Broken

by Karin Slaughter

  Will walked behind her down the hall. When he stopped outside Allison’s room, Lena turned. She didn’t say anything, but continued down the stairs. Will didn’t think there was anything of note in the girl’s room. Lena had done a thorough search. What struck Will the most was what was missing: There was no laptop. No schoolbooks. No notebooks. No pink backpack. No sign that a college student was living here except for the enormous amount of clothing. Had someone taken Allison’s school things? More than likely, they were in her Dodge Daytona, whereabouts unknown.

  Will heard the front door open and close. He looked out the window and saw Lena heading down the driveway toward the cruiser. She was on her cell phone. He knew she wasn’t calling Frank. Maybe she was looking for a lawyer.

  He had more pressing things to think about right now. Will went to the bathroom and used the camera on his cell phone to take a picture of the medicine cabinet. Next, he went downstairs to Tommy Braham’s bathroom. Will stepped over the towels and underwear to get to the medicine cabinet. He opened the mirrored door. An orange plastic pill bottle was the only thing inside. Will leaned in. The words on the label were small. The light was bad. And he was dyslexic.

  He used his phone to take another picture. This time, he sent the image to Faith with three question marks in the message.

  Sara had kept his handkerchief again. Will looked around for something to use so his fingerprints wouldn’t get on the bottle. Tommy’s underwear and dirty sock were not an option. Will rolled off some toilet paper from the roll stuck on the back of the toilet and used it to pick up the bottle. The cap wasn’t securely screwed down. He opened the top and saw a handful of clear capsules with white powder inside. Will shook one into his hand. There was no writing on the side, no pharmaceutical logo or maker’s mark.

  In movies, cops always tasted the white powders they found. Will wondered why drug dealers didn’t leave piles of rat poison lying around just for this particular reason. He put the bottle on the edge of the sink so he could photograph the capsule in his hand. Then he took a closer shot of the prescription label and sent both images to Faith.

  As a rule, Will stayed away from doctors. He couldn’t read them his insurance information when he called to make an appointment. He couldn’t fill out their forms while he was sitting in the waiting room. One time, Angie had been kind enough to give him syphilis and he’d had to take a regimen of pills four times a day for two weeks. Consequently, Will knew what a prescription label looked like. There was always an official logo from the pharmacy at the top. The doctor’s name and date were listed, the Rx number, the patient’s name, the dosage information, the warning stickers.

  This label seemed to have none of those things. It wasn’t even the proper size—he’d guess it was half the usual height and shorter in length. There were plenty of numbers typed across the top, but the rest of the information was written in by hand. A cursive hand, which meant Will didn’t know if he was staring at heroin or acetaminophen.

  His phone rang. Faith asked, “What the hell is that?”

  “I found it in Tommy’s medicine cabinet.”

  “‘Seven-nine-nine-three-two-six-five-three,’” she read. “‘Tommy, do not take any of these’ is written across the middle in cursive. Exclamation point at the end. The ‘do not’ is underlined.”

  Will said a silent prayer of thanks that he hadn’t tasted the white powder. “Is the handwriting feminine?”

  “Looks like it. Big and loopy. Slanted to the right, so she’s right-handed.”

  “Why would Tommy have a bottle of pills that said don’t take them?”

  “What about the three letters at the bottom? Looks like ‘H-O-C’ or ‘H-C-C’ …?”

  Will stared at the fine print in the corner of the label. The words were so blurry that his head started to ache. “I have no idea. The last photo is as tight as I can get. I’m going to get Nick to take it to the lab with the other stuff. Anything on Jason Howell?”

  “He’s worse than Allison, if that’s possible. No phone. No street address, just a PO box at the school. He’s got four thousand dollars in a savings account out of a bank in West Virginia.”

  “That’s interesting.”

  “Not as much as you’d think. The amount’s been going down slowly over the last four years. I’d guess it’s some kind of college fund.” She told him, “He also has a car registered in his name. Ninety-nine Saturn SW. Green. I already put out a BOLO.”

  That was at least something. “I’ll check at the school to see if it’s there. How are the background checks going on all the students who lived in Jason’s dorm?”

  “Slow and boring. None of these kids even have parking tickets. My mother had gotten me out of a DUI and a shoplifting charge by the time I was that age.” She laughed. “Please promise me you won’t remind me of that when my children get into trouble.”

  Will was too shocked to promise anything. “Did you track down the 911 audio?”

  “They said they’d email it to me but it hasn’t shown up yet.” Her breath was short, and he guessed she was walking through the house. “Let me do a computer search for those initials on the pill bottle.”

  “I’ll ask Gordon if his son was taking any medication.”

  “Are you sure you should do that?”

  “Meaning?”

  “What if Tommy was selling illegal drugs?”

  Will had a hard time imagining Tommy Braham as a drug kingpin. Still, he admitted, “Tommy knew everybody in town. He was always walking the streets. It’d be a perfect cover.”

  “What does the dad do for a living?”

  “I think he’s a lineman for Georgia Power.”

  “How are they living?”

  Will glanced around the crappy kitchen. “Not very well. Gordon’s truck is about ten years old. Tommy was living in a garage without a toilet. They were renting out a room to help make ends meet. The house must have been really nice thirty years ago, but they haven’t done much to keep it that way.”

  “When I did the sweep on Tommy, I found a checking account at the local bank. His balance was thirty-one dollars and sixty-eight cents. Did you say the dad was in Florida?”

  He saw where she was going with this. Florida was the beginning of a major drug corridor that went from the Keys up into Georgia and on to New England and Canada. “This doesn’t strike me as a drug thing.”

  “That knife wound to the neck sounds gang to me.”

  Will couldn’t deny she was right.

  Faith asked, “What else do you have?”

  “Detective Adams has seen fit to accept her part in Tommy Braham’s suicide.”

  For once, Faith didn’t have a quick comeback.

  “She said that Tommy didn’t kill Allison, and it’s her fault he managed to kill himself in custody, and that she’ll take all the blame.”

  Faith made a thinking noise. “What’s she hiding?”

  “What isn’t she hiding?” Will countered. “She’s lied and covered up so much that it’d be like pulling a piece of string on a ball of yarn.” He went into the kitchen, hoping to find a plastic bag. “Allison had a lot of nice clothes.”

  “What was she studying in college?”

  “Chemistry.”

  “How do you manage to dress yourself in the morning?” Faith sounded frustrated by his slowness. “Chemistry? Synthesizing chemicals to produce more complex products, like turning pseudoephedrine into methamphetamine?”

  Will found a box of Ziplocs in the last drawer he checked. “If Allison was cooking meth, or shooting it, she was being careful about it. She didn’t have any needle marks. There aren’t any pipes or drug paraphernalia around the house or in the garage. Sara will do a tox screen as part of the autopsy, but I’m not buying it.”

  “And Tommy?”

  “I’ll have to call Sara.” He waited for her to say something snarky about his using Sara’s name too many times.

  Miraculously, Faith let the opportunity pass. “There’s no H-O-
C or H-C-C in Grant County. I’ll try the number at the top of the label. Eight digits. Too long for a zip code, too short for zip-plus-four. One digit too many for a phone number. One too little for Social Security. Let me plug it in and see if I get anything.” Will sealed the pill bottle in the plastic bag as he waited for the results.

  Faith groaned. “My God, does every single search have to turn up porn?”

  “It’s God’s gift to us.”

  “I’d rather have a live-in nanny,” she countered. “I’m not finding anything. I can make some phone calls around the state. You know how some of the yokels are slow to enter their case files into the network. I’m just waiting around for Mama to come pick me up and take me to the hospital.”

  “I’d appreciate anything you feel like doing.”

  “If I watch one more home-remodeling show, I’m going to come down there and hope someone puts a knife in the back of my neck. And I’ve got the worst gas. I feel like—”

  “Well, I should go now. Thanks again for your help.” Will closed his phone to end the call. He locked up the house and put the pill bottle in his Porsche.

  Lena was still on the phone, but she got off when she saw Will. “Honda belongs to a Darla Jackson. She’s on parole for kiting some checks two years ago. She’s already paid it off. The charge will roll off her sheet in January.”

  “Did you talk to her?”

  Lena glanced over his shoulder. “I think we’re about to get our chance.”

  He turned around. An elderly woman was making her way down the driveway of the house across the street. She leaned heavily on a walker with a wire basket on the front. Bright yellow tennis balls were stuck on the back legs. The front door to her house opened, and a woman dressed in a pink nurse’s uniform called, “Mrs. Barnes! You forgot your coat!”

  The old woman didn’t seem concerned, though she was wearing nothing more than a thin housedress and slippers. The wind was blowing so hard that the hem kicked up as she navigated the steep drive. Fortunately, the rubber soles of her terry cloth slippers kept her from sliding down the concrete.

  “Mrs. Barnes!” The nurse jogged down the driveway with the coat. She was a big girl with broad shoulders and ample cleavage. She was out of breath when she finally caught up to the old woman. She wrapped the coat around her shoulders, saying, “You’ll catch your death out here.”

  Lena approached the women. “Mrs. Barnes, this is Agent Trent from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.”

  Mrs. Barnes did everything but wrinkle her nose. “What do you want?”

  Will felt like he was back in third grade and being yelled at for various schoolboy atrocities. “I’d like to talk to you about Allison and Tommy, if you have a minute.”

  “It seems like you’ve already made up your mind about that.”

  Will glanced back at her mailbox, remembering the street number from one of the incident reports. “Someone from your house called the police about Tommy’s dog barking. Your name wasn’t on the report.”

  “That was me,” the nurse volunteered. “I look after Mrs. Barnes in the evenings. Usually I’m not here until seven, but she needed help with some chores and I didn’t have anything better to do.”

  Will hadn’t realized how late in the day it was. He checked his cell phone and saw it was almost three o’clock. Faith had a little over an hour left before she went to the hospital. He asked the nurse, “You’re here every night?”

  “Every night but Thursday, and I get the last Sunday of the month off.” Will had to slow down her words in his head to understand what she was saying. The woman had more of a twang than anyone Will had yet to meet in Grant County.

  Lena took out her pen and notebook. She asked the nurse, “Can you tell me your name?”

  “Darla Jackson.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a business card. Her fingernails were bright red press-ons that complemented her caked-on makeup. “I work out of the E-Med Building over on Highway 5.”

  Lena pointed to the ancient Accord parked in front of the house. She already knew the answer, but she asked, “Is that yours?”

  “Yes, ma’am. It ain’t much, but it’s paid for. I pay all my bills on time.” She gave them a meaningful look, and Will gathered that Mrs. Barnes didn’t know about the bad checks.

  Lena handed Will the card. He looked down at it for a few seconds before asking Darla, “Why did you call the police about Tommy?”

  She opened her mouth to answer, but Mrs. Barnes took over, directing her words toward Will. “That boy never did anybody any harm. He had the sweetest heart and the most gentle disposition.”

  Will put his hands in his pockets, feeling like the cold was going to snap his fingers in two. He needed to find out more about Tommy’s sudden mood change in case Faith was right about the drugs he’d found in the kid’s medicine cabinet. “The incident report says that Tommy was yelling at someone. I take it that was you, Ms. Jackson?” The nurse nodded, and Will wondered why Darla’s name hadn’t been listed in the report. It seemed odd that the cop hadn’t recorded it along with all the other details. “Can you tell me what happened?”

  “Well, first off, I didn’t know he was retarded,” she said, almost like an apology. “As a registered nurse, I try to be more compassionate with people of special needs, but that dog was just yapping its head off and Mrs. Barnes was trying to go to sleep—”

  “I have terrible insomnia,” the old woman interjected.

  “I guess I let my temper get the best of me. I went over there to tell him to quiet it down, and he told me he couldn’t and I said that I’d call the pound if he didn’t find a way and they’d make that dog real quiet. As in dead quiet.” She seemed embarrassed. “Next thing I know, I hear this loud noise. I look out the front window and it’s cracked. You can see I put some tape on it.” Will looked up at the house. The glass in the window had a crooked silver line of tape along the bottom. “That wasn’t in the report.”

  Mrs. Barnes took over. “Lucky for us it was Carl Phillips they sent. I taught him in the fifth grade.” She put her hand to her chest. “We all agreed it was best to handle this with Gordon when he got back from Florida.”

  Will asked the nurse, “You’re here every night. Does that include Sunday night and last night?”

  “Yes. I’ve been up with Mrs. Barnes for the last three days. Her new medication has been giving her an awful time with her insomnia.”

  “It’s true,” the woman agreed. “I can’t even get my eyes to close.”

  “Did you see anything happening over at the house? Cars coming and going? Did Tommy use his scooter for anything?”

  “The bedroom’s at the back of the house,” Darla explained. “We were both back there all night on account of it’s close to the toilet.”

  “Darla, please,” Mrs. Barnes warned. “There’s no need for them to hear about that.”

  Lena asked, “Did either of you know Allison Spooner? She lived across the street in Tommy’s house.”

  They both became more circumspect. Darla offered, “I saw her around.”

  “Did you see her boyfriend?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Did you know his name?”

  Darla shook her head. “He was in and out a lot. I heard them screaming sometimes. Arguing. Struck me as the type of boy with a temper.”

  In Will’s experience, teachers were pretty good at making accurate snap judgments of people. He asked, “What about you, Mrs. Barnes?”

  “I saw him once or twice” was all she offered.

  “Did you ever hear him fighting with Allison?”

  She touched her fingers to her ear. “I don’t hear very well.”

  Will thought she was being uncharacteristically polite, since she’d certainly heard the dog barking. Of course, not many people wanted to speak ill of the dead. He imagined Mrs. Barnes would’ve had plenty to say about Allison Spooner last week. “Have you seen her car in the driveway recently?”

  “Gordon asked her
to park it in the street because it was leaking oil,” Mrs. Barnes said. “I haven’t seen it there in a while. At least not this weekend.”

  “Me neither,” Darla confirmed.

  “What about the boyfriend’s car? Did you notice what he was driving?”

  Both women shook their heads. Again, Darla spoke. “I’m not good with those things. It was a station wagon. Green or blue. I know that’s not real helpful.”

  He asked, “Did Allison ever have any friends come around? Men or women?”

  Darla offered, “Just that boyfriend. He was a beady-eyed little thing.”

  Will felt a drop of rain hit the top of his head. “Did you ever talk to him?”

  “No, but I can spot a loser a mile away.” She gave a shockingly rough laugh. “I sure have dated plenty of ’em in my life.”

  “The point is,” Mrs. Barnes interjected, “Tommy did not hurt that girl.” She glared at Lena. “And you know that.”

  Lena said, “I do.”

  That shut her up. She glanced back at the nurse. “I think I should go now.”

  Will started, “Mrs. Barnes—”

  She cut him off. “My son is a lawyer. Any more questions you have for me should be directed to him. Come, Darla. It’s time for my show.”

  With that, she twisted the walker and began the slow climb back up her driveway. Darla shrugged an apology before she followed.

  Will said, “I don’t think I’ve ever had an elderly woman in a walker lawyer up to me before.”

  There was a buzzing in the air, like a bunch of cicadas decided to start singing at the same time. The rain didn’t fall so much as turn into a light mist. Will blinked, feeling beads of water forming on his eyelashes.

  Lena asked, “What now?”

  “I guess that’s up to you.” Will looked at his phone again to check the time. Charlie would be here soon. “You can go back to the college with me or you can go look for a lawyer.”

  She didn’t have to think about her answer. “My car or yours?”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  THEY’D BARELY LEFT TAYLOR DRIVE WHEN THE SKY OPENED UP. Visibility was short. Lena kept the speedometer just below thirty as she navigated the flooded streets. The cold was making her injured hand ache. She flexed her fingers, trying to get some blood circulating. There was definitely an infection. She felt hot and cold at the same time. A slow ache was building in the back of her head.