Authors: Karin Slaughter
“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 pretty.”
“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.”
L
ENA 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.
Why? Lena was the last person on earth the woman should trust with her boy.
She got some tissue out of the box and wet the edge in the cup of water by the bed. Brad was on a ventilator, and some dried saliva was caked around his mouth. His lung had collapsed. His liver was
damaged. There was lots of internal bleeding. They were worried about infection. They were worried he would not make it through the night.
She wiped his chin, surprised to feel stubble. Lena had always thought of Brad as a kid, but the hair on his face, the size of his hand that she held in hers, reminded her that he was a grown man. He knew the risks that came with being a cop. Brad had been on the scene when Jeffrey died, the first responding officer. He never talked about it, but Brad was different after that day. More grown up. The chief’s death was a grim reminder that none of them was impervious to the bad guys they arrested.
Her phone vibrated again. Lena took it out of her pocket and scrolled through the numbers. She had called her uncle Hank in Florida to let him know she was okay in case he saw something on the news. Jared had called her as she was putting Tommy Braham in the back of the car. He was a cop. He’d heard about the stabbing on his radio. She had told him two words, “I’m okay,” then hung up before she started crying.
All of the other incoming calls on her phone were from Frank. He had been trying to reach her for the last five hours. She hadn’t seen him since he took off with Brad in the helicopter that had landed in the middle of the street. The look in his rheumy eyes had told a story she hadn’t wanted to hear. And now he was worried that she was going to tell everyone what she knew.
He
should
be worried.
Her phone rang again as she held it in her hand, but Lena pressed the button until the device powered down. She didn’t want to talk to Frank, didn’t want to hear any more of his excuses. He knew what had gone wrong today. He knew that Brad’s blood was on his hands just as much as it was on Lena’s—maybe more so.
She should just quit. Her resignation letter was in her jacket pocket, had been for weeks. She had gotten Tommy’s confession in record time. Let someone else get the details from him. Let another cop stare at Tommy Braham’s slack-jawed face for another two hours
trying to figure out what was going on in that tiny little brain of his. They could not fault Lena for her work. Jeffrey’s ghost could not hold her here after what had happened today.