Cop Town: A Novel

by Karin Slaughter

  And like everything else that had happened this week, it all started with Jimmy Lawson.

  21

  “You’re quitting.” Terry drove with one hand and smoked with the other. “I’m not playing, missy. Tomorrow. Your resignation on Vick’s desk before roll call.”

  Maggie said nothing. She had her eyes closed. Her jaw was ratcheted down so tight that she could taste the silver fillings in her teeth.

  “Fucking Patterson,” Terry muttered. “What’re you doin’ goin’ with that crazy slit anyway? You’re not a fucking detective. None of you are.”

  The taste of blood mixed with the metal. She had cut her cheek in the Portuguese house. Maggie couldn’t recall when. The edge of her molars had sliced open the skin like a knife.

  A knife.

  “You listenin’ to me?” Terry slapped her face. “Open your goddamn eyes.”

  Maggie opened her eyes. She stared straight ahead. The car’s headlights furrowed through the darkness.

  “Un-fuckin’-believable.” Terry continued to berate her. She continued to ignore him.

  They wouldn’t let Maggie stay at the hospital. Trouble had asked her to stay. Maggie had said she would stay. Terry had dragged her out by her collar in front of the whole squad.

  Gail wouldn’t even know she had been there. She was still in surgery. She would never see out of her eye again. That’s what the doctors had said. They’d also said she might have brain damage, but what did they know? Gail was joking even before the morphine. She had the paramedics cracking up. They had given her a cigarette and she’d made some comment about the smoke coming out of her eyeball.

  Maggie smiled. They used to joke all the time back when they rode together. Gail would tell her stories about old busts, like the bank robber who jumped on the counter, hit his head, and knocked himself out. Or the idiot who was trying to rob a liquor store and ended up shooting off his own hand. Riding alongside Gail, Maggie hadn’t just learned how to be a cop. She had learned how to be in charge. For the first time in her life, she had power. People had to stop when she told them to. They had to listen to what she said. They didn’t get to argue or talk over her or tell her she was wrong. Or if they did, Maggie wrote down every single word they said in her arrest report so the prosecutor could use it.

  And Gail would say, “Keep on talkin’, motherfucker. We got more pens.”

  That would never happen again. Gail couldn’t be a cop anymore. She couldn’t pass the physical readiness test with one eye. She couldn’t work the streets or bang up the bad guys. Anthony hadn’t just taken away her vision with that knife. He’d taken away her power.

  Maybe that’s why Maggie could feel no remorse for her actions. She had murdered a man. She had taken a life.

  An eye for an eye.

  “Hey, idiot!” Terry snapped his fingers in front of her face. “I asked you a question.”

  Maggie didn’t care about his questions. She had answered them all at the scene. She’d told Cal Vick what had happened to the best of her recollection. Not that she trusted her recollections. What happened in the Portuguese house felt so distant to her that Maggie had a hard time believing that she’d actually been there. It was like hearing stories about things she’d done as a child. Maggie didn’t really remember the events firsthand. She remembered the stories because she’d heard them so many times. When she was three and she opened all of Jimmy’s Christmas presents. When she was five and cut her leg on a rusty nail.

  Maggie flattened her palm to her leg. The ridges of the scar were as familiar as her reflection. She knew the story behind the injury, but the pain and the panic and the fear that had likely gone along with it were completely lost.

  Terry turned the steering wheel so hard that Maggie had to brace herself to keep from falling. He sped down the driveway and screeched to a stop under the carport. “Where’s your brother?”

  Maggie opened the door. She didn’t know where Jimmy was. His car wasn’t on the street. Back at the Portuguese house, she kept expecting to see him. Her heart lurched every time a new person came into the room. And then she would realize it wasn’t Jimmy and a cold wave of disappointment washed over.

  Maggie walked up the steps to the kitchen. Delia’s back was to Maggie. The ashtray overflowed with cigarettes smoked down to the filters.

  Maggie put her belt on the counter. “Mama.”

  Delia didn’t turn around. “You’re quitting tomorrow.”

  Maggie felt surprised, and then she felt stupid for being surprised.

  “I mean it, Margaret.” Delia turned around. Her eyes were red. She looked a hundred years old. “You’ll work with me at the diner. You’ll get an office job. You’ll drive a damn tow truck. I don’t care. You’re not going back to that job.”

  Terry said, “That’s exactly what I told her.” He wasn’t a big man, but his presence sucked the remaining air out of the kitchen. “Where’s Jimmy?”

  “He’s not with you?” Delia called up the stairs, “Jimmy?” She waited a second, then called louder. “Jimmy!”

  Lilly yelled back, “He’s locked in his room!”

  “Locked in his room?” Terry mumbled. “What the hell’s wrong with him?”

  “How the hell should I know?” Delia demanded. “None of my children give a shit about me.”

  Terry went up the stairs. His bad mood lingered.

  “I mean it, Margaret.” Delia’s voice was a quiet threat. “No more playing cops and robbers.”

  Even if Maggie had wanted to respond, she couldn’t unclench her jaw.

  “You killed a man. Murdered him.”

  Maggie stopped breathing.

  “There’s blood all over your clothes. On your face. Gail got hurt. She’s your friend. I know she’s your friend. And look what happened to her. She’s handicapped for the rest of her life.” Her voice trilled. “Her life, Margaret. It’s gone.”

  Maggie forced herself not to look away.

  “What’s going to happen to her?” Delia answered the question herself. “She’ll lose her job. She won’t be able to find another one. Her husband will leave her. What man wants to be with a woman like that? To have to take care of her for the rest of her life?”

  Maggie swallowed hard.

  “It could’ve just as easily been you. Did you consider that? That I might be stuck here taking care of you until I die? And then what? Your brother Jimmy has to take care of you? Or Lilly, God help her?” She clutched the counter with her hand. “Are you just going to stand there staring like an imbecile?”

  Maggie found her voice. “It didn’t happen to me.”

  “But look what did!” Delia’s anger erupted. “You’re a murderer now. Is that what you want to be? A murderer? With blood on your hands?” She grabbed Maggie’s arm. “Answer me!”

  Maggie looked down at her mother’s hand. The fingertips were stained yellow from nicotine. She told her mother, “The only regret I have is that I didn’t murder him sooner.”

  Delia staggered back. She could have been looking at a stranger.

  Maggie opened the cabinet under the sink. She grabbed a paper bag from the pile.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Cleaning up Terry and Jimmy’s mess.” She clutched the bag between her hands. “Isn’t that what you want me to do, Mother? Stay here for the rest of my life and clean up everybody’s fucking mess?”

  Maggie walked out the door. The night air was frigid. She didn’t bother to turn on the lights under the carport. Her father had installed the fixtures the last time he was out of the hospital. Most of the time, the bulbs flickered like a mirror ball. The kitchen light offered little illumination. For some reason, Maggie wanted to be in the shadows.

  Seven hours ago, Terry had thrown a can of beer at her head. Maggie picked it up now. Warm liquid sloshed onto her hand. She dropped the can into the bag. She picked up another can, then another. She didn’t intend to count, but she was on fifteen by the time she made her way to the side yard.

>   Maggie couldn’t see where she was going. She stepped on a can. The aluminum cupped around the arch of her shoe. She used her other foot to pry it off. Then she squatted on the ground and resumed picking up cans.

  Sixteen. Seventeen. Eighteen.

  The bag was overflowing. Instead of going back to the kitchen, Maggie walked across the yard.

  Lee Grant’s van was in the driveway. She could make out the gold, yellow, and blue bands, the Southern Bell logo on the side. Maggie pressed her hand to the hood. The engine was cold.

  She went up the two steps to the side entrance and knocked on the door. And then she rang the doorbell, because she wasn’t sure what Lee could hear. She’d said maybe five words to him in the last eight years. He was nervous around Jimmy and terrified of Terry, which meant that he was a hell of a lot smarter than people gave him credit for.

  Lee opened the door. His eyes went wide. He’d noticed the blood on her uniform.

  “Don’t worry,” she told him, feeling self-conscious because she’d forgotten how he looked at people’s mouths when they talked. “It’s not mine.”

  “Are you all right?” His r’s were soft. Ah you ah-wight?

  Maggie checked her house to make sure no one was outside. “Is there a central place at the phone company that has numbers and addresses for businesses?”

  To his credit, Lee didn’t ask her if she had checked the Yellow Pages. “The billing department.”

  “I need the address for a bar called Dabbler’s.” She spelled out the name for him, carefully enunciating each letter. “Can you get it for me?”

  “Yes.”

  Maggie let herself breathe for the first time in days.

  He asked again, “Are you all right?”

  Maggie could remember Lee asking her the same question eight years ago. She was lying on the couch in his mother’s kitchen. The air was hot and sticky. His mother wasn’t much of a cook. She was a nurse who worked nights. All of their meals were frozen dinners and fast food, which was a luxury nobody else on the street could afford.

  Maggie asked, “Can you put the address in my mailbox? I’m the only one who checks it.”

  “I know.” Lee seemed to realize what he’d revealed. He looked out at the street.

  Maggie saw the hearing aid tucked above his ear. He wore his old one when he jogged, probably because the new kind was more expensive. She guessed it was fifteen years ago that Jimmy and Lee had gotten into their last fistfight. Jimmy had broken Lee’s hearing aid. Lee’s father had come to the house and showed it to Delia. He worked for the phone company, too. He was still wearing his lineman’s belt. His eyes were bloodshot, which was odd because he wasn’t a drinker. Delia had to work extra shifts for three months to pay for a new hearing aid. She’d grounded Jimmy, but Terry had still taken him out on weekends.

  “I’m sorry,” Maggie said, but Lee wasn’t looking at her and she wasn’t sure he had heard.

  “Maggie!” Terry yelled.

  She jumped at the sound of his voice. Lee heard it, too. He was already shutting the door. Maggie ran down the stairs. She crossed the yard.

  “Maggie!”

  “What, Terry? What do you want?”

  Terry stood in the doorway. Anger burned in his eyes. He was huffing like a bull. Nostrils flared. Mouth open.

  Maggie stopped. She had learned the hard way that as bad as Terry could be when he was screaming, it was far, far worse when he was quiet.

  He spoke through gritted teeth. “Get in the house. Now.”

  Maggie walked up the stairs. She clutched the wobbly railing. Her legs could barely hold her. The last time Terry got this way, he had beaten her into the ground.

  The kitchen had taken on a darkness that wasn’t there before. Delia stood in the middle of the room. She held a sheet of notebook paper between her shaking hands. She was swaying. Maggie thought about the knife in Gail’s eye, the way the handle had moved back and forth as Gail tried not to blink.

  Delia stared at the words on the notebook paper. Everything about her trembled. “It’s not true. Tell me it’s not true.”

  Maggie could see the blue ink through the white paper. The handwriting was Jimmy’s. She took the note from her mother. The first line was so incomprehensible that it might as well have been written in another language.

  I am the Atlanta Shooter.

  Maggie felt a cold sensation envelop her body.

  I killed those guys because I was a dirty fag with them and I didn’t want anybody to find out.

  Maggie braced her hand on the counter so that she would not sink to the floor.

  Don’t try to find me or I will kill more people. Maggie—

  Maggie read her name twice. She couldn’t recall ever seeing her name written in her brother’s hand.

  Maggie, I’m sorry that I never apologized to you. I should’ve told you that what happened wasn’t your fault.

  She studied the signature. He’d written his full name at the bottom—James Lawson. The only letters she could make out were the J and the L. Maggie knew the mark was made by her brother’s hand. She typed all his reports. Every morning before roll call, she watched Jimmy scribble his signature on the dotted line.

  Terry said, “This doesn’t leave this room.”

  His words hung somewhere over her head. Maggie felt like she could reach up and touch them.

  Delia said, “But the guys. They can—”

  “I mean it,” Terry interrupted. “Nobody hears about this.”

  Maggie started shaking her head. “It’s a confession. We have to—”

  Terry’s hand clamped around her neck. Maggie’s feet lifted from the floor. She clawed at his fingers.

  “I said no one hears about this.”

  Maggie kicked her feet against the wall. Her lungs screamed in her chest.

  “This gets out—” He tightened his grip around her throat. “Them guys find out they been riding with a faggot—”

  “Terry,” Delia begged. “Terry, she’s turning blue. Let her go. Please. Please.”

  Terry released his grip.

  Maggie fell to the floor. She gulped for air. Her throat felt raw.

  Delia said, “It’s not true. My boy’s not a queer. Somebody musta made him write that.”

  “Bullshit,” Terry countered. “I don’t care if you hold a gun to my head, ain’t no way I’d say I was a faggot. You’d have to kill me first.”

  Delia couldn’t let it go. “Jimmy’s out with a new girl every weekend. He’s always fighting them off with a stick.”

  Maggie rasped the glass out of her throat. She picked up the letter from the floor. “Where did you find this?” She looked at Delia, then Terry. “Where?”

  Delia answered, “Terry found it on his bed.”

  Maggie was halfway up the stairs before she realized she was moving. She pushed herself to keep going into the hall. She passed Delia’s room, Lilly’s with her always-closed door, her own room, and then she stood outside Jimmy’s doorway.

  Terry must have kicked in the door. The jamb was splintered. Wood stuck out like daggers. Maggie ran her fingertips along the sharp ends. They dragged a white line across her skin.

  Jimmy’s room was painted the same dark gray as the rest of the house. The hundred-watt bulb in the ceiling fixture gave the space the appearance of a crime scene. He had a full-sized bed that Delia had bought for him when he turned sixteen. There was a dresser they had taken off the sidewalk when the family down the street got evicted. His Dopp kit was open on the top. She saw his razor, his comb, and brush. His aftershaves were lined up in a neat row. This was the only area in which Jimmy liked variety. Pierre Cardin. English Leather. Brut. Prince Matchabelli. Maggie gave him a new kind every year at Christmas.

  She went to Jimmy’s closet. There was no door, just a curtain that he pulled back. His uniforms were on the left, where she always hung them. His pants were in the middle, then shirts, then jackets on the far right. Jimmy was particular about his closet. He kept the colo
rs grouped together. Navy. Black. Gray. White.

  Maggie looked down at the letter in her hand.

  I am the Atlanta Shooter.

  She heard Terry behind her. He was still breathing hard, probably from coming up the stairs. She asked, “Where was Jimmy this afternoon? After we left?”

  Terry didn’t answer.

  Maggie started checking the pockets in Jimmy’s clothes.

  I killed those guys because I was a dirty fag with them.…

  Delia asked, “What are you looking for?”

  Maggie kept searching the pockets. Nothing. No matchbooks. No more confessions. She did all of Jimmy’s laundry. She was constantly finding phone numbers scribbled onto napkins and torn pieces of paper.

  Had all those numbers belonged to men?

  Delia said, “Maggie, stop. You know Jimmy doesn’t like you going through his stuff.”

  Maggie couldn’t stop. What was she expected to believe? That her brother followed her to the Portuguese house today? That he had almost killed Kate? That he had shot the pimp? And what about the other men—Keen and Porter, Ballard and Johnson? Was she supposed to accept that her brother had murdered all of those men, then come to the breakfast table the next morning and filled up on coffee and bacon and eggs with his family?

  And Don Wesley—Don was Jimmy’s friend. They were partners.

  Maggie turned around. Terry and Delia were standing behind her. She had to talk out the words before they exploded in her head. “It doesn’t make sense. Why would he do it?”

  “Because he’s a faggot,” Terry answered. “Can’t you fucking read? You’re the college girl. It was right in front of your face the whole time, but you had your head too far up your ass to see it.”

  “You didn’t see it, either.”

  Terry backhanded her so hard that Maggie fell against the wall. She put her hand to her cheek. The skin had broken open.

  “Fucking mess,” Terry mumbled as he paced the room. The space was small. He could only go three steps before he had to turn back around. “What the fuck was he thinking?”

  No one answered, because there wasn’t an answer that made sense. The only sound that broke the silence was the familiar scratch of a needle on a record. Tapestry. Lilly had the volume up. She didn’t want to hear what was going on.