Cop Town

by Karin Slaughter

  Jimmy said, “My dad painted over it.”

  “You’re supposed to.” Kate felt the heat of their scrutiny. “I’ll just be quiet.”

  “My favorite words from a woman.” Jimmy limped around the table. He was wearing black pants and a white button-down shirt. The sleeves were rolled up. The open collar had shorter points than was the fashion. Kate had never met a gay man who wasn’t a stylish dresser. She wondered if Philip was being truthful. He certainly enjoyed shocking her. But then, why would he lie about something like that?

  “Sit.” Maggie pointed at the chair across the table. She had a file open in front of her. A yellow legal notepad and pen were at her elbow.

  Kate saw that Maggie’s belt was hanging on the back of the chair. She took off her own belt and did the same. The sensation of weightlessness was recherché, which thought she kept to herself.

  “Keep your mic plugged in,” Maggie mumbled. Her head was bent over a file.

  Kate put the transmitter in her lap as she sat down. Both Rick and Maggie had the volume low on their radios. The crackling noise had become so constant that Kate barely registered it anymore.

  Rick took off his gloves. “Maggie has Ballard and Johnson. You take Keen and Porter.”

  Kate reached for the file Maggie offered, though she had no idea what was expected of her.

  Jimmy said, “Just write down anything that seems weird.”

  “Excellent.” Kate was still clueless, but she felt it was better to agree. Maggie slid another legal pad across the table. Kate took the pen out of her pocket. She supposed she could doodle until someone asked her why the hell she wasn’t doing what she was supposed to be doing.

  “We’ll split along with the girls.” Rick tossed folders in front of Jimmy as he spoke. “K&P evidence log. Duty sheet. Dispatch calls.” He scooped the rest of the folders out and held them. “I’ve got B&J.”

  Jimmy chuckled. “I could use a BJ.”

  Maggie glowered at her brother. “Shut up, Jimmy.”

  Kate felt her cheeks flush. She didn’t know what to do but open the file in front of her. Her stomach churned at the photograph: an eight-by-ten color close-up of a dead man. At least she assumed he was dead. His eyes were open. His graying black hair parted like a curtain across his forehead. In the center was an almost perfectly round hole.

  Jimmy nudged her arm. “You never seen a dead man before?”

  “Of course she has.” Maggie sounded livid. “Jesus.”

  “Jesus yourself, gal.” Jimmy leaned his chair back on two legs. “What’s gotten into you?”

  “We were supposed to do this at the diner.”

  “So?” He bounced in his chair as he threw a pen at his sister.

  Kate turned to the next picture. Another man. Another bullet hole. The photos they had been shown at the academy were black-and-white. Some of them were photocopies. They were nothing like the Kodachromes she held in her hands.

  “That’s Porter?” Maggie asked Kate.

  Kate turned the photo over. Porter, Marcus Paul. The name was familiar, but she couldn’t place it. Still, she told Maggie, “Yes. Porter.”

  “When was he killed?”

  Kate had to give herself time to process the question before she figured out how to answer it. Bad photocopies or not, she’d read a police report before. She flipped past the photographs and found the incident report. “September twelfth.” Two days before the anniversary of Patrick’s death. That was enough to jog her memory. Two police officers had been murdered execution-style behind a department store on September 12th.

  Kate scanned the names on the boxes: Mark Porter. Greg Keen. Alex Ballard. Leonard Johnson. Now she remembered. She’d read about all the men in the newspaper.

  They were reviewing the files of dead police officers.

  Maggie clicked her pen. She wrote as she talked. “Ballard and Johnson were killed—what was that?—three weeks before?”

  Kate picked up her pen and followed Maggie’s lead, making note of the victims’ names and the dates of their deaths. She flipped to the coroner’s report. “Both died from gunshot wounds to the head.”

  “Start with the incident report.” Maggie made a column, so Kate made a column. “What solves a crime is the connections—how is the victim connected to the killer?”

  Kate wrote Porter at the top of one column and Keen at the next.

  “There’s no such thing as a coincidence.” Maggie tapped her fingers for emphasis. “If anything sticks out, then write it down. It doesn’t matter how stupid it sounds. Let us know.”

  “Yeah,” Jimmy said. “Don’t worry about looking baaah-d.”

  Kate glared at him. He was sitting so close that she could feel the heat from his body. She didn’t understand this man. Regardless of the secret he was hiding, Jimmy had been shot yesterday. Twenty-four hours before that, a man who was likely his lover had been murdered in front of him. The same murderer had tried to kill Jimmy. How could he sit there so casually making jokes?

  Rick asked, “You got any beer?”

  Jimmy stood up. He rested his hand on the back of Kate’s chair, then the wall, as he limped into the other room. The clock by the door showed it was just after nine in the morning.

  Which had absolutely nothing to do with Kate.

  She glanced through the personnel files. Just the basics—date of employment, previous experience, marital status. There were no witness statements, but she found a few notes taken during interviews with family members and friends.

  Maggie said, “You always have to start over with him.” She was talking about Jimmy. Her tone had an air of resignation. “No matter what you do the day before, no matter how much you prove yourself, he hits reset the next day.”

  “Like an amnesiac,” Rick said.

  They both looked at him.

  “Like when you hit your head.” Rick stood up. “I’ll go check on Jimmy.”

  Kate waited until he was gone. “Can you please tell me what we’re doing here?”

  “We weren’t supposed to do it here.”

  As usual, Kate was slow on the uptake. Maggie was embarrassed about her house. And for good reason. Rather than make it worse by offering false platitudes, Kate asked, “What are we looking for in these files?”

  Maggie sat back in her chair. She tapped her pen on the table as she studied Kate. “I think the Atlanta Shooter is the same guy who murdered Don Wesley and tried to kill Jimmy.” She stopped tapping her pen. “And Jimmy agreed with me last night, but today he thinks I’m an idiot.”

  Kate had to make some leaps to understand what she was saying. “The Shooter killed these men? Porter and Keen and Ballard and Johnson?”

  “The M.O.’s are identical.” Maggie paused. “An M.O. is—”

  “Modus operandi. Yes, I know. They were all killed in the same manner.”

  “Right. So, we need to study the details of both sets of cases. Then we can compare them to what happened to Jimmy and Don. At least what Jimmy is saying happened.”

  Kate prayed that her expression didn’t give her away. She had a better idea about what happened in that alley than Maggie did. “Well, Don was shot twice, correct? And these other men were shot just one time?”

  “Correct,” Maggie agreed. “But there are lots of divergent facts. Neither Porter nor Keen were ever partnered with Johnson or Ballard. They were all in the same zone, but they didn’t socialize. Detectives who are smarter than us have already combed through these files and they didn’t find anything that connected any of the victims.”

  “Why do they need to connect?”

  “Because …” She searched for an explanation. “Let’s say that all the victims were Vietnam vets.”

  “My two guys were.”

  “My two guys weren’t. But if they were, then maybe they were part of a veterans’ group. Or they met at the VA hospital. Or served together.” Maggie shrugged. “If we find out how they all knew each other, then chances are they all knew somebody else.”<
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  “You mean the killer?” Kate finally got it. And now she understood why Maggie kept asking about the bar where Don Wesley had gotten those matches. “Or if they all hung out at the same place, like a bar, then that would be a connection.”

  “Exactly. But if that place from the matchbook was a cop hangout, more people would know about it.”

  “That’s the first time you’ve told me I’m right about something.” Kate didn’t let Maggie spoil the moment. “Can’t you just call the phone company and get the address?”

  “It doesn’t work that way. There’s not a central number to call. You have to file a formal request. And Salmeri’s Yellow Pages is a month old, same as mine. If the bar had been open when these other guys were murdered, then it would be in the book.”

  Kate nodded. “Fair point. So, we’re going through these files to connect these four shootings to Don Wesley’s death?”

  “Right,” Maggie agreed. “Sometimes with two cases, it’s hard to spot the connections. If you throw in a third case, your odds get better. Only, we need to prove that the third case belongs.”

  “And we do that by finding the connection that ties them all together.”

  “Right. Do you read?”

  “Of course I read.”

  “I mean books. Stories.”

  “Yes.”

  She tapped the file in front of her. “Look at it like a thriller novel. Michael Crichton. Helen MacInnes. Whatever. It’s a story, and we have to figure out the ending before anybody else does.”

  Jacqueline Susann was more Kate’s speed, but she got it. “Okay.”

  “Good.” That was obviously the end of the lesson. Maggie leaned over the pages in front of her.

  Kate flipped back to the incident report. Whoever had done the typing relied entirely on police codes. Thankfully, Kate hadn’t just been showing off before. She had memorized all the signals and APCO codes from her textbooks.

  She turned to a fresh sheet of paper and translated the timeline.

  At approximately 3:15 a.m. on September 12th, a 10-79 (anonymous call) came in to dispatch reporting a possible 20 (break-in) at Friedman’s Department Store. The caller said a masked man with a crowbar had been spotted trying to pry open the door. Central station verified no signal 10 (alarm triggered). Officers Greg Keen and Mark Porter 10-4’d (acknowledged). The officers 10-23’d (arrived on the scene) at 3:35 and took a 50 (left their car) to check the building. At 3:55, they called a 4 (all clear) and requested a 29 (meal break). The break was 10-4’d. At 4:45, dispatch requested a 10-20 (location). Officers were apparently still 10-7 (out of service) and it was assumed they were still 29 (eating). At 5:00, 5:05, and 5:10, dispatch reached out again. A possible 10-92 was filed (transmitter out of service). And finally, at 5:15, Officers Pendleton and Carson were sent to check for Keen and Porter at their last known location. A 63 was called immediately (officers down).

  Kate reread her work. She turned to a new page and wrote down Friedman’s Department Store. She underlined the words twice. The store was on Decatur Street. Jimmy Lawson and Don Wesley had been in an alley off of Whitehall, which was the south-southwest leg off Five Points.

  Connection.

  Next, she tackled the autopsy. Kate made more notes, but she wasn’t sure whether they would be helpful to anyone but herself. The report was very convoluted. She wasn’t a doctor. The drawings were not helpful. The coroner had a shaky hand.

  The similarities were: Both men had grit on the knees of their trousers. Both had been shot point-blank range in the center of the head. Both had eaten hamburgers within an hour of their deaths.

  The differences were: Mark Porter’s right middle fingernail was split to the bed. Greg Keen had blood in his left ear but Porter had none. The heels of Mark Porter’s shoes were worn at an odd angle. His left shoelace was untied. His front teeth were broken, posthumously, as he fell face-forward into the cobblestones that lined the alley.

  Kate studied the family statements, which mostly contained anecdotes about the dead men, stories they’d told about catching bad guys. Frankly, they came off as big fish tales, but considering all Kate had seen in the last day, she probably should take the stories at face value. Keen was a hunter. Porter hated the outdoors. They had both served in Vietnam early in the conflict. Keen was Navy. Porter was Army. Their employment records were anodyne. Neither one of them was under review. Neither was up for promotion.

  She found it unbearably depressing that the sum total of their lives came down to these scant pieces of paper.

  Kate looked at the photographs again. She was better prepared for the images this time. She already knew what had happened. The shooter had been approximately six inches from the targets. The men were on their knees.

  Kate thought about that. To be forced onto your knees. To look at a gun pointing at your head. To see the finger pull the trigger. To watch the explosion of the bullet coming out of the chamber. She could not imagine the terror.

  Both men were married, though Keen was separated. Their wedding rings had been catalogued in the autopsy report. Both of their wives had called them good husbands, honorable men. Who had gone to their houses and knocked on their doors?

  Kate knew what that part felt like, at least. You knew why they were there the minute you saw them. The rest was theater. You said the line “Yes, may I help you?” as if your brain did not know. As if your heart was not already in your throat.

  “What is it?” Maggie asked.

  Kate shook her head. She made a show of studying the photographs. Only the first few were hard to look at. The close-ups of the backs of the men’s heads. Each bullet had made a perfect hole in their foreheads. The exit wounds were another story. The skulls were fractured out. Chips of white bone were stark as teeth in the bloody mass that showed brain and tissue. Those pictures were almost unreal. Kate was looking into a man’s skull, but for some reason her mind convinced her that it was fake.

  Maybe that was why she was able to see the scratch on the back of Mark Porter’s neck. Kate held up the photo so she could better see. Was it a fingernail scratch?

  One time, Kate had scratched the back of Patrick’s neck in the heat of the moment. He’d thought it was funny the next day, but she had been mortified.

  Had Mark Porter’s neck been scratched by his wife, or was he doing the same thing that Don Wesley had been doing to Jimmy when the murder took place?

  Kate felt herself shaking her head. That was too much of a coincidence. The Shooter had obviously made the emergency call about the burglar behind Friedman’s. Porter and Keen were lured there. As far as Kate knew, there was no directive in the manual that required you to fellate your partner after giving an all clear.

  There was a scaled drawing of the crime scene in the back of the folder. Kate studied the diagram. The artist could teach the coroner a thing or two. The lines were steady and the objects were clearly defined. Everything that was within a radius of fifty feet from the bodies was marked with a number on the drawing. There was a legend in the corner. Kate scanned the recovered objects: cigarette butts, pieces of broken glass, hypodermic needles, squares of tinfoil, a bent silver spoon, the keys to the cruiser parked on the street, a piece of broken fingernail.

  A thought occurred to Kate. Her face got so warm that she felt the need to lean her head in her hands so that Maggie would not see. If Keen and Porter had oral sex, and the result of the completion was not at the scene, then where else would it be?

  She flipped back to the autopsy reports. Kate folded up the pages so that Maggie wouldn’t see her focusing on the separate lines that read GENITALS. The word “unremarkable” was listed for both men.

  She flipped back to the sections that listed stomach contents. Both victims had partially digested hamburgers and French fries that the coroner estimated were consumed an hour before death. Nothing else was listed. Kate wasn’t even sure it would be listed. Was that the sort of thing you could see inside a person’s stomach?

  “W
ait a minute,” Kate said.

  “What?”

  “Did your guys have anything in their stomachs?”

  Maggie nodded. “Burgers and fries.”

  “My guys requested a meal break right around the time we assume they were murdered, but the coroner estimates that they ate dinner at least an hour before they died.” She showed Maggie the two reports. “Hamburgers and fries.”

  “The only place they could get hamburgers that time of night is at the Golden Lady. It’s a strip club off Peachtree. All the night-shift guys eat there.”

  “Connection.” Kate wrote the Golden Lady on her list. “So, why did they request a meal break when they’d already eaten?”

  “Why would they call a meal break at all?” Maggie explained, “Night shift pays double. You don’t clock out for meals. Nobody checks up on you, because the brass is asleep.” She nodded toward Kate’s paperwork. “What else?”

  “Were your guys lured to the scene?”

  “Yes. There was an anonymous call reporting a break-in. No alarm.”

  “Same with mine. Did yours request a twenty-nine?”

  “Their last contact with dispatch was to call the scene clear and request a meal break.”

  Kate felt the hair go up on the back of her neck. “They were forced on their knees?”

  “Yes.”

  “They were shot in the foreheads?”

  “The weapon was six to eight inches away, superior angle, so the guy was standing over them, holding the gun down.”

  “That’s what I have, too.”

  “Twenty-five caliber?”

  “Twenty-five caliber,” Kate confirmed. “Anything unusual on the diagram of the scene?”

  Maggie flipped a few pages in her notepad. “Cigarette butts, drug paraphernalia, a pair of ripped women’s underwear.” She looked up and shrugged. “You could find that on any street in Atlanta right now.”

  “What about the car keys?”

  Maggie flipped to a different page. “Ballard had them in his front left pants pocket.”