Will asked, “You still think our murderer is a nineteen-year-old boy who lives with his father?”
The wind whipped off the lake as Lena stared at the tree. Tears came into her eyes. Her voice shook. “He confessed.”
Will quoted Tommy’s words back to her. “ ‘I got mad. I had a knife on me. I stabbed her once in the neck.’ ” He asked, “Did you find blood in the garage?”
“Yes.” She wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand. “He was cleaning it up when we got there. I saw a bucket, and there was …” Her voice trailed off. “There was blood on the floor. I saw it.”
Will rolled down the legs of his jeans. His shoes were sinking into the mud at the base of the tree. He saw there was a new color mixed in with the soil, a deep rust that soaked into the mesh on the toe of his sneaker.
Lena saw it, too. She fell to her knees. She stuck her fingers deep into the ground and grabbed a fistful of earth. The soil was soaked, but not just with rainwater. She let the dirt fall back to the ground. Her hand was dark red, streaked with Allison Spooner’s blood.
CHAPTER TEN
Lena pressed a wet paper towel to her neck. She was sitting with her back against the stall of the locker room toilet. A patrolman had tried to come in while she was dry-heaving. He’d left without saying a word.
She’d never had a strong stomach. Her uncle Hank used to say that Lena didn’t have the guts for the kind of life she was living. He wouldn’t have taken any pleasure in seeing that he was right.
“Oh, God,” she whispered, as close to a prayer as she’d come in a long while. What had that stupid kid gotten himself into? What else had she missed?
She closed her eyes. Nothing made sense right now. Nothing was fitting together the same way it had yesterday morning.
He did it. Lena knew Tommy had killed Allison. People didn’t confess to murder unless they were guilty. Even without that, less than fifteen minutes after they pulled the girl out of the lake, they had found Tommy in Allison’s apartment going through her things. Wearing a black ski mask. He ran when they confronted him. He stabbed Brad, even if it was with a letter opener. Lena had seen him stab Brad with her own eyes. She had listened to Tommy’s confession. She had watched him write down everything in his own stupid words. And he had killed himself. The guilt had gotten to him and he had sliced open his wrists because he knew what he had done to Allison was wrong.
So why was Lena doubting herself?
Suspects lied all the time. They never wanted to confess to all the horrors they’d committed. They split hairs. They admitted to rape but not murder. They admitted to punching but not beating, stabbing but not killing. Was it as simple as that? Had Tommy lied about killing Allison in the garage because he’d wanted to make the crime seem more understandable, more spur of the moment?
Lena pressed her head against the wall.
That stupid profile Will Trent came up with kept coming back to her. Cold. Calculated. Deliberate. That wasn’t Tommy. He wasn’t smart enough to think of all the variables. He would’ve had to plan ahead, get the cinder blocks and chains ready, carry them out to the lake ahead of time. Even if Tommy got the blocks after the fact, he would’ve had to anticipate the blood, and plan on the rain covering his tracks.
All that blood. The ground was soaked in it.
Lena scrambled to her knees and held her head over the toilet. Her stomach clenched, but nothing was left to come up. She sat back on her heels, staring at the back of the tank. The cool white porcelain stared back. This was her stall, and only her stall. This toilet was the one piece of ground she had managed to stake out solely for herself in the unisex locker room. The urinals were stained like old-lady teeth. The other two stalls were disgusting. They reeked of excrement no matter how many times they were cleaned. This morning, it didn’t seem to stop there. The whole place reeked of shit. And it was all coming from the top down.
Lena wiped her mouth with the paper towel. Her hand was throbbing where she’d been shot. She was probably getting an infection. The skin felt hot down to her wrist. She squeezed her eyes shut. She wanted to be away from here. She wanted to be back in bed with Jared. She wanted to go back to yesterday and shake Tommy Braham until he told her the truth about what really happened. Why was he in Allison’s apartment? Why was he going through her things? Why was he wearing the ski mask? Why did he run? And why, in God’s name, did he kill himself?
“Lena?” Marla Simms’s creaky voice was just above a whisper. “Can I have a minute?”
Lena pressed herself up to standing. It was not lost on her that the only spot she could call her own in this entire godforsaken place was the toilet.
Marla stood with a folded sheet of paper in her hands. “You all right?”
“No,” she said, because there was no use lying. She need only glance in the mirror to see the truth. Her hair was disheveled. Her face was red and blotchy. She was punch-drunk with lack of sleep and her nerves were so raw that she felt like she was vibrating even standing dead still.
“Agent Trent wanted this.” Marla held out the sheet of paper between her fingers, giving Lena a meaningful look, as if they were two spies passing a briefcase in front of the Kremlin. “He didn’t see it last night.”
Lena had to tug the sheet before Marla would release it. She recognized her own handwriting. The copied page was from her notebook. The transcript she had made of the 911 call. She tried to pick out the words but her eyes blurred. “I thought he asked for the tape?”
“If he wants more than this, then he’s going to have to drive down to Eaton to get it.” She tucked her hands into her wide hips. “And you can tell him from me that I’m not his personal secretary. I don’t know who he thinks he is, ordering people around.”
He was the man who was going to shut down this force if they didn’t do everything he said. “Have you talked to Frank this morning?”
“I’m guessing he came by last night. My files were a mess when I got here.”
Lena already knew Frank had stolen Tommy’s phone and taken the photograph from Allison’s wallet, but this new information sent a chill straight to her chest. “Which files?”
“All of them. I don’t know what he was looking for, but I hope he found it.”
“You gave Trent those incident reports.”
“What of it?”
“Why?”
“No one wants to speak ill of the dead, but I’ll come on out and say it to whoever asks. Tommy wasn’t acting right lately. He was getting into trouble, yelling at people, threatening them. Don’t get me wrong. He was a good boy when he was little. Had those precious little blond curls and pretty blue eyes. That’s what Sara’s remembering. But she doesn’t know what he was like lately. I think something just clicked in his head. Maybe it was there all along and we just didn’t notice. Didn’t want to notice.” Marla shook her head in a tight half-circle. “This is just a mess. A grade-A, certified pile of doo.”
Lena focused on Marla for the first time. The old woman wasn’t one of her biggest fans. At best, she managed a nod for Lena when she walked through the door in the morning. Most times, she never bothered to look up from her desk. “Why are you talking to me? You never talk to me.”
Marla bristled. “Excuse me for trying to help.” She turned on her heel and stomped out.
Lena watched the door slowly close on its hinges. The room felt small, claustrophobic. She couldn’t stay here all day, but her instinct to hide from Will Trent was hard to overcome. Larry Knox had told Frank that Will was a suit, not a cop. Lena’s first impression had been the same. With his cashmere sweater and metrosexual haircut, Will looked like he’d be more at home behind a desk, clocking out at five and going home to the wife and kids. The old Lena would have dismissed him as a fraud, not on her level and not deserving of the badge.
That old Lena had been burned so many times by her snap judgments that she’d practically self-immolated. Now, she could look past her knee-jerk reaction and see the truth. Will had be
en sent down by a deputy director who was a heartbeat away from the top job. Lena had met Amanda Wagner many years ago. She was a tough old bitch. There was no way Amanda would’ve sent her second string down here, especially at the request of Sara Linton. Will was probably one of the best investigators on her team. He had to be. In less than two hours, he had shattered Lena’s case against Tommy Braham into tiny pieces.
And now she had to go back out there and face him again.
Lena’s feet still ached from the long trek through the forest. Her shoes were soaking wet. She went to her locker. The combination left her mind as soon as she turned the dial. She pressed her forehead against the cool metal. Why was she still here? She couldn’t keep this up with Will Trent. There were so many lies and half-truths dangling out there that she couldn’t remember them all. He kept laying traps, and with each one, she felt herself getting closer and closer to falling in. She should go home before she said too much. If Trent wanted to stop her, he would have to do it with handcuffs.
The combination came into her head. Lena spun the dial, opening the locker. She looked at her rain jacket, her toiletries, the various crap she’d collected over the years. There was nothing here she wanted except the extra pair of sneakers she kept in the bottom. She started to close the locker but stopped at the last minute. Inside a box of tampons was a picture of Jared that had been taken three years ago. He was standing outside Sanford Stadium at the University of Georgia. The place was packed. Georgia was playing LSU. There was a crowd of students around him, but he was the only one looking back at the camera. Looking back at Lena.
This picture was the moment that she had fallen in love with him—outside that noisy stadium, surrounded by drunken strangers. Lena had actually managed to capture on film that exact moment when everything in her life had changed. Who would be around to capture it when it all changed back?
Probably the booking officer who took her mugshot.
The door popped open. Four patrolmen came in, so lost in conversation that they barely acknowledged Lena. She tucked Jared’s picture into her back pocket. Her socks were soaking wet, but she slid on her spare sneakers anyway. She just wanted to get out of here. She would walk through the squad room, right past Will Trent, get into her car and go home to Jared.
Lena would start packing tonight. She’d be one of those people who left her house key in the mailbox for the bank. Her car was in good shape. She had enough in savings to last her three months, four if Jared didn’t expect her to help out with rent. She would move in with him and try to get over this, try to find a way to live her life without being a cop.
If she wasn’t in jail for obstructing an investigation. If she wasn’t convicted of negligence. If Gordon Braham didn’t sue her into the ground. If Frank didn’t fill Jared’s ear with poison. Poison Jared would believe, because the great thing about lying was people believed it so long as the lie was close enough to the truth.
Lena slammed the locker closed, pressing her hand against the cool metal.
One of the patrolmen said, “You let that GBI asshole slip and hit his head, we’re not going to shed any tears.”
They were all suiting up, pulling on their heavy rain gear. Will had taken photographs and samples from the bark and soil by the tree, but he had ordered a full-scale search of the woods. He wanted more photographs, drawings, diagrams. He wanted to make sure the force knew that they had made a mistake. That Lena had made a mistake.
“Fucking retard,” another cop said.
Lena didn’t know if he meant Will or Tommy. Either way, she managed some false bravado. “Wish he was a little smarter so he knew how stupid he was.”
They were all laughing when she left the locker room. Lena pulled on her jacket. She walked through the squad room with more swagger than she felt. She had to get her composure back. She had to steel herself against the next barrage of questions from Will Trent. The fewer answers she gave him, the better off she would be.
The paper Marla had given her was in her hand. Lena skimmed the words as she walked so she wouldn’t have to talk to anybody. She stopped as she reached the front door. She read the transcript again. The words were in her handwriting, but the last few lines from the call were missing. The caller had mentioned that Allison had gotten into a fight with her boyfriend. Why was that part taken out?
She glanced at Marla behind the front desk. Marla stared back, one eyebrow raised above her glasses. She was either still pissed or sending Lena a message. It was hard to tell. Lena looked at the transcript again. The last part was gone, the cut clean so that you would never know it was missing. Had Marla taken a shot at tampering with police evidence? Frank had gone through her files last night. Why would he edit the transcript without telling Lena? Christ, she had her notebook in her back pocket with the original transcript. All Trent had to do was ask her to see it and Lena would be looking at an obstruction charge for tampering with evidence.
The front door opened before Lena could reach it. Will Trent had obviously grown impatient waiting outside.
“Detective,” he said by way of greeting. He’d changed back into his dress shoes and shed Carl Phillips’s jacket. He looked as eager as she was reticent.
Lena handed him the paper. “Marla told me to give you this. She said you’d have to track down the audio from Eaton yourself.”
Will called to Marla at the desk. “Thank you, Mrs. Simms.” He took the paper from Lena’s hand. His eyes scanned back and forth. “You heard the call, right?” He looked up. “You made the transcript from the audio?”
“They dictated it to me from the screen. The audiotapes are stored off-site. They’re not hard to get.” Lena held her breath, praying that he would not ask her to track them down.
“Any idea who made the call?”
She shook her head. “It was a woman’s voice. The number was blocked and she wouldn’t leave her details.”
“Did you make this copy for me?”
“No. Marla handed it to me.”
He pointed at a black dot on the page. “You’ve got some gum on the glass in your copier.”
Lena wondered why the hell he was telling her this. Will Trent was like no cop she had ever seen. He had a habit of skirting around the real questions, making random comments or observations that seemed to lead nowhere until suddenly it was too late and she felt the noose tighten around her neck. He was playing chess and she was sucking at checkers.
Lena tried her own diversion. “We should get out to the crime scene if you want to be back in time for the autopsies.”
“Weren’t we just at the crime scene?”
“We don’t know for a fact what happened. Tommy could’ve lied. That happens in Atlanta, right? Bad guys lie to the cops?”
“More often than I’d like.” He slipped the transcript into his briefcase. “What time are the procedures supposed to start?”
“Frank said eleven-thirty.”
“This was when you talked to him last night?”
Lena tried to remember the answer she had given Will the first time he’d asked this question. She had talked to Frank twice. Both times he had drilled her on Tommy’s confession. Both times he had renewed his threat to tear down her life if she didn’t cover his drunk ass.
Lena cast out a nonanswer, hoping Will would bite. “It’s like I told you before.”
He held open the front door for her. “Any idea why the press isn’t all over this?”
“The press?” She would have laughed if she hadn’t been standing up to her knees in shit. “The paper’s closed for the holiday. Thomas Ross always goes skiing this time of year.”
Will laughed good-naturedly. “You gotta love small towns.” A cold wind made him have to put his shoulder into closing the glass door. He tucked his hands into his jeans pockets. The cuffs of his pants were still wet. “Let’s take your car.”
She felt uncomfortable having him in her Celica, so she nodded toward Frank’s Town Car. Lena pulled her key chain from her pocket.
The county was on a tight budget and they both were supposed to share the car.
She pressed the button to unlock the doors.
Will didn’t get in. Instead, he scowled at the smell that wafted through the morning air. “Smoker?”
“Frank,” she said. The stink was worse than usual. He must have chain-smoked the whole trip to and from Macon last night.
Will asked, “This is Chief Wallace’s car?”
She nodded.
“Where’s Chief Wallace if this is his car?”
Lena managed to swallow the bile in her throat. “He took a cruiser to the hospital.”
Will didn’t comment, though she wondered if he’d made a mark in his book. Frank had taken the cruiser so he wouldn’t get stopped along the way. Speeding during a nonemergency situation was illegal, but it was the sort of illegal cops danced around all the time.
Will asked, “Can you drive a stick?”
It was her turn to scowl. Of course she could drive a stick.
Will said, “Let’s take my car.”
“Are you kidding me?” Lena had heard about the Porsche before she’d made it to the station this morning. The whole town was talking about it—what it must’ve cost, why a state investigator would be driving it, and, more important, that it was parked in front of the Linton house all night.
Will didn’t wait to see if she followed as he walked toward the opposite end of the lot. He talked as he made his way to the car, his leather briefcase swinging gently at his side. “I’m curious about Allison Spooner. You said she’s from Alabama?”
“Yes.”
“And she’s a student at Grant Tech?”
Lena was careful with her answer. “She’s registered at the school.”
Will turned to her. “So, that means she’s a student?”
“It means she’s registered. We haven’t talked to her teachers yet. We don’t know if she was actively attending classes. We get a lot of calls from parents this time of year wondering why they’re not getting report cards.”
The Will Trent Series 7-Book Bundle Page 146
