A Grant County Collection (56 page)

'Look at the picture,' she told him, glancing down at the nameplate on his desk. 'Mr Fitzgerald.'

'Albert,' he told her, taking the Polaroid from Jeffrey. He studied the image, his smile dropping a bit before he stretched it back out. 'This girl looks dead.'

'Good call,' Lena told him. 'Where are you going?'

Jeffrey had been watching Chip edge toward another door, but Lena had caught him first.

Chip stuttered, 'N-nowhere.'

'Keep it that way,' Jeffrey warned him. In the light of the office, the bartender was a scrawny guy, probably from a serious drug habit that kept him from eating too much. His hair was cut short over his ears and his face was clean shaven, but he still had the air of a derelict about him.

Albert said, 'Wanna lookit this, Chippie?' He held out the photo, but the bartender didn't take it. Something was going on with him, though. Chip's eyes kept darting from Lena to Jeffrey to the picture then the door. He was still edging toward the exit, his back pressed to the wall as if he could sneak away while they were watching.

'What's your name?' Jeffrey asked.

Albert answered for him. 'Donner, like the party. Mr Charles Donner.'

Chip kept sliding his feet across the floor. 'I ain't done nothing.'

'Stop right there,' Lena told him. She took a step toward him, and he bolted, swinging open the door. Lunging, she caught the back of his shirt, spinning him around straight into Jeffrey's path. Jeffrey's reaction was slow, but he managed to catch the young man before he fell flat on his face. He couldn't keep the kid from banging into the metal desk, though.

'Shit,' Chip cursed, holding his elbow.

'You're fine,' Jeffrey told him, scooping him up by his collar.

He bent over at the waist, clutching his elbow. 'Shit, that hurt.'

'Shut up,' Lena told him, picking up the Polaroid from the floor. 'Just look at it, you pud.'

'I don't know her,' he said, still rubbing his elbow, and Jeffrey wasn't sure whether or not he was lying.

Lena asked, 'Why'd you try to run?'

'I've got a record.'

'No shit,' Lena said. 'Why'd you try to run?' When he didn't answer her, she popped the back of his head.

'Christ, lady.' Chip rubbed his head, looking at Jeffrey, beseeching him for help. He was barely taller than Lena, and even though he had about ten pounds on her, she definitely had more muscle.

'Answer her question,' Jeffrey told him.

'I don't wanna go back inside.'

Jeffrey guessed, 'You've got a warrant out on you?'

'I'm on parole,' he said, still holding his arm.

'Look at the picture again,' Jeffrey told him.

His jaw tightened, but Chip was obviously used to doing what he was told. He looked down at the Polaroid. He showed no visible recognition on his face, but Jeffrey saw his Adam's apple bob as if he was trying to stop his emotions.

'You know her, don't you?'

Chip glanced back at Lena as if he was afraid she'd hit him again. 'If that's what you want me to say, yeah. Okay.'

'I want you to tell me the truth,' Jeffrey said, and when Chip looked up his pupils were as big as quarters. The guy was obviously high as a kite. 'You know she was pregnant, Chip?'

He blinked several times. 'I'm broke, man. I can barely feed myself.'

Lena said, 'We're not hitting you up for child support, you stupid fuck.'

The door opened and the girl from the stage stood there, taking in the situation. 'Y'all okay?' she asked.

Jeffrey had looked away when she opened the door, and Chip took advantage of the situation, sucker punching him square in the face.

'Chip!' the girl screamed as he pushed past her.

Jeffrey hit the floor so hard he literally saw an explosion of stars. The girl started screaming like a siren and she fought Lena tooth and nail, trying to keep her from chasing after Chip. Jeffrey blinked seeing double, then triple. He closed his eyes and didn't open them for what seemed like a long while.

Jeffrey was feeling better by the time Lena dropped him off at Sara's. The stripper, Patty O'Ryan, had scraped a line of skin off the back of Lena's hand, but that was all she had managed to do before Lena twisted the girl's arm behind her back and slammed her to the floor. She had been cuffing the stripper when Jeffrey finally managed to open his eyes.

'I'm sorry,' was the first thing Lena said, but it was somewhat drowned out by O'Ryan's brutal, 'Fuck you, you fucking pigs!'

Meanwhile, Charles Wesley Donner had gotten away, but his boss had been helpful, and, with a little prompting, gave them everything but Chip's underwear size. The twenty-four-year-old had been working at the Pink Kitty for just under a year. He drove a 1980 Chevy Nova and lived in a flophouse on Cromwell Road down in Avondale. Jeffrey had already called Donner's parole officer, who had been less than pleased to be awakened by a ringing phone in the middle of the night. She confirmed the address and Jeffrey had dispatched a cruiser to sit on it. An APB had gone out, but Donner had been in prison for six years on drug trafficking charges. He knew how to hide from the police.

Jeffrey eased open Sara's front door as gently as he could, trying not to wake her up. Chip wasn't strong, but he had landed his fist in the exact right place to bring Jeffrey down: under his left eye, just grazing the bridge of his nose. Jeffrey knew from experience the bruising would only get worse, and the swelling already made it hard to breathe. As usual, his nose had bled profusely, making it look a hell of a lot worse than it was. He had always bled like a faucet whenever he was hit on the bridge of his nose.

He turned on the under-counter lights in the kitchen, holding his breath, waiting for Sara to call out to him. When she didn't, he pried open the refrigerator and took out a bag of frozen peas. As quietly as he could, he broke up the freezer burn, separating the peas with his fingers. He clamped his teeth together and hissed out some air as he pressed the bag against his face, wondering again why it never hurt as much when you got injured as it did when you tried to fix it.

'Jeff?'

He jumped, dropping the peas.

Sara turned on the lights, the fluorescent tubes flickering above them. His head seemed to explode with it, a dull throbbing matching the flicker.

She frowned, taking in the shiner under his eye. 'Where'd you get that?'

Jeffrey bent over to pick up the peas, all the blood rushing to his head. 'The gettin' place.'

'You have blood all over you.' It sounded more like an accusation.

He looked down at his shirt, which was a lot easier to see in the bright lights of her kitchen than in the bathroom at the Pink Kitty.

'It's your blood?' she asked.

He shrugged, knowing where she was going with the question. She seemed to care more about the possibility of a stranger getting hepatitis from him than the fact that some stupid punk had nearly broken his nose.

He asked, 'Where's the aspirin?'

'All I have is Tylenol, and you shouldn't take that until you know the results from your blood test.'

'I've got a headache.'

'You shouldn't be drinking, either.'

The remark only served to annoy him. Jeffrey wasn't his father. He could certainly hold his liquor and one sip of a watered-down beer didn't qualify as drinking.

'Jeff.'

'Just drop it, Sara.'

She crossed her arms like an angry schoolteacher. 'Why aren't you taking this seriously?'

The words came out before he anticipated the shitstorm they would kick up. 'Why are you treating me like a fucking leper?'

'You could be carrying a dangerous disease. Do you know what that means?'

'Of course I know what it means,' he insisted, his body feeling slack all of the sudden, like he couldn't take one more thing. How many times had they done this? How many arguments had they had in this same kitchen, both of them pushed to the edge? Jeffrey was always the one who brought them back, always the one to apologize, to make things better. He had been doing this all his life, from smoothing down his mother's drunken tempers to stepping in front of his father's fists. As a cop, he put himself in people's business every day, absorbing their pain and their rage, their apprehension and fear. He couldn't keep doing it. There had to be a time in his life when he got some peace.

Sara kept lecturing him. 'You have to be cautious until we get the results from the lab.'

'This is just another excuse, Sara.'

'An excuse for what?'

'To push me away,' he told her, his voice rising. He knew he should take a step back and calm down, but he was unable to see past this moment. 'It's just another thing you're using to keep me at arm's length.'

'I can't believe you really think that.'

'What if I have it?' he asked. Again, he said the first thing that came to his mind. 'Are you never going to touch me again? Is that what you're trying to tell me?'

'We don't know –'

'My blood, my saliva. Everything will be contaminated.' He could hear himself yelling and didn't care.

'There are ways around –'

'Don't think I haven't noticed you pulling away.'

'Pulling away?'

He gave a humorless laugh, so damn tired of this he didn't even have the energy to raise his voice again. 'You won't even fucking tell me you love me. How do you think that makes me feel? How many times do I have to keep walking out on that tightrope before you let me come back in?'

She wrapped her arms around her waist.

'I know, Sara. And it's not that many more times.' He looked out the window over the sink, his reflection staring back at him.

At least a full minute passed before she spoke. 'Is that really how you feel?'

'It's how I feel,' he told her, and he knew it was true. 'I can't keep spending all my time wondering whether or not you're mad at me. I need to know . . .' he tried to finish, but found he didn't have the energy. What was the point?

It took some time, but her reflection joined his in the window. 'You need to know what?'

'I need to know you're not going to leave me.'

She turned on the faucet and took a paper towel off the roll. She said, 'Take off your shirt.'

'What?'

She wet the towel. 'You've got blood on your neck.'

'You want me to get you some gloves?'

She ignored the barb, lifting his shirt over his head, taking particular care not to bump his nose.

'I don't need your help,' he told her.

'I know.' She rubbed his neck with the paper towel, scrubbing at the dried blood. He looked at the top of her head as she cleaned him. Blood had dried in a trail down to his sternum, and she wiped this up before tossing the towel into the trash can.

She picked up the bottle of lotion she always kept by the sink and pumped some into the palm of her hand. 'Your skin's dry.'

Her hands were cold when she touched him and he made a noise that sounded like a yelp.

'Sorry,' she apologized, rubbing together her hands to warm them. She tentatively placed her fingers on his chest. 'Okay?'

He nodded, feeling better and wishing that she wasn't the reason why. It was the same old back and forth, and he was letting himself get pulled back in.

She continued to rub in the lotion in small circles, working her way out. She softened her touch, lingering around the pink scar on his shoulder. The wound had not completely healed yet, and he felt little electric tingles in the damaged skin.

'I didn't think you would make it,' she said, and he knew she was thinking back to the day he had been shot. 'I put my hands inside of you, but I didn't know if I could stop the bleeding.'

'You saved my life.'

'I could have lost you.'

She kissed the scar, murmuring something he couldn't hear. She kept kissing him, her eyes closing. He felt his own eyes close as she kissed a slow pattern across his chest. After a while, she started to work her way down, unzipping his jeans. Jeffrey leaned back against the sink as she knelt in front of him. Her tongue was warm and firm as it traced the length of him, and he braced his hands on the countertop to keep his knees from buckling.

His whole body shook from wanting her, but he forced himself to put his hands on her shoulders and pull her back to standing. 'No,' he told her, thinking he'd rather die than risk giving her some awful disease. 'No,' he repeated, even though he wanted nothing more than to bury himself inside her.

She reached down, using her hand where her mouth had been. Jeffrey gasped as she cupped him with her other hand. He tried to hold back, but looking at her face only made it harder. Her eyes were barely open, a rush of red pinking her cheeks. She kept her mouth inches from his, teasing him with the promise of a kiss. He could feel her breath as she spoke, but again could not hear what she was saying. She started kissing him in earnest, her tongue so soft and gentle he could barely breathe. Her hands worked in tandem, and he nearly lost his restraint when she took his bottom lip between her teeth.

'Sara,' he moaned.

She kissed his face, his neck, his mouth, and he finally heard what she was saying. 'I love you,' she whispered, stroking him until he could no longer hold back. 'I love you.'

Lena heard Jeffrey yelling through his closed office door as soon as she walked into the squad room. She lingered near the coffee machine by his office, but couldn't make anything out.

Frank joined her, holding out his mug for a top-up even though it was already full.

She asked, 'What's going on?'

'Marty Lam,' Frank said, shrugging. 'Was he supposed to be sitting on that house last night?'

'For Chip Donner?' Lena asked. Jeffrey had ordered a cruiser to wait outside Donner's house in case he showed up. 'Yeah. Why?'

'Chief drove by on his way in this morning and nobody was there.'

They both paused, trying to make out Jeffrey's words as his tone rose.

Frank said, 'Chief is pretty pissed.'

'You think?' Lena asked, her sarcasm thicker than the coffee.

'Watch it,' Frank said. He had always thought that the almost thirty years he had on her should afford him some kind of deference.

Lena changed the subject. 'You get that credit report back on the family?'

'Yeah,' he said. 'From what I could tell, the farm's running in the black.'

'By a lot?'

'Not much,' he said. 'I'm trying to get a copy of their tax returns. It's not gonna be easy. The farm's privately held.'

Lena stifled a yawn. She had slept about ten seconds last night. 'What'd the shelters say about them?'

'That we should all thank God every day there are people like that on the planet,' Frank said, but he didn't look ready to bow his head.

Jeffrey's door banged open, and Marty Lam walked out like an inmate doing the death row shuffle. He had his hat in his hands and his eyes on the floor.

'Frank,' Jeffrey said, walking over. She could tell he was still angry, and could only imagine the reaming he had given Marty. The fact that he had a bruise under his eye the color of a ripe pomegranate probably hadn't done much to improve his disposition.

He asked Frank, 'Did you get in touch with that jewelry supply company?'

'Got the list of customers who bought cyanide right here,' Frank said, taking a sheet of paper out of his pocket. 'They sold the salts to two stores up in Macon, one down along Seventy-Five. There's a metal plater over in Augusta, too. Took three bottles so far this year.'

'I know it's a pain in the ass, but I want you to check them out personally. See if there's any Jesus stuff around that might connect them to the church or to Abby. I'm going to talk to the family later on today and try to find out if she ever left town on her own.' He told Lena, 'We didn't get prints on the bottle of cyanide from Dale Stanley's.'

'None?' she asked.

'Dale always used gloves when he handled it,' Jeffrey said. 'Could be that's the reason.'

'Could be someone wiped it down.'

He told her, 'I want you to go talk to O'Ryan. Buddy Conford called a few minutes ago. He's representing her.'

She felt her nose wrinkle at the lawyer's name. 'Who hired him?'

'Fuck if I know.'

Lena asked, 'He doesn't mind if we talk to her?'

Jeffrey was obviously not interested in being questioned. 'Did I get it backward just then? You're my boss now?' He didn't let her answer. 'Just get her in the fucking room before he shows up.'

'Yes, sir,' Lena said, knowing better than to push him. Frank raised his eyebrows as Lena left and she shrugged, not knowing what to say. There was no deciphering Jeffrey's mood over the last few days.

She pushed open the fire door to the back part of the station. Marty Lam was at the water fountain, not drinking, and she nodded at him as she passed by. He looked like a deer caught in the headlights. She knew the feeling.

Lena punched the code into the lockbox outside the holding cells and took out the keys. Patty O'Ryan was curled up on her bunk, her knees almost touching her chin. Even though she was still dressed, or rather half-dressed, in her stripper's outfit from last night, she looked about twelve when she slept, an innocent tossed around by a cruel world.

'O'Ryan!' Lena yelled, shaking the locked cell door. Metal banged against metal, and the girl was so startled she fell onto the floor.

'Rise and shine,' Lena sang.

'Shut up, you stupid bitch,' O'Ryan barked back, no longer looking twelve or innocent. She put her hands to her ears as Lena shook the door again for good measure. The girl was obviously hungover, the question was from what.

'Get up,' Lena told her. 'Turn around, put your hands behind your back.'

She knew the drill, and barely flinched when Lena put the cuffs around her wrists. They were so thin and bony that Lena had to ratchet the locking teeth to the last notch. Girls like O'Ryan rarely ended up murdered. They were survivors. People like Abigail Bennett were the ones who needed to be looking over their shoulders.

Lena opened the cell door, taking the girl by the arm as she led her down the hall. This close to her, Lena could smell the sweat and chemicals pouring out of her body. Her mousy brown hair hadn't been washed in a while, and it hung in chunks down to her waist. As she moved, the hair shifted, and Lena saw a puncture mark on the inside of the girl's left elbow.

'You like meth?' Lena guessed. Like most small towns all over America, Grant had seen a thousandfold increase in meth trafficking over the last five years.

'I know my rights,' she hissed. 'You don't have any call to keep me here.'

'Obstructing justice, attacking an officer, resisting arrest,' Lena listed. 'You want to pee in a cup for me? I'm sure we can come up with something else.'

'Piss on you,' she said, spitting on the floor.

'You're a real lady, O'Ryan.'

'And you're a real cunt, you cocksucking bitch.'

'Woops,' Lena said, jerking the girl back by the arm so that she stumbled. O'Ryan gave a rewarding screech of pain. 'In here,' Lena ordered, pushing the girl into an interrogation room.

'Bitch,' O'Ryan hissed as Lena forced her down into the most uncomfortable chair in the police station.

'Don't try anything,' Lena warned, unlocking one of the cuffs and looping it through the ring Jeffrey had welded to the table. The table was bolted to the floor, which had proven to be a good idea on more than one occasion.

'You got no right to keep me here,' O'Ryan said. 'Chip didn't do nothing.'

'Then why'd he run?'

'Because he knows you fuckers were gonna bang him up no matter what.'

'How old are you?' Lena asked, sitting down across from her.

She tilted her chin up in defiance, saying, 'Twenty-one,' pretty much assuring Lena she was underage.

Lena told her, 'You're not helping yourself here.'

'I want a lawyer.'

'You've got one on the way.'

This took her by surprise. 'Who?'

'Don't you know?'

'Fuck,' she spat, her expression turning into a little girl's again.

'What's wrong?'

'I don't want a lawyer.'

Lena sighed. There was nothing wrong with this girl that a good slapping wouldn't fix. 'Why is that?'

'I just don't,' she said. 'Take me to jail. Charge me. Do whatever you want to do.' She licked her lips coyly, giving Lena a once-over. 'There something else you want to do?'

'Don't flatter yourself.'

When the sexual offer didn't work, she turned back into the frightened little girl. Crocodile tears dribbled down her cheeks. 'Just process me. I don't have anything to say.'

'We've got some questions.'

'Go fuck yourself with your questions,' she said. 'I know my rights. I don't have to say jack shit to you and you can't make me.' Minus the expletives, she sounded very much like Albert, the owner of the Pink Kitty, when Jeffrey had asked him to come down to the station last night. Lena hated when people knew their rights. It made her job a hell of a lot harder.

Lena leaned across the table, saying, 'Patty, you're not helping yourself.'

'Fuck you with your helping myself. I can help myself fine just shutting the fuck up.'

Spittle dotted the table, and Lena sat back, wondering what events had brought Patty O'Ryan to this kind of life. At some point, she had been someone's daughter, someone's friend. Now, she was like a leech, looking out for no one but herself.

Lena said, 'Patty, you're not going anywhere. I can sit here all day.'

'You can sit on a big fat cock up your ass, you cocksucking bitch.'

There was a knock on the door and Jeffrey walked in, Buddy Conford behind him.

O'Ryan did an instant one eighty, bursting into tears like a lost child, wailing at Buddy, 'Daddy, please get me out of here! I swear I didn't do anything!'

Sitting in Jeffrey's office, Lena braced her foot against the bottom panel of his desk, leaning back in her chair. Buddy looked at her leg, and she didn't know if it was with interest or envy. As a teenager, a car accident had taken his right leg from the knee down. Buddy's left eye had been lost to cancer a few years later and more recently, an angry client had shot him point-blank range over the matter of a bill. Buddy had lost a kidney from that fiasco, but he still managed to get the charge of attempted murder against his client reduced to simple assault. When he said he was a defendant's advocate, he wasn't lying.

Buddy asked, 'That boyfriend of yours staying out of trouble?'

'Let's not talk about it,' Lena said, regretting yet again that she had involved Buddy Conford in Ethan's troubles. The problem was, when you were on the other side of the table and you needed a lawyer, you wanted the wiliest, most crooked one out there. It was the old proverb of lying down with dogs and waking up with fleas. Lena was still itching from it.

'You taking care of yourself?' Buddy pressed.

Lena turned around, trying to see what was keeping Jeffrey. He was talking to Frank, a sheet of paper in his hand. He patted Frank on the shoulder, then walked toward the office.

'Sorry,' Jeffrey said. He shook his head once at Lena, indicating nothing had broken. He sat behind his desk, turning the paper facedown on the blotter.

'Nice shiner,' Buddy said, indicating Jeffrey's eye.

Jeffrey obviously wasn't up for small talk. 'Didn't know you had a daughter, Buddy.'

'Stepdaughter,' he corrected, looking as if he regretted having to admit it. 'I married her mama last year. We've been dating off and on for pretty much the last ten years. She's just a handful of trouble.'

'The mama or the daughter?' Jeffrey asked, and they shared one of their white-man chuckles.

Buddy sighed, gripping either side of the chair with his hands. He was wearing his prosthetic leg today, but he still had a cane. For some reason, the cane reminded Lena of Greg Mitchell. Despite her best intentions, she had found herself looking out for her old boyfriend this morning as she drove into work, hoping he was out for a walk. Not that she knew what she'd say to him.

'Patty's got a drug problem,' Buddy told them. 'We've had her in and out of treatment.'

'Where's her father?'

Buddy held his hands out in a wide shrug. 'Got me.'

Lena asked, 'Meth?'

'What else?' he said, dropping his hands. Buddy made a fine living from methamphetamine – not directly, but through representing clients who had been charged with trafficking in it.

He said, 'She's seventeen years old. Her mama thinks she's been doing it for a while now. This shooting up is recent. I can't do anything to stop her.'

'It's a hard drug to quit,' Jeffrey allowed.

'Almost impossible,' Buddy agreed. He should know. More than half of his clients were repeat offenders. 'We finally had to kick her out of the house,' he continued. 'This was about six months back. She wasn't doing anything but staying out late, stumbling in high and sleeping till three in the afternoon. When she managed to wake up, it was mostly to curse her mama, curse me, curse the world – you know how it is, everybody's an asshole but you. She's got a mouth on her, too, some kind of voluntary Tourette's. What a mess.' He tapped his leg with his fingers, a hollow, popping sound filling the room. 'You do what you can to help people, but there's only so far you can go.'

'Where'd she go when she moved out?'

'Mostly she crashed with friends – girlfriends, though I imagine she was entertaining some boys for pocket change. When she wore out her welcome, she started working at the Kitty.' He stopped tapping. 'Believe it or not, I thought that'd finally be the thing to straighten her out.'

'How's that?' Lena asked.

'Only time you help yourself is when you hit rock bottom.' He gave her a meaningful look that made her want to slap him. 'I can't think of anything more rock bottom than taking off your clothes for a bunch of seedy-ass rednecks at the Pink Kitty.'

Jeffrey asked, 'She didn't happen to get mixed up with the farm over in Catoogah, did she?'

'Those Jesus freaks?' Buddy laughed. 'I don't think they'd have her.'

'But do you know?'

'You can ask her, but I doubt it. She's not exactly the religious type. If she goes anywhere, it's looking to score, seeing how she can work the system. They may be a bunch of Bible-thumping lunatics, but they're not stupid. They'd see right through her in a New York minute. She knows her audience. She wouldn't waste her time.'

'You know this guy Chip Donner?'

'Yeah, I represented him a couple of times as a favor to Patty.'

'He's not on my files,' Jeffrey said, meaning Chip had never been busted by Grant County police.

'No, this was over in Catoogah.' Buddy shifted in his seat. 'He's not a bad guy, I have to say. Local boy, never been more than fifty miles from home. He's just stupid. Most of 'em are just stupid. Mix that with boredom and –'

'What about Abigail Bennett?' Jeffrey interrupted.

'Never heard of her. She work at the club?'

'She's the girl we found buried in the woods.'

Buddy shuddered, like someone had walked over his grave. 'Jesus, that's a horrible way to die. My daddy used to scare us when we'd go visit his mama at the cemetery. There was this preacher buried two plots over with a wire coming out of the dirt and going up to a telephone pole. Daddy told us they had a phone inside the coffin so he could call them in case he wasn't really dead.' He chuckled. 'One time, my mama brought a bell, one'a them bicycle bells, and we were all just standing around Granny's plot, trying to look solemn. She rang that bell and I liked to shit in my pants.'