Cop Town: A Novel

by Karin Slaughter

  He dropped the gun. He pulled open his shirt. Blood dribbled in a steady stream from his shoulder. The hole was black at the center, just like the holes he had put in his victims. Just like the hole in the roof that had almost been a hole in Maggie’s head. The bright red blood cut a line down his torso and pooled into the waist of his pants. His chest hair was gray and splotchy. There was a tattoo of a red fox above his heart.

  Patrick’s dog tags were around his neck.

  Kate stood up. She clutched the revolver in both hands. There was no more sweating. Her skin was cool. She was not afraid or panicked anymore. She was just certain that she was holding the gun that was going to kill this man. “Take those off.”

  “Come and get ’em.” Chip hooked his thumb through the metal chain. He actually winked at her. “You better be careful, sweetheart. Your doorman sees a badge, he’ll let anybody up.”

  “Give them back.” Kate’s voice was flat. She was dead inside—dead as Patrick. Dead as Chip Bixby was going to be. “Take them off right now.”

  “You really thought you could do this job?”

  “I said take them off.”

  “Even your own mama don’t want you wearing the badge.”

  “Shut up,” Kate ordered.

  “That’s what Liesbeth told me. Her and your granny. I talked to them last week.”

  He was lying. He had to be lying.

  “Saw them Jew tattoos on their arms. You’d never guess it, right? Coupla blonde slits. Guess Hitler wasn’t fooled.” He smiled again. “Too bad he didn’t finish the job.”

  “Shut your goddamn mouth.”

  “Are you going to finish the job, Kaitlin?” The smile had turned into a grin. “Nice couch they got in the living room. What do you call that color, turquoise?”

  Kate was a statue. Her lungs stopped breathing. Her heart stopped beating. Her finger was frozen on the trigger. She could see Chip on the turquoise couch. Sitting back with his legs spread wide as if he owned the place. Oma and Liesbeth would offer him cigarettes and cocktails, and why? Because they had no idea that a monster had talked his way into their home.

  “Do it,” Maggie said. “Shoot him.”

  Kate wanted to. With every ounce of her being, she yearned to pull the trigger.

  But she couldn’t—not because she didn’t have it in her, but because Chip Bixby so obviously wanted her to. Even now, Kate could hear the men on the street. They had heard the gunfire on the roof. They were probably working their way up the stairs, clearing each floor as they made their way to the top.

  Chip had obviously heard them, too, and he’d decided he’d rather be killed than taken alive.

  Kate put her finger back on the trigger guard. She told Maggie, “Handcuff him.” When Maggie didn’t move, Kate threw down her own set of cuffs. “We’re taking him in. You and me. We’re arresting this asshole and we’re going to take him in.”

  Maggie didn’t move.

  “Let’s go,” Kate told her. “You and me, Lawson. Not the guys. Us two tough gals are going to handcuff the great Chip Bixby and throw him in the back of our squad car and take him in.”

  Maggie took her time coming around. She reluctantly picked up the handcuffs. “I get to book him.”

  “I wouldn’t presume to have it otherwise.”

  Maggie clicked open the cuffs. She was nodding now as she worked it out in her head. “I’ll fingerprint him. Take his picture for the papers. Toss him into the cell.”

  “May I accompany you?”

  “You mean when I put him in the cell?” Maggie smiled. “Sure. Both of us will throw him in a cell in front of all the bad guys.”

  “No.” Chip took a step back. Then another. “Fuck no.”

  “Stop.” Kate’s finger curled around the trigger.

  Chip kept backing up. “You two snatches ain’t taking me in.”

  “Stop.” Kate’s voice was stronger now. She was walking toward him even as he kept walking away. “I’ll shoot you again.”

  Chip didn’t stop. He took another step back, then another, until his heels hit the parapet. He stepped up. He stepped out. He hung in the air for less than a second.

  And he was gone.

  At first, neither Maggie nor Kate moved. Then they both rushed to the edge of the building. The scene below was eerily similar to the one they’d found when they arrived. Except this time, instead of Terry Lawson surrounded by a group of cops, it was Chip Bixby with a dozen guns trained on him.

  They needn’t have bothered. Chip was obviously dead. His limbs were splayed. His skull had cracked open. Blood was everywhere.

  “Up there!” one of the cops shouted. Rick Anderson. He had his shotgun on his shoulder.

  Kate felt a bout of vertigo come on. She dropped to her knees so she wouldn’t tumble after Chip. The revolver fell to her side. “Oh, my God.”

  Maggie ran to Jimmy.

  “My God,” Kate repeated. What had just happened? She should have shot him. She should’ve put a bullet in his head before he jumped off the roof.

  Kate laughed. Was she really thinking that she should’ve killed Chip Bixby before he killed himself? She heard her father’s voice in her head: talk about beating a dead horse.

  Her father.

  Her Oma and mother.

  Kate shivered uncontrollably.

  Chip Bixby had been in their house. He had sat in their living room, talked to Liesbeth and Oma. He had planned to take Kate away from her family. He had the place ready for her. A room where she could yell and no one would hear her scream. Kate would’ve been gone. Her family would’ve lived out the rest of their lives never knowing what had happened to her.

  Just like Oma’s father and mother, her brother and son.

  There one moment, vanished the next.

  “Kate!” Maggie yelled. “Kate! Help me!”

  Maggie was using her teeth to tear the tape around Jimmy’s head.

  Kate had to let this go. She had to bury it somewhere safe in her psyche where it couldn’t hurt her. Chip was dead. Kate hadn’t been his victim. She hadn’t been anyone’s victim. She was a police officer. She had a gun she’d used to stop a suspect. She and her partner had closed a case. Kate had helped solve a crime that had been haunting the city since before she’d even decided to put on the uniform.

  Her uniform. How many times had Chip watched her take off her uniform?

  Kate shook her head, trying to rid her mind of the terrible thought. She pushed herself up. She wiped her hands on her pants. She walked toward Maggie and Jimmy to see what she could do to help.

  Maggie finally tore through the tape. Jimmy groaned as the adhesive pulled away from his skin. Maggie wrapped her arms around her brother. They were both crying. Neither one of them spoke.

  Until Jimmy said, “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s all right,” Maggie soothed. She stroked his back, kissed his cheek. “It’s gonna be okay. Everything’s fine.”

  Kate looked away. She felt tears in her eyes. She didn’t know for whom she was crying. Herself? Patrick? Maggie and Jimmy? Her parents? Her Oma? Maybe Kate was just relieved. That was the lie that she would tell herself. She wasn’t scared. She didn’t feel hunted or violated at the most intimate level possible.

  She was just relieved.

  “You’re okay,” Maggie told her brother. “You’re safe now.”

  “Everybody knows.” Jimmy sobbed. Like his sister had a few moments ago, he sounded resigned to the fate that awaited him. “Just shoot me, Maggie. Just throw me off the roof before they do.”

  Maggie was crying, too. “I won’t let them hurt you. They’ll have to come through me.”

  “It’s too late.” He was clearly devastated. “I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry.”

  There were loud voices in the stairway. Kate could hear the footsteps pounding up the concrete treads.

  “Just kill me,” Jimmy begged. “Give me the gun and I’ll do it.”

  “No.” Maggie wouldn’t let him go. “Jimm
y, I don’t care. I don’t care about any of it. All that matters is that you’re okay.”

  “I’m not okay.”

  “Yes, you are.” She held him tighter. “We’ll get through this. We will.”

  Jimmy didn’t respond. He stared over Maggie’s shoulder at the door, waiting for the judgment that was certain to come. There were more shouts echoing up the stairwell as the floors were cleared. Every man on the street was making his way up to the rooftop. Every man had probably heard what Terry Lawson had said to Maggie about his own nephew.

  You let your faggot brother get away.

  Kate said, “Chip lied.”

  They both looked up at her.

  She shrugged her shoulder. “He admitted it.”

  Maggie asked, “What are you talking about?”

  Kate spelled it out for them. “Chip admitted that he lied about Jimmy right before he jumped off the roof.” She put on her haughtiest Buckhead tone. “Gosh, you guys were standing right here the whole time. Didn’t you hear him say it, too?”

  34

  Maggie sat in a chair outside Terry’s hospital room.

  He was going to live.

  Maggie couldn’t let herself get used to the idea. All day yesterday and through the night, she had let herself think that he wasn’t going to make it. The doctors had said it would be touch-and-go for twenty-four hours, and here they were on the other side and Terry was still alive.

  Nobody knew what kind of life he was going to have. The bullet had grazed Terry’s spine. There was a lot of swelling. Part of the bullet was still in there. There was no way the fragments could be safely removed. They didn’t know if he would walk again. He couldn’t feel anything below his waist. All that they knew was he could breathe on his own. Which meant that he could talk.

  Not that Maggie had spoken to her uncle. She stayed in the chair outside his room and watched the door. Terry’s visiting hours were limited. There wasn’t the usual steady stream of cops floating in and out.

  Delia and Lilly cried too much to be with him for any length of time. The commissioner had come by, but he’d left five minutes later. Cal Vick stayed a little longer before the nurse kicked him out. Gail had wheeled herself up for a chat, but found out she wasn’t allowed to smoke because of the oxygen and wheeled herself back out. There was no sign of Mack McKay, Red Flemming, Les Leslie, or Jett Elliott. It fell to Bud Deacon to tell Terry about Chip. That conversation had gone on for almost an hour. Bud wouldn’t look at Maggie when he left the room.

  Jimmy had talked to Terry this morning. That was all the information Maggie had. She had pressed her brother for details. Of course she had pressed him. That was what Maggie always did. Only this time, Jimmy hadn’t done the thing he always did back, which was yell at her. He just shook his head and told her that everything was fine.

  Was it fine? Maggie had been downstairs. She’d heard the murmurs in the waiting room. She’d seen the way some of the other cops looked at Jimmy. All three of them had stuck to Kate’s story about Chip’s confession, but cops were naturally suspect. She assumed this was the reason that Red, Mack, Les, and Jett were staying away. They had worshipped Jimmy. What did it say about them if Jimmy turned out to be queer? And what did it say about Terry Lawson that his nephew was gay?

  Maggie should’ve been relieved that the men were gone from their lives, but she was furious at them for abandoning her brother. They had mentored him. They had treated him better than they treated their own sons. She would never forgive them for turning their backs on him for something that was none of their goddamn business.

  Not that Jimmy seemed bothered by the betrayal. What happened on the roof outside the rail yard had changed a lot of things, but Jimmy Lawson still wasn’t the type of guy to pour his heart out.

  And about the other thing—well, Maggie wasn’t the type of gal to pour her heart out, either.

  Kate, on the other hand, had done a complete one-eighty from the fresh-faced newbie who’d opened the locker room door too wide on her first day. She had some kind of liquid steel in her blood. Even when she’d seen the hundreds of pages on the clipboard they’d found in Chip Bixby’s car, all she had done was make a quip about how she preferred “Jewess” to “kike.”

  Who knew what Kate was really thinking when she saw the lists of things that Chip was planning to do to her? Or what she made of the surveillence reports that recorded her every waking hour from the moment Chip had met her on the shooting range? Or the rants he’d scribbled about the kikes and spicks and chinks ruining the world while good men like Chip Bixby fought to put things right?

  Who knew about anything where Kate Murphy was concerned?

  She was such a fucking good liar. Or obfuscator, as Kate would probably prefer. At least she was using her skills for good. The amount of bullshit Kate put into her incident report was breathtaking. Oddly, none of the embellishments were for her own benefit.

  Officer Lawson drew Bixby’s attention by kneeling on the ground, which gave me the opportunity to move closer to the revolver. Had she not distracted him, I would not have been able to act.

  Bixby. Maggie almost wished she’d been there when Terry was told the news. She wanted to see the look on his face. Not just one, but two men in Terry’s life had managed to pull the wool over his beady little eyes. And part of her couldn’t help but think that it just proved how full of shit Terry really was. He spent every waking hour complaining about the kikes and slits and coloreds and liberals and feminists and everybody else who was ruining his perfect little world. What did he think would happen when somebody like Chip used his words as a call to action?

  “Miss Lawson?” The nurse came out of Terry’s room. She held the door open for Maggie. “He’s asking for you.”

  Maggie didn’t know whether to laugh or check the woman’s pockets for dope.

  “Don’t stay too long.” The nurse wasn’t joking. Taking care of Terry had obviously sucked all the life from her soul. “He needs his rest.”

  Maggie put her hands on her knees. She pushed herself up. Her body still ached from being thrown around. Her cheek was bruised black. Her neck was blue and yellow. Her jaw popped from Terry punching her in the face.

  The lights were off in the room, but the glow of the equipment was enough to see by. Maggie had always felt comfortable in hospitals. She’d been visiting her father at Milledgeville for so many years that part of her thought of it as a second home.

  Terry was on an inversion bed to take the pressure off his spine. He was stomach-down. The face cradle offered him a view of the floor. Long straps kept his arms and legs immobilized. Another strap wound around the back of his head. His hospital gown was open. Maggie could see the wings of his shoulder blades. Twelve inches below, there was a large bandage where the bullet had torn into his flesh. A sheet covered the rest.

  Someone had painted a blue sky and fluffy white clouds on the tile directly below his face. There was a small mirror attached to an arm on the bed. The glass was tilted to show Terry’s eyes and nose, though Maggie wasn’t sure whether or not he could use it to see who was in the room.

  He said, “Move closer.”

  Maggie couldn’t understand him at first. His jaw was pressed into the face cradle. He could barely speak.

  “Closer.”

  She moved closer. He was staring into the mirror. He could see her.

  “Where’s Jimmy?”

  “He’s back at work.”

  Terry’s nostrils flared. “He has to quit.”

  Maggie didn’t respond.

  “He doesn’t belong.”

  “You sound like Chip Bixby.”

  Terry’s face was already red. His eyes were already bulging. Maggie didn’t need the usual clues to figure out that he was furious with her. She felt it in her gut. She felt it with every breath. Every beat of her heart. No matter how much she denied it, she was connected to Terry the same way she was connected to the sounds in her house: the slap of the phone cord, the bang of the cabin
et, the crack of the egg in the bowl.

  Maggie sat down on the floor. She crossed her legs Indian-style and leaned down just enough so that Terry could see her without the mirror.

  She said, “I want to tell you something.”

  He stared straight ahead.

  “You were wrong. Don’t you want to know what you were wrong about?”

  Terry’s jaw bulged.

  Maggie quoted his favorite saying: “ ‘People don’t take power. Somebody has to give it to them.’ ” She waited not for a response, but for her words to sink in. “You were wrong, Terry. I took the power. Kate Murphy took the power.”

  He didn’t look at her. He didn’t look in the mirror.

  “I’ve been sitting outside your room all night thinking about this. Do you wanna know what I figured out?” Maggie didn’t wait for an answer this time. “I don’t think you’re really racist. Or sexist. Or anti-Jew. Or anti-gay. Or any of that bullshit. I think you’re scared.”

  Terry still wouldn’t look at her.

  “You’re terrified.” She recalled Chip’s words on the rooftop. “Your whole world’s upside down. You don’t belong anymore.”

  Terry didn’t respond, but Maggie could tell her words were hitting the mark.

  She said, “Chip didn’t kill those cops because he hated them. He killed them because he couldn’t stand the fact that they were changing things. And you made him see that when you planted the evidence against Spivey. That’s what set him off. You know it. I know it. Spivey walked free, and two months later, Chip was murdering the same kind of people you blamed for making it happen.”

  Terry’s jaw clenched so hard that Maggie could see the outline of the bone underneath his skin.

  She said, “And the sad part is that Spivey walked because of you. The case was tight, but you couldn’t leave well enough alone. You couldn’t let a judge and jury decide on the facts.” Maggie gave him time to think about what she was saying. “Chip was paranoid. He was alone. His world was falling apart. And he couldn’t handle it. Just like you.”

  Terry trembled with rage. His flesh was mottled. Sweat dripped onto the floor beneath him.