow truck to arrive. Her battery was dead; she’d left the lights on while she was shopping. Patrick gave her a charge. She was aware of the double entendre. So was he. He referred to it incessantly. Kate’s irritation didn’t stop him from flirting, which was even more irrita
ting, then through attrition somewhat flattering, and then somehow kind of intoxicating, and then it was late enough for dinner, so—why not?

  Patrick was twenty-one years old, the same as her. He had a brother already serving. His father was a lawyer. He was studying to be an engineer, which seemed like one of those essential jobs you were always hearing about, like doctor or lawyer or son-of-a-politician. Patrick was none of these. He was a big Irish Mick with a seemingly high draft number who’d just met the girl of his dreams.

  They had been together just over fifteen months when he got called up. His father wasn’t connected, but Kate’s was. Patrick refused to allow favors to be called in. He didn’t think it was right. And he was right that it wasn’t right, but by then they were married and Kate was furious at her stupid, stubborn husband. She’d refused to see him off for basic training. When they’d kissed goodbye at the door, Kate had held on to him so tightly that he’d warned her she was going to break a rib.

  She wanted to break all of his ribs. She wanted to scratch out one of his eyes. She wanted to take a pipe wrench to his knee, a bat to his head. But she had let him go, because in the end, that was all she could do.

  She was in love, she was married, and she was alone.

  And then September 14th rolled around.

  What were the odds?

  Kate was helping her parents entertain when she heard the doorbell ring. Mary Jane was in the cellar because someone had asked for wine. Kate answered the door. Instead of party guests, two soldiers were standing on the front porch. Her first thought was how odd it was to see white men wearing white cotton gloves. They were dressed identically. They stood with identically straight spines. Their uniforms were wool, long-sleeved. The weather was unseasonably warm. Beads of sweat dotted their closely shaven upper lips, rolled down the sides of their thick necks.

  They both took off their hats in practiced unison. She almost laughed because the synchronization was so perfect. Only one of them spoke. He called her “ma’am.” Kate heard the words “regret to inform you,” then she found herself coming round on the couch with all the party guests gone. Their half-filled glasses and still-burning cigarettes were abandoned around the room. The soldiers left her a brochure entitled Death Benefits.