Cop Town: A Novel

by Karin Slaughter

  “My diagram has the keys fifteen feet away from Mark Porter’s body.” Kate suggested, “Maybe he had them in his hand because he was walking back to the car?”

  “You’re supposed to loop the ring around your middle finger.” Maggie pulled out her own keys and showed Kate. “That way they can’t be knocked out of your hand.”

  “Their cruiser was around the corner, a good fifty feet away.” Kate shrugged. “I always take out my keys when I’m closer, but that’s anecdotal.”

  “Tell me what you see.” Maggie spread two photos in front of Kate. Ballard and Johnson facedown in an alley. As with Kate’s victims, the backs of their heads were blown open. Their legs were at awkward angles. Their arms were wide. The equipment on their belts was spread around. The transmitters clipped to the backs of their belts were spattered in blood.

  Kate asked, “What am I missing?”

  “Look closer.”

  Kate leaned over the pictures. She studied the bodies the same way she used to study those puzzles that ask the viewer to spot the things that are different. She went back and forth between the two. Left shoe. Left shoe. Right shoe. Right shoe. She did this all the way up to the radio transmitters. “Oh.”

  “What about your guys?”

  Kate found the corresponding photos for Keen and Porter. Different angles, but roughly the same images: two men facedown on the ground with the backs of their heads missing. She spotted the same discrepancy Maggie had flagged. “My guys have their shoulder mics unplugged from their transmitters, too.”

  “That doesn’t happen by accident.”

  “No,” Kate said. The jack was almost too narrow for the plug. She assumed it was designed that way so that the cord didn’t easily pop out.

  Kate stared at the photographs so long that her eyes burned. Something else was bothering her. She just couldn’t put her finger on it.

  “Look at the way their arms are spread.” Maggie pointed to each picture. Every victim had his arms at the same angle. “When you arrest somebody, you make them lace together their fingers and put their hands on the top of their heads.”

  “Right.” Kate knew exactly what she was talking about. Their hands must have blown apart when the bullet passed through their skulls. “Do you think the Shooter forced them to request a meal break, then unplugged their mics?”

  “They didn’t unplug on their own.”

  “But the request for a meal break is a twenty-nine. These guys had a gun pointed at their heads. Instead of asking for a twenty-nine, why didn’t they request a sixty-three, officer needs assistance? The Shooter would never know the difference.” Kate answered her own question. “Unless the Shooter knew the police codes.”

  They both thought about that. The Shooter knew police codes. He knew procedure. He knew the routines.

  Maggie raised her voice, calling, “Jimmy?” She waited in vain for a response. “Jimmy?” She pushed herself up from the table. “Where the hell is he?”

  Kate followed Maggie through the humid kitchen, then out to the carport. Jimmy and Rick were in metal lawn chairs under the shade. Terry Lawson and Bud Deacon sat on the hood of a brown Impala. Jett Elliott was behind the wheel, but he was obviously passed out. Chip Bixby leaned against a cord of wood. Cal Vick was beside him. They all had beer cans, even Jett. Empties littered the ground. Kate was not surprised they were all friends. They were the same type of jerks, evidence of which was likely soon forthcoming.

  Terry glanced up, but he was obviously in the middle of a story. “So, then what happens? Kennedy gets shot and the only thing standing between us and that fucking commie brother of his is an Arab with a twenty-two.”

  “Good thing he knew how to use it.” Chip tipped his beer can. Kate could see the skin on the back of his knuckles was broken open. She suppressed a wave of nausea, but not because of the violence. At the gun range, Chip had pressed against Kate’s back as he showed her how to hold a gun. There weren’t enough hot showers in the world to rid her body of the memory.

  “No offense, sweetheart.” Terry was talking to Kate. He held a cold can to the back of his hand. His knuckles were bleeding. “I know you people put those Kennedy bastards right up there with the Pope.”

  Kate bristled. “I’m not Irish. I’m Dutch.”

  “I bet you are.” Cal Vick gave a suggestive laugh that turned into a hacking cough.

  “Steady.” Chip slapped the man on the back.

  Terry picked up where he left off. “All I’m saying is people don’t take power. You give it to them. Look at what’s happening here. Mayor Hartsfield traded his soul for the airport and the stadium. Then Massel, that fucking kike, takes over and forces MARTA up our asses.”

  Chip muttered, “Moving Africans Rapidly Through Atlanta.”

  Terry lifted his beer in agreement. “Now we get this spearchucker in a three-piece suit sitting behind the desk and suddenly we’re taking shots in the street.” He told Kate, “You weren’t here six months ago, sweetheart. You don’t know what it was like.”

  “Fucking Spivey,” Chip muttered.

  Edward Spivey. Kate heard the name echo in her head.

  Bud held up his beer can in a toast. “To Duke Abbott. Best damn detective this squad ever had. He deserved better than he got.”

  “Duke Abbott,” they all intoned.

  Terry leaned back and knocked on the windshield. “Jett? Wake up, you sad shit.”

  Jett stirred, but he was too far gone to do anything but roll his head to the other side.

  “Let him sleep it off.” Vick slurped beer from the rim of his can. “Lookit, boys, I gotta call back from California. Spivey’s still living there. Coupla D’s ran him down for me. He was on a church retreat last night. Twenty people saw him.”

  “You believe ’em?” Bud asked.

  Vick shrugged. “Plane schedules won’t work putting him in Atlanta around dawn and back in California by the time the detectives knocked on his door.”

  “Them D’s black or white?” Chip asked.

  Vick shrugged again. “Sounded white, but who can tell with them Hollywood types.”

  “Queers and freaks,” Bud muttered.

  “Lookit, Spivey don’t matter.” Terry slapped Bud on the shoulder. “We’re gonna get this one. We’ll fry him up like a chicken.”

  “Damn straight,” Vick agreed, though he didn’t seem troubled that half his detective squad was drinking in a carport rather than searching for a cop killer.

  “So we catch ’em,” Bud said. “So what? Some lawyer gets him off? And then the next day, another cop gets shot. Then another.”

  “Them’s the times, boys,” Vick said. “Ain’t none of that bullshit ever woulda happened if the good guys was still in charge.”

  “Damn straight,” Chip agreed. “We kept ’em in line.”

  “Kept this city working,” Terry added.

  Kate worked to keep her expression neutral. She wondered if this was the sort of talk Leo Frank heard before the lynch mob dragged him toward the tree.

  “Shit.” Bud tucked his hand into the waist of his pants. “When I was coming up, there wasn’t a nigger in Atlanta didn’t look down when you passed by. Now they’re struttin’ around like they own the place.”

  “They do fucking own the place.” Terry threw his empty can into the yard next door. “What crawled up your ass, Olive Oyl?”

  Maggie had her arms crossed. “I need to talk to Jimmy.”

  “About what?”

  “About—”

  “Nothing.” Terry talked over her. “I didn’t let you bunk off roll call so you could sit around the house with your girlfriend all morning.”

  “I’d sit around with her,” Bud offered.

  Chip belched. There was genial laughter from all the men but Rick Anderson. He gave Kate an apologetic look. Then he finished his beer.

  Jimmy threw his empty into the side yard. “Dutch.” He was looking at Kate. “That’s Holland, right?”

  “The Netherlands.” Terry
answered before Kate could. “I was stationed in Amsterdam back in ’45. Them gals all looked like her. Tall, blonde, fucking stacked. They see the uniform, you don’t even have to snap your fingers. They’re already asking, ‘How high?’ ” He shrugged a shoulder at Kate. “No offense, doll.”

  “None taken,” she said, as if he hadn’t just accused her mother and grandmother of being whores.

  Terry asked, “It took, what, five days for you guys to surrender after the Nazis started dropping bombs?”

  Kate chewed the inside of her cheek.

  “There were some Dutch sailors in the Pacific.” Chip crumpled his empty can and lobbed it into the yard. “Crazy bastards. Sank more ships in a week than the entire Allied forces. Brits said it was uncouth, but fuck ’em.”

  Terry said, “A Dutch ship fished my brother out of the Pacific. Too bad they didn’t bring him home.” He sat back on the car, seeming to reflect. “My tour in Amsterdam was at the bitter end. All over but the shoutin’. Krauts bombed the shit outta that city. The ordnance they used—I don’t know. So fuckin’ precise. You’d walk by a building and look through the window and there was nothing inside. No floors. No studs. No joists, even. Just brick outside and an empty shell inside.”

  “That wasn’t from bombing.” Kate was aware that her tone was terse, but she couldn’t stop herself. “The Nazis cut off supplies. People were starving to death. It was the hardest winter on record. They dismantled the buildings for fuel.”

  Terry started shaking his head before she was even finished. “I was there, sweetheart. They were bombed to hell and back. Half the city was gutted.”

  “It’s called the Hongerwinter.” Kate hit the syllables as hard as she could. “Over twenty thousand people starved to death.”

  “I read about that.” Maggie glanced nervously at Kate. “Audrey Hepburn did an interview. She was there when it happened.”

  “Audrey Hepburn’s English, you ditz.” Terry grabbed another beer. “You wanna talk about people starving, you shoulda seen those camps.”

  Bud mumbled something Kate forced herself not to hear.

  Terry said, “You could see the bones underneath their skin. Hollowed-out eyes. Teeth falling out. No hair. Dicks shriveled up. Tits hangin’ down like sandbags.” He popped the top off his beer can and threw the ring into the yard. “They were begging us for food, but you couldn’t feed ’em. They had to have those what-do-you-call-its when the doctor puts the needle in your wrist?”

  “IVs.” Kate’s voice was shaking. Her legs were shaking. Every part of her was shaking.

  “Yeah, IVs.” Terry stared at his beer can. “Me and one of my buddies, we saw this old chick—she got ahold of some bread or something. We tried to stop her, but two seconds after she swallowed it, she just dropped to the ground. Started having a seizure. Foam coming out of her mouth. Pissing herself. Doc said her stomach exploded.”

  “Jesus,” Rick mumbled. “I thought Nam was bad.”

  Bud spit on the ground. “Guadalcanal was bad. Nam was a walk in the park for you pussies.”

  “Damn straight.” Chip raised his beer in agreement. “Give me a gook over a Nip any day.”

  Rick stood up. He went into the house. The door closed behind him.

  No one said anything for a few moments. Kate looked down at the broken concrete. Tears blurred her vision. She saw her grandmother on the ground clutching her stomach. She saw her mother begging for bread. Terry was a brutal man, but he’d painted too vivid an image. Kate needed to get out of here so she could collect herself.

  She told Maggie, “We should go back to work.”

  “Work,” Terry echoed. “That what you doin’ in there, tough gal?” He was talking to Maggie. His expression had turned dark. His tone had a knife behind it. “You following up on those Shooter cases?” He grinned at the surprised look on Maggie’s face. “I know what you been up to, sweetheart. You smooth-talked Rick into getting those files. Dutch over here flashed her tits to make your brother look the other way.”

  Kate tasted blood on her tongue. He wasn’t going to get to her. She wouldn’t allow it.

  Terry said, “You think you found something twenty detectives can’t spot?”

  “It helps if you’re sober.” Maggie dodged the half-empty beer can he threw at her head. The metal hit the wall with a hard thump. “We found something.”

  “Yeah?” Terry chided, “Come on, tough gal. What’d you two geniuses find?”

  Maggie seemed to hesitate. “Their radios were unplugged.”

  Jimmy’s head turned. “What?”

  “All four of them. Their radios were unplugged.”

  Terry obviously hadn’t heard the information before, but he asked, “So what?”

  Maggie explained, “In both cases, the last call each unit made was for a meal break. And then their radios were unplugged, probably so they wouldn’t be able to call out.”

  Jimmy asked, “They took a twenty-nine? On a night shift?”

  Terry looked at his watch. “Three hours of your morning and that’s what you came up with? They unplugged their radios before clocking out to eat?” He laughed along with Bud and Chip. “They were probably taking a shit. Am I right?”

  Oddly, Jimmy wasn’t dismissive. He told Maggie, “He didn’t talk to us. The guy who took the shots. He didn’t talk. He just pulled the trigger.”

  “And he slashed their tires,” Terry said. “Nobody else had their tires slashed, right, Columbo?”

  Kate watched Maggie deflate under the scrutiny. She’d been so sure of herself in the house. Kate had felt the same sense of purpose. They were doing something useful. They were trying to accomplish something.

  “Go back to parking tickets, sweetheart.” Terry got a fresh beer. “Another two or three days of us banging up the streets, some asshole will come in begging us to arrest the guy.”

  “Better hurry.” Bud flexed his swollen hand. “My interrogator’s starting to hurt.”

  Good-natured chuckles followed.

  Maggie looked down at her feet. She kept working her jaw. She was trying to come up with something else, but there was nothing.

  “He was dragged.” Unbidden, Kate had said the words out loud. Everyone was looking at her. “Mark Porter was dragged.” She wanted her notes, but only for a crutch. She’d finally figured out what had been bothering her. “The heels of Porter’s shoes were worn on the back, not the bottom. There was a scratch on the back of his neck, probably from being grabbed. The fingernail on his right middle finger was broken. His keys were found fifteen feet from his body.”

  They all stared at her with blank looks on their faces.

  Maggie turned it into a story. “Porter made a break for it. He was grabbed by the collar, which is why he had the scratch on his neck. Porter fell, probably with the Shooter on top of him. He had his keys in his hand. The impact broke his fingernail. He was going for the car but the Shooter stopped him. Maybe Porter was knocked out or at least dazed. The Shooter dragged him back to Keen, put him on his knees, and shot them both in the head.” She answered Terry’s question. “The Shooter is adapting. He slashed the tires because the last time, someone almost got away.”

  Jimmy sat back in his chair. He scratched his chin in thought.

  Terry muttered, “Leave it to a coupla broads to zero in on a broken fingernail.”

  The laughter was different from before. This time, the men sounded almost relieved.

  Maggie held on to the theory. “In all three cases, they were dispatched out because of an anonymous call reporting a possible break-in.”

  Terry shook his head. “You know how many of those calls we get a month?”

  “Three,” Maggie said. “I checked with dispatch this morning. That time of day in that area, they get about three bogus calls a month.”

  Jimmy wouldn’t let go of his point. “He didn’t talk to us, Maggie. He just came around the corner and started shooting. He was so fast I barely had time to look at him.”

  Ma
ggie stared at her brother, almost begging him to understand. “It’s too coincidental. Maybe the Shooter didn’t expect you guys to be there when he turned the corner. Maybe he thought he was going to surprise you, but you surprised him.”

  Jimmy looked down at his beer can.

  Kate knew what he was thinking. The Shooter had been the one who was surprised. He was expecting two cops on foot, not both of them on the ground in flagrante delicto. All of the killer’s plans went out the window the moment he saw them.

  None of which Kate could say to the assembled crowd.

  A car horn beeped in the street.

  Terry scowled. “What’s that stupid slit doing here?”

  Maggie told Kate, “Go get in the car. I’ll be there in a minute.”

  Kate didn’t ask questions. She walked through the carport. The sun cut into her retinas. She stared at the ground ahead of her. She tried to blink away the stars, then she tried to blink away the awful images that came into her head again. Her grandmother writhing in pain. Her mother begging for scraps of food. Terry Lawson watching the whole thing with a can of beer in his hand.

  Kate’s chest felt tight. The muscles in her throat tensed. Tears welled into her eyes again. She had to shake this. She couldn’t just break down every day. She had to be tougher. Her family was counting on her. They wanted her to be strong.

  Kate made herself look up.

  Her stomach dropped.

  Gail Patterson was behind the wheel of a two-door Mercury. She gave Kate a toothy grin through the open window. “Hop in, Sheep.”

  19

  Maggie left by the front door rather than go through the carport. Her hands were loaded down with equipment. The stair treads creaked under the additional weight. She moved fast because she didn’t want Terry to ask them what they were up to. Gail was supposed to be out trapping johns. Maggie and Kate were supposed to be writing speeding tickets. All three of them would be in a world of shit if her uncle found out they were going to Colored Town to talk to a pimp about a girl.

  She saw Lee Grant jogging up the sidewalk. He was wearing a gold tracksuit with green stripes down the legs. The plastic box for his hearing aid was tucked into his jacket pocket. He was the Boo Radley of the neighborhood—a little older than everybody else, a little quieter, a little strange. When Maggie was a kid, they’d called him Deaf Lee, which turned into Deathly, which everybody thought was no big deal because it wasn’t like he could hear you making fun of him.