The arrest warrant was the last page in the pile, but this part of the process, at least, was computerized. All the spaces were printed in a typewriter font. The suspect’s name was at the top, his address and home phone. Will found the lined box for Tommy’s employer. He leaned over the form, squinting his eyes as he held his finger under the tiny letters. His mouth moved as he tried to sound out the word. Will was tired from the monotonous drive. The letters mixed around. He blinked, wishing there was more light in the room.
Sara Linton had been right about one thing. She had sat across from Will for a solid hour and not realized that he was dyslexic.
His phone rang, the noise startling him in the small space. He recognized Faith Mitchell’s number. “Hey, partner.”
“You were going to call me when you got there.”
“Things have been busy,” he said, which was sort of the truth. Will had always been bad with directions, and there were parts of Heartsdale between Main Street and the interstate that weren’t on his GPS.
She asked, “How’s it going?”
“I’m being treated with the utmost respect and care.”
“I wouldn’t drink anything unless it’s in a sealed bottle.”
“Good advice.” He sat back in the chair. “How’re you holding up?”
“I’m about to kill somebody or myself,” she admitted. “They’re going to do the C-section tomorrow afternoon.” Faith was diabetic. Her doctors wanted to control the delivery so her health wasn’t jeopardized. She started to give Will the details of the procedure, but he dazed out after she used the word “uterus” the second time. He studied his reflection in the two-way mirror, wondering if Mrs. Simms was right about his hair looking better now that he’d let it grow out.
Finally, Faith wound down her story. She asked, “What’s this fax you sent me?”
“Did you get all twelve pages?”
He could hear her counting the sheets. “I’ve got seventeen total. All from the same number.”
“Seventeen?” He scratched his jaw. “Are some of them duplicates?”
“Nope. Got a police report, xeroxed field notes—pages are cut out of the notebook, that’s weird. You don’t take pages out of your field book—and …” He assumed she was reading Tommy Braham’s confession. “Did you write this?”
“Very funny,” Will said. He hadn’t been able to make out the words when Sara had shown him the confession in the car, but even to Will, the looped, cartoonish shape of Tommy Braham’s handwriting seemed off. “What do you think?”
“I think this reads like one of Jeremy’s book reports when he was in first grade.”
Jeremy was her teenage son. “Tommy Braham is nineteen.”
“What is he, retarded?”
“You’re supposed to call it ‘intellectually disabled’ now.”
She made a snorting sound.
“Sara says his IQ was around eighty.”
Faith sounded suspicious, but she had been prickly the last time about Sara inserting herself into their case. “How does Sara happen to know his IQ?”
“She used to treat him at her clinic.”
“Did she apologize for dragging you below the gnat line on your vacation?”
“She doesn’t know it’s my vacation, but, yes, she apologized.”
Faith was quiet for a moment. “How’s she doing?”
He thought not of Sara, but of the scent she had left on his handkerchief. She didn’t strike him as the type of woman who would wear perfume. Maybe it was one of those fancy soaps that women used to wash their faces.
“Will?”
He cleared his throat to cover for his silence. “She’s okay. She was very upset, but mostly I think she has a good reason.” He lowered his voice. “Something doesn’t feel right about any of this.”
“You think Tommy didn’t kill the girl?”
“I don’t know what I think yet.”
Faith went quiet; never a good sign. He had been partnered with her for over a year, and just when Will thought he was learning to read her moods, she had gotten pregnant and the whole thing went out of whack. “All right,” she said. “What else did Sara tell you?”
“Some stuff about the man who killed her husband.” Will knew that Faith had already gone behind Sara’s back to find out the details. She didn’t know about Lena Adams’s involvement, or the fact that Sara believed Lena was responsible for Tolliver’s death. Will stood up and walked into the hall, making sure Knox wasn’t there. Still, he kept his voice low as he relayed the story Sara had told him about her husband’s murder. When he finished, Faith let out a long breath of air.
“Sounds like Sara has a hard-on for this Adams woman.”
Will sat back down at the table. “That’s one way to put it.” He did not share the part of Sara’s story that had stuck out the most. The entire time she spoke, she had not once uttered Jeffrey Tolliver’s name. She had only referred to him as “my husband.”
Faith offered, “I think priority number one is tracking down this Julie Smith. She either saw the murder or heard about it. Do you have her cell phone number?”
“I’ll get it from Sara later.”
“Later?”
Will ignored the question. Faith would want an explanation for why he was having dinner at Sara’s house, and then she’d want a report on how it went. “Where does—did—Tommy Braham work?”
She shuffled through the pages. “Says here he was employed at the bowling alley. Maybe that’s why he killed himself—to keep from having to spray Lysol in shoes all day.”
Will didn’t laugh at the joke. “They charged him with murder right off the bat. Not assault, not attempted murder, not resisting.”
“Where did they get murder? Am I missing the autopsy report? Lab reports? Forensic filings?”
Will laid it out for her. “Brad Stephens is stabbed. He’s airlifted to the hospital. The first thing Adams does is take Tommy Braham back to the station and get his confession for the Spooner girl’s murder.”
“She didn’t go to the hospital with her partner?”
“I’m assuming the chief did. He’s been a no-show.”
“Did Braham have a lawyer present?” Faith answered her own question. “No lawyer would let him make this confession.”
“A murder charge resonates more than assault. It could be political—get the town behind them so no one cares that a killer has killed himself.” Will had told Sara the same thing. If Tommy Braham was Allison Spooner’s murderer, then people would assume justice had already been served.
Faith said, “This confession is strange. He’s got details out the wazoo until the murder. Then, it’s taken care of in three lines. ‘I got mad. I had a knife on me. I stabbed her once in the neck.’ Not much of an explanation.” She added, “And there would be a boatload of blood from something like this. Remember that case where the woman’s throat was slit?”
Will cringed at the memory. Blood had sprayed everywhere—the walls, ceiling, floor. It was like walking into a paint booth. “Allison Spooner was stabbed in the back of the neck. Maybe that’s different?”
“That brings up another good point. One stab wound doesn’t sound mad. That sounds very controlled to me.”
“Detective Adams was probably in a hurry to get back to the hospital. Maybe she was planning a follow-up interview. Maybe Chief Wallace was going to have a go at Tommy later.”
“That’s not how you do it. If a suspect is talking, especially confessing, you get every detail.”
“They haven’t shown much of an aptitude for policing so far. Sara thinks Adams is sloppy, that she plays it too loose. From what I’m seeing with the Spooner investigation, she’s right about that.”
“Is she pretty?”
For a moment, Will thought she was asking about Sara. “I haven’t seen a picture yet, but the cop I spoke with said she was good-looking.”
“Young girl, college aged. The press is going to be all over this, especially if she’s pre
tty.”
“Probably,” he acknowledged. Yet another motive for putting Allison Spooner’s murderer behind bars as quickly as possible. “The girl worked at the local diner. I gather a lot of the cops in the station knew her.”
“That could explain why they made such a quick arrest.”
“It could,” he agreed. “But, if Sara is right and Tommy didn’t kill the girl, then we’ve still got a murderer out there.”
“When is the autopsy?”
“Tomorrow.” Will didn’t tell her that Sara had volunteered to do the procedure.
“It all seems very convenient,” Faith pointed out. “Dead girl found in the morning, murderer arrested before noon, found dead in his cell before suppertime.”
“If Brad Stephens doesn’t make it, they’re probably not going to let Tommy Braham be buried in the city limits.”
“When are you going to the hospital?”
“I hadn’t planned on it.”
“Will, a cop is in the hospital. If you’re within a hundred miles, you go see him. You hang around and comfort his wife or his mother. You give blood. It’s what cops do.”
Will chewed his lip. He hated hospitals. He had never understood why it was necessary to hang around them unless you had to.
“Isn’t Brad Stephens a potential witness, too?”
Will laughed. Unless Stephens was a Boy Scout, he doubted the man would help shed any light on what happened yesterday. “I’m sure he’ll be as courteous as he is forthcoming.”
“You still have to go through the motions.” She paused before continuing. “And since I’m being a cop, let me state the obvious: Tommy killed himself for the same reason he ran when they confronted him in the garage. He was guilty.”
“Or he wasn’t, and he knew no one would believe him.”
“You sound like a defense lawyer,” Faith noted. “What about the rest of this stuff? It looks like the first few pages of a novel.”
“What do you mean?”
“The handwritten notes from Spooner’s crime scene. ‘Found on the shore approximately thirty yards from the tide line and twelve feet from a large oak is a pair of white Nike Sport tennis shoes, sized women’s eight. Inside the left, resting on the sole, which is blue with the word ‘Sport’ emblazoned where the heel rests, is a yellow-gold ring….’ I mean, come on. This isn’t War and Peace. It’s a field report.”
“Did you get the suicide note?”
“‘I want it over.’” She had the same reaction as Will. “Not exactly the ‘goodbye cruel world’ you’d expect. And the paper is torn from a larger sheet. That’s strange, right? You’re going to write a suicide note and you tear it from another sheet of paper?”
“What else did you get? You said there were seventeen pages.”
“Incident reports.” She read aloud, “Police were called to Skatey’s roller rink on Old Highway 5 at approximately twenty-one hundred hours …” Her voice trailed off as she skimmed the words. “All right. Last week, Tommy got into a fight with a girl whose name they didn’t bother to get. He wouldn’t stop shouting. He was asked to leave. He refused. The police came and told him to leave. He left. No one arrested.” Faith was quiet again. “The second report involves a barking dog at the residence from five days ago. The last one is about loud music. This was two days ago. There’s a note on the last page where the cop who took the report makes a reminder to follow up with Tommy’s father when he gets back in town.”
“Who took the reports?”
“Same cop. Carl Phillips.”
That name was more than familiar. “I was told Phillips was the booking officer on duty when all of this went down.”
“That doesn’t make sense. You don’t put a street cop on booking.”
“Either he’s a really bad liar or they’re afraid he’s going to tell me the truth.”
“So, find him and figure it out for yourself.”
“I was told he’s out camping with his wife and kids right now. No cell phone. No way to get in touch with him.”
“What an amazing coincidence. His name’s Carl Phillips?”
“Right.” Will knew Faith was writing down the name. She hated when people tried to hide. He told her, “Their security cameras in the cells aren’t recording, either.”
“Did they tape the interview with Tommy?”
“If they did, I’m sure the film met with some kind of dropping accident involving electricity and water.”
“Shit, Will. You numbered these pages yourself, right?”
“Yeah.”
“One through twelve?”
“Right. What’s going on?”
“Page number eleven is missing.”
Will thumbed through his originals. They were all out of order.
She asked, “You’re sure you numbered—”
“I know how to number pages, Faith.” He muttered a curse as he saw that the eleventh page was missing from his copies, too.
“Why would someone take out a page and send the incident reports instead?”
“I’ll have to see if Sara—”
He heard a noise behind him. A cough, maybe a sneeze. He guessed that Knox was standing in the viewing room listening to everything that was being said.
“Will?”
He stood up, stacking the pages together, putting them back in the file. “You still seeing your mom for Thanksgiving?”
She took her time answering, misinterpreting his meaning. “You know I’d ask you to come if—”
“Angie’s planning a surprise for me. You know how she loves to cook.” He walked into the hallway and stopped outside the storage room, where he rapped his knuckles on the door. “Thank you for your help, Officer Knox.” The door didn’t open, but Will heard feet shuffling on the other side. “I’ll let myself out.”
Faith didn’t question him until he was in the squad room. “You clear?”
“Give me another minute.”
“Angie loves to cook?” She gave a deep belly laugh. “When’s the last time you saw the elusive Mrs. Trent?”
Seven months had passed since Angie had made an appearance, but that was none of Faith’s business. “How’s Betty doing?”
“I raised a child, Will. I think I can take care of your dog.”
Will pushed open the glass front door and walked into the drizzle. His car was parked at the end of the lot. “Dogs are more sensitive than children.”
“You’ve obviously never spent time around a sullen eleven-year-old.”
He glanced over his shoulder. Knox, or at least a figure looking very much like Knox, was standing in the window. Will kept his gait slow, casual. He didn’t speak again until he was safely inside the car. “There’s something else going on with this girl’s murder, Faith.”
“What do you mean?”
“Call it gut instinct.” Will looked back up at the station. One by one, the lights went off in the front of the building. “It’s just convenient that the one person who could probably tell me the truth about what really happened is dead.”
CHAPTER SIX
LENA HELD BRAD’S HAND. HIS SKIN FELT COOL. THE MACHINES in the room beeped and blipped and hummed, yet none of them could tell the doctors how Brad was really doing. She’d heard a nurse use the phrase “touch and go” a few hours ago, but Brad looked the same to Lena. He smelled the same, too. Antiseptic, sweat, and that stupid Axe body wash he’d started using because of the TV commercials.
“You’re going to be okay,” she told him, hoping her words were true. Every bad thing she’d thought about Brad today was ringing in her head like a bell. He wasn’t street smart. He wasn’t cut out for the job. He didn’t have the skills to be a detective. Was Lena to blame for Brad’s injuries because she had kept her mouth shut? Should she have told Frank that Brad shouldn’t be on the force? Frank knew this better than anybody. Every week for the last two years he’d muttered something about firing Brad. Ten minutes before Brad was stabbed, Frank was chewing him out.
But was it really Brad’s fault? Lena could see this morning’s events like a movie playing endlessly in her head. Brad ran down the street. He told Tommy to stop. Tommy stopped. He turned. The knife was in his hands. The knife was in Brad’s stomach.
Lena rubbed her hands over her face. She should be congratulating herself for getting Tommy Braham to confess. Instead, she couldn’t get past the feeling that she had missed something. She needed to talk to Tommy again, pull out more details about his movements before and after the murder. He was holding out on her, which wasn’t unusual in murder cases. Tommy didn’t want to admit that he was a bad person. That much had been evident the entire interview. He had skirted around the gory details, and Lena had let him because she wanted—needed—to get to Brad to see if he was okay. Lena wasn’t so exhausted that she couldn’t see that Tommy had more to say. She just needed some sleep before she went at him again. She had to make sure that her part of the case, at least the part she could control, was airtight.
The biggest problem was that Tommy was so damn hard to talk to. Less than a minute into his interrogation, Lena had figured out the kid wasn’t right in the head. He wasn’t just slow, he was stupid. Eager to fill in whatever blanks Lena left open so long as she gave him a map and directions. She had promised him he could go home if he confessed. She could still see the confused look on his face when she’d taken him back to the cells. He was probably sitting on his bunk right now wondering how on earth he had gotten himself into this mess.
Lena was wondering the same thing. All the pieces had come together so quickly this morning that she hadn’t had time to consider whether they really fit or if she was just forcing them into place. The stab wound in Allison Spooner’s neck. The suicide note. The 911 call. The knife.
The stupid knife.
Lena’s phone vibrated in her pocket. She ignored it the same way she had ignored everything around her since she had gotten to the hospital. Two hours with Tommy at the station. Two hours driving to Macon. More hours spent standing vigil outside Brad’s room. She had given blood. She’d drunk too much coffee. Delia Stephens, his mother, was getting some air now. She only trusted Lena to stay with her son.
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