Cop Town: A Novel

by Karin Slaughter

  Maggie had thought that their hero worship would end with Jimmy’s football career, but in some ways, they seemed happier to have Jimmy on the job than they were to see him on the field. The day Jimmy had graduated from the academy, the first two rows of the audience were filled with his cheering squad. They all loved him like a son. They mentored him. They told him stories. They offered advice.

  And sometimes, if they were drunk enough, they even let Maggie listen.

  “Hey!” Jett Elliott banged his fist on the roof of the car. He was so drunk he could barely stand. “We’re not lettin’ this one get away with it. You hear me?”

  “Damn straight we’re not.” Mack McKay shored up Jett with an arm around his shoulder. “We’re gonna take care of this ourselves.”

  There were grunts of agreement as a flask was passed around. Maggie pulled her purse onto her shoulder, but she couldn’t go anywhere. The wall of Terrys had managed to both block her path and completely ignore her.

  Les Leslie leaned against the car. “The boss already put in a call to California. Three-hour time difference, but they’ll get somebody to lay eyes on him.”

  He was talking about Edward Spivey. After the trial, the man had moved to the other side of the continent, but no one believed he would stay there for long.

  “Oughta fly out there ourselves,” Red Flemming said. “Lay more than eyes on him.”

  Terry slammed the car door. “Think they’ll let us take a noose on the plane?”

  “I got two in my trunk.” Jett grabbed at the flask.

  Mack pushed him away. “Fuck off.”

  Jett pushed back. “You fuck off.”

  Maggie took advantage of the shoving match and headed toward the street. She didn’t want to be around when they really got wound up.

  Red held out his arm to stop her. “Jimmy all right?”

  She nodded as she eyed the exit. “He’s fine.”

  “He’s coming in,” Terry said. “Wouldn’t stay home.”

  “Damn right he wouldn’t.” Les passed the flask to Terry. “We takin’ care of business today?”

  “Hell yeah.” Terry took a healthy drink. “Gonna put that fucker in the ground. Am I right?”

  “You’re goddamn right.” Jett grabbed the flask from Terry. “No trial for this asshole. Only walk he’s taking is to the grave.”

  There were more murmurs of agreement. Maggie tried to edge around Red.

  “Need to keep Jim out of this,” Red mumbled under his breath. Everyone heard him. Nods went around. Maggie was both annoyed and jealous. To a man, they would all lay down their lives protecting Jimmy Lawson.

  Terry said, “You got somewhere to be?”

  Maggie realized he was talking to her. She didn’t feel her usual impulse to do the opposite of what her uncle said. She started toward the street, glad to be away from them.

  The relief didn’t last long. She was never going to get away from these assholes. A black El Dorado was pulling into the parking lot. The window slid down. Bud Deacon had his hands gripped around the steering wheel. Chip Bixby was in the passenger seat. He looked worse than the rest of them. His cheeks were more sunken than usual. His lips were a weird blue, probably from smoking too much. Of all of Terry’s friends, Chip was the least offensive. Which wasn’t saying much.

  Maggie preempted the question. “Jimmy’s all right. He’s coming in.”

  “That ain’t right,” Bud said. “You shoulda told him to stay home.”

  She wanted to laugh. “You think he listens to me?”

  “Shut that smart mouth before I do,” Bud warned. “Is it too much to ask you to be there for your brother?”

  Maggie chewed her lip so she wouldn’t speak her mind.

  “It’s gonna be hard for him.” Chip’s voice was solemn. Duke Abbott had been his partner. Chip had been inside the motel when Duke was shot. He was also sitting behind Edward Spivey when the jury came back with an acquittal. Two deputies had to hold him down. If one of them hadn’t grabbed Chip’s gun, he’d probably be sitting on death row right now.

  Maggie said, “Jimmy knows he’s not alone.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Chip said. “Something like this happens—you’re alone for the rest of your life.”

  Maggie didn’t know what to say. She’d known Chip forever, but it wasn’t like they sat around talking about their feelings.

  Chip seemed to realize this, too. He told Bud, “Let’s go.”

  Maggie watched the car roll into the parking lot. She quickened her pace again. She didn’t want to think about the plans Terry and his friends were making. As a cop, she had a duty to make sure the law was upheld. But she was a cop, and she wasn’t going to rat out other cops. Besides, the men were detectives. Maggie was patrol. She was also a woman. No one would listen to her, and even if they did, they wouldn’t care unless The Atlanta Constitution ran a story on it. All Maggie could do for now was handle what was in front of her, and right now what was in front of her was getting ready for work.

  She dug around in her purse as she crossed the street. The brick that was the transmitter for her radio took up half the space in her bag. She clipped it onto the back of her belt, then jacked in the springy cord to her shoulder mic. Maggie checked the dials on top of the transmitter. There were two—one for volume, one for tuning. She could adjust both in her sleep.

  Cash from her wallet went into her front pocket. Two pens and a small notepad went into her left breast pocket, her citation book went into the right one. Chemical mace went into her back pocket along with a tube of nude lipstick. Neither one was regulation, but a girl had to protect herself.

  She catalogued the remaining items in her bag: a paperback, loose change, a darker lipstick, powder, mascara, blusher, eyeliner. The latter items were not necessary for the job, but necessary if she wanted to keep them from Lilly.

  A breeze rustled Maggie’s hair as she stepped onto the sidewalk. The sharp pain in her knee was gone. The sensation was more like she was aware that she had a knee rather than that she was about to collapse with every step. She didn’t know how Jimmy dealt with the constant discomfort every day. Of course, she didn’t know how her brother dealt with a lot of things.

  Either Jimmy was lying about what had happened during the shooting or he’d taken the time to clean his gun before leaving the hospital. Considering the half-ass job he’d done of cleaning his own face, she doubted the latter explanation. What was more likely was that he hadn’t fired the revolver at all.

  In which case, what else was he lying about? Had the Shooter’s gun really jammed? Because Maggie had been on the firing range enough times to know what happened when a gun jammed. She’d had it happen herself. She’d seen it happen to others. The sequence was always the same. You pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. You pulled the trigger again, maybe even a third or fourth time, before you accepted that the gun was jammed. The process was like sniffing bad milk or tasting something that was too spicy. You always had to do it more than once. You never believed something was off the first time.

  Maggie stopped walking. She looked down at her watch. When the second hand hit the twelve, she mentally walked herself through the Shooter’s movements.

  Turn the corner. Aim. Shoot Don Wesley. Recoil. Aim. Pull the trigger. Nothing. Pull the trigger again. Run.

  Five, maybe six seconds. That was assuming there was no hesitation. And that the Shooter was able to re-aim quickly even though Jimmy had to be moving the moment Don went down.

  Maggie started walking again. A second lasted longer than most people thought. The blink of an eye takes around three hundred milliseconds. The act of breathing in and out eats up around five seconds. An average marksman can pull his weapon in under two seconds.

  Jimmy Lawson was one of the best marksmen in their division. In five or six seconds, he could easily kill a man.

  Maggie turned the corner and almost ran into another cop. He had coffee-colored skin and was wearing a too-tight uniform that made him
look like a first-day recruit. His hands went up immediately, another sign that he was new.

  She told him, “Take the next left. Headquarters is on the left, halfway up.”

  He tipped his hat. “Thank you, ma’am.”

  Maggie continued up the sidewalk. The man jogged across the street and preceded her along the other side. She’d forgotten the academy had spit out a class of new graduates. There could not have been a worse day for new recruits to start. On top of dealing with the fallout from Don Wesley’s murder, they’d have to step over a bunch of flailing newbies who, if past was prologue, would wash out before the middle of the week.

  Instead of taking a left on Central Avenue, Maggie kept going straight for two more blocks. The Do Right Diner specialized in bland food and weak coffee, but its location ensured a loyal clientele. The place was empty but for two customers in the back. No one ate here unless they were on the clock, and roll call wouldn’t start for another forty minutes.

  “Jimmy all right?” the waitress asked.

  “He’s great, thanks.”

  Maggie kept walking toward the back. Two women in various states of undress were lounging across a circular banquette. Torn stockings, micro-minis, heavy makeup, and blonde wigs—these were all perks that came with being a PCO, or plainclothes officer. The women were part of the new John task force, which, as far as anyone could tell, was a moneymaking scheme that kept rich white bankers out of jail.

  Gail Patterson winked at Maggie around the smoke from her cigarette. Her deep South Georgia twang played perfectly with her undercover getup. “Lookin’ for some action, mama?”

  Maggie laughed, hoping her face didn’t look as red as it felt. Her first year on the job had been spent in a cruiser with Gail. The senior officer was gruff and ornery and undoubtedly the best teacher Maggie had ever had.

  “I need to bounce.” The other woman downed a glass of orange juice with a loud gulp. Her name was Mary Petersen. Maggie only knew her by reputation. She was a divorcée who had a thing for cops. Of course, that’s what they said about all the women on the force, that they joined because they had a thing for cops, so Maggie didn’t really know.

  Mary’s vinyl skirt squeaked as she slid out of the booth. “Jimmy all right?”

  “He’s fine.”

  “Good. You tell him we’re here for him.” She patted Maggie on the shoulder as she left.

  Gail waved at the vacated spot. “Rest your dogs, chickie.”

  “Thanks.” Maggie unclipped the transmitter from the back of her belt and sat down. The seat was still warm. She leaned into the soft foam. Suddenly, her eyes wanted to close. Her body started to relax. Maggie had been tense from the moment she’d entered her mother’s kitchen.

  Gail took off her wig and dropped it on the table. “You look as tired as I feel.”

  “Guilty,” Maggie admitted. “You look good.”

  Gail laughed out some smoke. “Fuckin’ liar.”

  Maggie was lying. Gail looked like an old whore, which was only partly due to the way she had to dress for work. She was forty-two years old. Her skin was showing wrinkles. Her hair was too black to be natural. There was a heaviness to her cheeks and eyelids. She had a deep cleft between her eyebrows that came from always scrutinizing everything around her.

  God forbid if Gail didn’t like what she saw. Everybody was afraid of her nasty temper. She had come up when there were no federal grants paving the way for women on the force. She’d fought tooth and nail to get her PCO rank. She was part of the old guard, Terry’s group, and like everybody else, she was terrified of losing her status.

  Gail asked, “How’s Jimmy really doing?”

  Maggie told the truth. “I have no idea. He never talks to me.”

  “Sounds about right.” She kept her cigarette in one hand as she used her fork to cut into a stack of pancakes. “You ask out that neighbor of yours yet?”

  Maggie hadn’t come to the diner to talk about her miserable dating prospects. “What’ve you heard about the shooting?”

  “I heard the killer’s not gonna be takin’ no walk like Edward Spivey.”

  “Besides that.”

  Gail studied her. She chewed, then took a smoke, then chewed some more. Finally, she asked, “Did you know Don?”

  “Not really. He was Jimmy’s friend.”

  Gail exhaled slowly. “I knew him.”

  Maggie waited for more.

  “He had a sweet side.” Gail stared off into the distance. “That’s the ones you always have to worry about, the assholes who aren’t assholes all the time.”

  “An asshole is always an asshole.”

  “That’s your youth talking.” She put down her fork. “This job changes you, baby doll, whether you like it or not. You bust balls long enough, you don’t wanna come home to a man who rolls over when you tell him to.” She winked. “You wanna be the one rolling over.”

  The only thing Maggie wanted to come home to these days was a quiet house and clean laundry.

  “It’s when they’re gentle that you start to lose yourself.” Gail was suddenly wistful. “They’re all strong and silent, then one day—hell, not even a day, maybe a second, two seconds if you’re lucky—this sweet side comes out and—” She snapped her fingers. “You’re a goner.”

  Maggie felt slow on the uptake. “You knew Don.”

  She shrugged. “He wasn’t so bad when you got him alone.”

  Maggie picked at a dried glob of syrup glued to the table. She had always looked up to Gail. She was good at her job. She had a husband who loved her. She was Maggie’s idea of what being a successful policewoman was all about.

  “Oh, kid, don’t be disappointed in me.”

  “I’m not,” Maggie lied.

  “You know I love Trouble.”

  Maggie smiled at the old joke. Her husband’s nickname was Trouble.

  Gail sighed out a flume of smoke. “I never see him, and when I do, all we do is fight about money and which bill is gonna get paid first and what are we gonna do about my sister’s deadbeat husband and how long can we put off before his mother has to come live with us.” She gave a halfhearted shrug. “Sometimes, it’s a relief to be with somebody who only wants you for one thing.”

  “It’s your business. You don’t have to explain it to me.”

  “Damn right I don’t.” She reached into her purse and pulled out a flask. All the upper ranks carried booze on them. Maggie watched Gail take a large mouthful. Then another. “Jesus, I hate it when the good ones die. Fought that fuckin’ war and came back here so another American could shoot him in an alley.”

  Maggie wondered how many breakfast tables she was going to have to sit around before she got a straight answer out of somebody. She repeated, “What have you heard about that shooting?”

  Gail glanced at the waitress before responding. “That hippie-dippie girlfriend of his. What’s her name, Pocahontas? She made a scene at the hospital.”

  Maggie had met the woman once. She had brown skin and jet-black hair that she wore in a long braid down her back. “How’d she find out?”

  “Heard it on the scanner. Don had one at his apartment.”

  “I didn’t know they were living together.”

  She laughed. “Neither did he.”

  Maggie laughed, too, but only so the moment wouldn’t turn more awkward. She echoed Terry’s words. “They’ll get him, anyway. Whoever did this. Five dead cops. You can only run for so long.”

  “They’ll get somebody.”

  Maggie didn’t ask for clarification. There had been questions about exactly how Terry had come up with the tossed gun and bloody shirt that tied Edward Spivey to Duke Abbott’s murder. The shitty part was that the case had been strong without the evidence. Unfortunately, most of the jurors came from Atlanta’s ghettos. They had seen too many cops plant too many pieces of evidence to believe this might be the one time that everything had been done by the book.

  “Anyway.” Gail tipped her flask into her coffee
cup. “They got all zones called in. Everybody’s on overtime. Nobody goes home until it’s over.”

  “Everybody?” Maggie couldn’t begin to imagine how much that would cost. “They didn’t even do that with Duke.”

  “Duke was different.”

  “They were both cops.”

  “Don’t play coy, gal. You know it ain’t the same. Duke was in a bad place at a bad time. This is Terry Lawson’s nephew out on the job, almost taking two in the head.”

  “Two?”

  “That’s the word at the station.” She pointed to the side of her head. “Don had one here.” She moved her finger to her cheek. “And one here.”

  Maggie could tell they were both thinking the same thing. “Those are hard shots to make.”

  “Just one of ’em’s hard. Two of ’em—that far from the target, cheap throwaway gun—that’s Paladin territory.”

  “It’s different from the Shooter,” Maggie said. “The other four got it once each in the forehead. Point-blank range. Execution-style.”

  Gail eyed her carefully. “You’re thinking it’s the Atlanta Shooter?”

  “Aren’t you?”

  “The Shooter’s still out there. We went balls to the walls the last two times and came up with fucking zero. And the murder this morning, the boys were in an alley when Don was shot, same as the other four victims.” Gail shrugged. “What do I know? Could all just be a crazy coincidence.”

  “Sure.” One of the first lessons Gail had taught Maggie was that there was no such thing as a coincidence.

  Gail asked, “You hear about the tires?”

  “They were slashed.”

  Gail tipped her lighter end over end, making a tapping sound against the table. “I know a gal in dispatch says he didn’t call it in.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Jimmy didn’t call a sixty-three.” Officer down. The call was standard procedure when a cop was injured. Gail said, “Dispatch didn’t even know that Don was hurt until they got a call from one of the docs at Grady saying he was dead.”