Cop Town: A Novel

by Karin Slaughter

  Kate’s mouth opened, but she couldn’t think what to say.

  “You ask my uncle Terry, the first one is worse than the second. Jimmy might as well have written a suicide note. Tell me why he said any of it if it’s not true.”

  “Because—” Kate was still stymied. “Because.”

  “Eduardo’s description. That’s Jimmy. Think about the Shooter: He knows the police codes. He knows police routines and procedures. Don wouldn’t be expecting Jimmy to pull a gun. Nobody would. And look at where we are. This is a gay bar where they had a memorial service for Don. You don’t have a service for somebody you don’t know. Don was gay. They were both gay, and Jimmy snapped, and—”

  “Maggie, stop this. You’re exhausted. You haven’t slept all night. You’re jumping to so many conclusions that you’ve forgotten the facts.”

  “I know the facts.”

  “Then let’s go over them.” Kate laid it out for her. “Delilah said that the Shooter was wearing jeans and a red shirt. Are you telling me Jimmy changed his clothes to kill Don, then changed back into his uniform before carrying him all the way to the hospital?”

  Maggie started shaking her head. “I don’t know. I don’t know what to think anymore.”

  “Does Jimmy own a red shirt? You said he only wears black, gray, and navy.”

  “The whore could’ve been lying. Or Eduardo was.”

  “She told the same lie Jimmy did, then. He said the Shooter was wearing a red shirt and jeans.”

  Maggie still could not accept it. “Jimmy lied about the Shooter. He said he was black.”

  “The Shooter was wearing black gloves. That’s why Jimmy said he was black. He probably saw the gun, and the hand holding it, and then he dove for cover. After what you and I both went through yesterday, I think it’s understandable that some of the details were lost.”

  Maggie kept shaking her head. There were tears in her eyes. “You just have to accept it. We both have to accept it.”

  “I won’t accept anything of the sort.” Kate finally realized that there was nothing to do but to tell Maggie the truth. Or at least part of it. “The night that Don was killed, Jimmy got hurt, too.”

  Maggie looked dubious. “I told you he has a bad knee.”

  “That’s not what I’m talking about. Some shrapnel from the bullet that killed Don was in Jimmy’s thigh.” Kate chose her words carefully. Maggie didn’t need the details. “I talked to the doctor at Grady who treated him.”

  “Jimmy didn’t say anything about shrapnel.”

  Kate flailed for an explanation. “You know how Jimmy is. He’s not going to admit he’s hurt. He’s too tough for that.”

  Maggie looked desperate to be persuaded. “What are you saying?”

  “Jimmy couldn’t get shrapnel in his leg if he was holding the gun. Ergo, he was standing beside Don when it happened.”

  Maggie put her hand to her neck. “He had blood all over his face and chest. I remember thinking he had to be close when Don was shot.”

  “That’s right,” Kate agreed. “He was standing beside Don when it happened.”

  Maggie sat up. “I saw fresh blood on Jimmy’s pants. You were there. I was in the street with Conroy. You guys pulled up. I saw the blood, and I asked him about it, and he got really weird.” She grabbed Kate’s arm. “Oh, Kate—are you sure? That’s really what the doctor said?”

  “You can talk to him yourself.” Kate felt certain Philip would have no trouble spinning a white lie. “We’ll go there now.”

  Maggie wasn’t listening. She was still picking everything apart. “I don’t understand. Why would he say he killed those people?”

  “Stress?” Kate was on shaky ground. This was more her father’s area of expertise. “Maybe at some level he felt responsible because he couldn’t save Don?”

  Maggie saw another hole in the confession. “So all those guys were gay? Keen, Porter, Johnson, Ballard?”

  “You heard the bartender,” Kate said. “The force is full of them.”

  “But those guys had wives. They had mistresses.”

  Kate could not begin to explain. She was only worried about Jimmy now. Why had he written those words? What could his motive possibly be?

  She read the letter again. Dirty fag. The phrase was something another person would call you, not something you would call yourself.

  Maggie said what they were both thinking. “None of this makes sense.”

  “There’s always a reason. We just need to figure it out.”

  “I’ve spent all night trying to. There’s no reason.” Maggie picked up a piece of gravel from the ground. She tossed it into the weeds.

  Kate read Jimmy’s words aloud. “ ‘I should’ve told you that what happened wasn’t your fault.’ ”

  Maggie threw another rock. This one went farther. She was trying to hit the shopping cart.

  Kate silently read the lines again.

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

  She asked, “What wasn’t your fault?”

  Maggie hurled another rock. This one landed closer to the cart. Instead of answering, she searched for another weapon.

  Kate looked down at the letter. She had it memorized by now. She stared instead at the cursive words. Maggie’s handwriting was better than her own. The pen had bored down into the paper. She could feel the indentations through the back of the page.

  Maggie said, “Eight years ago, Jimmy had this friend named Michael.”

  Kate kept her eyes down.

  “He was good-looking. Jimmy’s friends are always good-looking.” Maggie’s sharp, surprised laugh indicated that she finally understood why. “Michael slept over all the time. I was fifteen. I had a crush on him. He wouldn’t give me the time of day.” She gripped a rock in her hand. “One night, I was asleep and I woke up and Michael was on top of me.” She shrugged. “I was stupid about that kind of stuff. I didn’t really know what was going on, but it hurt like hell and he wouldn’t stop, and Jimmy must’ve heard me scream, because the next thing I know, he’s in my room and he’s beating the shit out of Michael.”

  She glanced over at Kate. “My mother was there, and my uncle Terry, which was the first time I realized he spent the night sometimes. My sister was five. She slept through it, but she knows about it now. Terry made sure of that.” She threw the rock. It clanged against the metal cart. “He hangs it over my head all the time. All of them do. It’s what they use against me when I forget my place.”

  Kate smoothed together her lips. She didn’t know what to say. At least now Maggie’s rage over Lewis Conroy raping a teenager made some kind of sense.

  Maggie said, “You know, the whole time Jimmy was beating Michael, he kept screaming, ‘How could you do this to me?’ Like he was the one who was hurt. And he was hurt. I’d never seen him upset like that before. He was bawling. Tears pouring down his face. Snot dripping out of his nose. He wouldn’t talk to me for months afterward, and when he finally did, it was never the same.” She kicked at the gravel on the ground. “I always thought that it was my fault. Because of what came afterward. Because I had shamed the family. But now I think Jimmy was upset because Michael had cheated on him.” She laughed again. “He was jealous of me. Or about what happened between me and Michael.”

  Kate heard Maggie’s words echo in her ears. What came afterward.

  What had come afterward? The nurse next door?

  Maggie took back her notebook and stared at Jimmy’s confession. “The weird thing is, Jimmy apologized to me yesterday when we were in the hospital. He told me he was sorry for what happened. First time he’s ever apologized for anything. And I know that he was talking about that night with Michael, because he said ‘seven years ago’ and I told him it was eight, and he agreed.” She shrugged at Kate. “So why would he say he never apologized?”

  “He didn’t apologize for what really happened.”

  “He was doped up on pain pill
s. Maybe he forgot he apologized.” She closed the notebook. “That still doesn’t explain why he wrote these things. Or where he is now.”

  “He could be with somebody you don’t know.”

  Maggie echoed Kate’s earlier words. “A secret person.”

  “He’s probably with a friend, Maggie. Somebody who knows about Don and can comfort him.” Kate tried, “Look at the letter from his point of view. Revealing that he’s gay means you won’t show it to anybody else. And the part about hurting more people if you come looking for him—he never hurt any of them in the first place. He was trying to push you away.”

  “Terry’s looking for him.” Maggie’s voice went down in distress. “He’s going to shoot him on sight. He told me himself.”

  “If you can’t find Jimmy, then Terry can’t.”

  Maggie’s desperation was back. “I don’t know what to do.”

  “We need to keep doing what we’ve been doing. Work the case. This is a big break. Don and Jimmy were targeted by the Shooter for a reason. If that reason is because the Shooter hates gay men, then we have a connection.”

  “What if Jimmy knows who the Shooter is? What if it’s somebody he was with, and he knows the guy is killing people, but he can’t turn him in?”

  That sounded as good an explanation as any, but it still got them nowhere. “We can sit around talking conspiracy theories or we can actually start looking into things.”

  Maggie said, “Maybe Jimmy is tracking him on his own. That’s what he was doing yesterday when that woman shot him. Maybe Jimmy has a lead and writing the letter was his way of making sure we didn’t get in the way.”

  Again, Kate could not argue with the theory. “I don’t see how we can get in the way if we keep working the case the same way we’ve been working it.”

  “You mean the files,” Maggie said. “Terry has them.”

  “He doesn’t have our brains. And you have yet to notice what an excellent memory I have.” Kate had no problem recalling all the questions she had yesterday after reading the Shooter files. “Autopsies are public records. Would a doctor censor the documents if he found evidence that led him to believe that the victims were gay?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “What about your friend at the coroner’s office?”

  “All she does is type the reports. They don’t tell her anything.” Maggie rubbed her eyes. “Mark Porter was happily married. Greg Keen was separated from his wife. I didn’t know Ballard and Johnson. They were married, according to their files. Two kids each. Gail might know more. She’s in everybody’s business.”

  “Then let’s go to the hospital.” Kate pushed herself up. She offered her hand to Maggie. “You get the gossip from Gail. I know a doctor who might be able to answer our other question about the autopsy.”

  Maggie stood on her own. “What if we’re wrong and Jimmy’s missing for another reason?”

  Kate repeated her earlier advice. “We just keep moving forward until we figure it out.”

  29

  Fox flicked up his coat collar as he walked through the train yard. He hadn’t shaved today. He smelled of booze. He was dressed in his usual camouflage.

  Nothing to see here, buddy, just another bum looking for a dry place to hole up.

  He had expected to open his front door this morning and find the newspaper screaming up a headline about a cop who had confessed to the most heinous of crimes. Instead, he saw a story about the mayor’s new integration plan. Fox’s eyesight was good. He stood over the paper, read the first few lines, then quietly shut the door.

  An unexpected development.

  Fox’s plan had depended upon the confession being made public. There had to be a day of reckoning. Jimmy Lawson had to be hunted. He had to be captured by a hero cop. And then he had to be handled by a hero force. One, maybe two men would be selected for the task. Trusted men. Men with steady hands and iron constitutions. Jimmy could not be allowed to tell his story. The force could not handle the shame. This fallen officer had been one of their own. Would they let the world know that they had harbored a murderer, a deviant, in the brotherhood?

  No sir. The good men who controlled this city would not let that happen.

  Fox knew for a fact that shame was a great motivator. It was why Jimmy had broken so quickly. All Fox had to do was press the gun to Jimmy’s head, and the next thing he knew, Jimmy was sitting at the Lawson dining room table with a pen in his hand.

  And then the problems started. Jimmy’s tears had wet the paper. Fox made him start over. Jimmy’s pen had torn the page. Fox made him start over. Jimmy had fucked up so many times that Fox had finally dictated every single word to him.

  And then Jimmy had asked for permission to write more.

  Who would’ve guessed the guy gave a shit about his sister?

  Fox had been an only child, as were his parents. There were no cousins to play with. The only uncle he ever knew was his Uncle Sam. Fox had never given any thought to what it might be like to have a sibling.

  Just one more head for Senior to cuff. One more ass for him to beat. One more hand to crush with the heel of his shoe. Another pair of legs to break.

  Because of course it wasn’t just Fox’s mother. Why just beat on a woman when you could whale on a growing boy?

  Fox didn’t ask Jimmy what he was apologizing to his sister for. They had time, but not that much time. If Jimmy was sending some kind of code, Fox was worried not one bit. No one would listen to Maggie Lawson. Fox had considered her for a target years ago and decided that she just wasn’t worth it. A woman like that would burn herself out on her own. Maggie had brought so much shame onto the family that her own mother couldn’t hold up her head when she walked down the street.

  What Fox didn’t count on was Terry Lawson’s shame. Jimmy was his blood. Fox should’ve known an old soldier like Terry would want to put his nephew down himself.

  An unexpected development, but one Fox could put to his own good use. That was what a man did. Other men looked at problems. Fox looked at solutions.

  Still, Fox was nervous. Could Kate do her part? Could Fox coax her into his lair?

  He felt a breath on the back of his neck. He heard the invisible footsteps sneaking up behind him. He saw the flicker of the leaves that could be the wind or could be a man with a knife who would silently slit Fox’s throat, then hide in the jungle waiting for the next white face that came along.

  Fox had seen it happen.

  They called him Mick.

  He had a movie star’s features, but he was willing to get his hands dirty. Adaptable. Smart. He learned the ropes. He paid his dues. And then he went in the wrong direction, ignored the right signs, and ended up with his neck cut back to his spine.

  Fox had not tracked the killer. He was too much in awe of his work. Mick was ten, maybe fifteen feet away from Fox when his time came. Fox was transfixed by the killer’s dance. The elegant tiptoe through the jungle. The graceful swing of the machete. The lissome turn of his head to keep the spray of arterial blood from clouding his vision.

  An artist.

  That was how Fox was going to be today. He had planned the dance in his head. There was just the matter of leading Kate to the center of the floor.

  Walking across the train yard, Fox heard the music start up in his head.

  30

  Kate tried to ignore the knowing looks she got from the nurse when she asked how to find Dr. Van Zandt’s office. If she hadn’t felt like a whore already, she certainly did now.

  She checked her watch as she walked down the hallway. Kate had allotted herself ten minutes to ask Philip her questions. Gail was in the bowels of the hospital having some sort of test performed. The nurse had said she would be at least half an hour. Kate didn’t need to be in a room with Philip for that long. Ten minutes was more than enough time for him to give her a straight answer.

  These were probably fool’s errands anyway. Gail Patterson wasn’t sitting on information that could break this case
wide open. She was too smart a cop not to have already put it together if she did. And Kate wasn’t certain that Maggie was up to the job. While she could see how Maggie had gotten to the point, Kate was slightly appalled that the woman could think even for a moment that her brother was capable of mass murder.

  As to the questions they had for Philip, so what if all the dead men were homosexuals? What could Kate and Maggie do with that information? There was nowhere for them to go. No one to talk to. They couldn’t start questioning members of the gay community, because they had no idea who they were. Kate occasionally read an alternative newspaper. Their offices might be a starting point. Or they could go back to the bartender at Dabbler’s.

  Or they could just run around in circles until they bumped heads and fell down.

  Philip’s office door was closed. Kate heard the deep vibrato of his voice. He was obviously on the phone. He was probably talking to another woman. Possibly his wife. Kate almost didn’t knock, but a couple of snickering nurses walked by and she knocked so loudly that the door shook.

  “Yes?” he called.

  Kate opened the door. Philip was sitting behind a metal desk. He held a telephone to his ear. Two leather Sled chairs were across from him. A sleek leather couch took up the entire left side of the room. He was wearing a dark blue suit that brought out the color in his eyes and an open-necked yellow shirt that showed the curling hair on his chest.

  Kate wanted to turn around and walk back out the door.

  “Darling.” He hung up the phone and rose from his chair. “What a pleasure to see you.”

  “I’m here on business.” She shut the door. “I need to talk to you about sperm.”

  “I’d be happy to make you some more.”

  Kate silently cursed her verbal idiocy. “This is serious.”

  “Of course it is. I can see that now.” He indicated the couch. Kate sat on the edge of one of the deep chairs.

  He said, “May I ask if you’re well? You left in such a hurry this morning.”

  “Yes, Dr. Van Zipless. Thank you for your concern.”